XV] MY CHARACTER AT TWENTY-ONE 225 



me to appear a very dull, ignorant, and uneducated person to 

 numbers of chance acquaintances. This deficiency has also 

 put me at a great disadvantage as a public speaker. I can 

 rarely find the right word or expression to enforce or illustrate 

 my argument, and constantly feel the same difficulty in private 

 conversation. In writing it is not so injurious, for when I 

 have time for deliberate thought I can generally express 

 myself with tolerable clearness and accuracy. I think, too, 

 that the absence of the flow of words which so many writers 

 possess has caused me to avoid that extreme diffuseness 

 and verbosity which is so great a fault in many scientific and 

 philosophical works. 



Another important defect is in the power of rapidly 

 seeing analogies or hidden resemblances and incongruities, 

 a deficiency which, in combination with that of language, has 

 produced the total absence of wit or humour, paradox or 

 brilliancy, in my writings, although no one can enjoy and 

 admire these qualities more than I do. The rhythm and 

 pathos, as well as the inimitable puns of Hood, were the 

 delight of my youth, as are the more recondite and fantastic 

 humour of Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll in my old age. 

 The faculty which gives to its possessor wit or humour is also 

 essential to the high mathematician, who is almost always 

 witty or poetical as well ; and I was therefore debarred from 

 any hope of success in this direction ; while my very limited 

 power of drawing or perception of the intricacies of form 

 were equally antagonistic to much progress as an artist or 

 a geometrician. 



Other deficiencies of great influence in my life have been 

 my want of assertiveness and of physical courage, which, com- 

 bined with delicacy of the nervous system and of bodily 

 constitution, and a general disinclination to much exertion, 

 physical or mental, have caused that shyness, reticence, and 

 love of solitude which, though often misunderstood and lead- 

 ing to unpleasant results, have, perhaps, on the whole, been 

 beneficial to me. They have helped to give me those long 

 periods, both at home and abroad, when, alone and surrounded 

 only by wild nature and uncultured man, I could ponder at 



VOL. I. Q 



