1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 129 



Chester, of Maudsley, G. H. Lewes and others, I was surprised at 

 his minute acquaintance with the most recent physiology; and 

 was no less surprised, on another occasion at his familiarity with 

 mediaeval natural history, for taking down from his librarj^ shelves 

 a copy of the Historia Naturalis of Johannes Johnston* (I by good 

 fortune became possessed of a copy of that rare work recently) I 

 was struck with, his intimate knowledge of its voluminous contents, 

 for he called my attention to a passage describing some Australian 

 animals (e. g. the Ornithorhyncus) which he had difficulty in ac- 

 cepting, for Australia was not explored till Captain Cook's voyage 

 of 1770, though Dutch navigators sighted Cape Leeuwin in 1627, 

 and I was thus led to discuss out-of-the-way zoological matters 

 with him. I was able to establish the fact that the descriptions 

 applied to South American animals not Australian. One instinc- 

 tively felt in his presence that he was hke Decker or Heyv/ood, 

 among the Elizabethan giants, the bosom companion of great 

 men, one who to pursue the similitude, could tell of "things done 

 at the Mermaid." He had the old-time reverence for books, and 

 would say with Milton ''as good almost kill a man as kill a good 

 book. Who kills a man^ kills a reasonable creature, God's image; 

 but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself." He had 

 the old reverence for great names, for immortal geniuses— he 

 would utter the very names of Shakespeare, or Chaucer, or Milton, 

 or Tennyson, with a tone of reverence — it was an education to 

 young men to sit at the feet of so great and so gracious a master. 

 If, I repeat, the'Ninth Edition of the Encycloptedia Britannica 

 is one of the most amazing products of 19th century literary 

 effort — the biggest book since the beginning of the world, hyper- 

 bolically exclaimed a well-known Montreal literary critic — if it is 

 the climax and flower of encyclopaedic literature — the greatest 

 (without question) of the Britannic Encyclopaedias — the credit 

 belongs to the editor. Professor Baynes was one of the greatest 

 of editors, I do not hesitate to say, and to his supreme intellectual 

 qualities the exalted character of the Ninth Edition of the Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica is directly due. 



* Published in x\msterdam in 1678. 



