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known him more , would have found him formed to engage all their esteem and love . These oc « casional departures from his habitual manners may be traced to Ms bodily indisposition . Many of his friends , who have entered
his room , ^ hen was suffering under this effect of his disease , well remember , that , after a few moments of conversation , he would shake off the oppression of his languor his wonted smile would
play over his features , that peculiar animation , which usually lighted up his countenance , would again break out , and he would enter into any subject proposed , with the warmest and liveliest
interest . Mr . Bucktriinster possessed all the characteristic features of a mind of the highest order . It was not marked by any of those eccentricities , which sometimes distinguish and disgrace men of brilliant genius , and which , are
usually perhaps to be ascribed , either to the deficiency , or the undue predominance , of some one of the mental powers . His mind was perfectly wr ell-balanced . There was a soberness , a rationality , a
practicableness in all his views , which proved , that judgment—in a degree very rarely found united with such splendid gifts of fancy— - presided over his other faculties and regulated their use . The most shining attribute of his mind
was , undoubtedl y , philosophic imagination . It was this , which gave him such extraordinary powers of delineation and illustration , and enabled him to impart novelty and lustre to every thing he touched . His conception of any subject , which engaged his mind , was strong and original j and he
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could hold it in view , till it spread itself before him in all its parts * and unfolded all its connexions .
When he was preparing to communicate his thoughts , a thousand associated ideas sprang up and gathered round the subject ; and imagination stood ready to fur . nish him with innumerable
delightful resemblances , which would often carry with them the force of arguments from anal ogy ^ as well as shed light and beauty on his conceptions . His intellectual habits presented no striking singularity . He was a real student . He had that first requisite
of all true and durable greatness , the habit of patient and long-con , tinued attention . He could delight in the dryest and most minute researches , as well as in ihe lofty and ethereal visions of fancy . Like the majority of men of learning , he loved to read more than to
think , and to think more than to vvriie . He composed with rapidity , but with intellectual toil ; and his best efforts were not made without a high degree of mental excitement .
His acquisitions were for his years , pre eminently great . Besides the studies peculiar to theology , his reading was very extensive in metaphysics , morals , biography , and particularly literary history ; and whatever he had once read , his memory made for ever his own . Of all branches of
knowledge it may be said that his excellence was most conspicuous in philology- —understanding by this word , the knowledge of language as an instrument of thought , in all its propriety and force , as well as all its shades and varieties of meaning , in its general theory , as well as in its modifications in dif-
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€ 66 Memoir of the Rev . J . S . Buckminsttr .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1814, page 666, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2446/page/6/
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