xxx BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



He was a good scholar, and very fond of the Greek and 

 Roman literature. I believe I am justified in saying, that his 

 knowledge of that literature was really more extensive and 

 thorough than that of many whose reputation as scholars has 

 been much greater. He could enjoy a discussion of a point 

 of classical philology as keenly as one on scientific subjects, and 

 when so engaged no one would have supposed that mathematics 

 was his favourite study. Indeed, as I have already intimated, 

 mathematics could not in any proper sense be so described : 

 Civil Law was certainly as much a favourite : and he seemed 

 to be most happy in conversation, when the subject was 

 one of a philosophical character. I have often felt disposed 

 to compare his mental constitution in many respects with that 

 of Leibnitz. Each was the philosopher quite as emphatically 

 as the mathematician. Leibnitz, I may observe, was one of 

 his favourites, and he mentioned to me one day with some 

 feeling of amusement that a Fellow of Trinity had spoken 

 to him of Leibnitz, under the title " your Leibnitz," as 

 though the old feeling of jealousy were still lurking in the 

 College. 



His love of philosophy fitted him especially to be the editor 

 of Bacon. It was a work, I believe, which he undertook with all 

 his heart, and relinquished with extreme pain and only under 

 a sense of imperious necessity. He was assisted too by his 

 familiarity with the philosophical speculations of the middle 

 ages: there was something congenial to his own cast of mind 

 in the discussions of the schoolmen, and I think he appreciated 

 Bacon all the more in virtue of his appreciation of those, whose 

 processes of thought and methods of argument it was Bacon's 

 task to supersede. 



similarity between Ellis and Dr Johnson. Ellis was an excellent conversationalist: 

 he not only expressed himself with singular precision, but he was a patient listener, 

 and readily caught up and retained in his memory the remarks of those with whom 

 he conversed. 



