Multiple

“ In the ordinary sense of the word Welby was not a good man of business. He loved a litter; his table was a byword. He was dilatory, inclined to potter over details, slow in coming to the point, and apt to delay a decision. But his industry was immense, and his proficiency in all the mysteries and minutiae of public finance unrivalled. His gift for estimates and for gauging the probable yield of taxes, new or old, was almost uncanny. He believed in a strong Treasury as a necessary check upon the growth of public expenditure and bureaucracy. ”

“ Kennedy's judgments were the fruit of great experience and learning, of an intellect which, though acute, was never the victim of its own subtlety, and of a complete mastery of lucid expression. His self-effacing nature kept him free from any trace of intellectual vanity or legal pedantry. His care and patience in weighing the merits of the weakest case were as unvarying as his courtesy and kindness to practitioners, especially to the less experienced among them, and he was regarded with affection as well as admiration by a wide circle of colleagues and friends. ”

“ In spite of what he achieved Cust was remarkable rather for what he was than for what he did. It was in society that he won his greatest triumphs. He was, before all things, a talker, born and trained, and few of his contemporaries added more than he did to the stock of harmless pleasures. An assiduous traveller from his youth upwards, he knew both men and cities, and he spoke fully and amply, not only from the books which he had read and remembered, but from his own gay and vivid experience of life. ”

“ To a wide and ever increasing circle he became a figure uniquely impressive for the weight, the authority, the luxuriant elaboration of his mind, and lovable to the same degree for his ripe humour, his loyalty, his inexhaustible kindness—as also for something more, for a strain of odd and unexpected simplicity, that survived in him after a lifetime of ironic observation and experience. ”

“ Never was character better expressed by outward appearance than in Edmond Warre. A big frame, great-limbed but just a little clumsy, and handsome features, full of dignity and kindliness, bespoke the man. He combined a very humble simplicity and a tender heart with true religion and remarkable energy. But his commanding nature made him sometimes inconsiderate of weaker vessels, and his megalopsychia might seem self-centred. Had he retired when his health first failed he would have been remembered as the greatest of Eton head masters. In the long period of decline men forgot the pristine Warre. ”

“ Parry's vivid interest in many things outside music, his love of the open air and the sea (he was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and sailing his own yacht was easily first among his favourite recreations) , his sympathy with young people, his constant desire to explore new ways of thought, even those ways in modern music which were most antipathetic to him—all contributed to keep his nature sane and sweet. He could be intolerant, hasty, and even forbidding. He never ‘suffered fools gladly’, but only fools failed to get at the essential simplicity and truth of the man. ”

“ To these various activities Traill brought prodigious physical energy and a most tenacious will. Contact with him gave a dominant impression of force, physical and moral. Nothing could less resemble the conventional idea of the college don. His presence was like a perpetual gale of wind; his bearing was aggressive, his gestures unrestrained, his speech uncompromising. He was contemptuous of forms and ceremonies, careless of personal dignity, and indifferent to the amenities of life. Essentially a man of action, he cared only for getting things done. ”

“ Sensitive and shy, Thomas guarded himself from the world by a fine, dry irony, which slightly veiled the poet both austere and ardent in his passion for beauty and the homely things of earth. His lofty, melancholy spirit burned in an eye fastidiously grave. ”

“ A faithful while ardent scholar, steeped in literature dramatic and general, a man of the world, a barrister at home in the courts and in the purlieus and quillets of the law, keenly interested in politics, of an open yet thoroughly conservative temper in church and state, of personal piety, a special lover of birds, Rogers's genius was exactly suited to that of Aristophanes. He is as lively as Frere, and more literal. As Walter Headlam said, ‘he permanently raised the standard of verse translation by writing verse that was verse’. ”

“ With a narrow and almost cunning mind, a turbulent and autocratic heart, something great yet childlike in the man’s nature was for ever at war with the universe, demanding mercy for mankind and peace for himself. ”

“ As a scholar Bishop has been justly compared with F. J. A. Hort, and, like Hort, he was a man of singular charm, striking appearance, and old-world courtesy. His piety was simple and sincere. His library, bequeathed to Downside, where he is buried, is a speaking record of the man; a unique collection, illustrating liturgy, made with exquisite knowledge and endless care, it was a life-long work of joy. ”

“ As a judge, Macnaghten's name will long endure. He possessed in a happy combination the gifts of listening with patience and deciding without doubt, after bringing to bear his great range of unobtruded learning and a clear practical appreciation of business and of character. Others in his time were as erudite and his equals in acumen, but it was remarkable that both bench and bar fell into the way of citing a sentence or two of an opinion of Macnaghten and of accepting it without discussion as an authoritative statement of the law. ”

“ As a preacher Drummond displayed great eloquence and passion. Vividly conscious of the divine presence, profoundly assured of the great truths on which his whole ministry rested, he searched the conscience of his hearers, braced their moral energies, kindled their spiritual imagination, and communicated some sense of those unseen realities of which he was himself so intensely aware. ”

“ From the first Reginald Smith was in close sympathy with his father-in-law. Without equalling the older man's speculative dash, he shared his ideal of the publisher—in literature a trustee of the public, in business the actual partner and trustee of the author. Aiming at quality rather than quantity in his business, he rendered ‘the other man’ not only justice, but countless services not in the bond. The possession of independent means enabled both men to show more concern for good literature than for mere profit-making. ”

“ Great gifts he possessed in abundance—inspiration, sensitiveness, clearness of style, an inexhaustible flow of melody, and that magical charm of utterance that goes with a vivid and imaginative personality. ”

“ Reflection on our experience, he held, doubtless gives rise to puzzles in plenty, but where contradictions are alleged to be involved in our fundamental notions of the world, the cause lies in some fallacy, usually simple and often merely verbal, in which we have been involved. Not unfairly the first principle of his philosophy may be described as the principle that there is no first principle—that, in Aristotle's words, there are ἴδιαι ἁρχαί. He never tired of insisting on the impossibility of general criteria, whether of knowledge, of beauty, or of morality. ”

“ Phillips's day was over. His dramatic genius was intense, but of very limited range. He could invest a human relationship, under circumstances essentially simple though often overlaid by the pomp of empire, with an air of devastating fate. His chosen theme is maternal or fraternal love torn asunder by the intervention of some such primary force as sexual passion. Outside this field he lacks artistic pliability and moral strength; and so for variety he is tempted to specious devices. ”

“ Ledwidge has been called the Burns and the Clare of the Irish, but he was not distinctively Irish in genius. Though his inspiration was drawn from the fields along the Boyne, its themes are common to rural poets through northern Europe—may-blossoms, roses of the lane, roadside birds upon the tops of dusty hedges, and especially the blackbird's song. His joy is purely sensuous; and his sorrow is at root the pagan grief that all things pass. ”

“ In a lecture Lee examined the different kinds of bias which a biographer had to guard against, the family bias, the official bias, the ethical bias, hero-worship, and most insidious of all, the historical bias. This last was a tendency to forget the distinction between history and biography, and to drown the man’s life in the story of his times, under pretence of showing the influence of his environment on him. It was the business of the historian, not of the biographer, to determine the man’s importance to his time. ”

“ Impeccable drawing, and a sound and sane handling of his materials, whether water-colour or oil, characterized all Alma-Tadema's productions; and he seemed rather to play with, than to work at the artistic problems he set himself to solve. He excelled in the representation of textures, and lavished beautiful accessories of every kind upon his canvases. His wide and profound knowledge of archaeology ensured an accuracy which never became pedantic, whether he was dealing with ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome, or with the Merovingian period which first attracted him. ”

“ No one recognized more clearly than Chamberlain how great a calamity would be a war in South Africa, of the nature of a civil war; but the question was whether the situation had not become so serious that even war might be the less of two evils. Moreover, if the British government had really aimed at putting an end to the Republic, they would not have counselled measures that would have secured to it a new lease of life. ”

“ Had she played no part in politics Lady Carlisle would have been marked out as a business woman with a real talent for administration. Her husband cared more for his art than for the management of landed property, and left the family estates mainly in her control. For the latter half of her life she was her own land agent and architect, picking her farmers with a keen eye for character, and planning the rebuilding of farmsteads and cottages, with the minute love of detail on which she prided herself. The estate finances were controlled with method and economy. ”

“ Though he had many admirers among his countrymen, Scotland never heartily relished Lang: he could not be serious, it was said, and he cut too near the bone. Yet he was the greatest bookman of his age, and after Stevenson, the last great man of letters of the old Scottish tradition. On two subjects only he refrained from expressing himself: on personal religion and on party politics. No man had more questions to ask of the next world, but he kept them to himself. ”

“ Fairbairn was loved and honoured by a wide circle of friends. He was devoted to his family and never so happy as when in his hospitable home. He was a keen conversationalist, a little dogmatic and assertive in manner, but always with a sense of humour, and a sensitive appreciation of human needs and failings. His wide knowledge of men, books, and affairs made him a most entertaining companion. Above all he was deeply religious. His monument is the college which he founded and the multitude of lives ‘made better by his presence’. ”

“ Evans’s task was, therefore, difficult and delicate, and even his friends had hardly foreseen that he possessed just that combination of qualities—courage, industry, acuteness, tact—which was needed for success in it. A more timid and conventional judge might have been content to shelter himself under the great prestige of Stowell; but Evans wisely relied on the principle that in international law ‘there is room for the extension of old doctrines or the development of new principles, where there is, or is even likely to be, a general acceptance of such by civilized nations. ”

“ Gaskell’s robust frame, sanguine complexion, and abundant dark hair and beard, which never went entirely white, gave him the appearance of a man whose occupation was in the open air; and indeed digging and the care of his garden formed his principal recreation. The clarity and half-veiled enthusiasm of his exposition, together with his somewhat slow and emphatic utterance, made him an enthralling teacher for senior students. He always treated them as if they were worthy to participate in the researches which occupied him at the moment. ”

“ A man of simple character, he was bluff and downright in manner, but his genuine kindness of heart won for him countless friends. He held a unique place in the national life. He was known to the public as ‘W.G.’ and was described as the ‘Champion’, a title which, while it had no official meaning, nobody disputed or wished to dispute. Prominent in an age when the cult of outdoor games was growing rapidly, contemporary opinion would have singled him out without hesitation as one of the best-known men in England. ”