his ill-fated foreign journey. Mr Ferrier was also a passenger, and scarcely dared to look on the almost unconscious form of one whose genius he so warmly admired."[1] It may be there are those who will in coming years speak to their children of similar feelings awakened in themselves, as they watched a feeble frame, whose worn features revealed, amid the light of piercing intellect, acute suffering held down by heroic endurance, in the quiet town of St Andrews.
To philosophy he ever gave his first and unwavering devotion; he doubtless felt himself, and it will probably be allowed by discerning judges, that the genuine interest which he maintained to the last in literature not technically or nominally philosophical, made him in no way less able to preserve his primary allegiance unalloyed. He read works of imagination with deep imaginative sympathy: a strong poetical element in his own nature responded vividly to the subtlest touch of all true poetry. His numerous contributions to ' Blackwood's Magazine ' attest to what extent the various sides of literature possessed attractions for him. For special mention may be selected,—The Translation of Tieck's Pietro d'Abano, in August 1839; of Deinhardstein's Picture of Danae, September 1841; The Tittle-Tattle of a Philosopher, December 1841; and the Review of Miss Barrett's Poems, November 1844. To some among the many readers whose admiration for Mrs Browning's genius
- ↑ Quoted from Principal Forbes's address to the Students of St Andrews, November 1864.
