I feel, on closing the book, a great admiration for the man, mingled with infinite pity for the miseries which his own temperament inflicted on him; it gives me, too, a high intellectual stimulus; it makes me realise the nobility and the beauty of knowledge, the greatness of the intellectual life. One may regret that in Pattison's case this was not mingled with more practical power, more sympathy, more desire to help rather than to pursue.
Used availability for A C Benson's The Upton Letters