Petersburg, seeing in him a
diplomatist with not only a keen intellect and large views, but
vibrating with the warmth, animation, friendliness, that are
charmingly un-diplomatic. Of Carlyle, his life-long, though not
always congenial intimate, he used to speak as having great graphic
power, but being essentially a humourist; a man who, with those he
could trust, never pretended to be in earnest, but used to roar
with glorious laughter over the fun of his own jeremiads; "so far
from being a prophet he is a bad Scotch joker, and knows himself to
be a wind-bag." He blamed Froude's revelations of Carlyle in "The
Reminiscences," as injurious and offensive. Froude himself he
often likened to Carlyle; the thoughts of both, he said, ran in the
same direction, but of the two, Froude was by far the more
intellectual man.
Staunch friend to the few, polite, though never effusive, to the
many, he also nourished strong antipathies. The appearance in
Madame Novikoff's rooms of a certain Scotch bishop invariably drove
him out of them, "Peter Paul, Bishop of Claridge's," he called him.
To Von Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), who spoke English in a
rapid half-intelligible falsetto, he gave the name of Mirliton
(penny trumpet).
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