Friday, December 23, 2016

An Epitaph to Allan Quatermain - A Host of Characters

Sir Henry Curtis being with Quatermain to the end gives these remarks as an epitaph to his dear friend and comrade Allan Quatermain:

“And so passed away a character that I consider went as near perfection as any it has ever been my lot to encounter. Tender, constant, humorous, and possessing of many of the qualities that go to make a poet, he was yet almost unrivalled as a man of action and a citizen of the world. I never knew any one so competent to form an accurate judgment of men and their motives. ‘I have studied human nature all my life,’ he would say, ‘and I ought to know something about it, ‘and he certainly did.

He had but two faults--one was his excessive modesty, and the other a slight tendency which he had to be jealous of anybody on whom he concentrated his affections. As regards the first of these points, anybody who reads what he has written will be able to form his own opinion.”

Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard

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