spite of the fact that he was classed by obituary
articles in England among the twelve most learned men of his time.

It would do no honor to Thomas Davidson's memory not to be frank about
him. He handled people without gloves, himself, and one has no right
to retouch his photograph until its features are softened into
insipidity. He had defects and excesses which he wore upon his sleeve,
so that everyone could see them. They made him many enemies, and if
one liked quarrelling he was an easy man to quarrel with. But his
heart and mind held treasures of the rarest. He had a genius for
friendship. Money, place, fashion, fame, and other vulgar idols of the
tribe had no hold on his imagination. He led his own life absolutely,
in whatever company he found himself, and the intense individualism
which he taught by word and deed, is the lesson of which our generation
is perhaps most in need.

All sorts of contrary adjectives come up as I think of him. To begin
with, there was something physically rustic which suggested to the end
his farm-boy origin. His voice was sweet and its Scottish cadences
most musical, and the extraordinary sociability of his nature made
friends for him as much among women as among men; he had, moreover, a
sort of physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in manner did he
ever grow quite "gentlemanly" or _Salonfaehig_ in the conventional and
obliterated sense of the terms. He was too cordial and emphatic for
that. His broad brow, his big chest, his bright blue eyes, his
volubility in talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far beyond the
common; but his fine and nervous hands, and the vivacity of all his
reactions suggested a degree of sensibility that one rarely finds
conjoined with so robustly animal a frame. The great peculiarity of
Davidson did indeed consist in this combination of the acutest
sensibilities with massive faculties of thought and action, a
combination which, when the thought and actions are important, gives to
the world its greatest men.

Davidson's native mood was happy. He took optimistic views of life and
of his own share in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from
his face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to
a large extent structural and not "expressive" at all) was displeasing
to many new acquaintances on whom it made an impression of too much
conceit. The impression of conceit was not diminished in their eyes by
the freedom