very act of its struggle and sorrow. He loved books of travel, energetic stories, strongly written historical sketches, tragic as well as satirical dramas, and books of well-described natural history. In nature itself, he was very fond of observing flowers, while, after his fashion, he loved animals passionately. They show the will naked, in all its naive cruelty, guilt, and innocence.
Edifying literature of all but the purely mystical type, most systematic schemes of constructive thought, all merely sentimental poetry, and above all such moralizing poetry as Schiller’s “Don Carlos,” he in general bitterly despised. These things seemed to him to hover above life. He wanted to contemplate the longing of life in itself. His critical and historical judgments are deep and yet wayward. He is once more on the lookout for types, not for connections; he had, for so learned a man, a poor eye for detecting unscholarly and fantastic theories, and frequently accepts such when they relate to topics beyond his immediate control. His literary sense was after all his best safeguard in scholarship. Here his fine contemplative intellect guided him. He could not make a bad blunder as to a purely linguistic question; but where his taste and instinct for the immediate inner life of things and of people were unable to guide him, he wandered too often in the dark. On all matters of learning his judgment remains, therefore, largely that of the sensitive man of the world. His sense of humor was of the keenest. The will is once for all as comic in its irrationalities as it is deep in its unrest. A distinguishing feature of his style is due to this wide reading, namely, his skill in metaphor and in other forms of comparison. In this respect he rivals those wonderful masters of comparison, the Hindoo metaphysicians, whom he knew through translations, and admired much. One further trait may yet be mentioned as pervading his study and his whole view of life. He was an intense admirer of the English temperament, just
