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their great author is still holding converse with us. It will be a satis- 

 faction to the members of this Academy to be told that his ' ' Elements 

 of Quaternions" — the work upon which he was engaged with the most 

 unceasing activity for the last two years — is all but complete. I have 

 reason to know that at no period of his life — not even when he was in 

 the prime of health and youthful vigour — did he apply himself to his 

 mathematical labours with more devoted diligence. Those who did not 

 actually know how he was employed, or who had formed a false estimate 

 of his character, might imagine him indolently reposing upon his laurels, 

 or pursuing his studies in a desultory way. Such a conception of him 

 would be the very opposite to the true one. His diligence of late was 

 even excessive — interfering with his sleep, his meals, his exercise, his 

 social enjoyments. It was, I believe, fatally injurious to his health. 



Believe me, Gentlemen, the fame of Sir "William Rowan Hamilton, 

 great as it was during his lifetime, will become yet greater when 

 the world has been furnished with materials enabling it more perfectly 

 to estimate the variety and richness of his endowments and the value 

 of the services which he has rendered to Science. His reputation, even 

 now, does not rest on the partiality of friends and countrymen. The 

 learned men of all lands have already declared him worthy of the 

 highest honours which can be paid to intellectual eminence. This 

 world-wide recognition, at the present time, of his genius and discove- 

 ries, affords us a sure pledge and earnest of the perpetuity of his repu- 

 tation, and warrants us in regarding his name as a glory which is not to 

 pass away from the scientihc and literary chaplet of Ireland. And in 

 this fact and this anticipation we might thankfully and happily behold a 

 full justification of his own early, and it might have been feared enthu- 

 siastic, aspirations — of his deep and generous consciousness that he was 

 intrusted with faculties and powers capable of achieving in the noblest 

 fields of thought a worthy fame both for himself and tor his country. 

 What were his feelings on this high subject of conscious power in con- 

 nexion with fame his Sonnet on Shakspeare beautifully expresses ; and 

 I cannot better conclude my sincere but inadequate tribute to his memory 

 than by repeating those moving and characteristic lines : — 



" Who says that Shakspeare did not know his lot, 

 But deem'd that in time's manifold decay 

 His memory should die and pass away, 

 And that within the shrine of human thought 

 To him no altar should be reared ? 0 hush ! 

 O veil thyself awhile in solemn awe! 

 Nor dream that all man's mighty spirit-law 

 Thou know'st ; how all the hidden fountains gush 

 Of the soul's silent prophesying power. 

 For as deep Love, 'mid all its wayward pain, 

 Cannot believe but it is loved again, 

 Even so, strong Genius, with its ample dow r er 

 Of a world-grasping love, from that deep feeling 

 "Wins of its own wide sway the clear revealing." 



I cannot doubt, Gentlemen, that I have had your sympathy in the ex- 



