It gave him a berth, and a chance to lie back and look on. And while that helped to ripen his wisdom, it sapped his initiative.
He had a fine mind; clear, impartial. Strong radical views. He had character, integrity, insight. A man of much weight. But he saw there was much to be learned and observed about life, and his instinct was to go slow, and quietly study its problems. "Instead," you say, "of immediately solving them like other young men!" But instead, too,--for such was his instinct--of _handling_ the problems. He wished to know more and feel wiser before he dealt with them. He had the preparatory attitude.
The trouble with the preparatory attitude is there's no end to it. There is so much to learn in this world that it won't do to wait. If you wait to fit yourself before acting, you never will act. You will somehow lose the habit of acting. Study too conscientiously the one hundred best books on swimming, and of course you'll learn a great deal about it, but you never will swim.
This was Grandfather's type. If he had been kicked out alone into the world and found every one fighting him, and if he had had to fight back, and fight hard, from his boyhood, it would have taught him the one thing he needed--more force for his powers.
As it was, he remained in the Admiralty. Studying life.
Grandfather was thirty-seven years old when Great-grandfather died. He (Grandfather) had been writing for the magazines for quite a long time,--he was only twenty-six when the Quarterly Review editors began to speak highly of him.
He now bought the London Athenaeum, which, though just born, was dying. Under Grandfather's editorship it became an important authority. It was known all over the world soon. But Grandfather wasn't. He never signed one of his articles, not even pseudonymously. And during the sixteen years in which he had control of the paper, this remarkable man withdrew altogether from general society, in order, he said, to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the integrity of his journal.
That rings hollow, that reason. He doubtless thought it true; but it wasn't. He withdrew from society, probably, because he liked withdrawing. With the gifts of a great man he didn't have a great man's robustness. Some kink in him held him back, and kept him from jousting and tournaments. He should have been psychoanalyzed. It may have been such a small kink.