Page:Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Volume 1.djvu/13



Rh In Holcroft's "Hugh Trevor" there is a passage in which Mr. Robinson was greatly interested, because he felt it to be singularly applicable to himself: "I was possessed of that hilarity which, when not regulated by a strong desire to obtain some particular purpose, shows itself in a thousand extravagant forms, and is then called animal spirits; but when once turned to an attainment of some great end, assumes the more worthy appellation of activity of mind." Of this passage Mr. Robinson says, "I have through life had animal spirits in a high degree. I might, under certain circumstances, have had more." When he was in his seventieth year, Mrs. Clarkson said of him, that he was "as much a boy as ever." Wordsworth called him "a healthy creature, who talked of coming again in seven years as others would of seven days." And the first line of the Dedication to H. C. R. of the "Memorials of the Italian Tour" is:—

"Companion! By whose buoyant spirit cheered."

This was, doubtless, in some measure owing to a healthful and vigorous constitution. Very rarely does so long a life pass with so little interruption from illness. Even so late as 1831, when he was in Italy, he made an excursion with three gentlemen, one of whom, before their return, volunteered this confession: "When I heard that you were to be of the party I, at first, refused to go; 'for,' I said, 'Mr. Robinson is an old man, and the rest of us shall have to accommodate ourselves to his infirmities; 'but you have already knocked up two of us, and all but me also."

Mr. Robinson was a voracious devourer of books. He read before he got up, and after he went to bed.