Veitch,--"filled with abstruse
metaphysical matter, original and quoted, bristling with
proportional and syllogistic formulae--that are still preserved,
is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the press,
and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to
dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest spirit
of love and devotion. She had a power, moreover, of keeping her
husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely against a
sort of energetic indolence which characterised him, and which,
while he was always labouring, made him apt to put aside the task
actually before him--sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry
suggested in the course of study on the matter in hand, sometimes
discouraged by the difficulty of reducing to order the immense
mass of materials he had accumulated in connection with it. Then
her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and refreshed
him, and never more so than when, during the last twelve years of
his life, his bodily strength was broken, and his spirit, though
languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is, that Sir
William's marriage, his comparatively limited circumstances, and
the character of his wife, supplied to a nature that would have
been contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought
no reward but in the doing of it, and that might never have been
made publicly known or available, the practical force and impulse
which enabled him to accomplish what he actually did in literature
and philosophy.
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