"It is curious," he wrote, "the feeling of having an audience,
like clay in your hands, to mould for a season as you please. It
is a terribly responsible power.... I do not mean for a moment to
imply that I am indifferent to the good opinion of others--far
otherwise; but to gain this is much less a concern with me than to
deserve it. It was not so once. I had no wish for unmerited
praise, but I was too ready to settle that I did merit it. Now,
the word DUTY seems to me the biggest word in the world, and is
uppermost in all my serious doings."
This was written only about four months before his death. A
little later he wrote, "I spin my thread of life from week to
week, rather than from year to year." Constant attacks of
bleeding from the lungs sapped his little remaining strength,
but did not altogether disable him from lecturing. He was
amused by one of his friends proposing to put him under
trustees for the purpose of looking after his health.
But he would not be restrained from working, so long
as a vestige of strength remained.
One day, in the autumn of 1859, he returned from his customary
lecture in the University of Edinburgh with a severe pain in his
side. He was scarcely able to crawl upstairs. Medical aid was
sent for, and he was pronounced to be suffering from pleurisy and
inflammation of the lungs. His enfeebled frame was ill able to
resist so severe a disease, and he sank peacefully to the rest he
so longed for, after a few days' illness:
"Wrong not the dead with tears!
A glorious bright to-morrow
Endeth a weary life of pain and sorrow.
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