Even so, now, many men overlook his narrowness and bigotry because of his genius and bravery.
His grandest quality was sincerity.

Priest and public man as he was, there was not a line of hypocrisy or cant in his whole being.

A sham was to him intolerable, the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not.

Reckless of consequences, of danger, of his popularity, and of his life, he blurted out the whole truth, as he saw it, "despite all cardinals, popes, kings and emperors, together with all devils and hell." Whether his ideal is ours or not, his courage in daring and his strength to labor for it must command our respect.
Next to his earnestness he owed his success to a {125} wonderful gift of language that made him the tongue, as well as the spear-point, of his people.

[Sidenote: His eloquence] In love of nature, in wonder, in the power to voice some secret truth in a phrase or a metaphor, he was a poet.