118 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



recent articles jostled alongside brilliant up-to-date treatises and 

 the work was very unequal and behind the times. Critics at the 

 time referred to its antiquated tone. Dr. Gregory's article on 

 Chemistry was obsolete, Dr. Traill's on "Heat" was lamentably 

 weak, while the summaries of Zoology and Astronomy were 

 beneath contempt. Looking over the volumes of the Eighth 

 Edition its wordy antiquated style is most apparent, and where 

 the articles are not wholly out of date they have no tone of au- 

 thority; they are unequal, often incomplete, and as 'Hhe man in 

 the street " would say they are good enough for an encyclopaedia. 



Here was an opportunity — here a chance for an editor, com- 

 petent for his task, and ambitious and fearless to do it. The 

 enterprising publishers found in the quiet and ancient University 

 of St. Andrews just the man — a man widely known in the literary 

 and philosophical world, more as a friend and scholar than as a 

 writer of books — a man of vast encyclopaedic knowledge — a man 

 with high ideals, of great mental grasp and thoroughness, and 

 possessed of the most kindly and genial of temperaments. Pro- 

 fessor Spencer Baynes, in his profound technical treatise on the 

 abstruse logical problem "the quantification of the predicate" 

 (entitled "The New Analytic of Logical Forms") which he had 

 written while with Sir William Hamilton, had shewn his calibre. 

 The essay referred to has been pronounced to be the only original 

 treatise in the field of pure logic produced in Britain, and ranking 

 with the greatest German or French contributions to logical 

 science. Professor Baynes's exceptional literary powers were 

 seen in the many articles which he had published in the best serial 

 journals of London and Edinburgh, while his masterly editorials 

 in the London Daily News during the American Civil War showed 

 his grasp of affairs of the time. He wrote innumerable anonymous 

 papers on the language of Shakespeare, on English dialects, and 

 various other literary subjects. 



To Fraser's Magazine he contributed many articles, and for a 

 number of years was a constant writer for the Edinburgh Review, 

 the high position of which he did much to sustain, in the eleven or 

 twelve articles which appeared in its pages from 1868 to 1874. 

 His translation of the "Port Royal Logic," while a minor piece 

 of work, is extremely valuable for the mass of notes at the end of 

 the volume, notes which range over a very wide field, historical, 

 literary, and philosophical, and indicate a familiarity with ab- 

 struse learning of a very exceptional kind. The last piece of 



