Page:Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc., being selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson.djvu/31

 INTRODUCTION admiring) account of Bagehot, in his old age his pet stories did duty rather too often. There is, however, no doubt of his mastery of the art of conversation, and it was partly for this reason that his company was so eagerly sought. As a young man and in middle life he was constantly invited out: in his old age his breakfast-parties were institutions. He complains that he neglects necessary work for desultory amusement and unprofitable talk, that his days are spent to no purpose, and that he gets through nothing of importance. But in this, as in so many of his self-reproaches, there is little substance. Literally he added to the gaiety of nations—by what he was, as well as by what he said. He was, in addition, an admirable man of business, and, in spite of his assertions to the contrary, a competent and successful barrister with a sound practice. He was a voracious reader—of law, history, philosophy, theology, novels, travels, and poetry—and he wrote detailed summaries and criticisms of much that he read. He travelled a great deal at home and abroad, and he left no individual and no object of interest unvisited. He was never too tired or busy to do someone a good turn, whether it were to visit a homesick child at school, to accompany rather dull acquaintances to the exhibition, to look after the business-matters of a widow, to collect money for someone who was in need, to introduce the many young foreigners who were commended to his notice, to distribute prospectuses of Coleridge's lectures, invest Wordsworth's savings or lend him a carpet-bag for his travels, or conclude terms for him with a publisher or comfort him in family afflictions.

Carlyle applied to him as a matter of course when he wanted

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