Though I lived for nearly two years in Mr. Simpson's
house, and for the next fourteen years, that is, till his
death, I saw him constantly, I neither exchanged a bitter
word with him, nor felt the slightest indignation or an-
noyance at anything he did or said. He was at heart one
of the kindliest as well as one of the shyest and apparently
most austere of men. Mathematics and law may have
dried up his intellect, but they never dried up his heart.

Though he was a man of fine intellect, and had a great
and deep knowledge of many subjects, I think I never saw
a man who was so absolutely devoid of any interest in
poetry or Belles-Lettres. I believe indeed that he was
quite without any understanding of what poetry meant.
If I had been told that he was the Wrangler who said that
he could not see "what Paradise Lost proved," I should
not have been the least surprised. And yet the style of his
writing was often remarkable for its perfect clarity and
perfect avoidance of anything in the shape of ambiguity.
He could say what he wanted to say in the fewest number
of words and in a way in which the most ingenious person
could not twist into meaning something which they were
not intended to mean. He was indeed a super-drafts-
man. But that is a gift which every man of letters who is
worthy of his salt ought to salute with reverence.

My treatment of many things in this book has been in-
adequate owing to want of space, but in no case has it
been so inadequate as that of London of the 'nineties.
But my complaint here is, of course, a complaint common
to every biography.

Biographers, I am told, always write in this strain.
They begin by declaring that they have nothing to say
and end by wailing over the insufficiency of the space
allowed them

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