Melbourne can hardly be called a very great man,--he had not the
purpose or tenacity for that, and he thought both too
contemptuously and too indulgently of human nature,--but I know of
no historical figure who is more wholly transfused and penetrated
by the aroma of charm. Everything that he did and said had some
distinction and unusualness: perceptive observation, ripe wisdom,
and, with it all, the petulant attractiveness of the spoiled and
engaging child. And yet even so, one is baffled, because it is not
the profundity or the gravity of what he said that impresses; it is
rather the delicate and fantastic turn he gave to a thought or a
phrase that makes his simplest deductions from life, his most
sensible bits of counsel, appear to have something fresh and
interesting about them, though prudent men have said much the same
before, and said it heavily and solemnly.
Not that charm need be whimsical and freakish, though it is perhaps
most beautiful when there is something of the child about it,
something naive and unconventional. There are men, of whom I think
that Cardinal Newman was pre-eminently one, who seem to have had
the appeal of a pathetic sort of beauty and even helplessness.
Newman seems to have always been surprised to find himself so
interesting to others, and perhaps rather over-shadowed by the
responsibility of it. He was romantically affectionate, and the
tears came very easily at the call of emotion.
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