xxviii BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



very earnestly, " pray do not say so !" He recognized from 

 the first the sure character of his disease, and he desired that 

 his sufferings might not be protracted ; at the same time he was 

 perfectly patient, even cheerful, and reverently acknowledged in 

 all his afflictions the governing hand of God. 



But it is time that I should leave the story of my friend's 

 sickness, upon which affectionate remembrance tempts me to 

 linger, in order that I may endeavour to give such estimate as 

 I can of his mind and character. 



Speaking generally I should say that his intellect was the 

 most remarkable that I have known. It was made up of a 

 combination of powers so delicately balanced, and working 

 together in such perfect harmony, that it would be difficult to 

 say that any one predominated over the rest. Popularly in 

 Cambridge he might be regarded as specially a mathematician, 

 because he was Senior Wrangler, but those who knew anything 

 of him were fully aware that mathematics was only one of his 

 acquirements, and that in conversation mathematics by no 

 means presented itself as the chief or even the favourite subject 

 of his thoughts. Indeed, I think, it would be difficult to say 

 that there was any one subject in which his mental powers were 

 manifested more decidedly than in others ; and the only marked 

 deficiency which I ever detected was in respect of music, for 

 which he had no special taste. I do not mean that he had no 

 sense of melody : this was far from being the case : but his con- 

 versation never ran upon the great masters of music and their 

 works, as it did upon almost all other subjects. 



Doubtless, however, mathematical power belonged to him 

 in a very large degree. With the present volume in the 

 reader's hands it would be superfluous to say much concerning 

 the special departments of mathematical investigation in which 

 his taste impelled him; but I may remark that he seemed 

 most naturally to associate his mathematics with the past ; he 



