"One hesitates to refer to the personal qualities that endeared him to
his intimate friends. I always detected in his life a certain undefined
loneliness. The scholar's shyness and the isolation of his exalted
position hardly account for it. A humanistic scholar in a University
where the practical departments were making greatest progress, engrossed
in his intellectual interests in the solitude of his upper chamber while
the busy commercial world went heedless by, always leisurely in the
midst of a most active life, a man of religious reticence who was
misunderstood because he did not make a noisy profession of his faith,
an old countryman in a new land that he never could quite call 'home,' a
controversialist skilled only in the use of the rapier and compelled at
times to enter the lists with those who wielded the bludgeon, a subtle
humourist who must 'carry on' with the prosaic and matter-of-fact, a
lover of his own fireside who must of necessity be socially advertised
with the vulgar, his spirit dwelt apart from the busy world in which he
served.
"Loyalty was the supreme virtue in his ethical code, and disloyalty was
to him the unpardonable sin. No man could have done for McGill what he
did and not make academic enemies. He found a group of professional
schools, each more or less autonomous, and he transformed it into a
University. His ideal of the unity of learning made it necessary that he
should run counter to the traditions of the various schools in seeking
to co-ordinate all departments of study, and he exposed himself to
criticism, just as President Eliot of Harvard did in his similar work
for his University; but I never heard him speak a disloyal word of any
of his colleagues. No man could have advocated Imperialism as he did
without making political enemies, and many a vigorous attack was made on
him by young Canadians; but I do not recall any spoken word or any
printed sentence of his that dragged his advocacy of Imperialism into
the realm of party politics or personal controversy. I know how true and
generous he was to one of his friends who always found in him a
congenial fellow-worker in the things of the spirit. I also know how
large a place he kept in his heart for the students,--rejoicing in
their success, proud of their manly conduct, heart-sad over the tragedy
of guilt and shame that befell any one of them. He had a warm heart,
although he did not wear it on his sleeve for daws to peck at. To me as
I go about the College yard he is a spiritual presence, summoning me to
do my best, to be accurate, fearless, loyal to the truth as I know the
truth, and loyal to those for whom I hold the truth in stewardship; and
such a spiritual comrade he will be while memory lasts. My experience is
that of many of you who were fond of him and of whom he was fond, and
our tribute to his memory, while quite unworthy, has at least, what he
would most desire, the merit of sincerity.