Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/274

 a reputation as his could not have been sustained; but it was in no small degree due also to the peculiar originality of his character, both intellectual and moral, and to the absolutely tireless energy of his versatile mind.

"Those who remember Cambridge some ten or fifteen years ago will readily call to mind his fame while an undergraduate there. From the time when he came up to the university, with the high reputation which he had won while a schoolboy, to the time he left it some eight years afterward to become Professor of Mathematics at University College, London, he was more universally known and discussed among all classes at the university, whether undergraduates, graduates, or dons, than any of his contemporaries. He was indeed at all times a contrast to the normal type. At first, when fresh from school, he appeared as an ardent High Churchman, but he gradually became known as a devoted follower of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and as the champion of those views with which his name has since been identified. But, whatever was the precise phase of thought in which he might be, there was the same brilliant though paradoxical style of asserting and defending his beliefs which made him the terror of authorities and the delight of younger men. He never was in any sense the head of a party there. He was far too eccentric and original to have many followers or imitators. But no one had a wider circle of intimate friends, and no one could be in intimate intercourse with him without being deeply influenced by his views; and it was at that time chiefly by his direct influence on those personally acquainted with him that he produced his effect on the university. But the many-sidedness of his character caused this direct personal influence to be much more widely extended than would have seemed possible to those unacquainted with him. Gifted with an almost equal love for science, mathematics, history, and literature—we may even add gymnastics—he was the center of a knot of devotees of each of these studies, each of whom welcomed him as a comrade and regarded with jealousy his attention to other subjects as being likely to seduce him from the true bent of his genius into less important and congenial studies. And no doubt it was a fortunate thing in this instance that the arrangements for retaining the ablest men at the English universities are so imperfect, that Professor Clifford found no certainty of sufficient scope for his energies there, and resolved to leave that abode of learned leisure, and come to London, to become a mathematical professor, inasmuch as it was this that prevented him from wasting his life in desultory essays in a great variety of directions. No doubt all of these would have shown a power which would have made them remarkable, but they would have been dearly purchased by the sacrifice of the far greater and more abiding results that followed the concentration of his energies on the one or two subjects to which he devoted himself after his departure from the university.

"When resident in London the same qualities that had won him so