"esteem him" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to express admiration or respect for someone. For example, "John won the race, and we should all esteem him for his hard work and dedication."
The best explanation, I think, is that Bush's critics esteem him too little to despise.
Conversely, if he is not a serious historian, why do serious people esteem him?
Future generations may esteem him more as a social and moral critic, a pioneer of the society of equality.
Some esteem him simply as a great traditional painter; others see him as a termite in the house of Modernism, eating away at its hidden ideological foundations.
If Echo were as fleet, I would esteem him worth a dozen such... ...... & suddenly, brought rigid by the unwitting bard, we turned our gaze aloft, where, shining majestically in sunlight beyond the pale of ournight, Echo 1 floated in the west.
During a recent campaign speech, according to the Times, Salvini said, "I admire Putin as a man of state, a man of government who defends the interests of his people and his businesses, who defends his values and borders, and I esteem him for free, not for money". The crisis of European social democracy is deepening.
His contemporaries esteemed him as a scholarly man of letters and a sincere churchman dedicated to reform of simoniacal practices.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But the second, which was presented by Phocion, he received, understanding from the older Macedonians how much Philip had admired and esteemed him.
And this recalls the servant described in the book of Isaiah, "one from whom men hide their faces," who "was despised, and we esteemed him not".
Though Berthier was not a distinguished commander, Napoleon esteemed him highly as chief of staff of the Grande Armée from 1805.
