"He was distant and isolated from the great arena of letters; cooped up within the narrow limits of desolate Scotland, and encircled with savage sights and sounds of civil discord, above which the name of God was howled by those whose hands were red with murder. When we regard his times, and observe the influence that for so long a period of his life, the war of religion exercised over his intellectual exertions, the wonder is, not that his great contemporaries of the continent became distinguished before him, but that after all he should have extricated his mind from so many toils, and have placed himself by a single effort—though one like the spring of a roused lion—at the side of the astonished demi-gods of science, who had been unconscious of their rival."