110 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



as I am aware. It was, however, claimed for him, and from two 

 quarters, viz.: the academic, and the ecclesiasticaL Possibly 

 jealous of the little Scottish University, (whose Professor of 

 Literature had accomplished so splendidly the gigantic task of 

 editing a work declared by an American authority to be "the 

 highest achievement of the English-speaking race in that field",) 

 the English University men wished to transfer some of the lustre 

 from the north, for Professor Smith, after he left the Scottish 

 Free Church, became Librarian, and, later. Professor of Oriental 

 Languages in Cambridge. But as he had been a clergyman in 

 Scotland, and for some time Professor in a small theological 

 college in Aberdeen, the Free Church did not resent the theory 

 of his editorship. It is true that the Free Church expelled Robert- 

 son Smith for heresy, but the younger churchmen, especially, 

 were not unwilling to regard him as the creator and moving power 

 in the editorial sanctum of the Encyclopaedia where his heresies 

 were published. 



I had the |)rivilege of knowing the late Professor Baynes, 

 not in a professional or even ordinary friendly way, but in the 

 most intimate manner. I was a student of his for two years, and 

 later his academic assistant, one of the last, if not the last he ever 

 had. I have, thus, quite a personal interest in this true story. 

 But more, I have the task of endeavoring to do some justice to 

 the memory of a truly great man — one who was modest and un- 

 assuming, but richly gifted, a profound scholar, almost encyclo- 

 paedic in the range of his knowledge, and widely beloved in literary 

 and scientific circles — a man whose magnum opus all the world 

 knows, but of the man himself knows little. The main facts of 

 his life are soon told. He was born in Somersetshire, at Welling- 

 ton, in 1823, and went to Edinburgh in 1845. Sir Wilham Hamil- 

 ton was reviving those studies in Logic and Metaphysics which 

 had been for long despised and misunderstood as a vital part of 

 academic training. He was, as Professor Veitch truly said, "the 

 means of inspiring and impressing young minds — opening up to 

 them new fields of thought and vision — giving principles and con- 

 victions which passed into their intellectual, moral, and religious 

 life — to a degree and extent which has been very rarely equalled 

 by an academic teacher. " Under the spell of this great master 

 in philosophy, Spencer Baynes became an enthusiastic toiler in 

 the field of intellectual science. Early in his course he attracted 

 the notice of Sir William, and the relation of student and pro- 



