OBITUARY NOTICES 43 



Council now feel is that a great man has been removed, a man great in intellect 

 and in the power of using it, in clearness of vision and purity of purpose, and 

 therefore great in his influence, always for good, on his fellowmen ; they feel that 

 they and many in the Society and beyond it have lost a strong and true friend." 



The obituary notice in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Vol. xxni, 

 p. 498) was prepared by Lord Kelvin. It contains, in addition to the 

 customary biographical details, some interesting reminiscences of the days 

 they worked together. Kelvin tells how they became acquainted in 1860 

 when Tait came to Edinburgh, and how they quickly resolved to join in 

 writing a book on Natural Philosophy. He then continues : 



" I found him full of reverence for Andrews and Hamilton, and enthusiasm for 

 science. Nothing else worth living for, he said ; with heart-felt sincerity I believe, 

 though his life belied the saying, as no one ever was more thorough in public duty 

 or more devoted to family and friends. His two years as ' don ' of Peterhouse and 

 six of professorial gravity in Belfast had not polished down the rough gaiety nor 

 dulled in the slightest degree the cheerful humour of his student days ; and this was 

 a large factor in the success of our alliance for heavy work, in which we persevered 

 for eighteen years. ' A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad, tires in a mile-a.' 

 The making of the first part of ' T and T' ' was treated as a perpetual joke, in 

 respect to the irksome details of interchange of 'copy,' amendments in type, and 

 final corrections of proofs. It was lightened by interchange of visits between Green- 

 hill Gardens, or Drummond Place, or George Square, and Largs or Arran, or the 

 old or new College of Glasgow ; but of necessity it was largely carried on by post. 

 Even the postman laughed when he delivered one of our missives, about the size 

 of a postage stamp, out of a pocket handkerchief in which he had tied it, to make 

 sure of not dropping it on the way. 



One of Tail's humours was writing in charcoal on the bare plaster wall of his 

 study in Greenhill Gardens a great table .of living scientific worthies in order of 

 merit. Hamilton, Faraday, Andrews, Stokes, and Joule headed the column, if I 

 remember right. Clerk Maxwell, then a rising star of the first magnitude in our 

 eyes, was too young to appear on the list... 



After enjoying eighteen years' joint work with Tait on our book, twenty-three 

 years without this tie have given me undiminished pleasure in all my intercourse 

 with him. I cannot say that our meetings were never unruffled. We had keen 

 differences (much more frequent agreements) on every conceivable subject, 

 quaternions, energy, the daily news, politics, quicquid agunt homines, etc., etc. We 

 never agreed to differ, always fought it out. But it was almost as great a pleasure 

 to fight with Tait as to agree with him. His death is a loss to me which cannot, 

 as long as I live, be replaced. 



The cheerful brightness which I found on our first acquaintance forty-one years 

 ago remained fresh during all these years, till first clouded when news came of the 

 death in battle of his son Freddie in South Africa, on the day of his return to duty 



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