In strong contrast with Halifax, how must the social qualities of Somers have risen in comparison; how refreshing must have been his good sense, which set forth all his great qualifications in order and beauty; how delightful that delicate sense of politeness which sprang in him from a humanity of disposition; which appeared in the least important of his actions; which manifested itself in the kindly expression of the countenance, in the refined manners, in the very tone of his voice. How admirable at once the solidity and the eloquence of a mind which comprehended not only the most abstruse sciences, the most profound and varied knowledge, but which displayed the graceful acquirements of an accomplished gentleman. Whilst Halifax employed his hours of recreation “to fetch and carry sing-song up and down,” Somers, by dividing his time between the public scenes of life, and the retirement of a cheerful, not an unemployed and gloomy and selfish retirement, attained a perfection of taste, an elegance and purity of style, that few men of his profession and station, engrossed as they must necessarily be with dry and recondite researches, have been enabled to acquire. He had, says Swift, “very little taste for conversation;”[397] and, unlike his associate _Buffo_, who “Received of wits an undistinguished race,” consoled himself, in his hours of recreation, “with the company of an illiterate chaplain or favourite servant.”—Yet the man who never delivered an opinion of a piece of poetry, a statue, or a picture, without exciting admiration from the just, and happy, and delicate turns of expression which he adopted, must have loved to commune with higher minds than the unsuitable companions whom Swift has assigned to his leisure hours.[398]