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��INTKOD UC TIOuV
��too proud to be vain. To every man, however humble in worldly eyes, who refrained from aggression on his sensi- tive self-respect, he was all courtesy and kindness ; to the impertinent and the boorish, to any man who purposely or even stupidly trod upon him, he blazed out in pitiless, bit- ing, scorching sarcasm. But he never took revenge. To meanness of whatever kind, to inhumanity, duplicity, hypocrisy, treachery, or injustice, he was as implacable as death, and neither forgot nor forgave. But to weak- ness and suffering, to errors of feebleness rather than of deliberate intention, even to deliberate knavery that was born of misery or misfortune and victimized nobody but himself, he was tender and pitiful as a woman. He knew as few know how to protect his own individuality ; and, what is even rarer, he knew how never to infringe upon the individuality of others. The factitious virtue of non-resistance he repudiated, as worthy only of slavish spirits ; but he prized as of supreme beauty and worth the real virtue of non-aggression. He was "one of Plutarch's men," as nobody will doubt who appreciates his poem, "To the Shade of Samuel Adams."
Indeed, whoever can read the letters above printed without penetrating to the extraordinary combination of strength and sweetness in this man's nature would seem to be dull of mind and cold of heart. It is not necessary at all to agree with all of his opinions ; he touches on too many subjects, treats them too rapidly and from too un- conventional a standpoint, to permit that. But who can help seeing in those letters the unconscious self-portrait- ure, not only of a man of genius, but also of a man who was astonishingly manly, sincere, deep-hearted and deep- thoughted, in the midst of a highly superficial and not altogether admirable civilization ? It may have made me
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