Our divinity tutor, Dr. Aikin, was a gentleman whose endowments as a man and as a scholar, according to my sincere judgment of him, it is not easy to exaggerate by panegyric. In his life he was rigorously virtuous, and, when I knew him, under as perfect a self-government as a participation of human weaknesses can well allow. He has acknowledged to me his irascible propensities in early life, and the difficulties which he encountered in this discipline of his temper. Religion had brought every wayward idea and irregular passion into subjection to the laws of reason, and had erected her trophy in the citadel of his mind. As his whole conduct was strictly moral, so the influences of religion upon his mind were permanent and awful. He was benevolent; candid in all his judgments on the characters of others; of great hospitality, as I myself experienced; quick to discern, and ready to acknowledge true merit, wherever it resided; not tenacious of his own opinion, but patiently attentive, beyond almost any man I ever knew, to the reasonings of an opponent; perfectly open to conviction; of an affability, softened by a modest opinion of himself, that endeared him to all; and a politeness of demeanour seldom found even in an elevated station.
His intellectual attainments were of a very superior quality indeed. His acquaintance with all the evidences of revelation, with morals, politics, and metaphysics, was most accurate and extensive. Every path of polite literature had been traversed by him, and traversed with success. He understood the Hebrew and French languages to perfection; and had an intimacy with the best
