It is also to be noted that his style of French, though he spelt it so ill, and never had the least mastery of punctuation, has real merit. Rapidity, easy vivacity, perfect clearness, here and there a certain quaint expressiveness: on the whole, he had learned the Art of Speech, from those old French Governesses, in those old and new French Books of his. We can also say of his Literature, of what he hastily wrote in mature life, that it has much more worth, even as Literature, than the common romantic appetite assigns to it. A vein of distinct sense, and good interior articulation, is never wanting in that thin-flowing utterance. The true is well riddled out from amid the false; the important and essential are alone given us, the unimportant and superfluous honestly thrown away. A lean wiry veracity (an immense advantage in any Literature, good or bad!) is everywhere beneficently observable; the QUALITY of the intellect always extremely good, whatever its quantity may be. It is true, his spelling--"ASTEURE" for "A CETTE HEURE"--is very bad. And as for punctuation, he never could understand the mystery of it; he merely scatters a few commas and dashes, as if they were shaken out of a pepper-box upon his page, and so leaves it. These are deficiencies lying very bare to criticism; and I confess I never could completely understand them in such a man. He that would have ordered arrest for the smallest speck of mud on a man's buff-belt, indignant that any pipe-clayed portion of a man should not be perfectly pipeclayed: how could he tolerate false spelling, and commas shaken as out of a pepper-box over his page? It is probable he cared little about Literature, after all; cared, at least, only about the essentials of it; had practically no ambition for himself, or none considerable, in that kind;--and so might reckon exact obedience and punctuality, in a soldier, more important than good spelling to an amateur literary man: He never minded snuff upon his own chin, not even upon his waistcoat and breeches: A merely superficial thing, not worth bothering about, in the press of real business!--