He was naturally a favorite in conversation,especially with all who had any funds for conversing:frank and direct,yet polite and delicate withal,--though at times too he could crackle with his dexterous petulancies,making the air all like needles round you;and there was no end to his logic when you excited it;no end,unless in some form of silence on your part.Elderly men of reputation I have sometimes known offended by him:for he took a frank way in the matter of talk;spoke freely out of him,freely listening to what others spoke,with a kind of "hail fellow well met"feeling;and carelessly measured a men much less by his reputed account in the bank of wit,or in any other bank,than by what the man had to show for himself in the shape of real spiritual cash on the occasion.But withal there was ever a fine element of natural courtesy in Sterling;his deliberate demeanor to acknowledged superiors was fine and graceful;his apologies and the like,when in a fit of repentance he felt commanded to apologize,were full of naivete,and very pretty and ingenuous.
His circle of friends was wide enough;chiefly men of his own standing,old College friends many of them;some of whom have now become universally known.Among whom the most important to him was Frederic Maurice,who had not long before removed to the Chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital here,and was still,as he had long been,his intimate and counsellor.Their views and articulate opinions,I suppose,were now fast beginning to diverge;and these went on diverging far enough:
but in their kindly union,in their perfect trustful familiarity,precious to both parties,there never was the least break,but a steady,equable and duly increasing current to the end.One of Sterling's commonest expeditions,in this time,was a sally to the other side of London Bridge:"Going to Guy's to-day."Maurice,in a year or two,became Sterling's brother-in-law;wedded Mrs.Sterling's younger sister,--a gentle excellent female soul;by whom the relation was,in many ways,strengthened and beautified for Sterling and all friends of the parties.With the Literary notabilities I think he had no acquaintance;his thoughts indeed still tended rather towards a certain class of the Clerical;but neither had he much to do with these;for he was at no time the least of a tuft-hunter,but rather had a marked natural indifference to _tufts_.
The Rev.Mr.Dunn,a venerable and amiable Irish gentleman,"distinguished,"we were told,"by having refused a bishopric:"and who was now living,in an opulent enough retirement,amid his books and philosophies and friends,in London,--is memorable to me among this clerical class:one of the mildest,beautifulest old men I have ever seen,--"like Fenelon,"Sterling said:his very face,with its kind true smile,with its look of suffering cheerfulness and pious wisdom,was a sort of benediction.It is of him that Sterling writes,in the Extract which Mr.Hare,modestly reducing the name to an initial "Mr.D.,"has given us:[13]"Mr.Dunn,for instance;the defect of whose Theology,compounded as it is of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers,of the Mystics and of Ethical Philosophers,consists,--if I may hint a fault in one whose holiness,meekness and fervor would have made him the beloved disciple of him whom Jesus loved,--in an insufficient apprehension of the reality and depth of Sin."A characteristic "defect"of this fine gentle soul.On Mr.
Dunn's death,which occurred two or three years later,Stirling gave,in some veiled yet transparent form,in _Blackwood's Magazine_,an affectionate and eloquent notice of him;which,stript of the veil,was excerpted into the Newspapers also.[14]
Of Coleridge there was little said.Coleridge was now dead,not long since;nor was his name henceforth much heard in Sterling's circle;though on occasion,for a year or two to come,he would still assert his transcendent admiration,especially if Maurice were by to help.
But he was getting into German,into various inquiries and sources of knowledge new to him,and his admirations and notions on many things were silently and rapidly modifying themselves.
So,amid interesting human realities,and wide cloud-canopies of uncertain speculation,which also had their interests and their rainbow-colors to him,and could not fail in his life just now,did Sterling pass his year and half at Bayswater.Such vaporous speculations were inevitable for him at present;but it was to be hoped they would subside by and by,and leave the sky clear.All this was but the preliminary to whatever work might lie in him:--and,alas,much other interruption lay between him and that.
