“His heart was pure and simple as a child’s
  Unbreathed on by the world:  in friendship warm,
  Confiding, generous, constant; and, though now
  He ranks among the great ones of the earth
  And hath achieved such glory as will last
  To future generations, he, I think,
  Would sup on oysters with as right good will
  In this poor home of mine as e’er he did
  On Petty Cury’s classical first floor
  Some twenty years ago.”

He loved to place his purse, his influence, and his talents at the disposal of a friend; and anyone whom he called by that name he judged with indulgence, and trusted with a faith that would endure almost any strain.  If his confidence proved to have been egregiously misplaced, which he was always the last to see, he did not resort to remonstrance or recrimination.  His course under such circumstances he described in a couplet from an old French comedy: 

 “Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot;
  L’honnete homme trompe s’eloigne et ne dit mot.

["La Coquette corrigee.  Comedie par Mr. Delanoue, 1756.”  In his journal of February 15, 1851, after quoting the couplet, Macaulay adds:  “Odd that two lines of a damned play, and, it should seem, a justly damned play, should have lived near a century and have become proverbial.”]

He was never known to take part in any family quarrel, or personal broil, of any description whatsoever.  His conduct in this respect was the result of self-discipline, and did not proceed from any want of sensibility.  “He is very sensitive,” said his sister Margaret, “and remembers long, as well as feels deeply, anything in the form of slight.”  Indeed, at college his friends used to tell him that his leading qualities were “generosity and vindictiveness.”  Courage he certainly did not lack.  During the years when his spirit was high, and his pen cut deep, and when the habits of society were different from what they are at present, more than one adversary displayed symptoms of a desire to meet him elsewhere than on paper.  On these occasions, while showing consideration for his opponent, he evinced a quiet but very decided sense of what was due to himself, which commanded the respect of all who were implicated, and brought difficulties that might have been grave to an honourable and satisfactory issue.

He reserved his pugnacity for quarrels undertaken on public grounds, and fought out with the world looking on as umpire.  In the lists of criticism and of debate it cannot be denied that, as a young man, he sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson pronounced upon a good hater.  He had no mercy for bad writers, and notably for bad poets, unless they were in want of money; in which case he became within his means, the most open-handed of patrons.  He was too apt to undervalue both the heart and the head of those who desired to maintain the old system of civil and religious exclusion, and who grudged political power