THE AUTHOR OF THORNDALE' AND MODERN

SCEPTICISM.

THE author of Thorndale' should not be forgotten. A more thoughtful, graceful, and wellinformed writer has not adorned our recent literature. Comparatively with some names occupying intellectual prominence, William Smith is peerless in the quality both of his thought and style, and it is strange therefore that he is not better known, and his writings more widely appreciated. This is the more strange that, as a writer, he is essentially modern, closely allied to all that is best in the present tendency of scientific culture, and inspired by its highest spirit of progressive hopefulness. The author of Thorndale,' of 'Gravenhurst,' and of the later Essays on Knowing and Feeling: a Contribution to Psychology,' is not merely a thinker of rare subtlety and richness of philosophical insight, but he is a thinker steeped in all the new scientific ideas, and capable of handling them with the easy, expansive grasp of a master. But then, as he himself said,

" 1

he led "an obscure life under an obscure name. Smith's nature was a deeply modest and retiring one. He shrunk from publicity of all kinds. He belonged to no clique, or school, or propaganda. His life was a life of thought for its own sake. The speculative child of his own age, he caught all its hues of opinion, and faithfully reflected their "conflict" in his own mental activity; but this he did as a solitary thinker, with no aim but to find the truth, or some opening towards the truth, for himself or others. He had no mission, no clear message to proclaim, no very definite doctrine of which he was confidently proud. He was all his days searching along lines of speculation, which he held firmly, and brought into clearer meaning; but he cannot be said to have worked out a system, and even his most confident conclusions are suggestive rather than dogmatic. There is a vein of scepticism in his most mature thought. He steps with the modesty of an inquirer, and there is the whisper of expectancy in his fullest utterances. If he is imbued with the modern spirit, he has yet nothing of its aggressiveness. His is rather the chivalry of an older order of thought, which is deferential to all, and puts its own claims gladly behind others.

Yet there is too much real life of thought in 'Thorndale' and other writings, to allow them to be forgotten. The singular purity and beauty of the author's style; the pensive if often baffled eagerness of his imaginative insight; his clear love of truth, and the rich light of higher feeling and devout enthusiasm, which never fails him, even when sounding the most perilous depths, must always make him a 1 Gravenhurst, p. 272.

favourite with students of that "divine philosophy" which is

"Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute."

Lacking in mass and consistency of thought, he may never occupy the foreground, but he is almost certain to hold a higher niche in the Temple of Philosophy than he yet enjoys. Without any formal design of forwarding such a result, but in the hope of making his philosophical position as clear as the somewhat hesitating balance of his thought will allow, we propose to make him the subject of a brief study. We are encouraged to do this in connection with a touching memoir written by his widow, and now published along with a new edition of 'Gravenhurst' and the Essays on 'Knowing and Feeling'-the last and not the least interesting of his philosophical labours.1

The memoir does not invite anything like criticism, but we should be doing injustice to our feelings as well as the feelings of all who have read it, if we did not, in a single word, advert to the charm and grace of its execution and the felicity of affectionate yet reticent feeling which breathes throughout its pages.

William Henry Smith was born at North End, Hammersmith, in the first month of 1808, in circumstances of apparent affluence. His father had early made a fortune "sufficient for his wants," and retired from business. He is described as a man of " strong natural intelligence," "peculiarly fond of quiet and of books, gentle yet law-giving, the recognised head of

1 Gravenhurst; or, Thoughts on Good and Evil, 2d ed., &c., with a Memoir of the Author. 1875.