3-021-236 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mr. David Masson, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh, 1865. Engraving from a photograph by Messrs. J. and C. Watkins. David Masson...was scarcely twenty years old when he undertook the editorship of a provincial newspaper, which he left in 1844, coming to London with the intention of freely using his pen as an independent writer...His writings consist for the most part of critical essays, some of the best of which made their first appearance in the North British Review, the British Quarterly Review, and Macmillan's Magazine...He has made a special study of Milton, and had already, in 1859, issued the first volume of a "Life of Milton, narrated in connection with the political, ecclesiastical and literary History of his Times"; but this important work is yet unfinished...it is by his recent essay on the metaphysical controversies between the late Sir William Hamilton and Mr. John Stuart Mill, in a volume named "Modern British Philosophy," which appeared three or four months ago, that Professor Masson has proved himself capable of dealing with such arduous and subtle philosophical discussions as seem to be most congenial to the Scottish mind'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.