The two grand characteristics of the Duke of Argyll which
made him a personage as well as a great person were independence and definiteness of thought. He always made up his own mind separately, collected his own facts, and when once convinced took his own course, which pretty often was not that of his colleagues. No authority impressed him, and the voice of the people, which is to so many Whigs an ultimate law, was in his eyes only one of the forces to be reckoned with. If he differed in science from Darwin he said so, and if the majority were against him he attacked the majority with arguments in which there was often scorn. He knew himself to be better informed on many sub- jects than most of those opposed to him, and abhorred the kind of intellectual flaccidity which proposes as a compromise that two plus two shall be counted three and a half. Naturally, being so able and so separate, he irritated a great many people, who described him as a ducal dominie, but he was absolutely straightforward, disinterested, and patriotic. Men like him, with minds of their own, and rank sufficient to be sure of an audience, are growing scarce among us, and as they served as breeze in the brick their departure weakens the structure. The Duke's books were just like his speeches, bold, definite, and clear, but they lack—as his speeches sometimes did not—the quality of per- suasiveness. They will not live, but he will, as an out- standing figure of-his time.
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