An excellent talker, a
voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a
clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly
at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with
painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another,
uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure
American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish,
Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College.
English to the last fibre of his thought -- saturated with
English literature, English tradition, English taste -- revolted
by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or
any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the
vices and extravagances of Shakespeare -- standing first on the
social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning;
shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the
license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial,
always intelligent -- Lodge had the singular merit of
interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows,
black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his
flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that
he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and
might have a future, if they could but divine it.
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