e earnest pleading of the Latin letters
which it was the custom to send in when a man stood for a Fellowship,
and in which Pattison set forth his ardent longing for knowledge, and
his narrow and unprosperous condition as a poor student. He always came
very near; indeed, he more than once won the vote of the best judges;
but he just missed the prize. To the bitter public disappointments of
1845 were added the vexations caused by private injustice and
ill-treatment. He turned fiercely on those who, as he thought, had
wronged him, and he began to distrust men, and to be on the watch for
proofs of hollowness and selfishness in the world and in the Church.
Yet at this time, when people were hearing of his bitter and unsparing
sayings in Oxford, he was from time to time preaching in village
churches, and preaching sermons which both his educated and his simple
hearers thought unlike those of ordinary men in their force, reality,
and earnestness. But with age and conflict the disposition to harsh and
merciless judgments strengthened and became characteristic. This,
however, should be remembered: where he revered ho revered with genuine
and unstinted reverence; where he saw goodness in which he believed he
gave it ungrudging honour. He had real pleasure in recognising height
and purity of character, and true intellectual force, and he maintained
his admiration when the course of things had placed wide intervals
between him and those to whom it had been given. His early friendships,
where they could be retained, he did retain warmly and generously even
to the last; he seemed almost to draw a line between them and other
things in the world. The truth, indeed, was that beneath that icy and
often cruel irony there was at bottom a most warm and affectionate
nature, yearning for sympathy, longing for high and worthy objects,
which, from the misfortunes especially of his early days, never found
room to expand and unfold itself. Let him see and feel that anything
was real--character, purpose, cause--and at any rate it was sure of his
respect, probably of his interest. But the doubt whether it was real
was always ready to present itself to his critical and suspicious mind;
and these doubts grew with his years.

People have often not given Pattison credit for the love that was in
him for what was good and true; it is not to be wondered at, but the
observation has to be made. On the other hand, a panegyrie, like that
which we reprint from