Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/42

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INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
xxxv

will have heard from others. His perfect courtesy, manhood, and native dignity were, with his stimulating intellect, the secret of their love for him.

" I am sorry that I cannot recall more of our brief intercourse, which I shall always be most thankful to have enjoyed."

Professor Veitch, formerly of St Andrews, now of Glasgow, may be quoted in conclusion.

"I first knew Mr Ferrier personally in the winter of 1860-61, as his colleague in the University of St Andrews. At that time his health, though good, was not robust. He seldom walked for recreation, spending his time almost exclusively, when not in his class-room, in his library among his books. Drawn to him partly by the interest of common studies, but quite as much by the attractive nature of the man, I very soon came to cherish for him the warmest affection. Refined, courteous, and genial, no speck of the pedantry which occasionally marks the man of recluse habits was visible in his manner. His devotion to abstract thought had in no degree dried up the freshness or limited the fulness of a mind that was from the first keenly susceptible of impressions from all that is highest and finest in nature and art. His early studies and training had been literary rather than philosophical; the beauty of form and style in which his thoughts were cast bore marks of this early culture.

"His one absorbing intellectual interest was ab-