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intimacy with our cousins the Diceys. Where and when his friendship with
my brother began I do not precisely know, but it was already very close.
As in some later cases, of which I shall have to speak, the friendship
seemed to indicate that Fitzjames was attracted by complementary rather
than similar qualities in the men to whom he was most attached. No two
men of ability could be much less like each other. Smith's talents were
apparently equally adapted for fine classical scholarship and for the
most abstract mathematical investigations. If it was not exactly by the
toss of a shilling it was by an almost fortuitous combination of
circumstances that he was decided to take to mathematics, and in that
field won a European reputation. He soared, however, so far beyond
ordinary ken that even Europe must be taken to mean a small set of
competent judges who might almost be reckoned upon one's fingers. But
devoted as he was to these abstruse studies, Smith might also be
regarded as a typical example of the finest qualities of Oxford society.
His mathematical powers were recognised by his election to the Savilian
professorship in 1860, and the recognition of his other abilities was
sufficiently shown by the attempt to elect him member for the University
in 1878. He would indeed have been elected had the choice been confined
to the residents at Oxford. Smith could discourse upon nothing without
showing his powers, and he would have been a singular instance in the
House of Commons of a man respected at once for scholarship and for
profound scientific knowledge, and yet a chosen mouthpiece of the
political sentiments of the most cultivated constituency in the country.
The recognition of his genius was no doubt due in great part to the
singular urbanity which made him the pride and delight of all Oxford
common rooms. With the gentlest of manners and a refined and delicate
sense of humour, he had powers of launching epigrams the subtle flavour
of which necessarily disappears when detached from their context. But it
was his peculiar charm that he never used his powers to inflict pain.
His hearers felt that he could have pierced the thickest hide or laid
bare the ignorance of the most pretentious learning. But they could not
regret a self-restraint which so evidently proceeded from abounding
kindness of heart. Smith's good nature led him to lend too easy an ear
to applications for the employment of his abilities upon tasks to which
h