of the late Renaissance
than any man of his day, his knowledge took little written form except a
volume on Isaac Casaubon. He also wrote an admirable little book on
_Milton_ for the _English Men of Letters_, edited parts of Milton and
Pope, and contributed a not inconsiderable number of essays and articles
to the _Quarterly_ and _Saturday Reviews_, and other papers. The
autobiography mentioned was published after his death.

Despite Pattison's peculiar temper he had warm and devoted friends, and
it was impossible for any one, whether personally liking him or not, to
deny him the possession of most unusual gifts. Whether his small
performance was due to the shocks just referred to, to genuine
fastidiousness and resolve to do nothing but the best, or to these
things mixed with a strong dash of downright indolence and want of
energy, is hard to say. But it would be entirely unjust to regard him as
merely a man who was "going to do something." His actual work though not
large is admirable, and his style is the perfection of academic
correctness, not destitute of either vigour or grace.

There were some resemblances between Pattison and Jowett (1817-94); but
the latter, unlike Pattison, had never had any sympathies with the
religious renaissance of his time. Like Pattison he passed his entire
life (after he obtained a Balliol fellowship) in his College, and like
him became head of it; while he was a much more prominent member of the
Liberal party in Oxford. His position as Regius Professor of Greek gave
him considerable influence even beyond Balliol. He, too, was an
_Essayist and Reviewer_, and he exercised a quiet but pervading
influence in University matters. He even acquired no mean name in
literature, though his work, after an early _Commentary_ on some
Epistles of St. Paul, was almost entirely confined to translations,
especially of Plato, and though in these translations he was much
assisted by pupils. He wrote well, but with much less distinction and
elegance than Pattison, nor had he by any means the same taste for
literature and erudition in it. But, as an influence on the class of
persons from whom men of letters are drawn, no one has exceeded him in
his day.

The dramatic catastrophe of the Disruption of the Scotch Kirk, which, by
a strange coincidence, was nearly contemporary with the crisis of the
Oxford Movement, set the final seal upon the reputation of Thomas
Chalmers, who headed the seceders. But this re