It was thus that the old man kept alive the embers of
his youth.
Charles Lamb once, considering whom of the world's vanished worthies he
would rather evoke, singled out Fulke Greville, and also--if our memory
is correct--Sir Thomas Browne. He thought, very sensibly, that any
reasonable human being, if permitted to summon spirits from the vasty
deep, would base his choice upon personal qualities, and not on mere
general reputation. There would be an elective affinity, a principle
of natural selection, (not Darwinian,) by which each would aim to draw
forth a spirit to his liking. One would not summon the author of such
and such a book, but this or that man. Milton wrote an admirable epic,
but he would be awful in society. Shakspeare was a splendid dramatist,
but one would hardly ask him for a boon-companion. Who could feel at
ease under that omniscient eye? But, if the Plutonian shore might, for a
few brief moments, render to our call its waiting shades, there are
not very many for whom our lips would sooner syllable the word of
resurrection than for Christopher North. Only to look upon him in his
prime would be worth much. To have a day with him on the moors, or an
ambrosial night, would be a possession forever.
Even now we can almost see him standing radiant before us, illuminated
and transfigured by the halo streaming round him. A huge man, towering
far above his fellows; with Herculean shoulders, deep chest, broad back,
sturdy neck, brawny arms, and massive fists; a being with vast muscle
and tense nerve; of choicest make, and finest tone and temper,--robust
and fine, bulky and sinewy, ponderous and agile, stalwart and elastic; a
hammer to give, and a rock to receive blows; with the light tread of
the deer, and the fell paw of the lion; crowned with a dome-like head,
firm-set, capacious, distinctive, cleanly cut, and covered with long,
flowing, yellow hair; a forehead broad, high, and rounded, strongly and
equally marked by perception and imagination, wit and fancy; light blue
eyes, capable of every expression, and varying with every mood, but
generally having a far, dim, dreamy look into vacancy,--the gaze of
the poet seeing visions; a firm, high, aquiline nose, indicating both
intellect and spirit; flexile lips, bending to every breath of passion;
a voice of singular compass and pliancy, responding justly to all his
wayward humors and all his noble thoughts, now tremulous with
tender passion, now rough with a partisan's fury; a man of strange
contradictions and inconsistencies every way; a hand of iron with
a glove of silk; a tiger's claw sheathed in velvet; one who fought
lovingly, and loved fiercely; champion of the arena, passionate poet,
chastiser of brutes, caresser of children, friend of brawlers, lover of
beauty; a pugilistic Professor of Moral Philosophy, who, in a thoroughly
professional way, gayly put up his hands and scientifically floored his
man in open day, at a public fair;[A] sometimes of the oak, sometimes of
the willow; now bearing grief without a murmur, now howling in his pain
like the old gods and heroes, making all Nature resonant with his cries;
knowing nothing of envy save from the reports of others, yet never
content to be outdone even in veriest trifles; a tropical heart and a
cool brain; full of strong prejudices and fine charities, generous and
exacting, heedless and sympathetic, quick to forgive, slow to resent,
firm in love, transient in hate; to-day scaling the heavens with
frantic zeal, to-morrow relaxing in long torpor; fond of long, solitary
journeys, and given to conviviality; tender eyes that a word or a
thought would fill, and hard lips that would never say die; a child of
Nature thrilled with ecstasy by storm and by sunshine, and a cultured
scholar hungering for new banquets; dreamer, doer, poet, philosopher,
simple child, wisest patriarch; a true cosmopolitan, having largest
aptitudes,--a tree whose roots sucked up juices from all the land, whose
liberal fruits were showered all around; having a key to unlock all
hearts, and a treasure for each; hospitable friend, husband-lover,
doting father; a boisterous wit, fantastic humorist, master of pathos,
practical joker, sincere mourner; always an extremist, yielding to
various excess; an April day, all smiles and tears; January and May met
together; a many-sided fanatic; a universal enthusiast; a large-hearted
sectarian; a hot-headed judge; a strong sketch full of color, with
neutral tints nowhere, but fall of fiery lights and deep glooms;
buoyant, irrepressible, fuming, rampant, with something of divine
passion and electric fire; gentle, earnest, true; a wayward prodigal,
loosely scattering abroad where he should bring together; great in
things indifferent, and indifferent in many great ones; a man who would
have been far greater, if he had been much less,--if he had been less
catholic and more specific; immeasurably greater in his own personality
than in any or all of his deeds either actual or possible;--such was
the man Christopher North, a Hercules-Apollo, strong and immortally
beautiful,--a man whom, with all his foibles, negligences, and
ignorances, we stop to admire, and stay to love.
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