"A strenuous education in the classics had given him an effortless command of language. I do not believe that he ever wrote, or spoke, a slipshod sentence in his life. His reading ranged wide; but he had a useful word, possibly of his own coining, to describe certain books as ‘skipworthy’. Perhaps his temperament left him a little insensitive to the arts, other than literature. Music was not merely distasteful to him; it caused him real discomfort. His philosophy and his statesmanship—his whole cast of mind—were matter-of-fact rather than imaginative. His virtues were those of commonsense and efficiency. He was a Roman rather than a Greek. His mind had a massive momentum that carried him along, with others behind him, and broke through obstacles. However arduous or exasperating the conditions, he always kept his composure. But he had in him an element of disdain—of contempt for the underhand and base. I do not recall ever seeing him angry, but I often knew him scornful. In the course of his public life he suffered many disappointments and defeats. He faced them with a Roman stoicism; and when I look for terms to describe the qualities that were notable above all others in his character, I can find them only in words that come to us from the Latin—magnanimity and equanimity."