His natural indolence in production had prevented him from exhausting his faculties in the more exacting labours of creative work, and it had left him time for omnivorous if desultory reading, the fruits of which he stored in a wonderfully retentive memory against an occasion for their use.

To a very fully equipped mind he brought the service of a robust and acute judgment.

Moreover when he applied his mind to a subject he had a faculty of intense, if fitful concentration; he could seize with great force on the heart of a matter; he had the power in a wonderfully short time of extracting the kernel and leaving the husk.

His judgments in writing are like those recorded by Boswell from his conversation; that is to say he does not, as a critic whose medium was normally the pen rather than the tongue would tend to do, search for fine shades of distinction, subdivide subtleties, or be careful to admit _caveats_ or exceptions; he passes, on the contrary, rapid and forcible verdicts, not seldom in their assertions untenably sweeping, and always decided and dogmatic.

He never affects diffidence or defers to the judgments of others.