As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that a Vicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, his University, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; nor have been "laudatus a laudatis viris." It is more rational to believe that Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations in which he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being more solicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negative of virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairly judged, and by another good criterion, the times in which he lived,—times of perpetual change, confusion, and perplexity.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See Mr Pearson's instructive and amusing article on "The Virtuoso" in the 'Nineteenth Century,' November 1909.
[4] This is an abbreviation of the passage in Burnet's 'History of his Own Time,' vol. i. p. 272. First edition.
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