SKETCH OF PROFESSOR CLIFFORD. 261 



What shall we say of an education or a culture which not only 

 fails to teach a man how to continue his own life, but which is itself 

 the means of destroying it ? On this point Clifford's intimate friend, 

 Pollock, writing about him in " The Fortnightly Review," says : " This 

 was the perilous excess in his own frame of nervous energy over con- 

 stitutional strength and endurance. He was able to call upon himself, 

 with a facility which in the result was fatal, for the expenditure of 

 power in ways and to an extent which only a very strong constitution 

 could have permanently supported ; and here the constitution was 

 feeble. He tried experiments on himself when he ought to have been 

 taking precautions. He thought, I believe, that he was really training 

 his body to versatility and disregard of circumstances, and fancied 

 himself to be making investments when he was in fact living on his 

 capital. At Cambridge he would constantly sit up most of the night 

 working or talking. In London it was not very different, and once or 

 twice he wrote the whole night through ; and this without any pro- 

 portionate reduction of his occupations in more usual hours. The 

 paper on ' The Unseen Universe ' was composed in this way, except a 

 page or two at the beginning, at a single sitting which lasted from a 

 quarter to ten in the evening till nine o'clock the following morning. 

 So, too, was the article on Virchow's address. But Clifford's rashness 

 extended much further than this one particular. He could not be in- 

 duced, or only with the utmost difficulty, to pay even moderate atten- 

 tion to the cautions and observances which are commonly and aptly 

 described as taking care of one's self. Had he been asked if it was 

 wrong to neglect the conditions of health in one's own person, as well 

 as to approve or tolerate their neglect on a larger scale, he would cer- 

 tainly have answered ' Yes.' But to be careful about himself was a 

 thing that never occurred to him." 



We append a portion of the estimate of Clifford made in the col- 

 umns of the " Saturday Review " : " The unexpected news of the 

 death of Professor Clifford at Madeira will have brought sadness to an 

 unusally large body of devoted friends, who had hoped that his strength 

 had not waned so far that it might not be recovered under the in- 

 fluence of the mild climate to which he had gone. Nor will it be only 

 by those who had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with Profes- 

 sor Clifford that the news of his untimely death will be deeply felt. 

 Few men who have passed away at so early an age have been so cen- 

 tral a figure as he was in the view of a large portion of the most highly 

 educated among us ; and still fewer have achieved this distinction, 

 while at the same time they retained the esteem and admiration of the 

 select few who were competent to estimate their powers and know 

 whether they had been put to a worthy use. But it was always his 

 fate to be conspicuous in whatever circumstances or society he was 

 placed. This was primarily due to his intellectual power, for, without 

 the wonderful rapidity and vigor of thought which he possessed, such 



