ABSTRACT

DAVID HARRIS was, I believe, born, at all events he lived, at Odiham, in Hampshire; he was by trade a potter. He was a muscular, bony man, standing about five feet nine and a half inches. His features were not regularly handsome, but a remarkably kind and gentle expression amply compensated the defect of mere linear beauty. The fair qualities of his heart shone through his honest face, and I can call to mind no worthier, or, in the active sense of the word, not a more ‘good man’ than David Harris. He was one of the rare species that link man to man in bonds of fellowship by good works; that inspire confidence, and prevent the structure of society from becoming disjointed, and, ‘as it were, a bowing wall, or a tottering fence.’ He was a man of so strict a principle, and such high honour, that I believe his moral character was never impeached. I never heard even a suspicion breathed against his integrity, and I knew him long and intimately. I do not mean that he was a canter.—Oh, no—no one thought of standing on guard and buttoning up his pockets in Harris’s company. I never busied myself about his mode of faith, or the peculiarity of his creed; that was his own affair, not mine, or any other being’s on earth: all I know is, that he was an ‘honest man,’ and the poet has assigned the rank of such a one in creation.