I have read and reread him.  His prose is excellent and borders on the poetical and transcendental---he conveys his ideas very well and nothing is obscure to me.  He's melancholic but not tragic;
in his dark despair, he still loves life; noting that life is brief, he opens his heart and mind to its possibilities and contradictions;
he lived by what he wrote; he conquered life and death in his unflinching faith in the ultimate decency of things.

In his smile, there was irony and, in his looks, he was a distant dreamer.