The time has been when his friends have thought that the island did not appreciate all this, did not realise it to the full, did not rightly apprehend the sacrifices that were being made, or the generous disproportion of the man and the work, but there can be no question of that kind now. Manxmen and Manxwomen know to-day that the island has lost the greatest man who was ever born to it, the finest brain, the noblest heart, the grandest nature that we can yet call Manx! We do not point to his scholarship, though that was splendid, or to the place he won in life, though it was high and distinguished, or yet to his books, though they were full of the fire of genius, racy of the soil he loved the best. None of these answers entirely to the idea we have of the man we knew and love so well. But the sparkling, brilliant soul, so tender, so strong, so humorous, so easily touched to sympathy, so gloriously gifted, this is the ideal that answers to our recollections of the first Manxman of this or any age.
When I pass from the island’s loss to my own, I must be one of a little group who, though not within the circle of his family, can hardly trust themselves to speak. Sitting here, in this foreign city, while my countrymen, for all I know, are doing the last offices for the truest friend man ever had, I feel how much the island has lost for me in losing him. The little paragraph in _Le Figaro_ fell on me this morning like a thundercloud from a cloudless sky, but more than once or twice or thrice during the past few months the thought has come over me of what the island would be without him. It came to me at the moment before I left home, and the last letter I wrote there was written to him, saying Good-bye and God bless you, and such other words of farewell as one sends to one’s friend on the eve of a long journey. But he has taken the longer journey of the two, and when the time comes to return home and I see our beautiful mountains from the sea, I don’t know what it will be to remember he is there no longer. During the past ten years I have leaned on him as on an elder brother, a wiser, stronger, purer, serener nature, on whom I could rely for solace and counsel and support. I did nothing without consulting him, and took no serious step without his sanction. My stories were told to him first, and he knew all my plans and intentions. If I have done anything that deserves to be remembered it is only myself that can know how much that is good in it is but a reflection from the light of his genius. He was the ablest appreciator, the most enthusiastic admirer, and the most inspiring of critics. To my moods of depression he brought the buoyancy of hope, to my weakness of heart the strength of his spirit, sustaining me amid the despondency of failure, and the no less real penalties of success. It was a familiar thought to me at Greeba that I could take the train to Ramsey four or five times a day, and within an hour I could be with him. And now he is gone, and I can go to him no more.