With streaks of the quack and adventurer in him, he gave out deep notes.
Says Lloyd: "His soul [was] one of those few souls that understand
themselves."
With an itch to use his pen as well as his tongue, he had none of the
patience, the hankering after perfection of form, of the professional man
of letters. His account of his Scanderoon exploit, a sea-log, a little
written-up later, was perhaps not meant for publication. It did not see the
light till 1868. His _Memoirs_ were written, he says, "for my own
recreation, and then continued and since preserved only for my own private
content--to please myself in looking back upon my past and sweet errors."
He even begs those who may come upon the MS. "to convert these blotted
sheets into a clear flame." His commentary on the _Faery Queen_ stanza was
thrown off in a hurry. "The same Discourse I made upon it the first half
quarter of an hour that I saw it, I send you there, without having reduced
it to any better form, or added anything at all to it." And so for the
better-known and interesting _Observations on 'Religio Medici.
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