At the same time his love of the marvellous found gratification in the wonders of the Arabian Nights, and it is further characteristically related of him that he used to carry continually in his waistcoat pocket a miniature copy of Ossian, passages from which he frequently recited with "sonorous elocution and vehement gesticulation."
His eloquence was in turn majestic, fierce, playful, insinuating; his gesticulation natural, vivid, large, powerful.