LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. xli 



long monologue delivered with extraordinary rapidity, to which 

 he had no difficulty in compelling his friends to listen. His 

 exceeding volubility was indeed a striking part of him, and a 

 very characteristic one. He was perhaps the most fluent and 

 rapid talker I have ever known. When elated and once fairly 

 off, his rattle of words was amazing. But although they were 

 poured forth at a prodigious rate, it was evident that they did 

 not come fast enough for his thoughts. In fact, though he rarely 

 talked nonsense, and was oftentimes singularly brilliant in 

 speech, his thoughts and words appeared sometimes to escape 

 from his control. This was most marked in a set discourse or a 

 lecture. He started a subject or a line of thought. Ideas and 

 speculations from all quarters soon crowded in. One after 

 another was taken up and pursued at a tremendous pace, 

 until at length we were watching a torrent of words on some 

 question as remote as possible from the subject which originally 

 provoked it. Thus when once in the Chair at our inaugural 

 dinner on the i st of October he rose to propose " Prosperity to 

 the Medical School," and in less than five minutes he was dis- 

 cussing with great vehemence the origin of the word " clan." 

 On another occasion he began a lecture, the subject of which was 

 to have been " Ancient Skulls," but towards the end a large part 

 of it was taken up by a criticism of the merits, as a writer, of 

 Diodorus Siculus. This striking feature of Rolleston's intellect 

 goes very far, I think, to explain the character of his work. It 

 was abundant, clever, brilliant, but too diffuse and fragmentary. 

 He touched many things, and most of them with effect, but he 

 produced nothing wholly worthy of himself. He was certainly 

 far greater than he appeared to be in any work he has left 

 behind him. Rolleston was indeed richly endowed in intellectual 

 gifts. He had splendid abilities, a marvellous memory abun- 

 dantly laden, a fertile imagination, a singularly quick and clear 

 apprehension,-- much in his mental constitution which might be 

 called genius, and overwhelming energy ; but lacking somewhat 

 perhaps of the power of patient thought, of steady and sustained 

 reflection. His will was not perhaps fully equal to the direction 



