THE TAIT PRIZE AT PETERHOUSE 49 



"Tait hated emotionalism almost as much as he hated evil, and he did hate evil 

 with a deadly hatred. His devotion, not only to his comrades and fellow-workers, 

 but also to older men such as Andrews and Hamilton was a remarkable feature 

 of his life. Tait was a most attractive personality, and its attractiveness would be 

 readily understood when he unveiled the portrait. It gave one the idea of a grand 

 man, a man whom it was a privilege to know. His only fault was that he would 

 not come out of his shell for the last twenty years, and that he never became a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society of London." 



Tait used to say that when he was young and would have liked to become 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society, he could not afford it, and that later, when he 

 could afford it, he had ceased to care about the distinction. It should be 

 stated that from 1875 onwards Tait was never out of Scotland. His last 

 visits to Cambridge were in 1874 and 1875, when he was Rede Lecturer and 

 Additional Examiner in the Mathematical Tripos. Having, as it were, taken 

 root in Edinburgh, he could have no very keen desire to become a Fellow 

 of a Society whose meetings he would never have attended. For the last 

 twenty-five years of his life he never left Edinburgh, except for a holiday at 

 St Andrews of ten days in the spring and six weeks in the autumn 1 . Hence 

 it came that he was personally unacquainted with most of the younger generation 

 of scientific workers, and in this sense it is true that he did not come " out of 

 his shell." But it must be repeated that the men of science who sought him out 

 in his chosen haunts found the warmest of welcomes ; and Mr Low's sketch 

 will show how far Tait was from the crabbed recluse that the phrase suggests. 

 About 1880 the President of the Royal Society suggested privately to Tait 

 that he should allow his name to be submitted to the Council. Tait, who 

 knew that the name of a valued friend whom he regarded as a genuine man 

 of science had been recently rejected by the Council, replied that he had no 

 pretensions to belong to a Society which was too good for his friend. This 

 humorous excuse not only served its immediate purpose, but also, to Tail's 

 delight, helped to procure for his friend soon afterwards the distinction he 

 sought. 



In "Quasi Cursores," the gallery of portraits of the Principal and 

 Professors of Edinburgh at the time of the Tercentenary in 1884, the 

 artist, William Hole, R.S.A., although very happy in most of his de- 

 lineations, has not caught Tait quite satisfactorily. The attitude and figure 

 generally are admirable, as are also the accessories of the Holtz machine, 



1 Tail's family can only recall one slight exception to this. In January, 1880, he delivered 

 a popular lecture on Thunderstorms in Glasgow. 



T. 7 



