PREFACE. IX 



one who was so many-sided, it is no small advantage 

 to be thus enabled to register the impression which 

 he made on different men. Even should this occasion 

 slight repetitions and discrepancies, the reader may 

 thus form a fuller and, on the whole, a truer image 

 than could be conveyed by a single narrator. Atten- 

 tion is here particularly directed to the statements in 

 Chapter XIII. by Dr. Paget, the Kev. Dr. Guillemard 

 (of Little St. Mary's, Cambridge), and Professor Hort. 



As a general rule, no attempt has been made to 

 weave the correspondence into the narrative. The 

 facts relating to each period have been grouped to- 

 gether, and the letters have been appended to these 

 in chronological order. 



A word should be said respecting Part III. What- 

 ever may be the judgment" of critics as to the literary 

 merits of Maxwell's occasional writings in verse, there 

 can be no doubt of their value for the purpose of the 

 present work. Like everything which he did, they 

 are characteristic of him, and some of them have 

 a curious biographical interest. Maxwell was singu- 

 larly reserved in common life, but would sometimes 

 in solitude express his deepest feelings in a copy of 

 verses which he would afterwards silently communi- 

 cate to a friend. Again, he shrank from controversy. 

 But his active mind was constantly playing on con- 

 temporary fallacies, or what appeared so to him, and 

 his turn for parody and burlesque enabled him to give 

 humorous expression to his criticism of mistaken 

 methods. Of the later pieces here reproduced, several 

 appeared in Nature with the signature % (which 



