Ossian Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

PREFATORY NOTICE. IX
indolent ; for his life was a hidden life to such. They and he dwelt
far apart. Yet few men were more sagacious, or less visionary,
making allowance for diiference of pursuits, and fewer still could
have resisted for so long a period the drain made by protracted
vigils and incessant mental effort on the vital powers. Few of
the busiest, in your busy city, worked harder in his own way, or
knew less of idleness. A disposition naturally retiring, joined to
a sensitive and gentle spirit that was too just to take advantage
of the weakness of others, and too proud to stoop to anything that
partook of artifice, was somewhat out of joint, perhaps, with the
usual conditions of success. There were others, however, who
knew how to hold such a man in estimation. In their eyes, he
was a man who had deliberately made choice of his vocation, and
was following it out, in the spirit of an earnest faith ; but a man,
besides of genial temperament, who was sincere in his friendship,
and honourable in all things. To them, his life— grand in the
simplicity of its taste, and the nobleness of its aims — seemed to
move bravely on, in an orbit of its own, tiU it 'shot on the sudden
into dark.'
" It would seem as if men passed from the midst of us
at intervals, whose moral and intellectual worth, after covering
their own lives with its beauty, and bidding fair to make lovelier
the lives of many, were suddenly restrained by stern inscrutable
decree from wider influence. It is as if the stream that had worn
its way from the bosom of lone hills, and made beautiful its
narrow course through glen and gorge, were of a sudden to slip
underground, disappearing at its broadest and strongest, where
the wild flowers and grasses of the uplands give place to the green
verge of tilled and peopled plains. Their natural genius, and the
discipline they wiUingly undergo, because the eye is fixed on
some farther goal, having served to trim their own lifes bark,
these men quit us on a voyage in which we may be borne to them,
but from which they cannot return to us. Such men are
understood only by the few who feel their power and influence, as
those of a life rich in its own gifts, and moving altogether, with