The Times/1895/Obituary/George Paul Macdonell

A correspondent writes as follows:—"Many friends will hear with regret of the death of Mr., of Lincoln's Inn and 40, Lansdowne-crescent. His illness was short, his end sudden.  He had gone with his wife and child to Haslemere to visit friends at Whitsuntide.  He caught a chill after playing cricket; pneumonia set in; and he passed quietly away in his sleep on the evening of Sunday.  After studying at Aberdeen University, where he took the gold medal for general scholarship, he joined the Bar.  An unaffected modesty of nature, a dislike of every form of self-seeking, prevented rapid success.  With subtilty [sic] of mind, which found delight in metaphysical and ethical, rather than legal, problems, he seemed to some far less eager than most barristers for professional success, and, interested in literature and philosophy, to let the stream flow by.  But, almost in spite of himself, practice, and that of the best kind, came; and more than one law officer found in him, in the preparation of opinions, a valuable assistant. Chiefly in magazine and newspaper articles, for the most part unsigned, and in such contributions as his essay in Mr. Bryce's book "Two Centuries of Irish History," is any record of a singularly acute and incisive intellect. Over the proofs of friends' books he would labour with even more zeal than over his own, supplying them with authorities which they had not thought; and it is characteristic that a clever little volume which he wrote several years ago passed through some 15 editions and was reprinted in America, without his ever putting his name to it. A volume on the "Functions of Government" was about to be published when he died. A long-planned treatise on the law of mortgages did not see the light, chiefly because his high standard of workmanship was not satisfied. His friends will not soon forget that beautiful nature, which in every relation of life freely gave, never exacted, never murmured; full of generous interest; content to be itself and to look out in a spirit of gentle irony upon the result." The funeral of Mr. George Macdonell will take place on Thursday, at 3 45 p.m., at Woking Crematorium.