As a hedgehog

[Geoffrey] Hill was breathtakingly shy, nearly as shy as a hedgehog—formality and bluster were his protections against the world. We attended three or four of his lectures, which were grave, learned, delivered as if composed of death notices—they were also ponderously slow. (By the end of a series of lectures, only a few true believers were left in the hall.) His method, which did not endear him to students, revealed the pressure of learning within, while tending to hide the grace. Indeed, that seemed part of the poet’s character—he was not an example of grace under pressure, but of pressure under grace.

William Logan, in "Remembering the Courtly Jester", aqui.