And so I have thought it well to draw in broad strokes and simple
outlines a picture of his personality as we, his family, knew and loved
it. It is only a _study_, so to speak, and is written very informally
and directly. Formal biographies, as I know from experience, must
emphasise a different aspect. They deal, as they are bound to do, with
public work and official activities; and the personal atmosphere often
vanishes in the process--that subtle essence of quality, the effect of a
man's talk and habits and prejudices and predispositions, which comes
out freely in private life, and is even suspended in his public
ministrations. It would be impossible, I believe, to make a presentment
of Hugh which could be either dull or conventional. But, on the other
hand, his life as a priest, a writer, a teacher, a controversialist, was
to a certain extent governed and conditioned by circumstances; and I can
see, from many accounts of him, that the more intimate and unrestrained
side of him can only be partially discerned by those who knew him merely
in an official capacity.

That, then, is the history of this brief Memoir. It is just an attempt
to show Hugh as he showed himself, freely and unaffectedly, to his own
circle; and I am sure that this deserves to be told, for the one
characteristic which emerges whenever I think of him is that of a
beautiful charm, not without a touch of wilfulness and even petulance
about it, which gave him a childlike freshness, a sparkling zest, that
aerated and enlivened all that he did or said. It was a charm which made
itself instantly felt, and yet it could be hardly imitated or adopted,
because it was so entirely unconscious and unaffected. He enjoyed
enacting his part, and he was as instinctively and whole-heartedly a
priest as another man is a soldier or a lawyer. But his function did not
wholly occupy and dominate his life; and, true priest though he was, the
force and energy of his priesthood came at least in part from the fact