the mightiest of
English deans. But the fault was more probably with the rector's
parsimony of words than with the editor. In 1877 he delivered a lecture,
afterwards reprinted in one of the reviews, on Books and Critics. It is
not without the usual piquancy and the usual cynicism, but he had
nothing particular to say, except to tell his audience that a small
house is no excuse for absence of books, inasmuch as a set of shelves,
thirteen feet by ten, and six inches deep, will accommodate nearly a
thousand octavos; and to hint that a man making a thousand a year, who
spends less than a pound a week on books, ought to be ashamed of
himself. There are some other fugitive pieces scattered in the
periodicals of the day. In 1871 and 1872 he published editions of the
_Essay on Man_ and _The Satires and Epistles_ of Pope. Ten years before
that he had been at last elected to the headship of his college, but the
old enthusiasm for influencing young minds was dead. We have spoken of
the Rector's timidity and impotence in practical things. Yet it is fair
to remember the persevering courage with which he pleaded one unpopular
cause. As Mr. Morison said not long ago, his writings on university
organisation, the most important of which appeared in 1868, are a noble
monument of patient zeal in the cause for which he cared most. 'Pattison
never lost heart, never ceased holding up his ideal of what a university
should be, viz. a metropolis of learning in which would be collected and
grouped into their various faculties the best scholars and _savants_ the
country could produce, all working with generous emulation to increase
the merit and renown of their chairs. If England ever does obtain such a
university, it will be in no small measure to Pattison that she will owe
it.'

Yet when the record is completed, it falls short of what might have been
expected from one with so many natural endowments, such unrivalled
opportunities, such undoubted sincerity of interest. Pattison had none
of what so much delighted Carlyle in Ram-Dass, the Hindoo man-god. When
asked what he meant to do for the sins of men, Ram-Dass at once made
answer that he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all the sins of
the world. Of this abdominal flame Pattison had not a spark. Nor had he
that awful sense which no humanism could extinguish in Milton, of
service as 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye.' Nor had he, finally,
that civil and secular enthusiasm which made me