CHAPTER IV.

GENERAL CHARACTER.

His

DELTA was tall, well formed, and erect. The development of his head was not peculiar in any way, but good upon the whole; and he carried it with a manly elevation. His hair was light, almost inclined to be sandy; and he usually wore it short. features were regular and handsome; but he had rather too much colour, not in the cheeks merely, but diffused over the whole face. His eyes were grey-blue, mild withal, but ready to twinkle sharp. When the sense of the ludicrous was full upon him, he had a way of raising his eyebrows, as people do in wonder; and there was a moist confused ferment in his eyes, glaring in the very riot and delirium of over-boiling fun. This was one of the strongest expressions of his nature; but, with the high moral powers ever watchful and dominant to chasten and subdue, it was not much indulged in. His usual tone of voice had a considerate kindliness in it, which was very pleasant to the ear.

In the way of beating down excuses, in order to have the visit of a friend prolonged, he was quite oldfashioned in his overbearing cordiality.

With these few remarks on Moir's personal appearance and manner, the office of his biographer, strictly speaking, ceases. His character ought to stand developed in the preceding pages. At all events, I am little disposed to sit in critical judgment, and pronounce a general verdict on any brother mortal. Still, it may be profitable for biographer and reader to take note together of some of the master features in the delineation before them.

Physic, like Law, is a jealous wife, and suffers no dalliance with the Muses. Well balanced, therefore, must that man's mind be, sound his self-regulating judgment, severe his subordinating self-denial, sleepless his industry, who can achieve medical success and literary success at one and the same time. Such a man was Macbeth Moir. He won

his professional way, in spite of the common distrust of the literary character, with no advantage of birth or fortune to help him-in his native place, too, where, proverbially, a prophet has no honour. A man of conduct he must have been, in the largest sense of that term. "It is a great compliment, both to yourself," says William Howitt, in a letter to Delta in 1838, "and the people you live amongst, that literature is not made to punish you in your profession. All medical men are terribly

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afraid of having a literary character, or of writing at all, except on some single professional subject. Your example proves that medical men may be devoted to their professional duties as well as distinguished in literature, and that there may be a public wise enough to see that." Let general society take the lesson; and let young men especially, if they find themselves ambitious of the double distinction which Delta carried off, be well aware that it is a difficult and rare one, and learn from him how to win it.

Moir's nature and life were simple, clear, and practical. Speculative and theoretical people found no favour in his eyes; the mystic and his mysticism he could not away with. A grave sense of the responsibility and the dignity of duty, a spirit of cheerful alacrity in discharging it, and principle to persevere to the end, were leading qualities of the man. All this we find in his history.

"The amiable Delta" has been a common phrase for a series of years. Let the phrase have its just meaning, and it is a good one. It were a grievous mistake, however, to suppose that Moir was a mere soft-eyed sentimentalist. The record of his life tells otherwise. In his resentment he could, at times, be even unreasonably sharp. At all times. he could be angry, when it was well for him to be angry; and his anger could deepen and darken into indignation. The natural rule and measure of his spirit, however, was to be kind and brotherly, not

in temper merely, but in active service of help. In the “quarrels of authors," alike from his native disposition, and his law of self-respect, he never mixed; and throughout the wide "republic of letters no man envied him, all men loved him. Galt and Macnish, Dickens and Hood, gave him the confidence of their hearts. Jeffrey regretted that he had not known him longer. Wilson bowed his manly head, laden with sorrow, over his closing grave. "A fine melodious nature," said Carlyle of him, when he heard of his death. "Well, he has lived and died in honour," wrote Gilfillan to me, on the same sad occasion: "Peace be to his fine and holy dust! How I regret that I never met with him! Yet it is very pleasing for me now to remember that we were on terms of good-will and friendship ere he went his eternal way." "We take farewell," says the beautiful tribute to his memory in Blackwood's Magazine, "of the gentlest and kindest being, of the most true and single-hearted man, that we may ever hope to meet with in the course of this earthly pilgrimage."

Professional reputation is a desirable thing, and literary honour is not to be despised; but all distinctions fade away as comparatively cheap, to those who had the privilege of knowing Mr Moir in "the mild majesty of private life." Constituted and composed of so many harmonious excellencies, the Christian gentleman, in the bosom of his beautiful family, was the consummation of them all.

CHAPTER V.

THE POETRY.

Some

WHEN Moir complained to me, after his severe accident in 1846, that he was a good deal depressed in spirit, I advised him, by way of gentle and pleasant recreation, to be preparing a general edition of his poetry for ultimate publication. months thereafter he told me that he had set about it, selecting and revising such pieces as he thought had "a chance of living" when he himself was gone. After his death, it was discovered that he had made but little progress. Probably he found a difficult task in what I had recommended as a recreation, gentle and pleasant. So hurriedly, in his snatches of leisure, had he written for the periodicals, that, besides issuing much slight imperfect matter, he had in his better poems repeated himself to a great extent. To publish the whole even of these better poems together, was out of the question-for, when a man has said a thing distinctly and well once, why say it again? and to