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I copied from the report of 1784 a note which was probably obtained surreptitiously from the War Office. I wanted to purchase the manuscript, but Louis Bonaparte bought it. I did not make a copy of the note which related to myself, because I should naturally have felt diffident in making any use of it.
But he was a little diffident about his father. He thought that, perhaps, his father might see Florence as he himself had first seen her, and might not have discernment enough to ascertain his mistake, as he had done. But Florence was not going to Clavering at once, and he would be able to give beforehand his own account of her.
He was a downright Englishman, not only as he ought to be, but also as one might wish he were not: following in every country the customs of his own, living only with Englishmen, and never discoursing with foreigners; not out of contempt to them, but from a sort of repugnance to foreign languages, and a timidity, which even at the age of fifty, rendered him very diffident in forming new acquaintances.
He sang O fortunatos agricolas! indeed, in every possible key, and with many cunning inflections, till I began to wonder what was the use of such people as Mr. Arch, and to sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner.
I shall say nothing of the miseries which embittered the life of the diffident boy. But I cannot pass in silence the deeper trouble of earliest manhood, when my soul first awoke to the dread that though other clouds might drift westward and dissolve, one would impend over me for ever.
He shook hands cordially with all and gave a pleasant word of recognition to the few he had met before. The young men received him with a hasty and somewhat limp handshake and an awkward "how d'ye do;" the young women were more graceful, but quite as diffident, and all were painfully respectful. But there was one young man who displayed neither awkwardness nor shyness.
Father did it . . . and Lucian does it: dear Lulu! We both love him, but it's difficult to be proud of him. Yet he has good qualities, good abilities. He's far cleverer than I am, and so are you," Laura's tone was diffident, "but oh, you are wrong in thinking so much of mere happiness.
'Yes; his Excellency has charged me with a message, of which I hope to acquit myself well, though I own to my misgivings about it now. 'You are too diffident, perhaps, of your powers, said she; and there was a faint curl of the lip that made the words sound equivocally. 'I do not know if great modesty be amongst my failings, said he laughingly. 'My friends would say not.
These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and lawless; whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive' and so on, and so on; you would have supposed he was talking about his family.
To such a mind philosophy was not a distant world to be entered with diffident and halting feet, ever ready to retreat at the first alarm of commonsense. It was his daily habitation. He lived in it, and guided himself by its intellectual compass among the perils and wonders of life, as naturally as other men feel their way by touch.
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