An abstract wit of gentle flow,
  Which wounds no friend, and hurts no foe.

He was my school-fellow and companion in childhood, my friend and associate in early manhood; our intimacy was close and cordial, and in after life this friendship became intense—­and I knew him perhaps better than any man ever knew him.

All the peculiarities of the boy remained with the man, distinguishing him in all his associations.  The refined purity of his nature made him naturally to despise and scorn all meanness and vice, and so intensely as to render an association with any man distinguished by these, however exalted his intellect, or extensive his attainments, impossible.  Falsehood, or the slightest dishonorable conduct in any man, put him at once beyond the pale of his favor or respect.  In all my association with him, I never saw an indelicate act in his conduct, or heard an obscene word in his conversation.  In youth, he was fond of the society of ladies—­fond of this society not for a pastime, but because of his high appreciation of the virtues of those he selected for society.  In his verse, “Memoriam,” he has embalmed the memory of those of our early female friends he most esteemed.  He rather courted this association in the individual than in the collective assembly—­for he was not fond of crowds, either in society, or the ordinary assemblages of men and women.

The love of fame, more than any other passion, fired his ambition; but it was not the love of notoriety—­the fame he courted was not that which should only render his name conspicuous among men, that he might receive the incense of hypocritical flattery, or be pointed at by the fickle multitude—­for such, his contempt was supreme; but it was the desire of his heart, and the struggle of his life, to be embalmed in men’s memories as the benefactor of his race, to be remembered for his deeds as the great and the good.  This was the spontaneous prompting of his heart, and for this he labored with the zeal of a martyr.

Much of his early life was devoted exclusively to literature.  His reading, though without order, was select and extensive.  He was well versed in ancient history.  The heroic characters of Greece and Rome were his especial admiration, and that of Brutus above all others.  Of the nations of modern Europe, and their history, he knew everything history could teach.  His imagination was fired with the heroic in the character of those of modern times, as well as those of antiquity, and seemed the model from which was formed his own.  The inflexible integrity, the devoted patriotism, the unselfish heroism of these were constantly his theme when a schoolboy, and the example for his imitation in manhood.