“ These character sketches—and the Diary bristles with them, great men and small, poets, statesmen, revolutionaries, criminals in the dock, lawyers on circuit, judges on the bench, chance acquaintances picked up on the road—these are not mere lucky flukes. "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance," and there is the genuine art, which conceals itself, in H. C. R.'s achievements. The statement that he "never could write anything" is abundantly disproved on his own evidence. ”

“ He was, in addition, an admirable man of business, and, in spite of his assertions to the contrary, a competent and successful barrister with a sound practice. He was a voracious reader—of law, history, philosophy, theology, novels, travels, and poetry—and he wrote detailed summaries and criticisms of much that he read. He travelled a great deal at home and abroad, and he left no individual and no object of interest unvisited. ”

“ Many people have written well of Lamb, whose lovable self is an inspiration to his critics. But who has said more in a single sentence than H. C. R. has included in the following comment: "Lamb, who needs very little indulgence for himself, is very indulgent towards others"? (June 15, 1815) . What force of judgment there is in all his criticisms, and some of these are adverse, on the character of Wordsworth, whom he worshipped this side idolatry as much as any; how well he depicts Coleridge in those "innings-for-one that he called conversation." ”

“ But the man who emerges from this mass of material is, nevertheless, a lovable personality—no Boswell certainly, but one who possessed a genuine gift for characterization, an instinct for friendship, and the power to stamp himself and his experience with extraordinary vividness on his pages. ”

“ He sympathized with Horne Tooke, with Hardy and with Thelwall, and was at first an ardent admirer of Godwin, with whom he long remained on friendly terms, though he came to disapprove of both his philosophy and his morals. He lived to be what he called himself in 1832, a "conservative reformer or reforming conservative," while in his old age he read the writings of Gladstone and President Lincoln's inaugural speech. ”

“ Friends and acquaintances unanimously turned to him when they were in need, and their testimony in his favour is overwhelming. Like Carlyle (April 29, 1825) , they knew by repeated experience his readiness to oblige, and made no scruple of applying to him in any and every emergency. "I am a man," he once told Bagehot, "to whom a great number of persons entertain the very strongest objection." ”

“ There is no need to go to the testimony of Professor de Morgan [4] or of Bagehot, the friends of his last years, when he might well be excused had his faculties failed him. But once more his oft-repeated complaint is incontrovertibly contradicted by his own writings—even by the least interesting of these, the journals of his tours, or by the reminiscences of his experiences as boy and man. No doubt the daily journal helped him with the latter, but even the Diary [5] was not always filled up day by day ”

“ This is no mere prosy raconteur, unable to distinguish between small things and great; no shorthand reporter taking indiscriminate notes of what passes before his eyes. The man has a mind of his own; he has critical ability and the power to estimate the worth of new works, prose or poetry, good as well as bad. ”

“ Kenilworth and Ivanhoe, for example, are recognized as definitely inferior to the Heart of Midlothian and Rob Roy. But, above all, it is as the admirer and missionary of Wordsworth among English men of letters that Crabb Robinson is best remembered, and to him and his readings and quotations in early days Wordsworth owed a large proportion of his first audience, fit though few. Moreover, as his German friends recognized, Crabb, for so he was always called by his intimates in later life, was one of the earliest to popularize German literature and to introduce German philosophy into England. ”

“ His society manners were not always above reproach; for instance, even as a young man he frequently fell asleep in company when he did not find it amusing, or when there was music which he could not appreciate. ”

“ Again, Miss Fenwick, Wordsworth's friend, whites to Henry Taylor, January 26, 1839, that there was "a series of ugliness in quick succession, one look more ugly than the one which preceded it, particularly when he is asleep. He is always asleep when he is not talking .. On which occasions little Willy [Wordsworth's grandson] contemplates him with great interest and often inquires 'What kind of face has Mr. Robinson?' 'A very nice face' is the constant answer ”

“ Wordsworth, just before H. C. R. goes on his long Italian tour in 1829, calls him "a healthy creature" who talks of coming again in seven years as others would of seven days. He himself confesses: "I have through life had animal spirits in a high degree." Dr. Sadler's choice of a motto for the Diary is thus peculiarly appropriate:
A Man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows ”