Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/275

Rh many friends at Cambridge still stood him in good stead, and he rapidly drew round him a large circle of warm friends and admirers, among whom might be found almost all the best known names in science or literature. This power of winding the affections of those who were most worthy of friendship was due mainly to the peculiarly winning gentleness and tenderness which characterized him, and made it impossible to resist the charm of personal intercourse with him. Although the nature of his opinions and his style of championing them raised him countless enemies among those who knew him only from his writings and lectures, yet there was no school of thought among the members of which he did not possess some intimate friends. However widely their opinions might differ, it seemed to be quite impossible for any one to feel hostility toward him after becoming personally acquainted with him. The versatility of his mind aided this greatly, for it gave to his conversation a charm which was quite peculiar, and which was felt alike by the most different classes of minds. There was no subject from which he used not to draw apt illustrations or expressive metaphors, which came clothed in language as quaint and as original as it was appropriate. Whatever he discussed seemed to become full of suggestiveness. These qualities gave great additional value to his mathematical lectures.

"With his style of teaching, the most valuable part of the instruction was the indirect effect of the lessons; the actual matter in hand was distinctly subordinate to the general training in the fundamental ideas and principles of the subject which its discussion enabled him to give. Everything was treated from the point of view in which it least needed the aid of artificial methods and conventions, so that its direct connection with the broad underlying principles common to a whole class of subjects might be immediately perceived. This dislike to artificial methods was almost a passion with him. He had great faith in the superiority of this style of teaching, and always maintained that it was the easiest as well as the best, a proposition to which the experience of most teachers would not lead them to assent. Perhaps it was his own special power of clear exposition which enabled him to succeed so well in thus handling his subjects in their most general form, instead of starting from simple and particular cases, and only taking up more general theorems after the simpler ones had been mastered by his pupils; but, whether or not this was the case, it is certain that he had all the success in his teaching that he could desire.

"It is a signal proof of the beauty of Professor Clifford's personal character that, in forming an estimate of him, one should so naturally and inevitably think first of his general qualities, and only in the second place of his claims to fame as a mathematician. For it was in the latter character that he first gained his great reputation, and it is in that that his claims to genius are the strongest. No one of his contemporaries ever approached Professor Clifford in his marvelous.