260 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



manner, but can hardly be said to have developed any theories or sys- 

 tem of his own. 



As. an expositor, Professor Clifford was peculiarly and remarkably 

 gifted. Aside from his mathematical attainments, this was the intel- 

 lectual quality for which he was the most distinguished. His power 

 in this direction is thus described by the "Pall Mall Gazette" : " His 

 faculty of explaining the results of scientific investigation in ordinary 

 language, and to persons having little or no special preparation, was 

 such as to amount of itself to genius. The grasp and width of his 

 imagination enabled him to deal freely with the very ideas of the 

 higher mathematics, unfettered by the symbolical expressions and ma- 

 chinery which had first made their conception possible ; and he trans- 

 lated the ideas into forms of wonderful simplicity for hearers who little 

 suspected the height and difficulty of .the achievement. Long ago, in 

 Cambridge days, he would discuss some complicated theorem of solid 

 geometry, without aid of paper or diagram, in such a way as to make 

 the whole thing seem visibly embodied in space and self-evident. Where 

 the text-books gave a chaos of algebraical manipulation, he would in- 

 stantly seize the real facts and relations and bring them out into mani- 

 fest light. Nor did this power fail him even in the most arduous flights 

 of modern geometrical speculation. He was the first in this country to 

 see and enforce the important philosophical bearings of what is called 

 imaginary geometry. His last published paper which saw the light 

 only a few days before we knew that his work was irrevocably ended, 

 was devoted to explaining with singular felicity and clearness the ulti- 

 mate foundations of the science of number." The capacity here re- 

 ferred to was so unique and remarkable in Professor Clifford as to win 

 for him a somewhat exaggerated reputation for originality ; that is, 

 he would so vividly and ingeniously present a difficult subject as al- 

 most to make the views expounded his own. 



Among his other accomplishments, Clifford was a skillful gymnast, 

 and as original in his performances as in his intellectual work. He 

 was always executing some striking or eccentric feat, such as hanging 

 head downward, by his toes, and drinking a glass of wine without 

 spilling it ; or going up to his room in the college by the water-spout 

 and through the window, instead of the regular staircase. He had 

 more pride in the invention of adventurous and daring gymnastic feats 

 than in his intellectual work. He seems, indeed, to have used his 

 gymnastic exercises as expressions of his genius rather than as means 

 of promoting health. He was of a slender constitution, which was 

 ever on the strain, in one direction or another ; and there is reason to 

 think that he was deficient in the important art of taking care of him- 

 self, and that, if he had conformed to the first requirement of moral- 

 ity, the duty of doing good to the nature that was in his own charge, 

 he might have done, far more good to the world by a prolonged and 

 increasingly useful life. 



