He was cheerful, genial, expansive, and preserved his buoyancy of spirit under circumstances the most trying and vexatious. He possessed great sweetness as well as great liberality of disposition; his combativeness was devoid of every particle of rancour; shrewd and crafty, he was yet open and candid. Intent, as he could not help being, on his own advantage as a trader, the interests of his customer had a very definite place in his mind. He worked for his patrons even more than for himself, and prided himself more upon having made another man's library than he would have done upon having made his own fortune. As a man of business, his principal defect was an over-sanguine temper; the spring, nevertheless, of his enterprise, and hence of his success. "Si non errasset fecerat ille minus."
Mr. Stevens died of a general decay of constitution resulting in dropsy, against which his vigorous constitution and indomitable cheerfulness contended with great hope of success to the very last. He had been married for upwards of thirty years to a highly accomplished lady, whose daughter by a former marriage is the widow of Mr. Hawker, the celebrated Vicar of Morwenstow. His son, Mr. H. N. Stevens, succeeds to the direction of his business, and inherits his literary and bibliographical tastes.
