xviii BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



elder brothers died, and he thus became heir in expectation 

 of considerable property, and soon by the death of his father 

 heir in possession. He was thus deprived of the chief induce- 

 ment to labour as a lawyer; and had it been otherwise, it is 

 clear that his health would never have enabled him to undergo 

 the necessary drudgery. Nor indeed would the actual practice 

 of law-courts have been very congenial to his feelings and 

 tastes: law in the abstract he loved exceedingly, as we shall 

 see presently, but law as it is concerned with the actual strifes 

 and quarrels of mankind would have been eminently distasteful 

 to him. 



As a Fellow of Trinity he made his College his home, 

 except for a short period after his election. Here he continued 

 his mathematical reading, but not with any very definite pur- 

 pose. He became very intimate with the late D. F. Gregory, 

 who was then Fellow of Trinity College, and who did good 

 service to mathematics by the establishment of the Cambridge 

 Mathematical Journal; when Gregory resigned the editorship 

 shortly before his death, Ellis took the office, and edited part 

 of the third and fourth volumes of the journal, in the latter of 

 which he inserted a short biographical memoir of his friend 1 . 



In January, 1844, Ellis was Moderator. On this occasion, 

 being myself one of the Examiners, I was thrown into closer 

 relations with him than before, and commenced that real inti- 

 macy which lasted as long as his life. His problem paper 

 on this occasion was singularly elegant, but perhaps too refined 

 for its purpose. His fellow moderator, O'Brien of Caius Col- 



1 Ellis's name appears as editor on the title-page of the fourth volume of the 

 Journal. I may take this opportunity of observing that the parallel drawn be- 

 tween Gregory and Ellis in a very kind and warmhearted obituary notice of the 

 latter, which was inserted in the Atken&um of Feb. n, 1860, seems to me not 

 justified. They resembled each other, no doubt, in the fact that both were good 

 mathematicians and both real philosophers and lovers of truth: but beyond 

 this very general resemblance the parallel does not hold. They were much 

 attached, and Ellis felt the loss of his friend keenly : but neither in mind nor 

 in manner was there much likeness between them. 



