Like an old Roman senator, or like a gentleman of the Southern States of America, he had the condescension of a gentleman to those below him, combined with the jealous self-assertiveness of a Jacobin to those above.

The only person who appears to have been able to manage him and bring out his more agreeable side was Browning.

It is, by the way, one of the many hints of a certain element in Browning which can only be described by the elementary and old-fashioned word goodness, that he always contrived to make himself acceptable and even lovable to men of savage and capricious temperament, of detached and erratic genius, who could get on with no one else.

Carlyle, who could not get a bitter taste off his tongue in talking of most of his contemporaries, was fond of Browning.

Landor, who could hardly conduct an ordinary business interview without beginning to break the furniture, was fond of Browning.