He saw not a little of what was good and noble, and would fain be such, but mainly that men might regard him for his goodness and nobility; hence his practical notion of the good was weak, and of the noble, paltry.

His one desire in doing anything, was to be approved of or admired in the same--approved of in the opinions he held, in the plans he pursued, in the doctrines he taught; admired in the poems in which he went halting after Byron, and in the eloquence with which he meant one day to astonish great congregations.

There was nothing original as yet discoverable in him; nothing to deliver him from the poor imitative apery in which he imagined himself a poet.

He did possess one invaluable gift--that of perceiving and admiring more than a little, certain forms of the beautiful; but it was rendered merely ridiculous by being conjoined with the miserable ambition--poor as that of any mountebank emperor--to be himself admired for that admiration.

He mistook also sensibility for faculty, nor perceived that it was at best but a probable sign that he might be able to do something or other with pleasure, perhaps with success.