; who has convictions of his own, but by a
power of sympathy, one of the rarest and highest mental, half moral,
half intellectual, qualities, can understand opinions which he does not
hold; understand and pardon, as the French say.

Whether Wilkins' tolerance was of the exalted kind, or alloyed by an
admixture of that other tolerance which is no better than indifference
and opportunism, it is impossible to say, for we do not know enough
about him to pronounce a judgment. Our data are scanty and incoherent,
scattered about in diaries and memoirs written by persons of different
stations and opinions. This much is certain, that Pope, Aubrey, Sprat,
Evelyn, Pepys, Tillotson, and Burnet speak of him with affection and
respect: one note runs through all their eulogies, that he was
universally beloved; yet he was not one of those nonentities whom now we
style amiable persons, but a man of character and power.

As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that a
Vicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, his
University, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; nor
have been "laudatus a laudatis viris." It is more rational to believe
that Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations in
which he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being more
solicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negative
of virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairly
judged, and by another good criterion, the times in which he
lived,--times of perpetual change, confusion, and perplexity.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Mr Pearson's instructive and amusing article on "The Virtuoso"
in the 'Nineteenth Century,' November 1909.

[4] This is an abbreviation of the passage in Burnet's 'History of his
Own Time,' vol. i. p. 272. First edition.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

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