SKETCH OF LIFE AND WORK 13 



come within the influence of the unconventional style 

 and imaginative power of Wordsworth, which enabled 

 him to realise and to interpret to others the spiritual in 

 nature as no one else had done. How much it might 

 have added to MacGillivray's appreciation of those 

 aspects of nature which interested him most, while it 

 would have led him to a deeper sense of the divine in 

 nature true and deep as that sense in him always was. 

 It would probably also have tended towards greater free- 

 dom from conventionalities, which must have hampered 

 him more or less (unconsciously) in his search after 

 truth, even in his own departments of science. But 

 the early acquired predilection for the Beattie style of 

 poetry, with the severity of the Edinburgh Review 

 criticisms of the " Lake School " and of Wordsworth's 

 poetry in particular, which then prejudiced so many 

 minds against it, sufficiently accounts for the absence 

 of the Wordsworth influence on his mind intensely 

 devoted to nature as he was. 



In one of the extracts from the memorial poem 

 given further on in this volume the writer of it, re- 

 ferring to Dr. Barclay's influence on him, says 



" The name which hallows this rude sonsr 



o 



Has been to me a blessing and a light 

 To guide me on my weary way along," 



and again 



" He saw my follies, and reprov'd them oft : 

 Not in the galling tone of sullen speech, 

 But as a friend, in accents firm though soft," 



