8o Chauncey Wright. [vr. 



how great is the loss which philosophy has sustained 

 in his death. For not only was he somewhat defi- 

 cient in the literary knack of expressing his thoughts 

 in language generally intelligible and interesting, but 

 he was also singularly devoid of the literary ambition 

 which leads one to seek to influence the public by 

 written exposition. Had he possessed more of this 

 kind of ambition, perhaps the requisite knack would 

 not have been wanting ; for Mr. Wright was by no 

 means deficient in clearness of thought or in com- 

 mand of language. The difficulty — or, if we prefer 

 so to call it, the esoteric character — of his writings 

 was due rather to the sheer extent of their richness 

 and originality. His essays and review-articles were 

 pregnant with valuable suggestions, which he was 

 wont to emphasise so slightly that their significance 

 might easily pass unheeded ; and such subtle sug- 

 gestions made so large a part of his philosophical 

 style that, if any of them chanced to be overlooked 

 by the reader, the point and bearing of the entire 

 argument was liable to be misapprehended. His 

 sentences often abounded in terse allusive clauses or 

 epithets which were unintelligible for want of a suffi- 

 cient clue to the subject-matter of the allusion : in 

 the absence of an exhaustive acquaintance with the 

 contents of the author's mind, the reader could only 



