Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 8
Scotland's chief historian. As a man, he was loved and valued in proportion as he was truly known. With a dry critical intellect he combined an intense sensitiveness, evinced in a painful shrinking from deficient sympathy, the real and pathetic cause of his unfortunate irascibility and impatience of contradiction. His private affections were deep and constant, his philanthropy embraced mankind, his gra cious and charitable actions were endless, and it is mournful to think that the mere exag geration of tender feeling, combined with his aversion to display and neglect of his personal appearance, should have obstructed the gene ral recognition of qualities as beautiful as un common. His main defect was, as remarked by his widow, an absence of imagination, rendering it difficult for him to put himself in another's place. In an historian such a deficiency is most serious, and could be but imperfectly supplied by the acuteness of his critical faculty. In biography it was to a certain extent counteracted by the strength of the sympathy which originally attracted him to his theme; and hence his biographical writings are perhaps the most truly and per manently valuable.
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