Probably, too--especially in his later
years--there was a certain amount of self-consciousness and
artificiality in his attitude toward the outer world, which was the
result partly of the social difficulties we have described, partly of
his own sense of difference from his surroundings, and partly again of
that timidity of nature, that self-distrust, which is revealed to us in
the Journal. So that he was by no means generally popular, and the great
success of the Journal is still a mystery to the majority of those who
knew him merely as a fellow-citizen and acquaintance. But his friends
loved him and believed in him, and the reserved student, whose manners
were thought affected in general society, could and did make himself
delightful to those who understood him, or those who looked to him for
affection. "According to my remembrance of him," writes M. Scherer, "he
was bright, sociable, a charming companion. Others who knew him better
and longer than I say the same. The mobility of his disposition
counteracted his tendency to exaggerations of feeling. In spite of his
fits of melancholy, his natural turn of mind was cheerful; up to the end
he was young, a child even, amused by mere nothings; and whoever had
heard him laugh his hearty student's laugh would have found it difficult
to identify him with the author of so many somber pages.
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