PERCIVAL.

Among my letters is one from Dr. E.D.  North, desiring me to furnish any facts within my reach, relating to the scientific character and general opinions of the late James G. Percival.  This information Dr. North proposed to incorporate into a memoir, to be prefixed to a new edition of Percival’s Poems.  The biographer, with his task unfinished, has followed the subject of his studies to the tomb.

Dr. North’s request revived in me many recollections of Percival; and finally led me to draw out the following sketch of him, as he appeared to my eyes in those days when I saw him often, and sometimes shared his pursuits.  Vague and shadowy is the delineation, and to myself seems little better than the reminiscence of a phantom or a dream.  Percival’s life had few externalities,—­he related himself to society by few points of contact; and I have been compelled to paint him chiefly by glimpses of his literary and interior existence.

My acquaintance with him grew out of some conversations on geological topics, and commenced in 1828, when he was working on his translation of Malte-Brun’s Geography.  The impression made on me by his singular person and manners was vivid and indelible.  Slender in form, rather above than under the middle height, he had a narrow chest, and a peculiar stoop, which was not in the back, but high up in the shoulders.  His head, without being large, was fine.  His eyes were of a dark hazel, and possessed uncommon expression.  His nose, mouth, and chin were symmetrically, if not elegantly formed, and came short of beauty only because of that meagreness which marked his whole person.  His complexion, light without redness, inclined to sallow, and suggested a temperament somewhat bilious.  His dark brown hair had become thin above the forehead, revealing to advantage that most striking feature of his countenance.  Taken all together, his appearance was that of a weak man, of delicate constitution,—­an appearance hardly justified by the fact; for he endured fatigue and privation with remarkable stanchness.

Percival’s face, when he was silent, was full of calm, serious meditation; when speaking, it lighted up with thought, and became noticeably expressive.  He commonly talked in a mild, unimpassioned undertone, but just above a whisper, letting his voice sink with rather a pleasing cadence at the completion of each sentence.  Even when most animated, he used no gesture except a movement of the first and second fingers of his right hand backward and forward across the palm of the left, meantime following their monotonous unrest with his eyes, and rarely meeting the gaze of his interlocutor.  He would stand for hours, when talking, his right elbow on a mantel-piece, if there was one near, his fingers going through their strange palmistry; and in this manner, never once stirring from his position, he would not unfrequently protract his discourse till long past midnight.  An inexhaustible, undemonstrative, noiseless, passionless man, scarcely evident to you by physical qualities, and impressing you, for the most part, as a creature of pure intellect.