I cannot tell you how much I have valued his conversation for these last two or three years, and he has never stopped growing, but has ripened from month to month.

Indeed, the weight of his thoughts and the fresh and various forms in which he constantly clothed them has made Shakespeare more conceivable to me, as Shakespeare was almost the only genius whom he wholly loved.

His taste was unerring.

What he called good was good, but so severe was it that very few works and very few men could satisfy him, and this because his standard was a pure ideal beauty and he never forgot himself so far as to accept any lower actual one in lieu of it.

But I must not begin yet to enumerate his perfections.