Charles Lamb once, considering whom of the world’s vanished worthies he would rather evoke, singled out Fulke Greville, and also—­if our memory is correct—­Sir Thomas Browne.  He thought, very sensibly, that any reasonable human being, if permitted to summon spirits from the vasty deep, would base his choice upon personal qualities, and not on mere general reputation.  There would be an elective affinity, a principle of natural selection, (not Darwinian,) by which each would aim to draw forth a spirit to his liking.  One would not summon the author of such and such a book, but this or that man.  Milton wrote an admirable epic, but he would be awful in society.  Shakspeare was a splendid dramatist, but one would hardly ask him for a boon-companion.  Who could feel at ease under that omniscient eye?  But, if the Plutonian shore might, for a few brief moments, render to our call its waiting shades, there are not very many for whom our lips would sooner syllable the word of resurrection than for Christopher North.  Only to look upon him in his prime would be worth much.  To have a day with him on the moors, or an ambrosial night, would be a possession forever.

Even now we can almost see him standing radiant before us, illuminated and transfigured by the halo streaming round him.  A huge man, towering far above his fellows; with Herculean shoulders, deep chest, broad back, sturdy neck, brawny arms, and massive fists; a being with vast muscle and tense nerve; of choicest make, and finest tone and temper,—­robust and fine, bulky and sinewy, ponderous and agile, stalwart and elastic; a hammer to give, and a rock to receive blows; with the light tread of the deer, and the fell paw of the lion; crowned with a dome-like head, firm-set, capacious, distinctive, cleanly cut, and covered with long, flowing, yellow hair; a forehead broad, high, and rounded, strongly and equally marked by perception and imagination, wit and fancy; light blue eyes, capable of every expression, and varying with every mood, but generally having a far, dim, dreamy look into vacancy,—­the gaze of the poet seeing visions; a firm, high, aquiline nose, indicating both intellect and spirit; flexile lips, bending to every breath of passion; a voice of singular compass and pliancy, responding justly to all his wayward humors and all his noble thoughts, now tremulous with tender passion, now rough with a partisan’s fury; a man of strange contradictions and inconsistencies every way; a hand of iron with a glove of silk; a tiger’s claw sheathed in velvet; one who fought lovingly, and loved fiercely; champion of the arena, passionate poet, chastiser of brutes, caresser of children, friend of brawlers, lover of beauty; a pugilistic Professor of Moral Philosophy, who, in a thoroughly professional way, gayly put up his hands and scientifically floored his man in open day, at a public fair;[A] sometimes of the oak, sometimes of the willow; now bearing grief without a murmur, now howling in his pain like the old gods and heroes,