6-18 SAMUEL ELIOT. 



generation which preceded Dr. Eliot's, — the generation preserved for 

 us in the portraits of Gilbert Stuart. Their traditions, however, their 

 principles, and to a great degree their manners, have here and there 

 persisted ; and in no familiar personality were they more typically pres- 

 ent than in Dr. Eliot's own. His nature had a vitality, his temper a 

 sunny freshness of feeling, — not inconsistent with occasional and sudden 

 breezes, — which made him at seventy-five seem in many aspects almost 

 a young man. And yet you could not see him or speak to him without 

 the sense that here was one who could not be himself if for a moment 

 he should strive to disguise that gracious personal distinction which 

 marked the gentlemen of the elder time as distinct fiom the gentlemen 

 of to-day and of the days to come. There was no lack of kindness in 

 all this, no lack even of sympathetic affability, no lack of cordial human 

 feeling such as heartily shares alike in joys and in sorrows. But there 

 was a beautiful, impalpable something which forbade any thought or act 

 of intrusive familiarity. His self-respect was so simple, so true, so 

 worthy, that it could not fail instantly to command the respect of whoever 

 had the privilege of meeting it. 



For such a nature the most welcome vehicle of expression during Dr. 

 Eliot's earlier years was probably literature, in its more scholarly aspect. 

 Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Prescott were only a generation older than he ; 

 Mr. Motley and Mr. Parkman were his contemporaries. His earliest 

 impulse, then, seems to have been towards that dignified and vigorous 

 school of historical writing which is among the most jjrecious possessions 

 of New England. That kind of literature demands special gifts which 

 he never quite revealed. His unfinished history shows neither such 

 vivid jiovver of concrete imagination as is essetitial to a notable historian, 

 nor yet a vital command of style. In substance and in form aldve it 

 indicates little creative power. Whether he realized this, and so relin- 

 quished his pen, or whether the pressing call of other and more im- 

 mediate duties diverted him from pure literature, it is hard to say. In 

 either event, the experience might well have been disheartening. A 

 man who has once felt the yearning to create works of art can seldom 

 rest happy in any other effort. What is most characteristic of Dr. Eliot 

 in all this, then, is that no one ever felt in him the least suggestion of 

 disappointment or of discouragement. Among his many admirable trait?, 

 none was more salient than his constant, serene courage. 



Disappointed or not, he found in the works which finally distracted 

 him from literature opportunity for wider, more lasting usefulness than 

 in mere letters he would ever have achieved. Very various these works 



