To a new subordinate “The General,” as he was always called, was rather stern and exacting; but when once he was convinced that his man was to be trusted, he practically let him take his own course; never interfered in matters of detail, accepted suggestions with the greatest courtesy and good humour, and was always ready with a kindly and humorous word of encouragement in times of difficulty.  I was once grumbling to him about how hard it was to carry on the work of the laboratory through a long series of November fogs, “when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared.”  “Never mind, Parker,” he said, instantly capping my quotation, “cast four anchors out of the stern and wish for day.”

The first passport to his friendship was entire sincerity.  Whatever other claims might be advanced, he would shut out from any approach to intimacy those whom he found to be untruthful or not straightforward.  Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters of his time he adopted none of the “offensive-defensive” methods of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury.  He armed himself with a cold correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social temperature instead of raising it.

XVII

IN THE FAMILY CIRCLE

His acquaintance and friendship were eagerly sought, and to those who entered the circle he gave abundantly of his brilliant gifts and of friendly affection; but the inmost circle was small—­the men who were comrades and brothers; the sister and the brother united with him in love and trust; the wife to win whom he served so long, and without whose sustaining help and comradeship his quick spirit and nervous temperament could hardly have endured the long and often embittered struggle.

In this inmost circle he was at once strong and tender.  The friend who most cordially admired his intellectual vigour and unflinching honesty could write after his death that—­

what now dwells most in my mind is the memory of old kindness, and of the days when I used to see him with (his wife) and his children.  I may safely say that I never came from your house without thinking how good he is; what a tender and affectionate nature the man has.  It did me good simply to see him.

Always the home was the inmost centre of his own life.  Here he found personal solace in his long struggle; the sympathy that was the pillar and stay of his genius, the twin incentive to labour and achievement, the warmth that gave a fuller value to the light he ensued.  None knew more perfectly than himself what he owed to his life-long companion, who, in turn, was as much uplifted by his eager spirit as she was proud to be the cherisher of big aspirations and the active minister to his attainment.  To her critical ear he gave the first reading of his essays; the judgment and the praise that he most valued were hers, and, as he put it towards the end of his life, when he was travelling with his son in Madeira and had been cut off from letters longer than he liked:—­