- lations as he met a friend, in an irrepressible satisfaction at the encounter
that not unfrequently conveyed high gratification to the arriver who was thus greeted. He had straight black hair, which he wore parted in the centre; a dark but not pale complexion; features compounded between length and a certain irregularity of outline, characteristic of the American mould; black eyebrows, firmly marking the edge of a brow, over which was a singularly upright, flat, white forehead, and under which beamed a pair of eyes dark, brilliant, reflecting, gay, and kind, with a certain look of observant humour, that suggested an idea of what is called slyness when it is applied to children or girls; for he had not the aspect given to him in one of his portraits, of which he said that "the fellow looked as if he had stolen a tankard." He had a head massive and tall, and larger than most men's,—Byron, Shelley, and Keats wore hats which he could not put on; but it was not out of proportion to the figure, its outlines being peculiarly smooth and devoid of "bumps." His upper lip was long, his mouth large and hard in the flesh; his chin retreating and gentle like a woman's. His sloping shoulders, not very wide, almost concealed the ample proportions of his chest; though that was of a compass which not every pair of arms could span. He looked like a man cut out for action,—a soldier; but he shrank from physical contest, telling you that his sight was short, and that he was "timid." We shall understand that mistaken candour better when we have examined his character a little further. Yet he did shrink from using his vigorous faculties, even in many ways. Nature had gifted him with an intense dramatic perception, an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of extraordinary compass, power, flexibility, and beauty. It extended from the C below the line to the F sharp above: there were no "passages" that he could not execute; the quality was sweet, clear, and ringing: he would equally have sung the music of Don Giovanni or Sarastro, of Oroveso or Maometto Secondo. Yet nature had not endowed him with some of the qualities needed for the practical musician,—he had no aptitude for mechanical contrivance, but faint enjoyment of power for its own sake. He dabbled on the pianoforte; delighted to repeat airs pleasing or plaintive; and if he would occasionally fling himself into the audacious revels of Don Giovanni, he preferred to be Lindoro or Don Ottavio; and still more, by the help of his falsetto, to dally with the tender treble of the Countess in Figaro, or Polly in Beggars' Opera. This waiving of the potential, this preference for the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character,—save when duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it; and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the error of his persecutor and gaily confessing to a community of mistake.
While he was yet at school, Hunt was pronounced by one of his schoolfellows a "fool for refining"—that is, one who was a fool in his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety to be precise. A boy all his life, this
