68 CHARLES LEE 



much more doubtful. With ladies Lee was never a 

 favourite. Mercy Warren, the sister of James Otis, 

 and one of the brightest and most highly cultivated 

 women of her time, saw Lee under all the glamour of 

 his newly assumed greatness, yet, while she admitted 

 that he was "judicious" and -"learned" (these were 

 her words), she could not but remark upon his extreme 

 coarseness and his slovenly habits. Indeed, when we 

 observe the frightful latitude of speech in some of his 

 letters, we feel that he would have been an uncom- 

 fortable guest to invite to dinner. He was tall and 

 extremely slender, almost without shoulders, the fore- 

 head rather high but very narrow, the nose aquiline 

 and enormous, the complexion sallow, the eyes small 

 and deep-set, inquisitive and restless, the upper lip 

 curled in chronic disdain of everything and every- 

 body, the chin contracted and feeble ; such was Charles 

 Lee at the age of two and forty, when he revisited 

 America, a weak, dyspeptic, querulous man. His linen, 

 like Daniel Quilp's, was of a peculiar hue, for such was 

 his taste and fancy ; his clothes had the air of hav- 

 ing been only half put on ; and he was seldom seen in 

 private or in public without five or six dogs at his 

 heels. Once he is said to have invited a friend to 

 dinner, and when the meal was served the only other 

 guests were found to be half a score of dogs, both 

 great and small, which squatted on chairs and lapped 

 up their food from plates set before them on the 

 table. " I must have some object to embrace," said 

 he ; " when I can be convinced that men are as worthy 

 objects as dogs, I shall transfer my benevolence, and 

 become as stanch a philanthropist as the canting 

 Addison affected to be." 



