Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/400

Rh arrive at, that I might have confidence to engage in discussing the topics which engross the attention of mankind. I dread to commit myself through ignorance, and ere I will appear (if ever I shall) in public, I will be backed up with a complete knowledge of the facts I speak on. This is high talking for a poor student in the second class of the Grammar School of Old Aberdeen.’ Nothing could express better the guiding principle from which he never swerved. He had the true scientific spirit in his respect for facts and in the pains he took, and insisted on others taking, to verify them. No statement of his is made at haphazard; he would delay his work until he was satisfied of the accuracy of every detail. This reverence for truth he had the knack of inspiring in others who came in touch with him. He had the insight of the philosopher into the significance of the facts he dealt with, and the consequent power to correlate and illumine them. Put shortly, his mind was in a high degree analytic and in nearly if not quite as high a degree synthetic No one who knew him well could fail to be impressed with the absolute independence as well as the power of his mind. He was an ideal seeker after truth. A severe critic of his own work, he was highly appreciative of the work of others. He was not lenient to error, especially if the error arose from want of verifying facts which ought to have been verified. Charlatans found to their cost that he could on occasion wield a grievous cudgel. But he was scrupulously fair in statement, and ready to recognise the good points even of a weakling. Full of much courtesy and nobility of heart, he was also a man of much humour of the quieter sort, a trait which appears in his writings but sparingly. His practical wisdom was well known and appreciated in the council of the Gaelic Society, in the Free Library Committee, of which he was long a useful member, and by the many friends and former pupils who sought him for advice. He had the power characteristic of great minds of getting at the essentials of a question, and of seeing things in true perspective.

It would be a mistake to regard Macbain as a Celtic scholar simply. It is probably not too much to say that he knew English literature and English philology as well as he knew Gaelic. A competent judge declared that of all the men he had met, Macbain had the best knowledge of English literature. I do not touch on his political views, which were strongly liberal, nor on other subjects on which he held clear and strong opinions. There were, indeed, few subjects of general interest which he had not considered with the same freshness and independence of thought which characterised all his work.

The extent and value of his work can perhaps be best appreciated by considering the condition in which Gaelic scholarship would now be without it. His researches have raised Gaelic philology to the highest scientific plane. Neither Welsh nor Irish has a philological dictionary; it is but recently that Victor Henry produced one of Breton, in the preface to which he acknowledges his great obligations to Macbain. He has made valuable contributions to Scottish history; he might, alas! have done much more VOL. III.