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Title: The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 1 (of 7)
Author: Various
Language: English
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THE
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
WITH
MEMOIRS.
VOL. I.
COMMITTEE.
_Chairman_—The Right Hon. the LORD CHANCELLOR.
_Vice-Chairman_—The Right Hon. LORD JOHN RUSSEL, M.P., Paymaster
General.
_Treasurer_—WILLIAM TOOKE, Esq., M.P., F.R.S.
W. Allen, Esq., F.R and R.A.S.
Rt. Hon. Visc. Althorp, M.P. Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Rt. Hon. Lord Auckland, President of the Board of Trade.
W. B. Baring, Esq., M.P.
Capt. F. Beaufort, R.N., F.R. and R.A.S., Hydrographer to the
Admiralty.
Sir C. Bell, F.R.S.L and E.
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S.
The Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Chichester.
William Coulson, Esq.
R. D. Craig, Esq.
Wm. Crawford, Esq.
J. Frederick Daniell, Esq., F.R.S.
Rt. Hon. Lord Dover, F.R.S., F.S.A.
Lieut. Drummond, R.E., F.R.A.S.
Viscount Ebrington, M.P.
T. F. Ellis, Esq., M.A., F.R.A.S.
John Elliotson, M.D., F.R.S.
Howard Elphinstone, Esq., M.A.
Thomas Falconer, Esq.
I. L. Goldsmid, Esq., F.R. and R.A.S.
B. Gompertz, Esq., F.R. and R.A.S.
G. B. Greenough, Esq., F.R. and L.S.
H. Hallam, Esq., F.R.S., M.A.
M. D. Hill, Esq., M.P.
Rowland Hill, Esq., F.R.A.S.
Edwin Hill, Esq.
Rt. Hon. Sir J. C. Hobhouse, Bart. M.P., Secretary at War.
David Jardine, Esq., M.A.
The Rt. Hon. the Lord Chief Justice of England.
Henry B. Ker, Esq.
Th. Hewitt Key, Esq., M.A.
George C. Lewis, Esq., M.A.
Edward Lloyd, Esq., M.A.
James Loch, Esq., M.P., F.G.S.
George Long, Esq., M.A.
J. W. Lubbock, Esq., F.R., R.A. and L.S.S.
Zachary Macaulay, Esq.
H. Malden, Esq., M.A.
Sir B. H. Malkin, M.A.
A. T. Malkin, Esq., M.A.
James Manning, Esq.
J. Herman Merivale, Esq., F.A.S.
James Mill, Esq.
W. H. Ord, Esq., M.P.
Rt. Hon. Sir H. Parnell, Bt. M.P.
Rt. Hon. T. S. Rice, M.P., F.A.S., Secretary to the Treasury.
Dr. Roget, Sec. R.S., F.R.A.S.
Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A., F.R.S.
Rev. Richard Sheepshanks, M.A.
J. Smith, Esq., M P.
Wm. Sturch, Esq.
Dr. A. T. Thomson, F.L.S.
N. A. Vigors, Esq., M.P., F.R.S.
John Ward, Esq.
H. Waymouth, Esq.
J. Whishaw, Esq., M.A., F.R.S.
John Wrottesley, Esq., M.A., Sec. R.A.S.
LOCAL COMMITTEES.
_Anglesea_—Rev. E. Williams.
Rev. W. Johnson.
Mr. Miller.
_Ashburton_—J. F. Kingston, Esq.
_Bilston_—Rev. W. Leigh.
_Birmingham_—Reverend J. Corrie, F.R.S. _Chairman_.
Paul Moon James, Esq., _Treasurer_.
Jos. Parkes, Esq. }
W. Redfern, Esq. } _Honorary Secs._
_Bonn_—Leonard Horner, Esq., F.R.S.L. & E.
_Bristol_—J. N. Sanders, Esq., _Chairman_.
J. Reynolds, Esq., _Treasurer_.
J. B. Estlin, Esq., F.L.S., _Secretary_.
_Bury St. Edmunds_—B. Bevan, Esq.
_Cambridge_—Rev. James Bowstead, M.A.
Rev. Prof. Henslow, M.A., F.L.S. & G.S.
Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A., F.L.S.
Rev. John Lodge, M.A.
Rev. Geo. Peacock, M.A. F.R.S. & G.S.
Rev. Prof. Sedgwick M.A., F.R.S. & G.S.
Professor Smyth, M.A.
Rev. C. Thirlwall, M.A.
B. W. Rothman, Esq., M.A., F.R.A.S. and G.S.
Rev. George Waddington.
_Canterbury_—Alexander B. Higgins. Esq.
_Canton_—J. F. Davis, Esq., F.R.S.
_Carnarvon_—R. A. Poole, Esq.
William Roberts, Esq.
_Chester_—Hayes Lyon, Esq.
Dr. Cumming.
Dr. Jones.
Henry Potts, Esq.
Dr. Thackery.
Rev. Mr. Thorp.
—— Wardell, Esq.
—— Wedge, Esq.
_Chichester_—Dr. Forbes, F.R.S., Dr. Sanden, and C. C. Dendy, Esq.
_Coventry_—Arthur Gregory.
_Denbigh_—John Maddocks, Esq.
Thomas Evans, Esq.
_Derby_—Joseph Strutt, Esq.
_Devonport_—Lt. Col J. Hamilton Smith, F.R. and L.S.
John Coles, Esq.
_Etruria_—Jos. Wedgwood, Esq.
_Exeter_—Rev. J. P. Jones.
J. Tyrrell, Esq.
_Glasgow_—K. Finlay, Esq.
D. Bannatyne, Esq.
Rt. Grahame, Esq.
Professor Mylne.
Alexander McGrigor, Esq.
Mr. T. Atkinson, _Honorary Secretary_.
_Glamorganshire_—Dr. Malkin, Cowbridge.
Rev. B. R, Paul, Lantwit.
W. Williams, Esq. Aberpergwm.
_Holywell_—The Rev. J. Blackwall.
_Keighley, Yorkshire_—Rev. T. Dury, M.A.
_Launceston_—Rev. J. Barfitt.
_Leamington Spa_—Dr. Loudon, M.D.
_Leeds_—J. Marshall, Esq.
Benjamin Gott, Esq.
J. Marshall, Jun., Esq.
_Lewes_—J. W. Woollgar, Esq.
_Liverpool Local Association_—Dr. Traill, _Chairman_.
J. Mulleneux, Esq., _Treasurer_.
Rev. W. Sheperd.
J. Ashton Yates, Esq.
_Ludlow_—T. A. Knight, Esq., P.H.S.
_Maidenhead_—R. Goolden, Esq., F.L.S.
_Manchester Local Association_—G. W. Wood, Esq., M.P., _Chairman_.
Benjamin Heywood, Esq., _Treasurer_.
T. W. Winstanley, Esq., _Hon. Sec._
Sir G. Philips, Bart., M.P.
_Monmouth_—J. H. Moggridge, Esq.
_Neath_—John Rowland, Esq.
_Newcastle_—James Losh, Esq.
Rev. W. Turner.
_Newport_—Ab. Clarke, Esq.
T. Cooke, Jun., Esq.
R. G. Kirkpatrick, Esq.
_Newport Pagnell_—J. Millar, Esq.
_Newton, Montgomeryshire_—W. Pugh, Esq.
_Norwich_—Rt. Hon. Lord Suffield.
Richard Bacon, Esq.
_Plymouth_—George Harvey, Esq., F.R.S.
_Rippon_—Rev. H. P. Hamilton, M.A., F.R.S. and G.S.
Rev. P. Ewart, M.A.
_Ruthen_—Rev. the Warden of.
Humphreys Jones, Esq.
_Sheffield_—J. H. Abraham, Esq.
_Shrewsbury_—R. A. Slaney, Esq., M.P.
_South Petherton_—John Nicholetts, Esq.
_St. Asaph_—Rev. George Strong.
_Stockport_—H. Marsland, Esq., _Treasurer_.
Henry Coppock, Esq., _Secretary_.
_Tavistock_—Rev. W. Evans.
John Rundle, Esq.
_Warwick_—Dr. Conolly.
The Rev. William Field, (_Leamington_).
_Waterford_—Sir John Newport. Bart., M.P.
_Wolverhampton_—J. Pearson, Esq.
_Worcester_—Dr. Corbett, M.D.
Dr. Hastings. M.D.
C. H. Hebb, Esq.
_Wrexham_—Thomas Edgworth, Esq.
J. E. Bowman, Esq., F.L.S., _Treasurer_.
Major William Lloyd.
_Yarmouth_—C. E. Rumbold, Esq., M.P.
Dawson Turner, Esq.
_York_—Rev. J. Kenrick, M.A.
John Wood, Esq., M.P.
THOMAS COATES, _Secretary_, No. 59, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL
KNOWLEDGE.
THE
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
WITH
MEMOIRS.
VOLUME I.
LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.
1833.
PRICE ONE GUINEA, BOUND IN CLOTH.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES
CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.
Page.
1. Dante 1
2. Sir H. Davy 11
3. Kosciusko 21
4. Flaxman 27
5. Copernicus 34
6. Milton 43
7. Jas. Watt 55
8. Turenne 63
9. Hon. R. Boyle 72
10. Sir I. Newton 79
11. Michael Angelo 89
12. Moliere 95
13. C. J. Fox 103
14. Bossuet 113
15. Lorenzo de Medici 122
16. Geo. Buchanan 129
17. Fénélon 137
18. Sir C. Wren 144
19. Corneille 153
20. Halley 161
21. Sully 169
22. N. Poussin 177
23. Harvey 185
24. Sir J. Banks 193
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. CLOWES
Stamford Street.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
DANTE ALIGHIERI.
_From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen, after a Picture by Tofanelli._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS.
[Illustration]
DANTE
While the more northern nations of modern Europe began to cultivate a
national and peculiar literature in their vernacular tongues, instead of
using Latin as the only vehicle of written thought, it was some time
before the popular language of Italy received that attention which might
have been expected from the prevalence of free institutions, and the
constant intercourse between neighbouring states speaking in similar
dialects. At last the example of other countries prevailed, and a native
poetry sprung up in Italy. If it be allowable to compare the progress of
the national mind to the stages of life, the Italian Muse may be said to
have been born in Sicily with Ciullo d’Alcamo in 1190; to have reached
childhood in Lombardy with Guido Guinicelli, about 1220; and to have
attained youth in Tuscany with Guido Cavalcanti, about 1280. But she
suddenly started into perfect maturity when Dante appeared, surpassing
all his predecessors in lyrical composition, and astounding the world
with that mighty monument of Christian poetry, which after five
centuries of progressive civilization still stands sublime as one of the
most magnificent productions of genius.
Dante Alighieri, the true founder of Italian literature, was born at
Florence A.D. 1265, of a family of some note. The name of Dante, by
which he is generally known, often mistaken for that of his family, is a
mere contraction of his Christian name Durante. Yet an infant when his
father died, that heavy loss was lightened by the judicious solicitude
with which his mother superintended his education. She intrusted him to
the care of Brunetto Latini, a man of great repute as a poet as well as
a philosopher; and he soon made so rapid a progress, both in science and
literature, as might justify the most sanguine hopes of his future
eminence.
Early as he developed the extraordinary powers of his understanding, he
was not less precocious in evincing that susceptibility to deep and
tender impressions, to which he afterwards owed his sublimest
inspirations. But his passion was of a very mysterious character. It
arose in his boyhood, for a girl “still in her infancy,” and it never
ceased, or lost its intensity, though she died in the flower of her age,
and he survived her more than thirty years. Whether he was enamoured of
a human being, or of a creature of his own imagination,—one of those
phantoms of heavenly beauty and virtue so common to the dreams and
reveries of youth,—it is extremely difficult to ascertain. Some of his
biographers are of opinion that the lady whom he has celebrated in his
works under the name of Bice, or Beatrice, was the daughter of Folco
Portinari, a noble Florentine; while others contend that she is merely a
personification of wisdom or moral philosophy. But Dante’s own account
of his love is given in terms often so enigmatical and apparently
contradictory, that it is almost impossible to make them agree perfectly
with either of these suppositions.
Whatever its object, his affection seems to have been most chaste and
spiritual in its nature. Instead of alienating him from literary
pursuits, it increased his thirst after knowledge, and ennobled and
purified his feelings. With the aid of this powerful incentive, he soon
distinguished himself above the youth of his native city, not only by
his acquirements, but also by elegance of manners, and amenity of
temper. Thus occupied by his studies, refined and exalted by his love,
and cherished by his countrymen, the morning of his life was sunned by
the unclouded smiles of fortune, as if to render darker by the contrast
the long and gloomy evening which awaited him.
His pilgrimage on earth was cast in one of the most stormy periods
recorded in history. The Church and the Empire had been long engaged in
a scandalous contest, and had often involved a great part of Europe in
their quarrels. Italy was especially distracted by two contending
parties, the Guelfs, who adhered to the Pope, and the Ghibelines, who
espoused the cause of the Emperor. In the year 1266, after a long
alternation of ruinous reverses and ferocious triumphs, the Guelfs of
Florence drove the Ghibelines out of their city, and at last permanently
established themselves in power. The family of Dante belonged to the
victorious party; and while he remained in Florence, it would have been
dangerous, perhaps impossible, to avoid mingling in these civil broils.
He accordingly went out against the Ghibelines of Arezzo in 1289; and in
the following year against those of Pisa. In the former campaign he took
part in the battle of Campaldino, in which, after a long and doubtful
conflict, the Aretines were completely defeated. On that memorable day
he fought valiantly in the front line of the Guelf cavalry, manifesting
the same energy in warfare, which he had displayed in his studies and in
his love.
But soon after the tumults of the camp had interfered with the calm of
his private and meditative life, his adored Beatrice, whether an earthly
mistress, or an abstraction of his moral and literary studies, was torn
from him. This loss, which in his writings he never ceases to lament,
reduced him to extreme despondency. Nevertheless in 1291, but a few
months after it, he married a lady of the noble family of the Donati, by
whom he had numerous offspring; a circumstance which would indicate a
strange inconsistency of character, had his heart been really
preoccupied by another love. This connexion with one of the first
families of the republic may have smoothed his way to civic eminence;
but if Boccaccio, usually a slanderer of the fair sex, be credited, the
lady’s temper proved unfavourable to domestic comfort.
He now entirely devoted himself to the business of government, and
attained such reputation as a statesman, that hardly any transaction of
importance took place without his advice. It has even been asserted that
he was employed in no less than fourteen embassies to foreign courts.
There may be some exaggeration in this statement; but it is certain that
in 1300, at the early age of five and thirty, he was elected one of the
Priors, or chief magistrates of the republic; a mark of popular favour
which ended in his total ruin.
About this time, the Guelfs of Florence split into two new divisions
called Bianchi and Neri (whites and blacks), from the denominations of
two factions which had originated at Pistoja, in consequence of a
dispute between two branches of the Cancellieri family. The Bianchi were
chiefly citizens recently risen to importance, who, having received no
personal injury from the Ghibelines, were disposed to treat them with
moderation; while the Neri consisted almost entirely of ancient nobles,
who, having formerly been the leaders of the Guelfs, still retained a
furious animosity against the Ghibelines. All endeavours to bring them
to a reconciliation proved useless: they soon passed from rancour to
contumely, and from contumely to open violence. The city was now in the
utmost confusion, and was very near being turned into a scene of war and
carnage, when the Priors, hardly knowing what course to pursue, invoked
the advice of Dante. His situation was most perplexing and critical. The
relations of his wife were at the head of the Neri; while Guido
Cavalcante, his dearest friend on earth, was one of the foremost leaders
of the Bianchi. Nevertheless, silencing all the claims of private
affection for the good of his country, he proposed to banish the
principal agitators of both parties. By the adoption of this measure,
public tranquillity was for a time restored. But Pope Boniface VIII.
could not suffer independent citizens to govern the republic. He sent
Charles de Valois to Florence under colour of pacifying the contending
parties, but in truth to re-establish in power the men most blindly
devoted to his own interests. The French prince, after having made the
most solemn promises to the Florentine government, that he would act
with rigorous impartiality and adopt only conciliatory measures,
obtained admission into the city, at the beginning of November, 1301.
Making no account of the engagements he had entered into, he now
permitted the Neri to perpetrate the most atrocious outrages on the
families of their opponents, and to close this scene of horror by
pronouncing sentence of exile and confiscation upon six hundred of the
most illustrious citizens. Dante was among the victims. He had made
himself obnoxious, both to the Neri, whom he had caused to be banished,
and to Charles de Valois, whose intrusion in the internal affairs of the
commonwealth he had firmly opposed in council. Accordingly, his house
was pillaged and razed, his property confiscated, and his life saved
only by his absence at Rome, whither he had been sent for the purpose of
propitiating the Pope. Highly disgusted at the treacherous conduct of
Boniface, who had been deluding him all the while with vain hopes and
honeyed words, he suddenly left Rome, and hastened to Siena. On his
arrival he heard that he had been charged with embezzling the public
money, and condemned to be burned, if he should fall into the hands of
his enemies. His indignation now reached its height; and in despair of
ever being restored to his native city except by arms, he repaired to
Arezzo, and united his exertions to those of the other Bianchi, who,
making common cause with the Ghibelines, formed themselves into an army
with the object of entering Florence by force. But their hopes were
disappointed; and after four years of abortive attempts they dispersed,
each in pursuit of his own fortune.
The noble, opulent citizen, the statesman and minister, the profound
philosopher, accustomed in all and each of these characters to the
respectful homage of his countrymen, was now, to use his own words,
“driven about by the cold wind that springs out of sad poverty,” and
compelled “to taste how bitter is another’s bread, how hard it is to
mount and to descend another’s stairs.” But the change from affluence to
want was not the worst evil that awaited the high-minded patriot in
banishment. For this he found compensation in the consciousness of
having done his duty to his country. But he suffered much more from
being mixed, and sometimes even confounded, with other exiles, whose
perverse actions tended to disgrace the cause for which he had
sacrificed all his private affections and interests. His misery was
carried to the utmost by a continual struggle between his nice sense of
honour and the pressure of want; by an excessive fear that his
intentions might be misunderstood, and a constant readiness to mistake
those of others. This morbid feeling he has pathetically expressed in
several passages, which can scarce be read without profound emotion.
In this mental torture he wandered throughout Italy, from town to town,
and from the palace of one of his benefactors to that of another,
without ever finding a resting place for his wounded spirit. He stooped
in vain to address letters of supplication to the Florentines; the
rancour of his enemies was not to be softened by prayers. Meanwhile the
hopes of the Ghibelines were again raised, when Henry VII., who had been
elected Emperor in 1308, entered Italy to regain the rights of
sovereignty which his predecessors had lost. Elated by the better
prospects which appeared to open, Dante became a strenuous advocate of
the imperial cause. He composed a treatise on monarchy, in which he
asserted the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the Court
of Rome: he wrote a circular both to the Kings and Princes of Italy, and
to the Senators of Rome, admonishing them to give an honourable
reception to their Sovereign; and he sent a hortatory epistle to the
Emperor himself, urging him to turn his arms against Florence, and to
visit that refractory city with severe punishment. Henry did accordingly
lay siege to Florence in September, 1312, but without success; and the
hopes of the Ghibelines were finally extinguished in the following
August, by his death, under strong suspicion of poison. Thus Dante, in
consequence of his recent conduct, saw himself farther than ever from
restoration to his beloved Florence. The unfortunate exile, now reduced
to despair, resumed his wanderings, often returning to Verona, where the
Scaligeri family always received him at their court with peculiar
kindness. It has been asserted that his thirst for knowledge led him to
Paris and Oxford. His journey to England is still involved in doubt; but
it appears certain, that he visited Paris, where he is said to have
acquired great fame, by holding public disputations on several questions
of theology.
On his return to Italy, he at length found a permanent refuge at
Ravenna, at the court of Guido da Polenta, the father of that ill-fated
Francesca da Rimini, for whom the celebrated episode of Dante has
engaged the sympathy of succeeding ages. The reception which he
experienced from this Prince, who was a patron of learning and a poet,
was marked by the reverence due to his character, no less than by the
kindness excited by his misfortunes. In order to employ his diplomatic
talents, and give him the pleasing consciousness of being useful to his
host, Guido sent him as ambassador, to negotiate a peace with Venice.
Dante, happy at having an opportunity of evincing his gratitude to his
benefactor, proceeded on his mission with sanguine expectation of
success. But being unable to obtain a public audience from the
Venetians, he returned to Ravenna, so overwhelmed with fatigue and
mortification, that he died shortly afterwards, in the fifty-seventh
year of his age, A. D. 1321, receiving splendid obsequies from his
disconsolate patron, who himself assumed the office of pronouncing a
funeral oration on the dead body.
The portrait of Dante has been handed down to posterity, both by history
and the arts. He is represented as a man of middle stature, with a
pensive and melancholy expression of countenance. His face was long, his
nose aquiline, his eyes rather prominent, but full of fire, his cheek
bones large, and his under lip projecting beyond the upper one; his
complexion was dark, his hair and beard thick and curled. These features
were so marked, that all his likenesses, whether on medals, or marble,
or canvas, bear a striking resemblance to each other. Boccaccio
describes him as grave and sedate in his manners, courteous and civil in
his address, and extremely temperate in his way of living; whilst
Villani asserts, that he was harsh, reserved, and disdainful in his
deportment. But the latter writer must have painted Dante such as he was
in his exile, when the bitter cup of sorrow had changed the gravity of
his temper into austerity. He spoke seldom, but displayed a remarkable
subtleness in his answers. The consciousness of worth had inspired him
with a noble pride which spurned vice in all its aspects, and disdained
condescending to any thing like flattery or dissimulation. Earnest in
study, and attached to solitude, he was at times liable to fits of
absence. The testimony of his contemporaries, and the still better
evidence of his own works, prove that his hours of seclusion were
heedfully employed. He was intimately conversant with several languages;
extensively read in classical literature, and deeply versed in the
staple learning of the age, scholastic theology, and the Aristotelian
philosophy. He had acquired a considerable knowledge of geography,
astronomy, and mathematics; had made himself thoroughly acquainted with
mythology and history, both sacred and profane; nor had he neglected to
adorn his mind with the more elegant accomplishments of the fine arts.
The mass of Dante’s writings, considering the unfavourable circumstances
under which he laboured, is almost as wonderful as the extent of his
attainments. The treatise ‘De Monarchia,’ which he composed on the
arrival of Henry VII. in Italy, is one of the most ingenious productions
that ever appeared, in refutation of the temporal pretensions of the
Court of Rome. It was hailed with triumphant joy by the Ghibelines, and
loaded with vituperation by the Guelfs. The succeeding emperor, Lewis of
Bavaria, laid great stress on its arguments as supporting his claims
against John XXII.; and on that account, the Pope had it burnt publicly
by the Cardinal du Pujet, his legate in Lombardy, who would even have
disinterred and burnt Dante’s body, and scattered his ashes to the wind,
if some influential citizens had not interposed. Another Latin work, ‘De
Vulgari Eloquentia,’ treats of the origin, history, and use of the
genuine Italian tongue. It is full of interesting and curious research,
and is still classed among the most judicious and philosophical works
that Italy possesses on the subject. He meant to have comprised it in
four books, but unfortunately only lived to complete two.
Of his Italian productions, the earliest was, perhaps, the ‘Vita Nuova,’
a mixture of mysterious poetry and prose, in which he gives a detailed
account of his love for Beatrice. It is pervaded by a spirit of soft
melancholy extremely touching; and it contains several passages having
all the distinctness and individuality of truth; but, on the other hand,
it is interspersed with visions and dreams, and metaphysical conceits,
from which it receives all the appearance of an allegorical invention.
He also composed about thirty sonnets, and nearly as many ‘Canzoni,’ or
songs, both on love and morality. The sonnets, though not destitute of
grace and ingenuity, are not distinguished by any particular excellence.
The songs display a vigour of style, a sublimity of thought, a depth of
feeling, and a richness of imagery not known before: they betoken the
poet and the philosopher. On fourteen of these, he attempted in his old
age to write a minute commentary, to which he gave the title of
‘Convito,’ or Banquet, as being intended “to administer the food of
wisdom to the ignorant;” but he could only extend it to three. Thus he
produced the first specimen of severe Italian prose; and if he indulged
rather too much in fanciful allegories and scholastic subtleties, these
blemishes are amply counterbalanced by a store of erudition, an
elevation of sentiment, and a matchless eloquence, which it is difficult
not to admire.
These works, omitting several others of inferior value, would have been
more than sufficient to place Dante above all his contemporaries; yet,
they stand at an immeasurable distance from the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the
great poem by which he has recommended his name to the veneration of the
remotest posterity. The Divine Comedy is the narrative of a mysterious
journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise, which he supposes himself
to have performed in the year 1300, during the passion week, having
Virgil as his guide through the two regions of woe, and Beatrice through
that of happiness. No creation of the human mind ever excelled this
mighty vision in originality and vastness of design; nor did any one
ever choose a more appropriate subject for the expression of all his
thoughts and feelings. The mechanical construction of his spiritual
world allowed him room for developing his geographical and astronomical
knowledge: the punishments and rewards allotted to the characters
introduced, gave him an excellent opportunity for a display of his
theological and philosophical learning: the continual succession of
innumerable spirits of different ages, nations, and conditions, enabled
him to expatiate in the fields of ancient and modern history, and to
expose thoroughly the degradation of Italian society in his own times;
while the whole afforded him ample scope for a full exertion of his
poetical endowments, and for the illustration of the moral lesson,
which, whatever his real meaning may have been, is ostensibly the object
of his poem. Neither were his powers of execution inferior to those of
conception. Rising from the deepest abyss of torture and despair,
through every degree of suffering and hope, up to the sublimest
beatitude, he imparts the most vivid and intense dramatic interest to a
wonderful variety of scenes which he brings before the reader. Awful,
vehement, and terrific in hell, in proportion as he advances through
purgatory and paradise, he contrives to modify his style in such a
manner as to become more pleasing in his images, more easy in his
expressions, more delicate in his sentiments, and more regular in his
versification. His characters live and move; the objects which he
depicts are clear and palpable; his similes are generally new and just;
his reflections evince throughout the highest tone of morality; his
energetic language makes a deep and vigorous impression both on the
reason and the imagination; and the graphic force with which, by a few
bold strokes, he throws before the eye of his reader a perfect and
living picture, is wholly unequalled.
It is true, however, that his constant solicitude for conciseness and
effect led him, sometimes, into a harsh and barbarous phraseology, and
into the most unrestrained innovations; but considering the rudeness of
his age, and the unformed state of his language, he seems hardly open to
the censure of a candid critic on this account. On the other hand, it is
impossible not to wonder how, in spite of such obstacles, he could so
happily express all the wild conceptions of his fancy, the most abstract
theories of philosophy, and the most profound mysteries of religion. The
occasional obscurity and coldness of the Divine Comedy proceeds much
less from defects of style, than from didactic disquisitions and
historical allusions which become every day less intelligible and less
interesting. To be understood and appreciated as a whole, and in its
parts, it requires a store of antiquated knowledge which is now of
little use. Even at the period of its publication, when its geography
and astronomy were not yet exploded, its philosophy and theology still
current, and many of its incidents and personages still fresh in the
memory of thousands, it was considered rather as a treasure of moral
wisdom, than as a book of amusement. The city of Florence, and several
other towns of Italy, soon established professorships for the express
purpose of explaining it to the public. Two sons of Dante wrote
commentaries for its illustration: Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, and
many others followed the example in rapid succession; and even a few
years since Foscolo and Rossetti excited fresh curiosity and interest by
the novelty of their views. Notwithstanding the learning and ingenuity
of all its expositors, the hidden meaning of the ‘Divina Commedia’ is
not yet perfectly made out, though Rossetti, in his ‘Spirito
Antipapale,’ lately published, seems to have shown, that under the
exterior of moral precepts, it contains a most bitter satire against the
court of Rome. But whether time shall remove these obscurities, or
thicken the mist which hangs around this extraordinary production, it
will be ever memorable as the mighty work which gave being and form to
the beautiful language of Italy, impressed a new character on the poetry
of modern Europe, and inspired the genius of Michael Angelo and of
Milton.
There is no life of Dante which can be recommended as decidedly superior
to the rest. The earliest is that of Boccaccio; but it evidently cannot
be relied on for the facts of his life. There are others by Lionardo,
Aretino, Fabroni, Pelli, Tiraboschi, &c. The English reader will find a
fuller account prefixed to Mr. Carey’s translation of the ‘Divina
Commedia,’ and in Mr. Stebbing’s Lives of the Italian Poets.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
_From the original Picture by_
Sir Thomas Lawrence
_in the possession of the Royal Society_.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
DAVY
Where the length of the memoir necessarily bears a small proportion to
the quantity of matter which presses on the biographer’s attention, two
courses lie open to his choice; either to select a few remarkable
passages in his subject’s life for full discussion, or to give a general
and popular sketch of his personal history. The latter plan seems here
the more advisable. To many readers a minute analysis of Davy’s physical
researches would be unintelligible, without full explanations of the
very instruments and objects with, and upon which, he worked. We shall
therefore make it our chief object to trace his private history,
interspersing notices of his labours and discoveries, but leaving to
publications of expressly scientific character the task of doing justice
to his scientific fame. Both departments have been fully treated in the
Life published by Dr. Paris.
Humphry Davy was born near Penzance in Cornwall, December 17, 1778, of a
family in independent, though humble circumstances, which for a century
and a half had possessed and resided upon a small estate situated in
Mount’s Bay. Though no prodigy of precocious intellect, his childhood
gave reasonable promise of future talent; and especially manifested the
dawning of a vivid imagination, united with a strong turn for
experiments in natural philosophy. One of his favourite amusements was
to exhibit to his playfellows the operation of melting in a candle
scraps of tin; or to make and explode detonating balls. Another was the
inventing and repeating to them fairy tales and romances. At times,
however, he would exercise his eloquence upon graver subjects; and, when
no better could be obtained, the future lecturer is said to have found a
staid, if not attentive, audience in a circle of chairs. At an early age
he was placed at school at Penzance, where, in the usual acceptation of
the words, he profited little: his own opinion, however, was different.
“I consider it fortunate,” he wrote to a member of his family, “that I
was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of
study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton’s school. I
perhaps owe to these circumstances the little talents that I have, and
their peculiar application: what I am, I have made myself. I say this
without vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart.” He was soon removed to
the school at Truro, where he remained two years, undistinguished except
by a love of poetry, which manifested itself in composition at an early
age. This, indeed, continued to be a favourite amusement, until, in
mature life, he became absorbed in scientific pursuits: and it has been
said upon high authority, that if Davy had not been the first chemist,
he would have been the first poet of his age. This opinion must look for
support, not to his metrical productions, which in truth nowise justify
it, but to the vivid imagination and high powers of eloquence, which, in
the vigour and freshness of youth, delighted the fashionable, as much as
his discoveries amazed the scientific world.
In 1794 his father died, and his mother in consequence removed from
Varfell, the patrimonial estate, to Penzance, where Davy was apprenticed
to Mr. Borlase, a surgeon in that town. For the medical part of his new
profession he showed distaste; but his attention was at once turned to
the study of chemistry, which he pursued thenceforward with undeviating
zeal. Akin to this pursuit, and fostered by the natural features of his
native country, was his early taste for geology. “How often,” said Davy
to his friend and biographer on being shown a drawing of Botallack
mine,—“how often when a boy have I wandered about these rocks in search
of new minerals, and when fatigued, sat down upon the turf, and
exercised my fancy in anticipations of scientific renown.” The notoriety
which, in a small town, he readily acquired as the boy who was “so fond
of chemical experiments,” introduced him to a valuable friend, Mr.
Davies Gilbert, in early life his patron, in mature age his successor in
the chair of the Royal Society. By him the young man was introduced to
Dr. Beddoes, who was at that time seeking an assistant in conducting the
Pneumatic Institution, then newly established at Bristol, for the
purpose of investigating the properties of aeriform fluids, and the
possibility of using them as medical agents. It was not intended that,
in forming this engagement, Davy should give up the line of life marked
out for him; on the contrary, his abode at Bristol was considered part
of his professional education. But his genius led him another way, and
this lucky engagement opened a career of usefulness and fame, which
under other circumstances might have been long delayed. The arrangement
was concluded upon liberal terms, and in October, 1798, before he was
twenty years old, he left his home in high spirits to enter upon
independent life. It is to his honour, that as soon as a competent,
though temporary provision was thus secured, he resigned, in favour of
his mother and sisters, all his claims upon the paternal estate.
Soon after removing to Bristol, he published, in a work entitled
‘Contributions to Medical and Physical Knowledge,’ edited by Dr.
Beddoes, some essays on heat, light, and respiration. Of these it will
be sufficient to say, that with much promise of future excellence, they
show a most unbridled imagination, and contain many speculations so
unfounded and absurd, that in after-life he bitterly regretted their
publication. During his engagement, his zeal and intrepidity were
signally displayed in attempts to breathe different gases, supposed, or
known, to be highly destructive to life, with a view to ascertain the
nature of their effects. Two of these experiments, the inhaling of
nitrous gas and carburetted hydrogen are remarkable, because in each he
narrowly escaped death. But his attention was especially turned to the
gas called nitrous oxide, which, upon respiration, appeared to transport
the breather into a new and highly pleasurable state of feeling, to
rouse the imagination, and give new vigour to the most sublime emotions
of the soul. The effects produced, exaggerated by the enthusiasm of the
patients, were in fact closely analogous to intoxication; and many
persons still remember the curiosity and amusement, excited by the
freaks of poets and grave philosophers, while under the operation of
this novel stimulus. In 1800 he published ‘Researches Chemical and
Philosophical, respecting Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration.’ The
novelty of the results announced, combined with the ability shown in
their investigation, and the youth of the author, produced a great
sensation in philosophical circles; and through the celebrity thus
acquired, and the favourable opinion of him formed upon personal
acquaintance by several eminent philosophers of the day, he was offered
by the conductors of the Royal Institution, the office of Assistant
Lecturer in Chemistry, with the understanding that ere long he should be
made sole Professor. This negotiation took place in the spring of 1801,
and on May 31, 1802, he was raised to the higher appointment.
To Davy, the quitting Bristol for London was the epoch of a
transformation—an elevation from the chrysalis to the butterfly state.
In youth his person, voice, and address were alike uncouth; and at first
sight they produced so unfavourable an impression upon Count Rumford,
that he expressed much regret at having sanctioned so unpromising an
engagement. The veteran philosopher soon found reason to change his
opinion. Davy’s first course of lectures, which was not delivered till
the spring of 1802, excited a sensation unequalled before or since. Not
only the philosophical but the literary and fashionable world crowded to
hear him; and his vivid imagination, fired by enthusiastic love for the
science which he professed, gave, to one of the most abstruse of
studies, a charm confessed by persons the least likely to feel its
influence. The strongest possible testimony to his richness of
illustration is supplied by Mr. Coleridge:—“I go,” he said, “to Davy’s
lectures to increase my stock of metaphors.” Had this been all, the
young prodigy would soon have ceased to dazzle; but his fame was
maintained and increased by the success which waited on his
undertakings; and, in a word, Davy became the lion of the day. The
effect of this sudden change was by no means good. Sought and caressed
by the highest circles of the metropolis, he endeavoured to assume the
deportment of a man of fashion; but the strange dress sat awkwardly, and
ill replaced a natural candour and warmth of feeling, which had
singularly won upon the acquaintance of his early life. It is but
justice, however, to add that his regard for his family and early
friends was not cooled by this alteration in his society and prospects.
Our limits are too narrow to admit even a sketch of the various trains
of original investigation pursued by Davy, during his connection with
the Institution. Of these, the most important is that series of
electrical inquiries pursued from 1800 to 1806, the results of which
were developed in his celebrated first Bakerian Lecture, delivered in
the autumn of the latter year, before the Royal Society, which received
from the French Institute the prize of 3000 francs, established by the
First Consul, for the best experiment in electricity or galvanism. In it
he investigated the nature of electric action, and disclosed a new class
of phenomena illustrative of the power of the Voltaic battery in
decomposing bodies; which, in the following year, led to the most
striking of his discoveries, the resolution of the fixed alkalies,
potash and soda, into metallic bases. This discovery took place in
October, 1807, and was published in his second Bakerian Lecture,
delivered in the following November. The novelty and brilliancy of the
view thus opened, raised public curiosity to the highest pitch: the
laboratory of the Institution was crowded with visitors, and the high
excitement thus produced, acting upon a frame exhausted by fatigue,
produced a violent fever, in which for many days, he lay between life
and death. Not until the following March was he able to resume his
duties as a lecturer.
During the next four years he was chiefly employed in endeavouring to
decompose other bodies, in prosecuting his inquiries into the nature of
the alkalies and in obtaining similar metallic bases from the earths, in
which he partially succeeded. The resolution of nitrogen was attempted
without success. In tracing the nature of muriatic and oxymuriatic acid,
he was more fortunate; and proved the latter to be an undecompounded
substance, in direct opposition to his own opinion, recorded at an
earlier period. This discovery is the more honourable, for nothing
renders the admission of truth so difficult, as having advocated error.
On the 8th April, 1812, he received the honour of knighthood from the
Prince Regent, in testimony of his scientific merits. This was the more
welcome, because he was on the eve of exchanging a life of professional
labour for one, not of idleness, for he pursued his course of discovery
with unabated zeal, but of affluence and independence. On the 11th of
the same month, he married Mrs. Apreece, a lady possessed of ample
fortune; previous to which he delivered his farewell lecture to the
Royal Institution. At the same time he appears to have resigned the
office of Secretary to the Royal Society, to which he had been appointed
in 1807. Two months afterwards he published ‘Elements of Chemical
Philosophy,’ which he dedicated to Lady Davy, “as a pledge that he
should continue to pursue science with unabated ardour.” In March, 1813,
appeared the ‘Elements of Agricultural Chemistry,’ containing the
substance of a course of lectures delivered for ten successive seasons
before the Board of Agriculture.
That part of the Continent which was under French influence, being
strictly closed against the English at this time, it is much to the
credit of Napoleon, that he immediately assented to a wish expressed by
Davy, and seconded by the Imperial Institute, that he might be allowed
to visit the extinct volcanoes in Auvergne, and thence proceed to make
observations on Vesuvius while in a state of action. He reached Paris,
Oct. 27th, 1813. The French philosophers received him with enthusiasm:
it is to be regretted that at the time of his departure their feelings
were much less cordial. There was a coldness, and pride, or what seemed
pride, in his manner, which disgusted a body of men too justly sensible
of their own merit to brook slights; especially when, in spite of
national jealousy, they had done most cordial and unhesitating justice
to the transcendent achievements of the British philosopher. Nor was
this the only ground for dissatisfaction. Iodine had been recently
discovered in Paris, but its nature was still unknown. Davy obtained a
portion, and proceeded to experiment upon it. This was thought by many
an unfair interference with the fame and rights of the original
investigators. Davy himself felt that some explanation at least was due,
in a paper which he transmitted to the Royal Society; and as the passage
in question contained what, though perhaps not meant to be such, might
easily be construed into an insinuation, that but for him, the results
communicated in that paper might not have been obtained, it was not
likely to conciliate. There is probably much truth in the excuse offered
by his biographer, for the superciliousness charged against him upon
this, and other occasions, that it was merely the cloak of a perpetual
and painful timidity.
It is remarkable that, with a highly poetical temperament, he seems to
have been senseless to the beauties of art. The wonders of the Louvre
extracted no sign of pleasure: he paced the rooms with hurried steps, in
apathy, roused only by the sight of an Antinous sculptured in alabaster,
“Gracious Heaven!” he then exclaimed, “what a beautiful stalactite.”
From Paris, Dec. 29th, he proceeded without visiting Auvergne, to
Montpellier, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples, which he reached May
8th, 1814. At various places he prosecuted his researches upon iodine;
and at Florence, he availed himself of the great burning lens to
experiment upon the combustion of the diamond, and other forms of
carbon. At Naples and Rome he instituted a minute and laborious inquiry
into the colours used in painting by the ancients; the results of which
appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1815.
The autumn of 1815 is rendered memorable by the discovery of the
safety-lamp, one of the most beneficial applications of science to
economical purposes yet made, by which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
lives have been preserved. Davy was led to the consideration of this
subject by an application from Dr. Gray, now Bishop of Bristol, the
Chairman of a Society established in 1813, at Bishop-Wearmouth, to
consider and promote the means of preventing accidents by fire in
coal-pits. Being then in Scotland, he visited the mines on his return
southward, and was supplied with specimens of fire-damp, which, on
reaching London, he proceeded to examine. He soon discovered that the
carburetted hydrogen gas, called fire-damp by the miners, would not
explode when mixed with less than six, or more than fourteen times its
volume of air; and further, that the explosive mixture could not be
fired in tubes of small diameters and proportionate lengths. Gradually
diminishing their dimensions, he arrived at the conclusion that a tissue
of wire, in which the meshes do not exceed a certain small diameter,
which may be considered as the ultimate limit of a series of such tubes,
is impervious to the inflamed air; and that a lamp covered with such
tissue, may be used with perfect safety even in an explosive mixture,
which takes fire, and burns within the cage, securely cut off from the
power of doing harm. Thus when the atmosphere is so impure that the
flame of the lamp itself cannot be maintained, the _Davy_ still supplies
light to the miner, and turns his worst enemy into an obedient servant.
This invention, the certain source of large profit, he presented with
characteristic liberality to the public. The words are preserved, in
which when pressed to secure to himself the benefit of it by a patent,
he declined to do so, in conformity with the high-minded resolution
which he formed upon acquiring independent wealth, of never making his
scientific eminence subservient to gain:—“I have enough for all my views
and purposes, more wealth might be troublesome, and distract my
attention from those pursuits in which I delight. More wealth could not
increase my fame or happiness. It might undoubtedly enable me to put
four horses to my carriage, but what would it avail me to have it said,
that Sir Humphry drives his carriage and four?” He who used wealth and
distinction to such good purpose, may be forgiven the weakness if he
estimated them at too high a value.
The coal-owners of the north presented to him a service of plate, in
testimony of their gratitude. He underwent, however, considerable
vexation from claims to priority of invention, set up by some persons
connected with the collieries, whose attention had been turned with very
imperfect success to the same end. The controversy has long been settled
in his favour, by the decision of the most eminent names in British
science, and the general voice of the owners of the Newcastle
coal-field: and while the pits are worked, the name of Davy, given by
the colliers to the safety-lamp, cannot be forgotten.
In 1818 he again visited Naples, with a view of applying the resources
of chemistry to facilitate the unrolling of the papyri found in
Herculaneum. These, it is well known, are generally in a state
resembling charcoal, often cemented into a solid mass, and the texture
so entirely destroyed, that it is hardly possible to separate the
layers. Examination of some specimens transmitted to England satisfied
him that they had not been subjected to heat, and that instead of being
a true charcoal, they were analogous to peat or to the lignite called
Bovey coal. He concluded, therefore, that the rolls were cemented into
one mass by a substance produced by fermentation in their vegetable
substance, and hoped to be able so far to destroy this, as to facilitate
the detaching one layer from another, without obliterating the writing.
With this view he submitted fragments to the operation of chlorine and
iodine, with such fair hope of success, that he was encouraged to
proceed to Naples; the Government furnishing him with every
recommendation, and defraying the expenses of such assistants as he
thought it necessary to take out. His success, however, fell short of
his hopes; and partly from disappointment, partly from a belief that
unfair obstacles were thrown in his way by interested persons, he
abandoned the undertaking at the end of two months, having partially
unrolled twenty-three MSS. and examined about one hundred and twenty,
which offered no prospect of success. His visit to Naples led, however,
to one conclusion of interest to geologists, that the strata which cover
Herculaneum are not lava, but a tufa consolidated by moisture, and
resembling that at Pompeii except in its hardness.
In October, 1818, Sir Humphry Davy was created a baronet, as a reward
for his scientific services. Soon after his return to England in 1820,
died Sir Joseph Banks, the venerable President of the Royal Society.
Davy succeeded to the chair, which he retained till forced to quit it by
ill health, zealous in fulfilling its duties, without relaxing in his
private labours. It would have been better had he not obtained this
honour. His scientific pride disgusted some; his aristocratic airs,
unpardonable in one so humbly born, excited the ridicule of others. Much
of this weakness may be traced to the pernicious effects of early
flattery. Had he been content with chemical fame, he would have spared
some mortifications and heart-burnings both to himself and others. His
demeanour changed, immediately after the delivery of his first lecture.
On the following day he dined with his early friend and patron, Sir
Henry Englefield, who, speaking of his behaviour on that day after
eighteen years had elapsed, said, “It was the last effort of expiring
nature.” Such frailties, though just grounds of censure and regret to
his contemporaries, will be lost in the splendour of his discoveries.
Yet is the observation of them not useless as a warning to others: for
the higher the station, the more closely will the actions of him who
fills it be scrutinised, especially if his elevation be the work of his
own hands.
In 1823 he undertook, in consequence of an application from Government
to the Royal Society, an inquiry into the possibility of preventing the
rapid decay of the copper sheathing of ships. His former Voltaic
discoveries at once explained the cause and suggested a remedy. When two
metals in contact with each other are exposed to moisture, the more
oxidable rapidly decays, while on the less oxidable no effect is
produced. Thus a very small piece of iron or zinc was found effectually
to stop the solution of a very large surface of copper. Several ships
were accordingly fitted with _protectors_, as they were called, which
succeeded perfectly in preserving the copper; but their use was found to
be attended by an evil greater than that which they remedied. The ships’
bottoms grew foul with unexampled rapidity; and the protectors were
finally abandoned by the Admiralty in 1828. This failure was a source of
much ill-natured remark to the many whom Davy had offended, or who were
jealous of his reputation, and of deep mortification to himself. Indeed
he displayed an impatience of censure, and irritability of temper, far
from dignified: the spoilt child of fortune, he could not bear the
feeling of defeat, still less the triumph of his enemies. This weakness
may perhaps be partly ascribed to declining health, which must always
more or less overcloud the mind, especially of one whose amusements as
well as his employments were of an active and stirring kind. To the
sports of fly-fishing and shooting he was devotedly attached; and
jealous, even to a ludicrous degree, of his reputation and success,
which it is said not always to have been so great as he would willingly
have had it believed. But his failing health gradually curtailed his
enjoyment of these pleasures, and towards the end of 1825, the
indisposition which his friends had long seen stealing on him reached
its crisis in the form of an apoplectic attack. All immediate cause of
alarm was soon removed; but the traces of his illness remained in a
slight degree of paralysis, which impaired, though without materially
affecting, his muscular powers. By the advice of his physicians he
hastened abroad, and passed the rest of the winter, and the spring, at
Ravenna. In the summer he visited the Tyrol and Illyria, and finding his
health still precarious, resigned the chair of the Royal Society. In the
autumn he returned to England, having gained little strength. The early
winter he spent in Somersetshire, at the house of an old and valued
friend, too weak for severe mental exertion, or to pursue successfully
his favourite sports. Yet the ruling passion was still shown in the
amusement of his sick hours, which were chiefly devoted to the
preparation of ‘Salmonia.’ Of the merits of this book as a manual for
the fly-fisher, we presume not to speak. To the general reader it may be
safely recommended, as containing many eloquent and poetical passages,
with much amusing information respecting the varieties and habits of the
trout and salmon species, and of the insect tribes on which they feed.
In the spring of 1828, Davy once more sought the Continent in search of
health. His steps were turned to that favourite district, of which he
speaks as the “most glorious country in Europe, Illyria and Styria;”
where he solaced the weary hours of sickness, by such field-sports as
his failing health enabled him to pursue, in the revision of an improved
edition of ‘Salmonia,’ and in the composition of the ‘Last Days of a
Philosopher.’ Of this he says, in a letter dated Rome, February 6, 1829,
“I write and philosophise a good deal, and have nearly finished a work
with a higher aim than ‘Salmonia.’ It contains the essence of my
philosophical opinions, and some of my poetical reveries.” Under this
sanction, the reader will peruse with pleasure the sketch contained in
the third dialogue of a geological history of the earth, and the other
questions of natural philosophy which are discussed. A large portion of
the work is occupied by metaphysical and religious disquisitions. As a
moral philosopher, his opinions do not seem entitled to peculiar weight.
Of his visionary excursion to the limits of the solar system, it is not
fair to speak but as the play of an exuberant imagination, mastering the
sober faculties of the mind. The work contains many passages, reflective
and descriptive, of unusual beauty; and is a remarkable production to
have been composed under the wasting influence of that disease, which,
of all others, usually exerts the most benumbing influence.
The winter of 1828–9 he spent at Rome; with returning spring he
expressed a wish to visit Geneva, but his hours were numbered. He
reached that city on May 28, unusually cheerful; dined heartily on fish,
and desired to be daily supplied with every variety which the lake
afforded: a trifling circumstance, yet interesting from its connection
with his love of sport. In the course of the night he was seized with a
fresh attack, and expired early in the morning without a struggle. His
remains were honoured by the magistrates with a public funeral, and
repose in the cemetery of Plain Palais. He died without issue, and the
baronetcy is in consequence extinct.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
KOSCIUSZKO.
_From a Print engraved in 1829 by A. Pleszczynski, a Pole._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
KOSCIUSKO
Among the remarkable men of modern times, there is perhaps none, whose
fame is purer from reproach, than that of Thaddeus Kosciusko. His name
is enshrined in the ruins of his unhappy country, which, with heroic
bravery and devotion, he sought to defend against foreign oppression,
and foreign domination. Kosciusko was born at Warsaw, about the year
1755. He was educated at the school of Cadets, in that city, where he
distinguished himself so much in scientific studies as well as in
drawing, that he was selected as one of four students of that
institution, who were sent to travel at the expense of the state, with a
view of perfecting their talents. In this capacity he visited France,
where he remained for several years, devoting himself to studies of
various kinds. On his return to his own country he entered the army, and
obtained the command of a company. But he was soon obliged to expatriate
himself again, in order to fly from a violent but unrequited passion,
for the daughter of the Marshal of Lithuania, one of the first officers
of state of the Polish court.
He bent his step to that part of North America, which was then waging
its war of independence against England. Here he entered the army, and
served with distinction, as one of the adjutants of General Washington.
While thus employed, he became acquainted with La Fayette, Lameth, and
other distinguished Frenchmen, serving in the same cause; and was
honoured by receiving the most flattering praises from Franklin, as well
as the public thanks of the Congress of the United Provinces. He was
also decorated with the new American order of Cincinnatus, being the
only European, except La Fayette, to whom it was given.
At the termination of the war he returned to his own country, where he
lived in retirement till the year 1789, at which period he was promoted
by the Diet to the rank of Major-General. That body was at this time
endeavouring to place its military force upon a respectable footing, in
the vain hope of restraining and diminishing the domineering influence
of foreign powers, in what still remained of Poland. It also occupied
itself in changing the vicious constitution of that unfortunate and
ill-governed country—in rendering the monarchy hereditary—in declaring
universal toleration—and in preserving the privileges of the nobility,
while at the same time it ameliorated the condition of the lower orders.
In all these improvements, Stanislas Poniatowski, the reigning king,
readily concurred; though the avowed intention of the Diet was, to
render the crown hereditary in the Saxon family. The King of Prussia
(Frederic William II.), who, from the time of the Treaty of Cherson in
1787, between Russia and Austria, had become hostile to the former
power, also encouraged the Poles in their proceedings; and even gave
them the most positive assurances of assisting them, in case the changes
they were effecting occasioned any attacks from other sovereigns.
Russia at length, having made peace with the Turks, prepared to throw
her sword into the scale. A formidable opposition to the measures of the
Diet had arisen, even among the Poles themselves, and occasioned what
was called the confederation of Targowicz, to which the Empress of
Russia promised her assistance. The feeble Stanislas, who had proclaimed
the new constitution, in 1791, bound himself in 1792 to sanction the
Diet of Grodno, which restored the ancient constitution, with all its
vices and all its abuses. In the meanwhile, Frederic William, King of
Prussia, who had so mainly contributed to excite the Poles to their
enterprises, basely deserted them, and refused to give them any
assistance. On the contrary, he stood aloof from the contest, waiting
for that share of the spoil, which the haughty Empress of the north
might think proper to allot to him, as the reward of his
non-interference.
But though thus betrayed on all sides, the Poles were not disposed to
submit without a struggle. They flew to arms, and found in the nephew of
their king, the Prince Joseph Poniatowski, a general worthy to conduct
so glorious a cause. Under his command Kosciusko first became known in
European warfare. He distinguished himself in the battle of Zielenec,
and still more in that of Dubienska, which took place on the 18th of
June, 1792. Upon this latter occasion, he defended for six hours, with
only four thousand men, against fifteen thousand Russians, a post which
had been slightly fortified in twenty-four hours, and at last retired
with inconsiderable loss.
But the contest was too unequal to last; the patriots were overwhelmed
by enemies from without, and betrayed by traitors within, at the head of
whom was their own sovereign. The Russians took possession of the
country, and proceeded to appropriate those portions of Lithuania and
Volhynia, which suited their convenience; while Prussia, the friendly
Prussia, invaded another part of the kingdom.
Under these circumstances, the most distinguished officers in the Polish
army retired from the service, and of this number was Kosciusko.
Miserable at the fate of his unhappy country, and at the same time an
object of suspicion to the ruling powers, he left his native land, and
retired to Leipsic; where he received intelligence of the honour which
had been conferred upon him by the Legislative Assembly of France, who
had invested him with the quality of a French citizen.
But his fellow-countrymen were still anxious to make another struggle
for independence; and they unanimously selected Kosciusko as their chief
and generalissimo. He obeyed the call, and found the patriots eager to
combat under his orders. Even the noble Joseph Poniatowski, who had
previously commanded in chief, returned from France, whither he had
retired, and received from the hands of Kosciusko the charge of a
portion of his army.
The patriots had risen in the north of Poland, to which part Kosciusko
first directed his steps. Anxious to begin his campaign with an action
of vigour, he marched rapidly towards Cracow, which town he entered
triumphantly on the 24th of March, 1794. He forthwith published a
manifesto against the Russians; and then, at the head of only five
thousand men, he marched to meet their army. He encountered, on the 4th
of April, ten thousand Russians at a place called Wraclawic; and
entirely defeated them, after a combat of four hours. He returned in
triumph to Cracow, and shortly afterwards marched along the left bank of
the Vistula to Polaniec, where he established his head quarters.
Meanwhile the inhabitants of Warsaw, animated by the recital of the
heroic deeds of their countrymen, had also raised the standard of
independence, and were successful in driving the Russians from the city,
after a murderous conflict of three days. In Lithuania and Samogitia an
equally successful revolution was effected, before the end of April;
while the Polish troops stationed in Volhynia and Podolia, marched to
the reinforcement of Kosciusko.
Thus far fortune seemed to smile upon the cause of Polish freedom—the
scene was, however, about to change. The undaunted Kosciusko, having
first organised a national council to conduct the affairs of government,
again advanced against the Russians. On his march, he met a new enemy,
in the person of the faithless Frederic William of Prussia; who, without
having even gone through the preliminary of declaring war, had advanced
into Poland, at the head of forty thousand men.
Kosciusko, with but thirteen thousand men, attacked the Prussian army on
the 8th of June, at Szcekociny. The battle was long and bloody; at
length, overwhelmed with numbers, he was obliged to retreat towards
Warsaw. This he effected in so able a manner, that his enemies did not
dare to harass him in his march; and he effectually covered the capital,
and maintained his position for two months against vigorous and
continued attacks. Immediately after this reverse the Polish General
Zaionczeck lost the battle of Chelm, and the Governor of Cracow had the
baseness to deliver the town to the Prussians, without attempting a
defence.
These disasters occasioned disturbances among the disaffected at Warsaw,
which, however, were put down by the vigour and firmness of Kosciusko.
On the 13th of July, the forces of the Prussians and Russians, amounting
to fifty thousand men, assembled under the walls of Warsaw, and
commenced the siege of that city. After six weeks spent before the
place, and a succession of bloody conflicts, the confederates were
obliged to raise the siege; but this respite to the Poles was but of
short duration.
Their enemies increased fearfully in number, while their own resources
diminished. Austria now determined to assist in the annihilation of
Poland, and caused a body of her troops to enter that kingdom. Nearly at
the same moment, the Russians ravaged Lithuania; and the two corps of
the Russian army, commanded by Suwarof and Fersen, effected their
junction in spite of the battle of Krupezyce, which the Poles had
ventured upon with doubtful issue, against the first of these
commanders, on the 16th of September.
Upon receiving intelligence of these events, Kosciusko left Warsaw and
placed himself at the head of the Polish army. He was attacked by the
very superior forces of the confederates on the 10th of October, 1794,
at a place called Macieiowice; and for many hours supported the combat
against overwhelming odds. At length he was severely wounded, and as he
fell, he uttered the prophetic words, “_Finis Poloniæ_.” It is asserted,
that he had exacted from his followers an oath, not to suffer him to
fall alive into the hands of the Russians, and that in consequence the
Polish cavalry, being unable to carry him off, inflicted some severe
sabre wounds on him, and left him for dead on the field; a savage
fidelity, which we half admire even in condemning it. Be this as it may,
he was recognised and delivered from the plunderers by some Cossack
chiefs; and thus was saved from death to meet a scarcely less harsh
fate—imprisonment in a Russian dungeon.
Thomas Wawrzecki became the successor of Kosciusko in the command of the
army; but with the loss of their heroic leader, all hope had deserted
the breasts of the Poles. They still, however, fought with all the
obstinacy of despair, and defended the suburb of Warsaw, called Praga,
with great gallantry. At length this post was wrested from them. Warsaw
itself capitulated on the 9th of November, 1794; and this calamity was
followed by the entire dissolution of the Polish army on the 18th of the
same month.
During this time, Kosciusko remained in prison at Petersburgh; but, at
the end of two years, the death of his persecutress the Empress
Catherine released him. One of the first acts of the Emperor Paul was to
restore him to liberty, and to load him with various marks of his
favour. Among other gifts of the autocrat was a pension, by which,
however, the high-spirited patriot would never consent to profit. No
sooner was he beyond the reach of Russian influence than he returned to
the donor the instrument, by which this humiliating favour was
conferred. From this period the life of Kosciusko was passed in
retirement. He went first to England, and then to the United States of
America. He returned to the Old World in 1798, and took up his abode in
France, where he divided his time between Paris, and a country-house he
had bought near Fontainbleau. While here he received the appropriate
present of the sword of John Sobieski, which was sent to him by some of
his countrymen serving in the French armies in Italy, who had found it
in the shrine at Loretto.
Napoleon, when about to invade Poland in 1807, wished to use the name of
Kosciusko, in order to rally the people of the country round his
standard. The patriot, aware that no real freedom was to be hoped for
under such auspices, at once refused to lend himself to his wishes. Upon
this the Emperor forged Kosciusko’s signature to an address to the
Poles, which was distributed throughout the country. Nor would he permit
the injured person to deny the authenticity of this act in any public
manner. The real state of the case was, however, made known to many
through the private representations of Kosciusko; but he was never able
to publish a formal denial of the transaction till after the fall of
Napoleon.
When the Russians in 1814 had penetrated into Champagne, and were
advancing towards Paris, they were astonished to hear that their former
adversary was living in retirement in that part of the country. The
circumstances of this discovery were striking. The commune in which
Kosciusko lived was subjected to plunder, and among the troops thus
engaged he observed a Polish regiment. Transported with anger he rushed
among them, and thus addressed the officers: “When I commanded brave
soldiers they never pillaged; and I should have punished severely
subalterns who allowed of disorders such as those which we see around.
Still more severely should I have punished older officers, who
authorized such conduct by their culpable neglect.”—“And who are you,”
was the general cry, “that you dare to speak with such boldness to
us?”—“I am Kosciusko.” The effect was electric: the soldiery cast down
their arms, prostrated themselves at his feet, and cast dust upon their
heads according to a national usage, supplicating his forgiveness for
the fault which they had committed. For twenty years the name of
Kosciusko had not been heard in Poland save as that of an exile; yet it
still retained its ancient power over Polish hearts; a power never used
but for some good and generous end.
The Emperor Alexander honoured him with a long interview, and offered
him an asylum in his own country. But nothing could induce Kosciusko
again to see his unfortunate native land. In 1815, he retired to
Soleure, in Switzerland; where he died, October 16th, 1817, in
consequence of an injury received by a fall from his horse. Not long
before he had abolished slavery upon his Polish estate, and declared all
his serfs entirely free, by a deed registered and executed with every
formality that could ensure the full performance of his intention. The
mortal remains of Kosciusko were removed to Poland at the expense of
Alexander, and have found a fitting place of rest in the cathedral of
Cracow, between those of his companions in arms, Joseph Poniatowski, and
the greatest of Polish warriors, John Sobieski.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
JOHN FLAXMAN.
_From the original Picture by_
John Jackson,
_in the possession of the Right Hon. Lord Dover_.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
FLAXMAN
It was not till the time of Banks and Flaxman, that the English school
had produced any notable specimens of the lofty and heroic style in
sculpture. Wilton, Bacon, and Nollekens, were respectable in their line,
which was nearly confined to allegorical monuments and busts.
Roubilliac, though eminently unclassical, possessed a superior style of
art, and has executed some works which for strength and liveliness of
expression may challenge competition in this or any other country. But
the attainments and genius of the two first-mentioned artists were of a
different, and a loftier class. Those, however, who trace the history of
the lives of Flaxman and Banks, will find, that whatever they achieved
in the higher departments of sculpture was due solely to their ardent
pursuit of excellence, almost unaided by that patronage, which, in this
country, has been so liberally bestowed on other branches of the fine
arts.
The heroic beauty and noble proportions of the Mourning Achilles, fully
establish the claim of Banks to a high rank as a poetic sculptor; this
fine work of art, however, remained for years in plaster during his
life, and after his death was presented to the British Gallery, where it
now stands in the hall, “as a warning,” observes Mr. Allan Cunningham,
“to all sculptors who enter, that works of classic fancy find slender
encouragement here!” With respect to Flaxman, in an early period of his
professional career, he executed the outline illustrations of Homer,
Æschylus, and Dante, which at once established his fame; and yet, during
a long life, no single patron called upon him to embody in marble any
one of these lofty conceptions, the very existence of which forms the
chief glory of the English school of poetic design.
The progress of sculpture in this country has been very recently traced
by Mr. Allan Cunningham, in his amusing ‘Memoirs of British Sculptors.’
Of these, the last, and most interesting, is that of Flaxman, from the
spirited and amusing pages of which, together with the memoir prefixed
to the Lectures on Sculpture, this short account has been chiefly
extracted.
John Flaxman, the second son of a moulder of figures, who kept a shop in
the Strand for the sale of plaster casts, was born in 1755. Like most
who have been eminent as artists, he early manifested a taste for
drawing. As soon as he could hold a pencil, he took delight in copying
whatever he saw, and at an age when most children are engrossed with
childish sports, he had read many books, and had begun to trace upon
paper the lineaments and actions of those heroes who had engaged his
fancy. Numerous stories are told of his fondness for that art to which
his mature energies were devoted; and, allowing somewhat for the fond
recollections of parents and friends, it is fully established that young
Flaxman early showed proofs both of application and genius. To this
development of his talents, his bodily constitution may have lent some
aid, for his health from infancy was delicate, and a weak, and somewhat
deformed frame, indisposed him from joining in the usual games of
children.
His station in life did not enable him to profit by the common means of
education; he gathered his knowledge from various sources, and mastered
what he wanted by some of those ready methods which form part of the
inspirations of genius. The introduction, through the means of an early
patron, Mr. Mathew, to Mrs. Barbauld, contributed to improve his
education and form his taste.
In his fifteenth year he became a student in the Royal Academy. Here he
formed an intimacy with Blake and Stothard, both artists of original
talent; but, like their more eminent companion, less favoured by fortune
than many not so deserving of patronage and applause.
At the Academy, Flaxman obtained the silver medal, but in the contest
for the gold one, he was worsted by Engleheart, a name now entirely
forgotten. Flaxman, however, though humbled and mortified, was only
stimulated by this defeat to greater exertions and more unwearied
application.
The narrow circumstances of his father did not allow him to devote his
whole time to unproductive study. His first employment was for the
Wedgewoods; and to this fortunate combination of genius in the artist,
and enterprise, skill, and taste in the manufacturers, the sudden and
rapid improvement of the porcelain of this country is mainly to be
ascribed. “The subjects executed by Flaxman were chiefly small groups in
very low relief, from subjects of ancient verse and history; many of
which,” observes Mr. A. Cunningham, “are equal in beauty and simplicity
to his designs for marble: the Etruscan vases and the architectural
ornaments of Greece supplied him with the finest shapes; these he
embellished with his own inventions, and a taste for forms of elegance
began to be diffused over the land. Flaxman loved to allude, even when
his name was established, to these humble labours; and since his death,
the original models have been eagerly sought after.” A set of chessmen,
also executed for the Wedgewoods, are exceedingly beautiful.
Whilst earning by his labour a decent subsistence, he continued his
devotion to the pursuit of his art, making designs from the Greek poets,
the Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible. He exhibited various works at the
Academy; but it does not appear that he was enabled by patronage to
execute any of these in marble, and it is, perhaps, owing to the little
practice that he had in early life in this mode of working, that his
admitted want of excellence in this branch of the art of sculpture is to
be attributed.
In 1782 he left his father’s home, and married an amiable and
accomplished woman, whose society and affection formed the chief
happiness of his after life. All those who knew them, describe in
glowing terms the harmony and mutual affection in which they lived. In
1787 he determined to visit Rome. Two monuments which he executed before
his departure deserve notice. One is in memory of Collins. It represents
the poet seated, reading what he told Dr. Johnson was his only book,
‘THE BIBLE,’ whilst his lyre and poetical compositions lie neglected on
the ground. The second is erected in Gloucester cathedral, to Mrs.
Morley, who perished with her child at sea, and is represented as rising
with the infant from the waves, at the summons of angels. The simple and
serene beauty of this work is admirably suited for monumental sculpture.
How he profited whilst at Rome by the study of those noble specimens of
ancient art, to which modern artists resort as the best school of
excellence, is shown in the outline illustrations of Homer, Æschylus,
and Dante; works which spread his fame throughout Europe, and at once
stamped the character of the English School of Design. These
compositions, which have been the admiration of every nation where art
is cultivated, which have been repeatedly published in Germany and
Italy, as well as in England, and which have been commented on with
unlimited praise by Schlegel, and almost every other modern writer on
the fine arts, were made, the Homeric series for fifteen shillings;
those taken from Æschylus and Dante, for one guinea each. It is not
creditable to English taste that this country does not possess a single
group, or even bas-relief, executed from them, although the author lived
for more than thirty years after their publication.
Of the illustrations of the Iliad, there are in all thirty-nine; of the
Odyssey, thirty-four. Of the designs from Dante, thirty-eight are taken
from the Hell, thirty-eight from the Purgatory, and thirty-three from
the Paradise. The Homeric series was made for Mrs. Hare. The
illustrations of Æschylus were undertaken at the desire of the Countess
Spencer; and those of the Divina Commedia were executed for Mr. Thomas
Hope, one of Flaxman’s early patrons, for whom, whilst at Rome, he
executed in marble a very beautiful small-sized group of Cephalus and
Aurora.
Of these three series, the Homeric is the most popular. This preference
may, perhaps, be accounted for by the Grecian poem being more generally
familiar than that of Dante: yet the subject of the Divina Commedia in
many respects appears to have been more congenial to the talents of the
artist; and perhaps an impartial judgment will pronounce, that of all
the works of Flaxman, the designs from Dante best exhibit his peculiar
genius. During his stay at Rome he executed for Frederick, Earl of
Bristol and Bishop of Derry, a group in marble, which consisted of four
figures larger than life, representing the fury of Athamas, from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses: by this he lost money, the price agreed on being only six
hundred guineas; a sum insufficient to cover the expenses of the work.
The recollection of this piece of patronage was so disgusting, to use
the word by which he himself once characterized it, that in after life
he could not bear to talk on the subject.
Whilst in Italy he made numerous drawings and memoranda upon ancient
art, which afterwards formed the groundwork of his lectures on
sculpture. After an absence of seven years he returned to England, and
engaged a house in Buckingham-street, in which he continued to reside
till his death.
His first great work after his return was a monument to the Earl of
Mansfield. In 1797 he was elected an associate, and in 1800, a member of
the Royal Academy, to which he presented, on his admission, a marble
group of Apollo and Marpessa. He visited for a short time, in 1802, the
splendid collections of the Louvre, in order to revive his early
recollection of the works of art which had been brought from Rome. In
1810, a professorship of sculpture having been established by the
Academy, he was elected to fill the chair, and his lectures were
commenced in 1811. Those who had formed high expectations of eloquence,
and of felicity of diction and illustration, were disappointed. The
sedate gravity of his manner, his unimpassioned tone, and the somewhat
dull catalogue of statues and works of art which he occasionally
introduced, conduced to tire a general audience. But the ten lectures,
which have been published since his death, must always furnish an
important manual to every student in sculpture. The lectures on Beauty,
and the contrast of Ancient and Modern Sculpture, are peculiarly
interesting, and embody nearly all which can be said on the leading
principles of art. In addition to these lectures he wrote several
anonymous articles, which are enumerated by Mr. Cunningham. These were
the ‘Character of the Works of Romney,’ for Hayley’s life of that
artist, and either the whole or part of the articles, Armour,
Basso-relievo, Beauty, Bronze, Bust, Composition, Cast, Ceres, in Rees’s
Cyclopædia. Many of the opinions put forth in these different essays he
has embodied in his lectures.
Besides the designs already noticed, he executed numerous illustrations
of the Pilgrim’s Progress, forty designs for Sotheby’s translation of
Oberon, and thirty-six designs from Hesiod, illustrating the story of
Pandora, and exhibiting the effects of her descent on earth. The
subjects from Hesiod were those in which his poetic fancy appeared most
to delight.
In 1820, Flaxman lost his wife, with whom he had lived in uninterrupted
happiness for thirty-eight years, and from the effects of this
bereavement he seemed never entirely to recover. A beloved sister, and
the sister of her whom he most loved, remained to him, and continued his
companions till his death.
At the time of this domestic misfortune the artist was in the zenith of
his fame. Commissions poured in, and among them, one order especially
worthy of his talents, for a group of the Archangel Michael vanquishing
Satan, given by the Earl of Egremont, a nobleman who has omitted no
opportunity of patronising the fine arts in this country. This group
exhibits more grandeur of conception than any work of art of modern
times. Unfortunately the marble of which it was cut was much
discoloured, and the work was not entirely finished at his death.
Amongst the finest of Flaxman’s later productions, Mr. Cunningham
enumerates his Pysche, the pastoral Apollo (also in the possession of
Lord Egremont), and two small statues of Michael Angelo and Raphael. But
the most remarkable of them is the shield of Achilles, designed and
modelled for Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, the silversmiths. The diameter
is three feet, and the description of Homer has been strictly followed.
In the centre is the chariot of the sun, in bold relief, almost starting
from the surface, surrounded by the most remarkable of the heavenly
bodies: around the rim is rolled the ever flowing ocean. The
intermediate space is occupied by twelve scenes, beautifully designed in
conformity with the words of the poet. For this the artist was paid
£620. Four casts of it in silver were taken, the first for the late
King, another for the Duke of York, the third for Lord Lonsdale, the
fourth for the Duke of Northumberland.
Flaxman died on the 7th of December, 1826, of an inflammation of the
lungs, the result of a cold. In person he was small, and slightly
deformed, but his countenance was peculiarly placid and benign, and
greatly expressive of genius. His dress, manners, and mode of life were
simple in the extreme: he was never found at the parties of the rich and
great, and mixed little even with his professional brethren. His life
was spent in a small circle of affectionate friends, in his studio, and
in his workshops, where those whom he employed looked up to him as a
father.
Amongst the different classes of his works, the religious and the poetic
were those in which he chiefly excelled. The number of pure and exalted
conceptions, which he has left sketched in plaster or outlined in
pencil, is quite extraordinary. “His solitude,” observes Sir Thomas
Lawrence, “was made enjoyment to him by a fancy teeming with images of
tenderness, purity, or grandeur. His genius, in the strictest sense of
the word, was original and inventive.” Among the most important of his
works not before noticed, is his monument to the memory of Sir Francis
Baring, in Mitcheldever Church, Hants, a work of exquisite beauty, both
in design and expression, embodying the words, “Thy kingdom come—thy
will be done—deliver us from evil.” He also executed, among others,
monuments to the memory of Mary Lushington, of Lewisham, in Kent, to the
Countess Spencer, to the Rev. Mr. Clowes, of St. John’s Church,
Manchester, and to the Yarborough family at Street Thorpe, near York.
This last, and one to Edward Bulmer, representing an aged man
instructing a youthful pair, Flaxman considered the best of his
compositions.
He executed several historical monuments to naval and military
commanders. These deal too largely in emblems and allegories,
Britannias, lions, victories, and wreaths of laurel, to add much to the
reputation of the artist: especially as his forte lay in the exquisite
feeling and grace of his conceptions, not in manual dexterity of
execution; the chief merit to which such cold and uninteresting
productions can lay claim. He executed statues of Sir Joshua Reynolds;
of Sir John Moore, in bronze, of colossal size, for Glasgow; of Pitt,
for the Town-Hall of the same city; of Burns; and of Kemble, in the
character of Coriolanus. That of Sir Joshua Reynolds (one of his
earliest) is perhaps the best. Many of his works were sent abroad: for
India he executed a statue of the Rajah of Tanjore, and a monument to
the celebrated Schwartz; two monuments in memory of Lord Cornwallis, a
figure of Warren Hastings, and a statue of the Marquess of Hastings.
Since the death of Flaxman, six plates have been published by his
sister, from his designs. The subjects are religious; the engravings are
admirable fac-similes of the original drawings, which were made in his
best time; and perhaps there is no published work of his more
illustrative of the peculiar taste and genius of the artist.
Our Portrait has been engraved from a fine picture by Jackson, in the
possession of Lord Dover. There is also an excellent portrait painted by
Howard, and a good bust of Flaxman was executed by Baily some few years
before our artist’s death.
[Illustration: [“Feed the hungry,” from a bas-relief of Flaxman.]]
[Illustration]
COPERNICUS
The illustrious discoverer of the true planetary motions, whose features
are represented on the accompanying plate, lived during the latter part
of the fifteenth century, and the first half of the following one.
Notwithstanding the success and celebrity of the theory which still
bears his name, the materials are very scanty for personal details
regarding his life and character. This ignorance is not the result of
recent neglect. A century had scarcely elapsed from the time of his
death, when Gassendi, who, at the request of the poet Chapelain,
undertook to compile an account of him, was forced to preface it by a
similar declaration.
Whilst Europe rang from one end to the other with the fierce dispute to
which the new views of the relation and motions of the heavenly bodies
gave rise, the character, the situation and manner of life, almost the
country, of the great author of the controversy, remained unknown to the
greater number of his admirers and opponents. Even the name of the
discoverer of the Copernican system now appears strange, except in the
Latinised form of Copernicus, in which alone it occurs in his own
writings and in those of his commentators.
Nicolas Cöpernik[1], to use his genuine appellation, was a native of
Thorn, a city of Polish Prussia, situated on the river Weichsel or
Vistula. He was born in the year 1473. Little is known of his parents,
except that his father, whose name also was Nicolas, was a surgeon, and,
as it is believed, of German extraction. The elder Cöpernik was
undoubtedly a stranger at Thorn, where he was naturalized in 1462: he
married Barbara, of the noble Polish family of Watzelrode. Luke, one of
her brothers, attained the high dignity of Bishop of Ermeland in the
year 1489, and the prospects of advancement which this connection held
out to young Cöpernik, probably induced his father to destine him to the
ecclesiastical profession. He acquired at home the first elements of a
liberal education, and afterwards graduated at Cracow, where he remained
till he received the diploma of Doctor in Arts and Medicine from that
university. He is said to have made considerable proficiency in the
latter branch of study; and possessed, even in more advanced life, so
high a reputation for skill and knowledge, as to produce an erroneous
belief that he had once followed medicine.
Footnote 1:
The authority for this manner of spelling the name is Hartknoch, Alt
und Neues Preussen. The inscription, Nicolao Copernico, which appears
on the plate, is a literal copy of the inscription on the original
picture.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
NICOLAO COPERNICO.
_From a Picture in the possession of the Royal Society, presented by
D^r. Wolf, of Dantzic, June 6, 1770._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
He also exhibited at an early age a very decided taste for mathematical
studies, especially for astronomy; and attended the lectures, both
public and private, of Albert Brudzewski, then mathematical professor at
Cracow. Under his tuition, Copernicus, as we shall hereafter call him,
became acquainted with the works of the astronomer, John Müller, (now
more commonly known by his assumed appellation of Regiomontanus,) and
the reputation of this celebrated man is said to have exercised a marked
influence in deciding the bent of his future studies. Müller died at
Rome a few years after the birth of Copernicus, and when the latter had
reached an age capable of appreciating excellence and nourishing
emulation, he found Müller’s works disseminated through every civilized
country of Europe, his genius and acquirements the subject of universal
admiration, and his premature death still regretted as a public
calamity. The feelings to which the contemplation of Müller’s success
gave rise, were still more excited by a journey into Italy, which
Copernicus undertook about the year 1495. One of his brothers and his
maternal uncle were already settled in Rome, which was therefore the
point to which his steps eventually tended. He quitted home in his
twenty-third year; when his diligence in cultivating the practical part
of astronomy had already procured for him some reputation as a skilful
observer. It seems to have been in contemplation of this journey that he
began to study painting, in which he afterwards became a tolerable
proficient.
Bologna was the first place at which he made any stay, being drawn
thither by the reputation of the astronomical professor, Dominic Maria
Novarra. Copernicus was not more delighted with this able instructor
than Novarra with his intelligent pupil. He soon became an assistant and
companion of Novarra in his observations, and in this capacity acquired
considerable distinction, so that on his departure from Bologna and
arrival at Rome, he found that his reputation had preceded him. He was
appointed to a professorship in that city, where he continued to teach
mathematics for some years with considerable success.
It does not appear at what time Copernicus entered into holy orders:
probably it may have been during his residence at Rome; for on his
return home he was named to the superintendence of the principal church
in his native city Thorn. Not long afterwards his uncle Luke, who, in
1489, succeeded Nicolas von Thungen in the bishopric of Ermeland,
enrolled him as one of the canons of his chapter. The cathedral church
of the diocese of Ermeland is situated at Frauenburg, a small town built
near one of the mouths of the Vistula, on the shore of the lake called
Frische Haff, separated only by a narrow strip of land from the Gulf of
Dantzig. In this situation, rendered unfavourable to astronomical
observations by the frequent marshy exhalations rising from the river
and lake, Copernicus took up his future abode, and made it the principal
place of his residence during the remainder of his life. Here those
astronomical speculations were renewed and perfected, the results of
which have for ever consigned to oblivion the subtle contrivances
invented by his predecessors to account for the anomalies of their own
complicated theories.
But we should form a very erroneous opinion of the life and character of
Copernicus, if we considered him, as it is probable that by most he is
considered, the quiet inhabitant of a cloister, immersed solely in
speculative inquiries. His disposition did not unfit him for taking an
active share in the stirring events which were occurring around him, and
it was not left entirely to his choice whether he would remain a mere
spectator of them.
The chapter of Ermeland, at the time when he became a member of it, was
the centre of a violent political struggle, in the decision of which
Copernicus himself was called on to act a considerable part. In the
latter half of the fifteenth century, a bitter war was carried on
between the King of Poland and a military religious fraternity, called
the Teutonic or German Knights of St. Mary of Jerusalem, who were
incorporated towards the end of the twelfth century. Having been called
into Prussia, they established themselves permanently in the country,
built Thorn and several other cities, and gradually acquired a
considerable share of independent power. On the death of Paul von
Segendorf, bishop of Ermeland, Casimir, king of Poland, in pursuance of
a design which he was then prosecuting, to get into his own hands the
nomination to all the bishoprics in his dominions, appointed his
secretary, Stanislas Opporowski, to the vacant see. The chapter of
Ermeland proceeded notwithstanding to a separate nomination, and elected
Nicolas von Thungen. Opporowski, backed by Casimir, entered Ermeland at
the head of a powerful army. From this period the new Bishop of Ermeland
necessarily made common cause with the German Knights; they renounced
their allegiance to the crown of Poland, and threw themselves on the
protection of Matthias king of Hungary. At length, Casimir finding
himself unable to master the confederacy, separated Nicolas von Thungen
from it, by agreeing to recognise him as Prince-Bishop of Ermeland, on
the usual condition of homage. Nicolas thus became confirmed in his
dignity, but his unhappy subjects did not fare better on that account,
the country being now exposed to the fury of the German Knights, as it
had suffered before from the violence of the Polish soldiery. These
disturbances were continued during the life of Luke Watzelrode, and the
city of Frauenburg, as well as its neighbour Braunsburg, frequently
became the theatre of warlike operations.
The management of the see was often committed to the care of Copernicus
during the absence of his uncle, who on political grounds resided for
the most part at the Court; and his activity in maintaining the rights
of the chapter rendered him especially obnoxious to the Teutonic Order.
In one of the short intervals of tranquillity, they took occasion to
cite him before the meeting of the States at Posen, on account of some
of his reports to his uncle concerning their encroachments. Gassendi,
who mentions this circumstance, merely adds that at length his own and
his uncle’s merit secured the latter in the possession of his dignity.
In 1512 Watzelrode died, and Copernicus was chosen as administrator of
the see until the appointment of the new bishop, Fabian von Losingen. In
1518 the knights under their grand master, Albert of Brandenburg, took
possession of Frauenburg and burnt it to the ground.
During the following year hostilities continued in the immediate
neighbourhood of Frauenburg, but in the course of that summer,
negotiations for peace between the Teutonic Order and the King of Poland
were begun, through the mediation of the bishop. At last a truce was
agreed upon for four years, during which Fabian von Losingen died, and
Copernicus was again chosen administrator of the bishopric. In 1525
peace was concluded with the Teutonic Knights, Albert having consented
to receive Prussia as a temporal fief from the King of Poland. It was
probably on this occasion that Copernicus was selected to represent the
chapter of Ermeland at the Diet at Graudenz, where the terms of peace
were finally settled; and by his firmness the chapter recovered great
part of the possessions which had been endangered during the war. This
service to his chapter was followed by another of more widely extended
importance. During the struggle, which had continued with little
interruption for more than half a century, the currency had become
greatly debased and depreciated; and one of the most important subjects
of deliberation at the meeting at Graudenz related to the best method of
restoring it. There was a great difference of opinion whether the
intended new coinage should be struck according to the old value of the
currency, or according to that to which it had fallen in consequence of
its adulteration. To assist in the settlement of this important
question, Copernicus drew up a table of the relative value of the coins,
then in circulation throughout the country. He presented this to the
States, accompanied by a memoir on the same subject, an extract from
which may be seen in Hartknoch’s History of Prussia. Throughout the
troublesome period of which we have just given an outline, Copernicus
seems to have displayed much political courage and talent. When
tranquillity was at length restored, he resumed the astronomical studies
which had been thus interrupted by more active duties.
There appears to be little doubt that the philosopher began to meditate
on the ideas which led him to the true knowledge of the constitution of
the solar system, at least as early as 1507. Every one, who has heard
the name of Copernicus mentioned, is aware that before him the general
belief was, that the earth occupies the centre of the universe; that the
changes of day and night are produced by the rapid revolution of the
heavens, such as our senses erroneously lead us to believe, until more
accurate and complicated observation teaches us the contrary; that the
change of seasons and apparent motions of the planetary bodies are
caused by the revolution of the sun and planets from west to east round
the earth, in orbits of various complexity, subject to the common daily
motion of all from east to west.
Instead of the daily motion of the heavens from east to west, Copernicus
substituted the revolution of the earth itself from west to east. He
explained the other phenomena of the planetary motions by supposing the
sun to be fixed, and the earth and other planets to revolve about him;
not, however, in simple circular orbits, according to the popular view
of the Copernican theory. It was absolutely necessary to retain much of
the old machinery of deferent and epicycle so long as the prejudice
existed, from which Copernicus himself was not free, that nothing but
circular motion is to be found in the heavens. Another step was made by
the following generation, and astronomers were taught by Kepler to
believe that the circular motion which they were so anxious to preserve
in their theories, has no real existence in the planetary orbits. The
advantage of the new system above the old, was, that by not denying to
the earth the motion which it really possesses, the author had to invent
epicycles to explain only the real irregularities of the motions of the
other planets, and not those apparent ones which arise out of the motion
of the orb from which they are viewed.
It is commonly said that besides the two motions already mentioned,
Copernicus attributed to the earth a third annual revolution on its
axis. This was necessary from the idea which he had formed of its motion
in its orbit. He conceived the earth to be carried round as if resting
on a lever centred in the sun, which would cause the poles of the daily
motion to point successively to different parts of the heavens; the
third motion was added to restore these poles to their true position in
every part of the orbit. It was afterwards seen that these two annual
motions might be considered as resulting from one of a different kind,
and in this simpler form they are now always considered by astronomical
writers.
It would be an interesting inquiry to follow Copernicus through the
train of reasoning which induced him to venture upon these changes; but
it is impossible to attempt this, or to explain his system, within the
limits to which this sketch is necessarily confined. In one point of
view, his peculiar merit appears not to be in general sufficiently
insisted upon. If he had merely suggested the principles of his new
theory, he would doubtless have acquired, as now, the glory of lighting
upon the true order of the solar system, and of founding thereupon a new
school of astronomy: but his peculiar and characteristic merit, that by
which he really earned his reputation, and which entitles him to take
rank by the side of Newton in the history of astronomy, was the result
of his conviction, that if his principles were indeed true, they would
be verified by the examination of details, and the persevering
resolution with which he thereupon set himself to rebuild an
astronomical theory from the foundation. This was the reason, at least
as much as the fear of incurring censure, why he delayed the publication
of his system for thirty-six years. During the greater part of that time
he was employed in collecting, by careful observation, the materials of
which it is constructed: the opinions on which it is based, comprising
the whole of what was afterwards declared to be heretical and impious,
were widely known to be entertained by him long before the work itself
appeared. He delayed to announce them formally, until he was able at the
same time to show that they were not random guesses, taken up from a
mere affectation of novelty; but that with their assistance he had
compiled tables of the planetary motions, which were immediately
acknowledged even by those whose minds revolted most against the means
by which they were obtained, to be far more correct than any which till
then had appeared.
Copernicus’s book seems to have been nearly completed in 1536, which is
the date of a letter addressed to him by Cardinal Schonberg, prefixed to
the work. So far at this time was the church of Rome from having decided
on the line of stubborn opposition to the new opinions, which, in the
following century, so much to her own disgrace, she adopted, that
Copernicus was chiefly moved to complete and publish his work by the
solicitations of this cardinal, and of Tindemann Giese, the bishop of
Culm; and the book itself was dedicated to Pope Paul III. It is
entitled, ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI.’ The dedication
is written in a very different strain from that to which his followers
were soon afterwards restricted. He there boldly avows his expectation
that his theory would be attacked as contrary to the Scriptures, and his
contempt of such ill-considered judgment. A more timid preface, in which
the new theory is spoken of as a mere mathematical hypothesis, was added
to this dedication by Osiander, to whom Copernicus had entrusted the
care of preparing the book for publication. It has been said that the
author was far from approving this, and if his death had not followed
closely upon its publication, it is not improbable that he would have
suppressed it.
The revolution of opinion that has followed the publication of this
memorable work was not immediately perceptible: even to the end of the
sixteenth century, as Montucla observes, the number of converts to its
doctrines might be easily reckoned. The majority contented themselves
with a disdainful sneer at the folly of introducing such ridiculous
notions among the grave doctrines of astronomy: but although
impertinent, it was as yet considered harmless; and all those who were
at the pains to examine the reasoning on which the new theory was
grounded, were allowed, unmolested, to own themselves convinced by it.
It was not until the spirit of philosophical inquiry was fully awakened,
that the church of Rome became sensible how much danger lurked in the
new doctrines; and when the struggle began in earnest between the
partisans of truth and falsehood, the censures pronounced upon the
advocates of the earth’s motion, were in fact aimed through them at all
who presumed, even in natural phenomena, to see with other eyes than
those of their spiritual advisers.
Copernicus did not live to witness any part of the effect produced by
his book. A sudden attack of dysentery and paralysis put an end to his
life, within a few hours after the first printed copy had been shown to
him, in his seventy-second year, on the 24th May, 1543, one century
before the birth of Newton. The house at Thorn, in which he is said to
have been born, is still shown, as well as that at Frauenburg, in which
he passed the greater part of his life. An hydraulic machine, of which
only the remains now exist, for supplying the houses of the canons with
water, and another of similar construction at Graudenz, which is still
in use, are said to have been constructed by him. An account of them may
be seen in Nanke’s Travels. From the little that is known of
Copernicus’s private character, his morals appear to have been
unexceptionable; his temper good, his disposition kind, but inclining to
seriousness. He was so highly esteemed in his own neighbourhood, that
the attempt of a dramatic author to satirise him, by introducing his
doctrine of the earth’s motion upon the stage at Elbing, was received by
the audience with the greatest indignation. He was buried in the
cemetery of the chapter of Ermeland, and only a plain marble slab,
inscribed with his name, marked the place of his interment. Until this
was rediscovered in the latter half of the last century, an opinion
prevailed that his remains had been transported to Thorn, and buried in
the church of St. John, where the portrait of him is preserved, from
which most of the prints in circulation have been taken. It is engraved
in Hartknoch’s Prussia, and, according to that author, copies of it were
frequently made. The portrait prefixed to Gassendi’s life, is a copy of
that given in Boissard, with the addition of a furred robe. There is a
good engraving of the same likeness, by Falck, a Polish artist, who
lived about a century later than Copernicus. In the year 1584, Tycho
Brahe commissioned Elia Olai to visit Frauenburg, for the purpose of
more accurately determining the latitude of Copernicus’s observatory,
and, on that occasion, received as a present from the chapter the
Ptolemaic scales, made by the astronomer himself, which he used in his
observatory, and also a portrait of him said to have been painted by his
own hand. Tycho placed these memorials, with great honour, in his own
observatory, but it is not known what became of them after his death,
and the dispersion of his instruments. The portrait, from which the
engraving prefixed to this account is taken, belongs to the Royal
Society, to which it was sent by Dr. Wolff, from Dantzig, in 1776. It
was copied by Lormann, a Prussian artist, from one which had been long
preserved and recognised as an original in the collection of the Dukes
of Saxe Gotha. In 1735, Prince Grabowski, bishop of Ermeland, exchanged
for it the portrait of an ancestor of the reigning duke, who had been
formerly bishop of that see. Grabowski left it to his chamberlain, M.
Hussarzewski, in whose possession it remained when the copy was made.
Dr. Wolff, in the letter accompanying his present, (inserted in the
Phil. Trans. vol. lxvii.) declares that this original had been compared
with the Thorn portrait, and that the resemblance of the two is perfect.
It does not appear very striking in the engravings. A colossal statue of
Copernicus, executed by Thorwaldsen, was erected at Warsaw in 1830, with
all the demonstrations of honour due to the memory of a man who holds so
distinguished a place in the history of human discoveries.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._
JOHN MILTON.
_From a Miniature of the same size by Faithorne. Anno 1667, in the
possession of William Falconer Esq._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
MILTON
That sanctity which settles on the memory of a great man, ought upon a
double motive to be vigilantly sustained by his countrymen; first, out
of gratitude to him, as one column of the national grandeur; secondly,
with a practical purpose of transmitting unimpaired to posterity the
benefit of ennobling models. High standards of excellence are among the
happiest distinctions by which the modern ages of the world have an
advantage over earlier, and we are all interested by duty as well as
policy in preserving them inviolate. To the benefit of this principle,
none amongst the great men of England is better entitled than Milton,
whether as respects his transcendent merit, or the harshness with which
his memory has been treated.
John Milton was born in London on the 9th day of December, 1608. His
father, in early life, had suffered for conscience’ sake, having been
disinherited upon his abjuring the popish faith. He pursued the
laborious profession of a scrivener, and having realised an ample
fortune, retired into the country to enjoy it. Educated at Oxford, he
gave his son the best education that the age afforded. At first, young
Milton had the benefit of a private tutor: from him he was removed to
St. Paul’s School; next he proceeded to Christ’s College, Cambridge, and
finally, after several years’ preparation by extensive reading, he
pursued a course of continental travel. It is to be observed, that his
tutor, Thomas Young, was a Puritan, and there is reason to believe that
Puritan politics prevailed among the fellows of his college. This must
not be forgotten in speculating on Milton’s public life, and his
inexorable hostility to the established government in church and state;
for it will thus appear probable, that he was at no time withdrawn from
the influence of Puritan connections.
In 1632, having taken the degree of M.A., Milton finally quitted the
University, leaving behind him a very brilliant reputation, and a
general good will in his own college. His father had now retired from
London, and lived upon his own estate at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. In
this rural solitude, Milton passed the next five years, resorting to
London only at rare intervals, for the purchase of books or music. His
time was chiefly occupied with the study of Greek and Roman, and, no
doubt, also of Italian literature. But that he was not negligent of
composition, and that he applied himself with great zeal to the culture
of his native literature, we have a splendid record in his ‘Comus,’
which, upon the strongest presumptions, is ascribed to this period of
his life. In the same neighbourhood, and within the same five years, it
is believed that he produced also the Arcades, and the Lycidas, together
with L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso.
In 1637 Milton’s mother died, and in the following year he commenced his
travels. The state of Europe confined his choice of ground to France and
Italy. The former excited in him but little interest. After a short stay
at Paris he pursued the direct route to Nice, where he embarked for
Genoa, and thence proceeded to Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Naples. He
originally meant to extend his tour to Sicily and Greece; but the news
of the first Scotch war, having now reached him, agitated his mind with
too much patriotic sympathy to allow of his embarking on a scheme of
such uncertain duration. Yet his homeward movements were not remarkable
for expedition. He had already spent two months in Florence, and as many
in Rome, yet he devoted the same space of time to each of them on his
return. From Florence he proceeded to Lucca, and thence, by Bologna and
Ferrara, to Venice; where he remained one month, and then pursued his
homeward route through Verona, Milan, and Geneva.
Sir Henry Wotton had recommended, as the rule of his conduct, a
celebrated Italian proverb, inculcating the policy of reserve and
dissimulation. From a practised diplomatist, this advice was
characteristic; but it did not suit the frankness of Milton’s manners,
nor the nobleness of his mind. He has himself stated to us his own rule
of conduct, which was to move no questions of controversy, yet not to
evade them when pressed upon him by others. Upon this principle he
acted, not without some offence to his associates, nor wholly without
danger to himself. But the offence, doubtless, was blended with respect;
the danger was passed; and he returned home with all his purposes
fulfilled. He had conversed with Galileo; he had seen whatever was most
interesting in the monuments of Roman grandeur, or the triumphs of
Italian art; and he could report with truth, that in spite of his
religion, every where undissembled, he had been honoured by the
attentions of the great, and by the compliments of the learned.
After fifteen months of absence, Milton found himself again in London at
a crisis of unusual interest. The king was on the eve of his second
expedition against the Scotch; and we may suppose Milton to have been
watching the course of events with profound anxiety, not without some
anticipation of the patriotic labour which awaited him. Meantime he
occupied himself with the education of his sister’s two sons, and soon
after, by way of obtaining an honourable maintenance, increased the
number of his pupils.
Dr. Johnson, himself at one period of his life a schoolmaster, on this
occasion indulges in a sneer which is too injurious to be neglected.
“Let not our veneration for Milton,” says he, “forbid us to look with
some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance: on the
man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their
liberty; and when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his
patriotism in a private boarding-school.” It is not true that Milton had
made “great promises,” or any promises at all. But if he had made the
greatest, his exertions for the next sixteen years nobly redeemed them.
In what way did Dr. Johnson expect that his patriotism should be
expressed? As a soldier? Milton has himself urged his bodily weakness
and intellectual strength, as reasons for following a line of duty for
which he was better fitted. Was he influenced in his choice by fear of
military dangers or hardships? Far from it: “for I did not,” he says,
“shun those evils, without engaging to render to my fellow-citizens
services much more useful, and attended with no less of danger.” What
services were those? We shall state them in his own words, anticipated
from an after period. “When I observed that there are in all three modes
of liberty—first, ecclesiastical liberty; secondly, civil liberty;
thirdly, domestic: having myself already treated of the first, and
noticing that the magistrate was taking steps in behalf of the second, I
concluded that the third, that is to say, domestic, or household
liberty, remained to me as my peculiar province. And whereas this again
is capable of a threefold division, accordingly as it regards the
interests of conjugal life in the first place, or those of education in
the second, or finally the freedom of speech, and the right of giving
full publication to sound opinions,—I took it upon myself to defend all
three, the first, by my Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, the second,
by my Tractate upon Education, the third, by my Areopagitica.”
In 1641 he conducted his defence of ecclesiastical liberty, in a series
of attacks upon episcopacy. These are written in a bitter spirit of
abusive hostility, for which we seek an insufficient apology in his
exclusive converse with a party which held bishops in abhorrence, and in
the low personal respectability of a large portion of the episcopal
bench.
At Whitsuntide, in the year 1645, having reached his 35th year, he
married Mary Powel, a young lady of good extraction in the county of
Oxford. One month after, he allowed his wife to visit her family. This
permission, in itself somewhat singular, the lady abused; for when
summoned back to her home, she refused to return. Upon this provocation,
Milton set himself seriously to consider the extent of the obligations
imposed by the nuptial vow; and soon came to the conclusion, that in
point of conscience it was not less dissoluble for hopeless
incompatibility of temper than for positive adultery, and that human
laws, in as far as they opposed this principle, called for reformation.
These views he laid before the public in his Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce. In treating this question, he had relied entirely upon the
force of argument, not aware that he had the countenance of any great
authorities; but finding soon afterwards that some of the early
reformers, Bucer and P. Martyr, had taken the same view as himself, he
drew up an account of their comments on this subject. Hence arose the
second of his tracts on Divorce. Meantime, as it was certain that many
would abide by what they supposed to be the positive language of
Scripture, in opposition to all authority whatsoever, he thought it
advisable to write a third tract on the proper interpretation of the
chief passages in Scripture, which refer to this point. A fourth tract,
by way of answer to the different writers who had opposed his opinions,
terminated the series.
Meantime the lady, whose rash conduct had provoked her husband into
these speculations, saw reason to repent of her indiscretion, and
finding that Milton held her desertion to have cancelled all claims upon
his justice, wisely resolved upon making her appeal to his generosity.
This appeal was not made in vain: in a single interview at the house of
a common friend, where she had contrived to surprise him, and suddenly
to throw herself at his feet, he granted her a full forgiveness: and so
little did he allow himself to remember her misconduct, or that of her
family, in having countenanced her desertion, that soon afterwards, when
they were involved in the general ruin of the royal cause, he received
the whole of them into his house, and exerted his political influence
very freely in their behalf. Fully to appreciate this behaviour, we must
recollect that Milton was not rich, and that no part of his wife’s
marriage portion (£1000) was ever paid to him.
His thoughts now settled upon the subject of education, which it must
not be forgotten that he connected systematically with domestic liberty.
In 1644 he published his essay on this great theme, in the form of a
letter to his friend Hartlib, himself a person of no slight
consideration. In the same year he wrote his ‘Areopagitica, a speech for
the liberty of unlicensed printing.’ This we are to consider in the
light of an oral pleading, or regular oration, for he tells us expressly
[Def. 2.] that he wrote it “ad justæ orationis modum.” It is the finest
specimen extant of generous scorn. And very remarkable it is, that
Milton, who broke the ground on this great theme, has exhausted the
arguments which bear upon it. He opened the subject: he closed it. And
were there no other monument of his patriotism and his genius, for this
alone he would deserve to be held in perpetual veneration. In the
following year, 1645, was published the first collection of his early
poems: with his sanction, undoubtedly, but probably not upon his
suggestion. The times were too full of anxiety to allow of much
encouragement to polite literature: at no period were there fewer
readers of poetry. And for himself in particular, with the exception of
a few sonnets, it is probable that he composed as little as others read,
for the next ten years: so great were his political exertions.
Early in 1649 the king was put to death. For a full view of the state of
parties which led to this memorable event, we must refer the reader to
the history of the times. That act was done by the Independent party, to
which Milton belonged, and was precipitated by the intrigues of the
Presbyterians, who were making common cause with the king, to ensure the
overthrow of the Independents. The lamentations and outcries of the
Presbyterians were long and loud. Under colour of a generous sympathy
with the unhappy prince, they mourned for their own political
extinction, and the triumph of their enemies. This Milton well knew, and
to expose the selfishness of their clamours, as well as to disarm their
appeals to the popular feeling, he now published his ‘Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates.’ In the first part of this, he addresses himself to the
general question of tyrannicide, justifying it, first, by arguments of
general reason, and secondly, by the authority of the reformers. But in
the latter part he argues the case personally, contending that the
Presbyterians at least were not entitled to condemn the king’s death,
who, in levying war, and doing battle against the king’s person, had
done so much that tended to no other result. “If then,” is his argument,
“in these proceedings against their king, they may not finish, by the
usual course of justice, what they have begun, they could not lawfully
begin at all.” The argument seems inconclusive, even as addressed _ad
hominem_: the struggle bore the character of a war between independent
parties, rather than a judicial inquiry, and in war the life of a
prisoner becomes sacred.
At this time the Council of State had resolved no longer to employ the
language of a rival people in their international concerns, but to use
the Latin tongue as a neutral and indifferent instrument. The office of
Latin Secretary, therefore, was created, and bestowed upon Milton. His
hours from henceforth must have been pretty well occupied by official
labours. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more
invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics
ever involved him. On the very day of the king’s execution, and even
below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work,
admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for the sensation
which it produced at the time, and the lasting controversy which it has
engendered, one of the most remarkable known in literary history. This
was the ‘Eikon Basilike, or Royal Image,’ professing to be a series of
meditations drawn up by the late king, on the leading events from the
very beginning of the national troubles. Appearing at this critical
moment, and co-operating with the strong reaction of the public mind,
already effected in the king’s favour by his violent death, this book
produced an impression absolutely unparalleled in any age. Fifty
thousand copies, it is asserted, were sold within one year; and a
posthumous power was thus given to the king’s name by one little book,
which exceeded, in alarm to his enemies, all that his armies could
accomplish in his lifetime. No remedy could meet the evil in degree. As
the only one that seemed fitted to it in kind, Milton drew up a running
commentary upon each separate head of the original: and as that had been
entitled the king’s image, he gave to his own the title of
‘Eikonoclastes, or Image-breaker,’ “the famous surname of many Greek
emperors, who broke all superstitious images in pieces.”
This work was drawn up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by
its very plan and purpose, it threw him upon difficulties which no
ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to
all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics
being all determined by the Eikon, Milton, for the first time, wore an
air of constraint and servility, following a leader and obeying his
motions, as an engraver is controlled by the designer, or a translator
by his original. It is plain, from the pains he took to exonerate
himself from such a reproach, that he felt his task to be an invidious
one. The majesty of grief, expressing itself with Christian meekness,
and appealing, as it were from the grave, to the consciences of men,
could not be violated without a recoil of angry feeling, ruinous to the
effect of any logic, or rhetoric the most persuasive. The affliction of
a great prince, his solitude, his rigorous imprisonment, his constancy
to some purposes which were not selfish, his dignity of demeanour in the
midst of his heavy trials, and his truly Christian fortitude in his
final sufferings—these formed a rhetoric which made its way to all
hearts. Against such influences the eloquence of Greece would have been
vain. The nation was spell-bound; and a majority of its population
neither could or would be disenchanted.
Milton was ere long called to plead the same great cause of liberty upon
an ampler stage, and before a more equitable audience; to plead not on
behalf of his party against the Presbyterians and Royalists, but on
behalf of his country against the insults of a hired Frenchman, and at
the bar of the whole Christian world. Charles II. had resolved to state
his father’s case to all Europe. This was natural, for very few people
on the continent knew what cause had brought his father to the block, or
why he himself was a vagrant exile from his throne. For his advocate he
selected Claudius Salmasius, and that was most injudicious. This man,
eminent among the scholars of the day, had some brilliant
accomplishments, which were useless in such a service, while in those
which were really indispensable, he was singularly deficient. He was
ignorant of the world, wanting in temper and self-command, conspicuously
unfurnished with eloquence, or the accomplishments of a good writer, and
not so much as master of a pure Latin style. Even as a scholar, he was
very unequal; he had committed more important blunders than any man of
his age, and being generally hated, had been more frequently exposed
than others to the harsh chastisements of men inferior to himself in
learning. Yet the most remarkable deficiency of all which Salmasius
betrayed, was in his entire ignorance, whether historical or
constitutional, of every thing which belonged to the case.
Having such an antagonist, inferior to him in all possible
qualifications, whether of nature, of art, of situation, it may be
supposed that Milton’s triumph was absolute. He was now thoroughly
indemnified for the poor success of his ‘Eikonoclastes.’ In that
instance he had the mortification of knowing that all England read and
wept over the king’s book, whilst his own reply was scarcely heard of.
But here the tables were turned: the very friends of Salmasius
complained, that while his defence was rarely inquired after, the answer
to it, ‘Defensio pro Populo Anglicano,’ was the subject of conversation
from one end of Europe to the other. It was burnt publicly at Paris and
Toulouse: and by way of special annoyance to Salmasius, who lived in
Holland, was translated into Dutch.
Salmasius died in 1653, before he could accomplish an answer that
satisfied himself: and the fragment which he left behind him was not
published, until it was no longer safe for Milton to rejoin. Meantime
others pressed forward against Milton in the same controversy, of whom
some were neglected, one was resigned to the pen of his nephew, Philips,
and one answered diffusely by himself. This was Du Moulin, or, as Milton
persisted in believing, Morus, a reformed minister then resident in
Holland, and at one time a friend of Salmasius. For two years after the
publication of this man’s book (Regii Sanguinis Clamor) Milton received
multiplied assurances from Holland that Morus was its true author. This
was not wonderful. Morus had corrected the press, had adopted the
principles and passions of the book, and perhaps at first had not been
displeased to find himself reputed the author. In reply, Milton
published his ‘Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano,’ seasoned in every
page with some stinging allusions to Morus. All the circumstances of his
early life are recalled, and some were such as the grave divine would
willingly have concealed from the public eye. He endeavoured to avert
too late the storm of wit and satire about to burst on him, by denying
the work, and even revealing the author’s real name: but Milton
resolutely refused to make the slightest alteration. The true reason of
this probably was that the work was written so exclusively against
Morus, full of personal scandal, and puns and gibes upon his name, which
in Greek signifies foolish, that it would have been useless as an answer
to any other person. In Milton’s conduct on this occasion, there is a
want both of charity and candour. Personally, however, Morus had little
ground for complaint: he had bearded the lion by submitting to be
reputed the author of a work not his own. Morus replied, and Milton
closed the controversy by a defence of himself, in 1655.
He had, indeed, about this time some domestic afflictions, which
reminded him of the frail tenure on which all human blessings were held,
and the necessity that he should now begin to concentrate his mind upon
the great works which he meditated. In 1651 his first wife died, after
she had given him three daughters. In that year he had already lost the
use of one eye, and was warned by the physicians that if he persisted in
his task of replying to Salmasius, he would probably lose the other. The
warning was soon accomplished, according to the common account, in 1654;
but upon collating his letter to Philaras the Athenian, with his own
pathetic statement in the Defensio Secunda, we are disposed to date it
from 1652. In 1655 he resigned his office of secretary, in which he had
latterly been obliged to use an assistant.
Some time before this period, he had married his second wife, Catherine
Woodcock, to whom it is supposed that he was very tenderly attached. In
1657 she died in child-birth, together with her child, an event which he
has recorded in a very beautiful sonnet. This loss, added to his
blindness, must have made his home, for some years, desolate and
comfortless. Distress, indeed, was now gathering rapidly upon him. The
death of Cromwell in the following year, and the imbecile character of
his eldest son, held out an invitation to the aspiring intriguers of the
day, which they were not slow to improve. It soon became too evident to
Milton’s discernment, that all things were hurrying forward to
restoration of the ejected family. Sensible of the risk, therefore, and
without much hope, but obeying the summons of his conscience, he wrote a
short tract on the ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth,
concluding with these noble words, “Thus much I should perhaps have
said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones,
and had none to cry to, but with the Prophet, Oh earth! earth! earth! to
tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to.
Nay, though what I have spoken should happen [which Thou suffer not, who
didst create free, nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being
servants of men] to be the last words of our expiring liberty.” A
slighter pamphlet on the same subject, ‘Brief Notes’ upon a sermon by
one Dr. Griffiths, must be supposed to be written rather with a
religious purpose of correcting a false application of sacred texts,
than with any great expectation of benefiting his party. Dr. Johnson,
with unseemly violence, says, that he kicked when he could strike no
longer: more justly it might be said that he held up a solitary hand of
protestation on behalf of that cause now in its expiring struggles,
which he had maintained when prosperous; and that he continued to the
last one uniform language, though he now believed resistance to be
hopeless, and knew it to be full of peril.
That peril was soon realised. In the spring of 1660, the Restoration was
accomplished amidst the tumultuous rejoicings of the people. It was
certain that the vengeance of government would lose no time in marking
its victims; for some of them in anticipation had already fled. Milton
wisely withdrew from the first fury of the persecution, which now
descended on his party. He secreted himself in London, and when he
returned into the public eye in the winter, found himself no farther
punished, than by a general disqualification for the public service, and
the disgrace of a public burning inflicted on his Eikonoclastes, and his
Defensio pro Populo Anglicano.
Apparently it was not long after this time that he married his third
wife, Elizabeth Minshul, a lady of good family in Cheshire. In what year
he began the composition of his ‘Paradise Lost,’ is not certainly known:
some have supposed in 1658. There is better ground for fixing the period
of its close. During the plague of 1665 he retired to Chalfont, and at
that time Elwood the quaker read the poem in a finished state. The
general interruption of business in London occasioned by the plague, and
prolonged by the great fire in 1666, explain why the publication was
delayed for nearly two years. The contract with the publisher is dated
April 26, 1667, and in the course of that year the Paradise Lost was
published. Originally it was printed in ten books: in the second, and
subsequent editions, the seventh and tenth books were each divided into
two. Milton received only five pounds in the first instance on the
publication of the book. His farther profits were regulated by the sale
of the three first editions. Each was to consist of fifteen hundred
copies, and on the second and third respectively reaching a sale of
thirteen hundred, he was to receive a farther sum of five pounds for
each; making a total of fifteen pounds. The receipt for the second sum
of five pounds is dated April 26, 1669.
In 1670 Milton published his History of Britain, from the fabulous
period to the Norman conquest. And in the same year he published in one
volume Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The Paradise Regained, it
has been currently asserted that Milton preferred to Paradise Lost. This
is not true; but he may have been justly offended by the false
principles on which some of his friends maintained a reasonable opinion.
The Paradise Regained is inferior by the necessity of its subject and
design. In the Paradise Lost Milton had a field properly adapted to a
poet’s purposes: a few hints in Scripture were expanded. Nothing was
altered, nothing absolutely added: but that, which was told in the
Scriptures in sum, or in its last results, was developed into its whole
succession of parts. Thus, for instance, “There was war in Heaven,”
furnished the matter for a whole book. Now for the latter poem, which
part of our Saviour’s life was it best to select as that in which
Paradise was Regained? He might have taken the Crucifixion, and here he
had a much wider field than in the Temptation; but then he was subject
to this dilemma. If he modified, or in any way altered, the full details
of the four Evangelists, he shocked the religious sense of all
Christians; yet, the purposes of a poet would often require that he
should so modify them. With a fine sense of this difficulty, he chose
the narrow basis of the Temptation in the Wilderness, because there the
whole had been wrapt up in Scripture in a few brief abstractions. Thus,
“He showed him all the kingdoms of the earth,” is expanded, without
offence to the nicest religious scruple, into that matchless succession
of pictures, which bring before us the learned glories of Athens, Rome
in her civil grandeur, and the barbaric splendour of Parthia. The actors
being only two, the action of Paradise Regained is unavoidably limited.
But in respect of composition, it is perhaps more elaborately finished
than Paradise Lost.
In 1672 he published in Latin, a new scheme of Logic, on the method of
Ramus, in which Dr. Johnson suspects him to have meditated the very
eccentric crime of rebellion against the universities. Be that as it
may, this little book is in one view not without interest: all
scholastic systems of logic confound logic and metaphysics; and some of
Milton’s metaphysical doctrines, as the present Bishop of Winchester has
noticed, have a reference to the doctrines brought forward in his
posthumous Theology. The history of the last-named work is remarkable.
That such a treatise had existed, was well known, but it had
disappeared, and was supposed to be irrecoverably lost. But in the year
1823, a Latin manuscript was discovered in the State-Paper Office, under
circumstances which left little doubt of its being the identical work
which Milton was known to have composed; and this belief was
corroborated by internal evidence. By the King’s command, it was edited
by Mr. Sumner, the present Bishop of Winchester, and separately
published in a translation. The title is ‘De Doctrina Christiana, libri
duo posthumi’—A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy
Scriptures alone. In elegance of style, and sublimity of occasional
passages, it is decidedly inferior to other of his prose works. As a
system of theology, probably no denomination of Christians would be
inclined to bestow other than a very sparing praise upon it. Still it is
well worth the notice of those students, who are qualified to weigh the
opinions, and profit by the errors of such a writer, as being composed
with Milton’s usual originality of thought and inquiry, and as being
remarkable for the boldness with which he follows up his arguments to
their legitimate conclusion, however startling those conclusions may be.
What he published after the scheme of logic, is not important enough to
merit a separate notice. His end was now approaching. In the summer of
1674 he was still cheerful, and in the possession of his intellectual
faculties. But the vigour of his bodily constitution had been silently
giving way, through a long course of years, to the ravages of gout. It
was at length thoroughly undermined: and about the tenth of November,
1674, he died with tranquillity so profound, that his attendants were
unable to determine the exact moment of his decease. He was buried, with
unusual marks of honour, in the chancel of St. Giles’ at Cripplegate.
The published lives of Milton are very numerous. Among the best and most
copious are those prefixed to the editions of Milton’s works by Bishop
Newton, Todd, and Symmons. An article of considerable length, founded
upon the latter, will be found in Rees’s Cyclopædia. But the most
remarkable is that written by Dr. Johnson in his ‘Lives of the British
Poets;’ production grievously disfigured by prejudice, yet well
deserving the student’s attentions for its intrinsic merits, as well as
for the celebrity which it has attained.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
JAMES WATT.
_From a Picture by Sir W. Beechey in the possession of J. Watt Esq. of
Aston Hall._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
WATT
Those who by cultivating the arts of peace have risen from obscurity to
fame and wealth, seldom leave to the biographer such ample memorials of
their private lives as he could wish to work upon. The details of a life
spent in the laboratory or in the workshop rarely present much variety;
or possess much interest, except when treated scientifically for the
benefit of the scientific reader. Such is the case with James Watt: the
history of his long and prosperous life is little more than the history
of his scientific pursuits; and this must plead our excuse if it chance
that the reader should here find less personal information about him
than he may desire. Fortunately his character has been sketched before
it was too late, by the masterly hand of one who knew him well. Most of
the accounts of him already published are said, by those best qualified
to judge, to be inaccurate. The same authority is pledged to the general
correctness of the article Watt, in the supplement to the Encyclopædia
Britannica, and from that article the facts of this short memoir are
taken.
Both the grandfather and uncle of James Watt were men of some repute in
the West of Scotland, as mathematical teachers and surveyors. His father
was a merchant at Greenock, where Watt was born, June 19, 1736, and
where he received the rudiments of his education. Our knowledge of the
first twenty years of his life may be comprised in a few short
sentences. At an early age he manifested a partiality for the practical
part of mechanics, which he retained through life, taking pleasure in
the manual exercise of his early trade, even when hundreds of hands were
ready to do his bidding. In his eighteenth year he went to London, to
obtain instruction in the profession of a mathematical instrument-maker;
but he remained there little more than a year, being compelled to return
home by the precariousness of his health.
In 1757, shortly after his return home, he was appointed
instrument-maker to the University of Glasgow, and accommodated with
premises within the precincts of that learned body. Robert Simpson, Adam
Smith, and Dr. Black, were then some of the professors; and from
communication with such men, Watt could not fail to derive the most
valuable mental discipline. With Dr. Black, and with John Robison, then
a student, afterwards eminent as a mathematician and natural
philosopher, he formed a friendship which was continued through life. In
1763 he removed into the town of Glasgow, intending to practise as a
civil engineer, and in the following year was married to his cousin Miss
Miller.
In the winter of 1763–4, his mind was directed to the earnest
prosecution of those inventions which have made his name celebrated over
the world, by having to repair a working model of a steam-engine on
Newcomen’s construction, for the lectures of the Professor of Natural
Philosophy. In treating this subject, we must presume that the reader
possesses a competent acquaintance with the history and construction of
the steam-engine. Those who do not possess the requisite knowledge, will
find it briefly and clearly stated in a short treatise written by Mr.
Farey, and in many works of easy access. Newcomen’s engine, at the time
of which we speak, was of the last and most approved construction. The
moving power was the weight of the air pressing on the upper side of a
piston working in a cylinder; steam being employed at the termination of
each downward stroke to raise the piston with its load of air up again,
and then to form a vacuum by its condensation when cooled by a jet of
cold water, which was thrown into the cylinder when the admission of
steam was stopped. Upon repairing the model, Watt was struck by the
incapability of the boiler to produce a sufficient supply of steam,
though it was larger in proportion to the cylinder than was usual in
working engines. This arose from the nature of the cylinder, which being
made of brass, a better conductor of heat than cast-iron, and
presenting, in consequence of its small size, a much larger surface in
proportion to its solid content than the cylinders of working engines,
necessarily cooled faster between the strokes, and therefore at every
fresh admission consumed a greater proportionate quantity of steam. But
being made aware of a much greater consumption of steam than he had
imagined, he was not satisfied without a thorough inquiry into the
cause. With this view he made experiments upon the merits of boilers of
different constructions; on the effect of substituting a less perfect
conductor, as wood, for the material of the cylinder; on the quantity of
coal required to evaporate a given quantity of water; on the degree of
expansion of water in the shape of steam: and he constructed a boiler
which showed the quantity of water evaporated in a given time, and thus
enabled him to calculate the quantity of steam consumed at each stroke
of the engine. This proved to be several times the content of the
cylinder. He soon discovered that, whatever the size and construction of
the cylinder, an admission of hot steam into it must necessarily be
attended with very great waste, if, in condensing the steam previously
admitted, that vessel had been cooled down sufficiently to produce a
vacuum at all approaching to a perfect one. If, on the other hand, to
prevent this waste, he cooled it less thoroughly, a considerable
quantity of steam remained uncondensed within, and by its resistance
weakened the power of the descending stroke. These considerations
pointed out a vital defect in Newcomen’s construction: involving either
a loss of steam, and consequent waste of fuel, or a loss of power from
the piston’s descending at every stroke through a very imperfect vacuum.
It soon occurred to Watt, that if the condensation were performed in a
separate vessel, one great evil, the cooling of the cylinder, and the
consequent waste of steam, would be avoided. The idea once started, he
soon verified it by experiment. By means of an arrangement of cocks, a
communication was opened between the cylinder, and a distinct vessel
exhausted of its air, at the moment when the former was filled with
steam. The vapour of course rushed to fill up the vacuum, and was there
condensed by the application of external cold, or by a jet of water: so
that fresh steam being continually drawn off from the cylinder to supply
the vacuum continually created, the density of that which remained might
be reduced within any assignable limits. This was the great and
fundamental improvement.
Still, however, there was a radical defect in the atmospheric engine,
inasmuch as the air being admitted into the cylinder at every stroke, a
great deal of heat was abstracted, and a proportionate quantity of steam
wasted. To remedy this, Watt excluded the air from the cylinder
altogether; and recurred to the original plan of making steam the moving
power of the engine, not a mere agent to produce a vacuum. In removing
the difficulties of construction which beset this new plan, he displayed
great ingenuity and powers of resource. On the old plan, if the cylinder
was not bored quite true, or the piston not accurately fitted, a little
water poured upon the top rendered it perfectly air-tight, and the
leakage into the cylinder was of little consequence, so long as the
injection water was thrown into that vessel. But on the new plan, no
water could possibly be admitted within the cylinder; and it was
necessary, not merely that the piston should be air-tight, but that it
should work through an air-tight collar, that no portion of the steam
admitted above it might escape. This he accomplished by packing the
piston and the stuffing-box, as it is called, through which the
piston-rod works, with hemp. A farther improvement consisted in
equalizing the motion of the engine by admitting the steam alternately
above and below the piston, by which the power is doubled in the same
space, and with the same strength of material. The vacuum of the
condenser was perfected by adding a powerful pump, which at once drew
off the condensed, and injection water, and with it any portion of air
which might find admission; as this would interfere with the action of
the engine, if allowed to accumulate. His last great change was to cut
off the communication between the cylinder and the boiler, when a
portion only, as one-third or one-half, of the stroke was performed;
leaving it to the expansive power of the steam to complete it. By this,
economy of steam was obtained; together with the power of varying the
effort of the engine according to the work which it has to do, by
admitting the steam through a greater or smaller portion of the stroke.
These are the chief improvements which Watt effected at different
periods of his life. Of the patient ingenuity by which they were
rendered complete, and the many beautiful contrivances by which he gave
to senseless matter an almost instinctive power of self-adjustment, with
precision of action more than belongs to any animated being, we cannot
speak; nor would it be easy to render description intelligible without
the help of diagrams. His first patent bears date June 5, 1769, so that
some time elapsed between the invention and publication of his
improvements. The delay arose partly from his own want of funds, and the
difficulty of finding a person possessed of capital, who could
appreciate the merit of his invention; partly from his own increasing
occupation as a civil engineer. In that capacity he soon acquired
reputation, and was employed in various works of importance. In 1767 he
made a survey for a canal, projected, but not executed, between the
Clyde and Forth. He also made the original survey for the Crinan Canal,
since carried into effect by Mr. Rennie; and was employed extensively in
forming harbours, deepening rivers, constructing bridges, and all the
most important labours of his profession. The last and greatest work of
this kind on which he was employed, was a survey for a canal between
Fort William and Inverness, where the Caledonian Canal now runs.
At last Dr. Roebuck, the establisher of the Carron iron-works, became
Watt’s partner in the patent, upon condition that he should supply the
necessary funds for bringing out the invention, and receive in return
two-thirds of the profit. That gentleman, however, was unable to fulfil
his share of the contract, and in 1774 resigned his interest to Mr.
Boulton, the proprietor of the Soho works, near Birmingham. Watt then
determined to remove his residence to England; a step to which he
probably was rendered more favourable by the death of his wife in 1773.
In 1775, Parliament, in consideration of the national importance of Mr.
Watt’s inventions, and the difficulty and expense of introducing them to
public notice, prolonged the duration of his patent for twenty-five
years.
The partners now erected engines for pumping water upon a large scale,
and it was found by comparative trials that the saving of fuel amounted
to three-fourths of the whole quantity consumed by the engines formerly
in use. This fact once established, the new machine was soon introduced
into the deep mines of Cornwall, where, of all places, its merits could
best be tried. The patentees were paid by receiving one-third of the
savings of fuel. From the time that the new value of their invention was
fully proved, Messrs. Boulton and Watt had to maintain a harassing
contest with numerous invaders of their patent rights; and it was not
until near the expiration of the patent in 1800, that the question was
definitively settled in their favour. These attacks, however, did not
prevent Watt from realizing an ample fortune, the well-earned reward of
his industry and ability, with which he established himself at
Heathfield, in the county of Stafford.
At one period Watt devoted much attention to the construction of a
rotary engine, in which the power of the steam should be applied
directly to produce circular motion. Like all who have yet attempted to
solve this problem, he failed to obtain a satisfactory result; and
turned his attention in consequence to discover the best means of
converting reciprocal into rotary motion. For this purpose he originally
intended to use the crank; but having been forestalled by a neighbouring
manufacturer, who took out a patent for it, having obtained his
knowledge, as it is said, surreptitiously from one of Watt’s workmen, he
invented the combination called the sun and planet wheels. Afterwards he
recurred to the crank, without a shadow of opposition from the patentee.
He was also the author of that elegant contrivance, the parallel motion,
which superseded the old-fashioned beam and chain, and rendered possible
the introduction of the double engine, in which an upward, as well as a
downward force is applied.
His attention, however, was not confined to the subject of steam. He
invented a copying machine, for which he took out a patent, in 1780. In
the winter of 1784–5, he erected an apparatus, the first of its kind,
for warming his apartments by steam. He also introduced into England the
method of bleaching with oxymuriatic acid, or chlorine, invented and
communicated to him for publication by his friend Berthollet. Towards
the conclusion of life, he constructed a machine for making fac-similes
of busts and other carved work; and also busied himself in forming a
composition for casts, possessing much of the transparency and hardness
of marble.
With chemistry Watt was well acquainted. In 1782 he published a paper in
the Philosophical Transactions, entitled, ‘Thoughts on the constituent
parts of Water, and of Dephlogisticated Air.’ His only other literary
undertaking was the revision of Professor Robison’s articles on Steam
and Steam Engines, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, to which he added
notes containing an account of his own experiments on steam, and a
history of his improvements in the engine.
About the year 1775 he married his second wife, Miss Macgregor. Though
his health had been delicate through life, yet he reached the advanced
age of eighty-four. He died at his house at Heathfield, August 25, 1819.
Chantrey made a bust of him some years before his death; from which the
same distinguished artist has since executed two marble statues, one for
his tomb, the other for the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow; and a third in
bronze, also for Glasgow, which has recently been erected there. It
represents Watt seated in deep thought, a pair of compasses in his hand,
and a scroll, on which is the draught of a steam-engine, open on his
knee.
We cannot better close this account, than with a short extract from the
sketch of his character, to which we have alluded in a former page.
After speaking of the lasting celebrity which Watt has acquired by his
mechanical inventions, the author continues, that “to those to whom he
more immediately belonged, who lived in his society and enjoyed his
conversation, this is not, perhaps, the character in which he will be
most frequently recalled,—most deeply lamented,—or even most highly
admired. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt
was an extraordinary and in many respects a wonderful man. Perhaps no
individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact
information, had read so much, or remembered what he had read so
accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a
prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodising power of
understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was
presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and
yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It
seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation
with him, had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and
exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable
clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort
or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge
confined, in any degree, to the studies connected with his ordinary
pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in
chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science,
might, perhaps, have been conjectured; but it could not have been
inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally
known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity,
metaphysics, medicine, and etymology; and perfectly at home in all the
details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too,
with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent
literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great
mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together,
the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the
measures or the matter of the German poetry. * * *
“It is needless to say, that with those vast resources, his conversation
was at all times rich and instructive in no ordinary degree. But it was,
if possible, still more pleasing than wise, and had all the charms of
familiarity, with all the substantial treasures of knowledge. No man
could be more social in his spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his
manners, or more kind and indulgent towards all who approached him.
* * * His talk, too, though overflowing with information, had no
resemblance to lecturing, or solemn discoursing; but, on the contrary,
was full of colloquial spirit and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and
grave humour, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of
temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the
condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its main staple and
characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone
of pretended rebuke and contradiction, which he used towards his younger
friends, that was always felt by them as an endearing mark of his
kindness and familiarity, and prized accordingly, far beyond all the
solemn compliments that ever proceeded from the lips of authority. His
voice was deep and powerful; though he commonly spoke in a low and
somewhat monotonous tone, which harmonized admirably with the weight and
brevity of his observations, and set off to the greatest advantage the
pleasant anecdotes which he delivered with the same grave tone, and the
same calm smile playing soberly on his lips. There was nothing of
effort, indeed, or of impatience, any more than of pride or levity, in
his demeanour; and there was a finer expression of reposing strength,
and mild self-possession in his manner, than we ever recollect to have
met with in any other person. He had in his character the utmost
abhorrence for all sorts of forwardness, parade, and pretension; and
indeed never failed to put all such impostors out of countenance, by the
manly plainness and honest intrepidity of his language and deportment.
“He was twice married, but has left no issue but one son, long
associated with him in his business and studies, and two grandchildren
by a daughter who predeceased him. He was fellow of the Royal Societies
both of London and Edinburgh, and one of the few Englishmen who were
elected members of the National Institute of France. All men of learning
and of science were his cordial friends; and such was the influence of
his mild character, and perfect fairness and liberality, even upon the
pretender to these accomplishments, that he lived to disarm even envy
itself, and died, we verily believe, without a single enemy.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
Engraved by W. Holl.
MARSHAL TURENNE.
_From the original Picture by Latour,
in the collection of the Musée Royale, Paris._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
TURENNE
Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, born September 16th,
1611, was the second son of the Duc de Bouillon, prince of Sedan, and of
Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of the celebrated William of Orange, to
whose courage and talents the Netherlands mainly owed their deliverance
from Spain. Both parents being zealous Calvinists, Turenne was of course
brought up in the same faith. Soon after his father’s death, the Duchess
sent him, when he was not yet thirteen years old, into the Low
Countries, to learn the art of war under his uncle, Maurice of Nassau,
who commanded the troops of Holland in the protracted struggle between
that country and Spain. Maurice held that there was no royal road to
military skill, and placed his young relation in the ranks, as a
volunteer, where for some time he served, enduring all hardships to
which the common soldiers were exposed. In his second campaign he was
promoted to the command of a company, which he retained for four years,
distinguished by the admirable discipline of his men, by unceasing
attention to the due performance of his own duty, and by his eagerness
to witness, and become thoroughly acquainted with, every branch of
service. In the year 1630, family circumstances rendered it expedient
that he should return to France, where the court received him with
distinction, and invested him with the command of a regiment.
Four years elapsed before Turenne had an opportunity of distinguishing
himself in the service of his native country. His first laurels were
reaped in 1634, at the siege of the strong fortress of La Motte, in
Lorraine, where he headed the assault, and, by his skill and bravery,
mainly contributed to its success. For this exploit he was raised at the
early age of twenty-three to the rank of Marechal de Camp, the second
grade of military rank in France. In the following year, the breaking
out of war between France and Austria opened a wider field of action.
Turenne held a subordinate command in the army, which, under the
Cardinal de la Valette, marched into Germany to support the Swedes,
commanded by the Duke of Weimar. At first fortune smiled on the allies;
but, ere long, scarcity of provisions compelled them to a disastrous
retreat over a ruined country, in the face of the enemy. On this
occasion the young soldier’s ability and disinterestedness were equally
conspicuous. He sold his plate and equipage for the use of the army;
threw away his baggage to load the waggons with those stragglers who
must otherwise have been abandoned; and marched on foot, while he gave
up his own horse to the relief of one who had fallen, exhausted by
hunger and fatigue. These are the acts which win the attachment of
soldiers, and Turenne was idolized by his.
Our limits will not allow of the relation of those campaigns in which
the subject of this memoir filled a subordinate part. In 1637–8 he again
served under La Valette, in Flanders and Germany, after which he was
made Lieutenant-General, a rank not previously existing in France. The
three following years he was employed in Italy and Savoy, and in 1642
made a campaign in Roussillon, under the eye of Louis XIII. In the
spring of 1643, the King died; and in the autumn of the same year,
Turenne received from the Queen Mother and Regent, Anne of Austria, a
Marshal’s baton, the appropriate reward of his long and brilliant
services. Four years a captain, four a colonel, three Marechal de Camp,
five lieutenant-general, he had served in all stations from the ranks
upwards, and distinguished himself in them not only by military talent,
but by strict honour and trustworthiness, rare virtues in those
turbulent times when men were familiar with civil war, and the great
nobility were too powerful to be peaceful subjects.
Soon after his promotion, he was sent to Germany, to collect and
reorganise the French army, which had been roughly handled at
Duttlingen. It wanted rest, men, and money, and he settled it in good
quarters, raised recruits, and pledged his own credit for the necessary
sums. The effects of his exertions were soon seen. He arrived in Alsace,
December, 1643, and in the following May was at the head of 10,000 men,
well armed and equipped, with whom he felt strong enough to attack the
Imperial army, and raise the siege of Fribourg. At that moment the glory
which he hoped and was entitled to obtain, as the reward of five months’
labour, was snatched from him by the arrival of the celebrated Prince de
Condè, at that time Duc d’Enghien, to assume the command. The vexation
which Turenne must have felt was increased by the difference of age, for
the Prince was ten years his junior, and of personal character. Condè
was ardent and impetuous, and flushed by his brilliant victory at Rocroi
the year before; Turenne cool, calculating, and cautious, unwearied in
preparing a certainty of success beforehand, yet prompt in striking when
the decisive moment was come. The difference of their characters was
exemplified upon this occasion. Merci, the Austrian commander, had taken
up a strong position, which Turenne said could not be forced; but at the
same time pointed out the means of turning it. Condè differed from him,
and the second in command was obliged to submit. On two successive days
two bloody and unsuccessful assaults were made: on the third Turenne’s
advice was taken, and on the first demonstration of this change of plan
Merci retreated. In the following year, ill supplied with every thing,
and forced to separate his troops widely to obtain subsistence, he was
attacked at Mariendal, and worsted by his old antagonist Merci. This,
his first defeat, he felt severely: still he retained his position, and
was again ready to meet the enemy, when he received positive orders from
Mazarin to undertake nothing before the arrival of Condè. Zealous for
his country and careless of personal slights, he marched without
complaint under the command of his rival: and his magnanimity was
rewarded at the battle of Nordlingen, in 1645, where the centre and
right wing having failed in their attack, Turenne with the left wing
broke the enemy’s right, and falling on his centre in flank, threw it
into utter confusion. For this service he received the most cordial and
ample acknowledgments from Condè, both on the field, and in his
despatches to the Queen Regent. Soon after, Condè, who was wounded in
the battle, resigned his command into the hands of Turenne. The
following campaigns of 1646–7–8 exhibited a series of successes, by
means of which he drove the Duke of Bavaria from his dominions, and
reduced the Emperor to seek for peace. This was concluded at Munster in
1648, and to Turenne’s exertions the termination of the thirty years’
war is mainly to be ascribed.
The repose of France was soon broken by civil war. Mazarin’s
administration, oppressive in all respects, but especially in fiscal
matters, had produced no small discontent throughout the country, and
especially in Paris; where the parliament openly espoused the cause of
the people against the minister, and were joined by several of the
highest nobility, urged by various motives of private interest or
personal pique. Among these were the Prince of Conti, the Duc de
Longueville, and the Duc de Bouillon. Mazarin, in alarm, endeavoured to
enlist the ambition of Turenne in his favour, by offering the government
of Alsace, and the hand of his own niece, as the price of his adherence
to the court. The Viscount, pressed by both parties, avoided to declare
his adhesion to either: but he unequivocally expressed his
disapprobation of the Cardinal’s proceedings, and, being superseded in
his command, retired peaceably to Holland. There he remained till the
convention of Ruel effected a hollow and insincere reconciliation
between the court and one of the jarring parties of which the Fronde was
composed. That reconciliation was soon broken by the sudden arrest of
Condè, Conti, and the Duc de Longueville. Turenne then threw himself
into the arms of the Fronde; urged partly by indignation at this act of
violence, partly by a sympathy with the interests of his brother, the
Duc de Bouillon; but more, it is said, by a devoted attachment to the
Duchesse de Longueville, who turned the great soldier to her purposes,
and laughed at his passion. He sold his plate; the Duchess sold her
jewels: they concluded an alliance with Spain, and the Viscount was soon
at the head of an army. But the heterogeneous mass of Frenchmen,
Spaniards, and Germans, melted away during the first campaign; and
Turenne, at the head of eight thousand men, found himself obliged to
encounter the royal army, twenty thousand strong. In the battle which
ensued, he distinguished his personal bravery in several desperate
charges: but the disparity was too great; and this defeat of Rhetel was
of serious consequence to the Fronde party. Convinced at last that his
true interest lay rather on the side of the court, then managed by a
woman and a priest, where he might be supreme in military matters, than
in supporting the cause of an impetuous and self-willed leader, such as
Condè, Turenne gladly listened to overtures of accommodation, and passed
over to the support of the regency. His conduct in this war appears to
be the most objectionable part of a long and, for that age, singularly
honest life. The fault, however, seems to have been rather in espousing,
than in abandoning, the cause of the Fronde. Many of that party were
doubtless actuated by sincerely patriotic motives. Such, however, were
not the motives of Turenne, nor of the nobility to whom he attached
himself: and if, in returning to his allegiance, he followed the call of
interest as decidedly as he had followed the call of passion in
revolting, it was at least a recurrence to his former principle of
loyalty, from which, in after-life, he never swerved.
The value of his services was soon made evident. Twice, at the head of
very inferior troops, he checked Condè in the career of victory: and
again compelled him to fight under the walls of Paris; where, in the
celebrated battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine, the Prince and his army
narrowly escaped destruction. Finally, he re-established the court at
Paris, and compelled Condè to quit the realm. These important events
took place in one campaign of six months, in 1652.
In 1654 he again took the field against his former friend and commander,
Condè, who had taken refuge in Spain, and now led a foreign army against
his country. The most remarkable operation of the campaign was the
raising the siege of Arras; which the Spaniards had invested, according
to the most approved fashion of the day, with a strong double line of
circumvallation, within which the besieging army was supposed to be
securely sheltered against the sallies of the garrison cooped up within,
and the efforts of their friends from without. Turenne marched to the
relief of the place. This could only be effected by forcing the enemy’s
entrenchments; which were accordingly attacked, contrary to the opinion
of his own officers, and carried at all points, despite the personal
exertions of Condè. The Spaniards were forced to retreat. It is
remarkable that Turenne, not long after, was himself defeated in
precisely similar circumstances, under the walls of Valenciennes, round
which he had drawn lines of circumvallation. Once more he found himself
in the same position at Dunkirk. On this occasion he marched out of his
lines to meet the enemy, rather than wait, and suffer them to choose
their point of attack: and the celebrated battle of the Dunes or
Sandhills ensued, in which he gained a brilliant victory over the best
Spanish troops, with Condè at their head. This took place in 1657.
Dunkirk and the greater part of Flanders fell into the hands of the
French in consequence; and these successes led to the treaty of the
Pyrenees, which terminated the war in 1658.
Turenne’s signal services were appreciated and rewarded by the entire
confidence both of the regency, and of Louis himself, after he attained
his majority and took the reins of state into his own hands. At the
King’s marriage, in 1660, he was created Marshal-General of the French
armies, with the significant words, “Il ne tient qu’a vous que ce soit
davantage.” The monarch is supposed to have meditated the revival of the
high dignity of Constable of France, which could not be held by a
Protestant. If this were so, it was a tempting bribe; but it failed.
Covetousness was no part of Turenne’s character; and for ambition, his
calm and strong mind could not but see that a dignity won by such
unworthy means would not elevate him in men’s eyes. We would willingly
attribute his conduct to a higher principle; but there is reason to
believe that henceforth he rather sought to be converted from the strict
tenets of Calvinism in which he had been brought up. It is at least
certain, from his correspondence, that about this time he applied
himself to theological studies, with which an imperfect education, and a
life spent in camps, had little familiarized him; and that in the year
1668 he solemnly renounced the Protestant church. However, he asked and
received nothing for himself, and was refused one trifling favour which
he requested for his nephew: and perhaps the most fair and probable
explanation of his conversion is, that his profession of Calvinism had
been habitual and nominal, not founded upon inquiry and conviction; and
that in becoming a convert to Catholicism, he had little to give up,
while his mind was strongly biassed in favour of the fashionable and
established creed.
When war broke out afresh between France and Spain, in 1667, Louis XIV.
made his first campaign under Turenne’s guidance, and gained possession
of nearly the whole of Flanders. In 1672, when Louis resolved to
undertake in person the conquest of Holland, he again placed the
command, under himself, in Turenne’s hands, and disgraced several
marshals who refused to receive orders from the Viscount, considering
themselves his equals in military rank. How Le Grand Monarque forced the
passage of the Rhine when there was no army to oppose him, and conquered
city after city, till he was stopped by inundations, under the walls of
Amsterdam, has been said and sung by his flatterers; and need not be
repeated here. But after the King had left the army, when the Princes of
Germany came to the assistance of Holland, and her affairs took a more
favourable turn under the able guidance of the Prince of Orange, a wider
field was offered for the display of Turenne’s talents. In the campaign
of 1673 he drove the Elector of Brandenburg, who had come to the
assistance of the Dutch, back to Berlin, and compelled him to negotiate
for peace. In the same year he was opposed, for the first time, to the
Imperial General Montecuculi, celebrated for his military writings, as
well as for his exploits in the field. The meeting of these two great
generals produced no decisive results.
Turenne returned to Paris in the winter, and was received with the most
flattering marks of favour. On the approach of spring, he was sent back
to take command of the French army in Alsace, which, amounting to no
more than ten thousand men, was pressed by a powerful confederation of
the troops of the empire, and those of Brandenburg, once again in the
field. Turenne set himself to beat the allies in detail, before they
could form a junction. He passed the Rhine, marched forty French leagues
in four days, and came up with the Imperialists, under the Duke of
Lorraine, at Sintzheim. They occupied a strong position, their wings
resting on mountains; their centre protected by a river and a fortified
town. Turenne hesitated: it seemed rash to attack; but a victory was
needful before the combination of the two armies should render their
force irresistible, and he commanded the best troops of France. The
event justified his confidence. Every post was carried sword in hand.
The Marshal had his horse killed under him, and was slightly wounded. To
the officers, who crowded round him with congratulations, he replied,
with one of those short and happy speeches which tell upon an army more
than the most laboured harangues, “With troops like you, gentlemen, a
man ought to attack boldly, for he is sure to conquer.” The beaten army
fell back behind the Neckar, where they effected a junction with the
troops of Brandenburg: but they dared attempt nothing further, and left
the Palatinate in the quiet possession of Turenne. Under his eye, and,
as it appears from his own letters, at his express recommendation, as a
matter of policy, that wretched country was laid waste to a deplorable
extent. This transaction went far beyond the ordinary license of war,
and excited general indignation even in that unscrupulous age. It will
ever be remembered as a foul stain upon the character of the general who
executed, and of the king and minister who ordered or consented to it.
Having carried fire and sword through that part of the Palatinate which
lay upon the right or German bank of the Rhine, he crossed that river.
But the Imperial troops, reinforced by the Saxons and Hessians to the
amount of sixty thousand men, pressed him hard: and it seemed impossible
to keep the field against so great a disparity of force; his own troops
not amounting to more than twenty thousand. He retreated into Lorraine,
abandoning the fertile plains of Alsace to the enemy, led his army
behind the Vosges mountains, and crossing them by unfrequented routes,
surprised the enemy at Colmar, beat him at Mulhausen and Turkheim, and
forced him to recross the Rhine. This is esteemed the most brilliant of
Turenne’s campaigns, and it was conceived and conducted with the greater
boldness, being in opposition to the orders of Louvois. “I know,” he
wrote to that minister, in remonstrating, and indeed refusing to follow
his directions, “I know the strength of the Imperialists, their
generals, and the country in which we are. I take all upon myself, and
charge myself with whatever may occur.”
Returning to Paris at the end of the campaign, his journey through
France resembled a triumphal progress; such was the popular enthusiasm
in his favour. Not less flattering was his reception by the King, whose
undeviating regard and confidence, undimmed by jealousy or envy, is
creditable alike to the monarch and to his faithful subject. At this
time Turenne, it is said, had serious thoughts of retiring to a convent,
and was induced only by the earnest remonstrances of the King, and his
representations of the critical state of France, to resume his command.
Returning to the Upper Rhine, he was again opposed to Montecuculi. For
two months the resources and well-matched skill of the rival captains
were displayed in a series of marches and counter-marches, in which
every movement was so well foreseen and guarded against, that no
opportunity occurred for coming to action with advantage to either side.
At last the art of Turenne appeared to prevail; when, not many minutes
after he had expressed the full belief that victory was in his grasp, a
cannon-ball struck him while engaged in reconnoitring the enemy’s
position, previous to giving battle, and he fell dead from his horse,
July 27th, 1675. The same shot carried off the arm of St. Hilaire,
commander-in-chief of the artillery. “Weep not for me,” said the brave
soldier to his son, “it is for that great man that we ought to weep.”
His subordinates possessed neither the talents requisite to follow up
his plans, nor the confidence of the troops, who perceived their
hesitation, and were eager to avenge the death of their beloved general.
“Loose the piebald,” so they named Turenne’s horse, was the cry; “he
will lead us on.” But those on whom the command devolved thought of
nothing less than of attacking the enemy; and after holding a hurried
council of war, retreated in all haste across the Rhine.
The Swabian peasants let the spot where he fell lie fallow for many
years, and carefully preserved a tree under which he had been sitting
just before. Strange that the people who had suffered so much at his
hands, should regard his memory with such respect.
The character of Turenne was more remarkable for solidity than for
brilliancy. Many generals may have been better qualified to complete a
campaign by one decisive blow; few probably have laid the scheme of a
campaign with more judgment, or shown more skill and patience in
carrying their plans into effect. And it is remarkable that, contrary to
general experience, he became much more enterprising in advanced years
than he had been in youth. Of that impetuous spirit, which sometimes
carries men to success where caution would have hesitated and failed, he
possessed little. In his earlier years he seldom ventured to give
battle, except where victory was nearly certain: but a course of victory
inspired confidence, and trained by long practice to distinguish the
difficult from the impossible, he adopted in his later campaigns a
bolder style of tactics than had seemed congenial to his original
temper. In this respect he offered a remarkable contrast to his rival in
fame, Condè, who, celebrated in early life for the headlong valour, even
to rashness, of his enterprises, became in old age prudent almost to
timidity. Equally calm in success or in defeat, Turenne was always ready
to prosecute the one, or to repair the other. And he carried the same
temper into private life, where he was distinguished for the dignity
with which he avoided quarrels, under circumstances in which lesser men
would have found it hard to do so, without incurring the reproach of
cowardice. Nor must we pass over his thorough honesty and
disinterestedness in pecuniary matters; a quality more rare in a great
man then than it is now.
In 1653 he married the daughter of the Duc de la Force. She died in
1666, without leaving children.
Turenne composed memoirs of his own life, which are published in the
Life of him by the Chevalier Ramsay. There is also a collection of his
Military Maxims, by Captain Williamson. In 1782 Grimoard published his
‘Collection des Memoirs du Marechal de Turenne.’ Deschamps, an officer
who served under him, wrote a full account of his two last campaigns;
and the history of his four last campaigns has been published under the
name of Beaurain. We may also refer the reader for the history of these
times to Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV.
[Illustration: French Cavalier of the seventeenth century.]
[Illustration]
BOYLE
This excellent and accomplished person was one of those who do honour to
high birth and ample fortune, by employing them, not as the means of
selfish gratification or personal aggrandisement, but in the furtherance
of every useful pursuit, and every benevolent purpose. By the lover of
science he is honoured as one of the first and most successful
cultivators of experimental philosophy; to the Christian his memory is
endeared, as that of one, who, in the most licentious period of English
history, showed a rare example of religion and virtue in exalted
station, and was an early and zealous promoter of the diffusion of the
Scriptures in foreign lands.
Robert Boyle was the youngest son but one of a statesman eminent in the
successive reigns of Elizabeth, and the first James and Charles; and
well known in Ireland by the honourable title of the Great Earl of Cork.
He has left an unfinished sketch of his own early life, in which he
assumes the name of Philaretus, a lover of virtue; and speaks of his
childhood as characterized by two things, a more than usual inclination
to study, and a rigid observance of truth in all things. He was born in
Ireland, January 25, 1626–7. In his ninth year he was sent, with his
elder brother Francis, to Eton, where he spent between three and four
years: in the early part of which, under the guidance of an able and
judicious tutor, he made great progress both in the acquisition of
knowledge, and in forming habits of accurate and diligent inquiry. But
his studies were interrupted by a severe ague; and while recovering from
that disorder he contracted a habit of desultory reading, which it
afterwards cost him some pains to conquer by a laborious course of
mathematical calculations. During his abode at Eton several remarkable
escapes from imminent peril occurred to him, upon which, in after-life,
he looked back with reverential gratitude, and with the full conviction
that the direct hand of an overruling providence was to be traced in
them.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
ROBERT BOYLE.
_From an original Picture, in the possession of Lord Dover._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
Towards the close of 1637, as it should seem, his father, who had
purchased the manor of Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, took him home. In
October, 1638, he was sent abroad, under the charge of a governor, with
his brother Francis. They visited France, Switzerland, and Italy; and
Philaretus’s narrative of his travels is not without interest. The only
incident which we shall mention as occurring during this period, is one
which may be thought by many scarcely worthy of notice. Boyle himself
used to speak of it as the most considerable accident of his whole life;
and for its influence upon his life it ought not to be omitted. While
staying at Geneva, he was waked in the night by a thunder-storm of
remarkable violence. Taken unprepared and startled, it struck him that
the day of judgment was at hand; “whereupon,” to use his own words, “the
consideration of his unpreparedness to welcome it, and the hideousness
of being surprised by it in an unfit condition, made him resolve and
vow, that if his fears that night were disappointed, all further
additions to his life should be more religiously and watchfully
employed.” He has been spoken of as being a sceptic before this sudden
conversion. This does not appear from his own account, farther than as
any boy of fourteen may be so called, who has never taken the trouble
fully to convince himself of those truths which he professes to believe.
On the breaking out of the rebellion in 1642, the troubled state of
England, and the death of the Earl of Cork, involved the brothers in
considerable pecuniary difficulties. They returned to England in 1644,
and Robert, after a short delay, took possession of the manor of
Stalbridge, which, with a considerable property in Ireland, had been
bequeathed to him by his father. By the interest of his brother and
sister, Lord Broghill and Lady Ranelagh, who were on good terms with the
ruling party, he obtained protections for his property, and for the next
six years made Stalbridge his principal abode. This portion of his life
was chiefly spent in the study of ethical and natural philosophy; and
his name began already to be respected among the men of science of the
day.
In 1652 he went to Ireland to look after his property, and spent the
greater part of the next two years there. Returning to England in 1654,
he settled at Oxford. That which especially directed him to this place,
besides its being generally suited to the prosecution of all his
literary and philosophical pursuits, was the presence of that knot of
learned men, from whom the Royal Society took its rise. It consisted of
a few only, but those eminent; Bishop Wilkins, Wallis, Ward, Wren, and
others, who used to meet for the purpose of conferring upon
philosophical subjects, and mutually communicating and reasoning on
their respective experiments and discoveries.
At the restoration, Boyle was treated with great respect by the King;
and was strongly pressed to enter the church by Lord Clarendon, who
thought that his high birth, eminent learning, and exemplary character
might be of material service to the revived establishment. After serious
consideration he declined the proposal, upon two accounts, as he told
Burnet; first, because he thought that while he performed no
ecclesiastical duties, and received no pay, his testimony in favour of
religion would carry more weight; secondly, because he felt no especial
vocation to take holy orders, which he considered indispensable to the
proper entering into that service.
From this time forwards, Boyle’s life is not much more than the history
of his works. It passed in an even current of tranquil happiness, and
diligent employment, little broken, except by illness, from which he was
a great sufferer. At an early age, he was attacked by the stone, and
continued through life subject to paroxysms of that dreadful disease:
and in 1670, he was afflicted with a severe paralytic complaint, from
which he fortunately recovered without sustaining any mental injury. On
the incorporation of the Royal Society in 1663, he was named as one of
the council, in the charter; and as he had been one of the original
members, so through his life he continued to publish his shorter
treatises in their Transactions. In 1662 he was appointed by the King,
Governor of the Corporation for propagating the Gospel in New England.
The diffusion of Christianity was a favourite subject of exertion with
him through life. For the sole purpose of exerting a more effectual
influence in introducing it into India, he became a Director of the East
India Company; and, at his own expense, caused the Gospels and Acts to
be translated into Malay, and five hundred copies to be printed and sent
abroad. He also caused a translation of the Bible into Irish to be made
and published, at an expense of £700; and bore great part of the expense
of a similar undertaking in the Welsh language. To other works of the
same sort he was a liberal contributor: and as in speech and writing he
was a zealous, yet temperate advocate of religion, so he showed his
sincerity by a ready extension of his ample funds to all objects which
tended to promote the religious welfare of his fellow-creatures.
In the year 1666 he took up his abode in London, where he continued
for the remainder of his life. We have little more to state of his
personal history. He was elected President of the Royal Society in
1680, but declined that well-earned honour, as having, in his own
words, “a great (and perhaps peculiar) tenderness in point of oaths.”
In the course of 1688 he began to feel his strength decline, and set
himself seriously to complete those of his undertakings which he
judged most important, and to arrange such of his papers as required
to be prepared for publication. It gives us rather a curious notion of
the scientific morality of the day, to learn that he had been a great
sufferer by the stealing of his papers. Such at least was his own
belief, hinted in a public advertisement, and expressed more fully in
his private communications. His manuscript books disappeared in an
incomprehensible way, insomuch that he resolved to write upon loose
sheets of paper, “that the ignorance of the coherence might keep men
from thinking them worth stealing.” Notwithstanding he complains of
numerous losses, and expresses a determination to secure the
“remaining part of his writings, especially those that contain most
matters of fact, by sending them maimed and unfinished, as they come
to hand, to the press.” A still more serious loss occurred to him
through the carelessness of a servant, who broke a bottle of vitriol
over a box of manuscripts prepared for publication, by which a large
part of them were utterly ruined. To these misfortunes, the
non-appearance of many promised works, and the imperfect state of
others, is to be ascribed. During the years 1689–90, he gradually
withdrew himself more and more from his other employments, and from
the claims of society, to devote himself entirely to the preparation
of his papers. He died, unmarried, December 31, 1691, aged sixty-five
years, and was buried in the chancel of St. Martin’s-in-the-fields.
To give merely the dates and titles of Boyle’s several publications,
would occupy several pages. They are collected in five volumes folio, by
Dr. Birch, and amount in number to ninety-seven. The philosophical works
have been abridged in three volumes quarto by Dr. Shaw, who has prefixed
to his edition a character of the author, and of his works. From 1660 to
the end of his life, every year brought fresh evidence of his close
application to science, and the versatility of his talents, and the
extent of his knowledge. His attention was directed to chemistry,
mathematics, mechanics, medicine, anatomy; but more especially to the
former, in its many branches: and though he is not altogether free from
the reproach of credulity, and appears not to have entirely freed
himself from the delusions of the alchymists, still he did more towards
overthrowing their mischievous doctrines, and establishing his favourite
science on a firm foundation, than any man; and his indefatigable
diligence in inquiry, and unquestioned honesty of relation, entitle him
to a very high place among the fathers of modern chemistry. On this
point we may quote the testimony of the celebrated Boerhaave,
(Chemistry, vol. i. p. 55,) who says, that among the writers who have
treated of Chemistry with a view to natural philosophy and medicine, we
may reckon among the chief, the Hon. Robert Boyle. Redi also, in his
‘Experimenta Naturalia,’ affirms that in experimental philosophy there
never was any man so distinguished, and that perhaps there never will be
his equal in discovering natural causes.
It is, however, as the father of pneumatic philosophy that his
scientific fame is most securely based. To the invention of the air-pump
he possesses no claim, an instrument of that sort having been exhibited
in 1654 by Otto Guericke of Magdeburg: but his improvements, and his
well-combined and ingenious experiments first made that instrument of
value, and proved the elasticity of the air. These were given to the
world in his first published, and perhaps his most important work,
entitled, ‘New Experiments upon the Spring of the Air.’
A considerable portion of Boyle’s works is occupied by religious
treatises. Two of these, ‘Seraphic Love,’ and a ‘Free Discourse against
Swearing,’ were written before he had reached the age of twenty; though
not published for many years after. He established by his will an annual
lecture, “in proof of the Christian religion against notorious
infidels.” Bentley was the first preacher on this foundation.
Boyle’s funeral sermon was preached by Bishop Burnet, who had been under
some obligation to him for assistance in publishing his History of the
Reformation. The sermon has been considered one of Burnet’s best; and it
has this advantage, that funeral panegyric has seldom been more
sincerely and honestly bestowed. We conclude by quoting one or two
passages, which illustrate the beauty of Boyle’s private character. “He
had brought his mind to such a freedom that he was not apt to be imposed
on; and his modesty was such that he did not dictate to others; but
proposed his own sense with a due and decent distrust, and was ever very
ready to hearken to what was suggested to him by others. When he
differed from any, he expressed himself in so humble and obliging a way
that he never treated things or persons with neglect, and I never heard
that he offended any one person in his whole life by any part of his
demeanour. For if at any time he saw cause to speak roundly to any, it
was never in passion, or with any reproachful or indecent expressions.
And as he was careful to give those who conversed with him no cause or
colour for displeasure, he was yet more careful of those who were
absent, never to speak ill of any, in which he was the exactest man I
ever knew. If the discourse turned to be hard on any, he was presently
silent; and if the subject was too long dwelt on, he would at last
interpose, and, between reproof and raillery, divert it.
“He was exactly civil, even to ceremony, and though he felt his easiness
of access, and the desires of many, all strangers in particular, to be
much with him, made great waste of his time; yet, as he was severe in
that, not to be denied when he was at home, so he said he knew the heart
of a stranger, and how much eased his own had been, while travelling, if
admitted to the conversation of those he desired to see; therefore he
thought his obligation to strangers was more than bare civility; it was
a piece of religious charity in him.
“He had, for almost forty years, laboured under such a feebleness of
body, and such lowness of strength and spirits, that it will appear a
surprising thing to imagine how it was possible for him to read, to
meditate, to try experiments, and write as he did. He bore all his
infirmities, and some sharp pains, with the decency and submission that
became a Christian and philosopher. He had about him all that unaffected
neglect of pomp in clothes, lodging, furniture, and equipage, which
agreed with his grave and serious course of life. He was advised to a
very ungrateful simplicity of diet, which, by all appearance, was that
which preserved him so long beyond all men’s expectation. This he
observed so strictly, that in the course of above thirty years he
neither ate nor drank to gratify the varieties of appetite, but merely
to support nature; and was so regular in it, that he never once
transgressed the rule, measure and kind that were prescribed him. * * *
“His knowledge was of so vast an extent, that were it not for the
variety of vouchers in their several sort, I should be afraid to say all
I know. He carried the study of Hebrew very far into the Rabbinical
writings and the other Oriental languages. He had read so much out of
the Fathers, that he had formed out of it a clear judgment of all the
eminent ones. He had read a vast deal on the Scriptures, and had gone
very nicely through the whole controversies on religion, and was a true
master of the whole body of divinity. He read the whole compass of the
mathematical sciences; and though he did not set himself to spring any
new game, yet he knew even the abstrusest parts of geometry. Geography,
in the several parts of it that related to navigation or travelling,
history, and books of travels, were his diversions. He went very nicely
through all the parts of physic; only the tenderness of his nature made
him less able to endure the exactness of anatomical dissections,
especially of living animals, though he knew them to be most
instructive. But for the history of nature, ancient or modern, of the
productions of all countries, of the virtues and improvements of plants,
of ores and minerals, and all the varieties that are in them in
different climates, he was by much, by very much, the readiest and
perfectest I ever knew, in the greatest compass, and with the truest
exactness. This put him in the way of making that vast variety of
experiments, beyond any man, as far as we know, that ever lived. And in
these, as he made a great progress in new discoveries, so he used so
nice a strictness, and delivered them with so scrupulous a truth, that
all who have examined them, may find how safely the world may depend
upon them. But his peculiar and favourite study was chemistry, in which
he engaged with none of those ravenous and ambitious designs that draw
many into them. His design was only to find out Nature, to see into what
principles things might be resolved, and of what they were compounded,
and to prepare good medicaments for the bodies of men. He spent neither
his time nor his fortune upon the vain pursuits of high promises and
pretensions. He always kept himself within the compass that his estate
might well bear. And as he made chemistry much the better for his
dealing with it, so he never made himself either the worse, or the
poorer for it.”
It would be easy to multiply testimonies of the high reputation in which
Boyle was held: indeed the reader will find numerous instances collected
in the article Boyle, in Dr. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica, the perusal
of which will amply gratify the reader’s curiosity. Still more detailed
accounts of Boyle’s life and character will be found in other works to
which we have already referred, especially in Dr. Birch’s Life.
[Illustration: Air-Pump.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
_From the original Picture by Vanderbank in the possession of the
Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
NEWTON
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas-day, 1642 (O. S.), at Woolsthorpe, a
hamlet in the parish of Colsterworth, in Lincolnshire. In that spot his
family had possessed a small estate for more than a hundred years; and
his father died there a few months after his marriage to Harriet
Ayscough, and before the birth of his son. The widow soon married again,
and removed to North Witham, the rectory of her second husband, Mr.
Smith, leaving her son, a weakly child who had not been expected to live
through the earliest infancy, under the charge of her mother.
Newton’s education was commenced at the parish school, and at the age of
twelve he was sent to Grantham for classical instruction. At first he
was idle, but soon rose to the head of the school. The peculiar bent of
his mind soon showed itself in his recreations. He was fond of drawing,
and sometimes wrote verses; but he chiefly amused himself with
mechanical contrivances. Among these was a model of a wind-mill, turned
either by the wind, or by a mouse enclosed in it, which he called the
miller; a mechanical carriage moved by the person who sat in it; and a
water-clock, which was long used in the family of Mr. Clarke, an
apothecary, with whom he boarded at Grantham. This was not his only
method of measuring time: the house at Woolsthorpe, whither he returned
at the age of fifteen, still contains dials made by him during his
residence there.
Mr. Smith died in 1656, and his widow then returned to Woolsthorpe with
her three children by her second marriage. She brought Newton himself
also thither, in the hope that he might be useful in the management of
the farm. This expectation was fortunately disappointed. When sent to
Grantham on business, he used to leave its execution to the servant who
accompanied him, and passed his time in reading, sometimes by the
way-side, sometimes at the house of Mr. Clark. His mother no longer
opposed the evident tendency of his disposition. He returned to school
at Grantham, and was removed thence in his eighteenth year to Trinity
College, Cambridge.
The 5th of June, 1660, was the day of his admission as a sizer into that
distinguished society. He applied himself eagerly to the study of
mathematics, and mastered its difficulties with an ease and rapidity
which he was afterwards inclined almost to regret, from an opinion that
a closer attention to its elementary parts would have improved the
elegance of his own methods of demonstration. In 1664 he became a
scholar of his college, and in 1667 was elected to a fellowship, which
he retained beyond the regular time of its expiration in 1675, by a
special dispensation authorizing him to hold it without taking orders.
It is necessary to return to an earlier date, to trace the series of
Newton’s discoveries. This is not the occasion for a minute enumeration
of them, or for any elaborate discussion of their value or explanation
of their principles; but their history and succession require some
notice. The earliest appear to have related to pure mathematics. The
study of Dr. Wallis’s works led him to investigate certain properties of
series, and this course of research soon conducted him to the celebrated
Binomial Theorem. The exact date of his invention of the method of
Fluxions is not known; but it was anterior to 1666, when the breaking
out of the plague obliged him for a time to quit Cambridge, and
consequently when he was only about twenty-three years old.
This change of residence interrupted his optical researches, in which he
had already laid the foundation of his great discoveries. He had
decomposed light into the coloured rays of which it is compounded, and
having thus ascertained the principal cause of the confusion of the
images formed by refraction, he had turned his attention to the
construction of telescopes which should act by reflection, and be free
from this evil. He had not, however, overcome the practical difficulties
of his undertaking, when his retreat from Cambridge for a time stopped
this train of experiment and invention.
On quitting Cambridge Newton retired to Woolsthorpe, where his mind was
principally employed upon the system of the world. The theory of
Copernicus and the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler had at length
furnished the materials from which the true system was to be deduced. It
was indeed all involved in Kepler’s celebrated laws. The equable
description of areas proved the existence of a central force; the
elliptical form of the planetary orbits, and the relation between their
magnitude and the time occupied in describing them, ascertained the law
of its variation. But no one had arisen to demonstrate these necessary
consequences, or even to conjecture the universal principle from which
they were derived. The existence of a central force had been surmised,
and the law of its action guessed at; but no proof had been given of
either, and little attention had been awakened by the conjecture.
Newton’s discovery appears to have been quite independent of any
speculations of his predecessors. The circumstances attending it are
well known: the very spot in which it first dawned upon him is
ascertained. He was sitting in the garden at Woolsthorpe, when the fall
of an apple called his attention to the force which caused its descent,
to the probable limits of its action and law of its operation. Its power
was not sensibly diminished at any distance at which experiments had
been made: might it not then extend to the moon and guide that luminary
in her orbit? It was certain that her motion was regulated in the same
manner as that of the planets round the sun: if, therefore, the law of
the sun’s action could be ascertained, that by which the earth acted
would also be found by analogy. Newton, therefore, proceeded to
ascertain by calculation from the known elements of the planetary
orbits, the law of the sun’s action. The great experiment remained: the
trial whether the moon’s motions showed the force acting upon her to
correspond with the theoretical amount of terrestrial gravity at her
distance. The result was disappointment. The trial was to be made by
ascertaining the exact space by which the earth’s action turned the moon
aside from her course in a given time. This depended on her actual
distance from the earth, which was only known by comparison with the
earth’s diameter. The received estimate of that quantity was very
erroneous; it proceeded on the supposition that a degree of latitude was
only sixty English miles, nearly a seventh part less than its actual
length. The calculation of the moon’s distance and of the space
described by her, gave results involved in the same proportion of error;
and thus the space actually described appeared to be a seventh part less
than that which corresponded to the theory. It was not Newton’s habit to
force the results of experiments into conformity with hypothesis. He
could not, indeed, abandon his leading idea, which rested, in the case
of the planetary motions, on something very nearly amounting to
demonstration. But it seemed that some modification was required before
it could be applied to the moon’s motion, and no satisfactory solution
of the difficulty occurred. The scheme therefore was incomplete, and, in
conformity with his constant habit of producing nothing till it was
fully matured, Newton kept it undivulged for many years.
On his return to Cambridge Newton again applied himself to the
construction of reflecting telescopes, and succeeded in effecting it in
1668. In the following year Dr. Barrow resigned in his favour the
Lucasian professorship of mathematics, which Newton continued to hold
till the year 1703, when Whiston, who had been his deputy from 1699,
succeeded him in the chair. On January 11, 1672, Newton was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. He was then best known by the invention of
the reflecting telescope; but immediately on his election he
communicated to the Society the particulars of his theory of light, on
which he had already delivered three courses of lectures at Cambridge,
and they were shortly afterwards published in the Philosophical
Transactions.
It is impossible here to state the various phenomena of light and
colours which were first detected and explained by Newton. They entirely
changed the science of optics, and every advance which has since been
made in it has only added to the importance and confirmed the value of
his observations. The success of the new theory was complete. Newton,
however, was much vexed and harassed by the discussions which it
occasioned. The annoyance which he thus experienced made him even think
of abandoning the pursuit of science, and although it failed to withdraw
him from the studies to which he was devoted, it confirmed him in his
unwillingness to publish their results.
The next few years of Newton’s life were not marked by any remarkable
events. They were passed almost entirely at Cambridge, in the
prosecution of the researches in which he was engaged. The most
important incident was the communication to Oldenburgh, and, through
him, to Leibnitz, that he possessed a method of determining maxima and
minima, of drawing tangents, and performing other difficult mathematical
operations. This was the method of fluxions, but he did not announce its
name or its processes. Leibnitz, in return, explained to him the
principles and processes of the Differential Calculus. This
correspondence took place in the years 1676 and 1677: but the method of
fluxions had been communicated to Barrow and Collins as early as 1669,
in a tract, first printed in 1711, under the title ‘Analysis per
equationes numero terminorum infinitas.’ Newton had indeed intended to
publish his discovery as an introduction to an edition of Kinckhuysen’s
Algebra, which he undertook to prepare in 1672; but the fear of
controversy prevented him, and the method of fluxions was not publicly
announced till the appearance of the Principia in 1687. The edition of
Kinckhuysen’s treatise did not appear; but the same year, 1672, was
marked by Newton’s editing the Geography of Varenius.
In 1679 Newton’s attention was again called to the theory of
gravitation, and by a fuller investigation of the conditions of
elliptical motion, he was confirmed in the opinion that the phenomena of
the planets were referable to an attractive force in the sun, of which
the intensity varied in the inverse proportion of the square of the
distance. The difficulty about the amount of the moon’s motion remained,
but it was shortly to be removed. In 1679 Picard effected a new
measurement of a degree of the earth’s surface, and Newton heard of the
result at a meeting of the Royal Society in June, 1682. He immediately
returned home to repeat his former calculation with these new data.
Every step of the process made it more probable that the discrepance
which had so long perplexed him would wholly disappear: and so great was
his excitement at the prospect of entire success that he was unable to
proceed with the calculation, and intrusted its completion to a friend.
The triumph was perfect, and he found the theory of his youth sufficient
to explain all the great phenomena of nature.
From this time Newton devoted unremitting attention to the development
of his system, and a period of nearly two years was entirely absorbed by
it. In 1684 the outline of the mighty work was finished; yet it is
likely that it would still have remained unknown, had not Halley, who
was himself on the track of some part of the discovery, gone to
Cambridge in August of that year to consult Newton about some
difficulties he had met with. Newton communicated to him a treatise De
Motu Corporum, which afterwards, with some additions, formed the first
two books of the Principia. Even then Halley found it difficult to
persuade him to communicate the treatise to the Royal Society, but he
finally did so in April, 1686, with a desire that it should not
immediately be published, as there were yet many things to complete.
Hooke, whose unwearied ingenuity had guessed at the true law of gravity,
immediately claimed to himself the honour of the discovery; how unjustly
it is needless to say, for the merit consisted not in the conjecture but
the demonstration. Newton was inclined in consequence to prevent the
publication of the work, or at least of the third part, De Mundi
Systemate, in which the mathematical conclusions of the former books
were applied to the system of the universe. Happily his reluctance was
overcome, and the whole work was published in May, 1687. Its doctrines
were too novel and surprising to meet with immediate assent; but the
illustrious author at once received the tribute of admiration for the
boldness which had formed, and the skill which had developed his theory,
and he lived to see it become the common philosophical creed of all
nations.
We next find Newton acting in a very different character. James II. had
insulted the University of Cambridge by a requisition to admit a
Benedictine monk to the degree of Master of Arts without taking the
oaths enjoined by the constitution of the University. The mandate was
disobeyed; and the Vice-Chancellor was summoned before the
Ecclesiastical Commission to answer for the contempt. Nine delegates, of
whom Newton was one, were appointed by the University to defend their
proceedings; and their exertions were successful. He was soon after
elected to the Convention Parliament as member for the University of
Cambridge. That parliament was dissolved in February, 1690, and Newton,
who was not a candidate for a seat in the one which succeeded it,
returned to Cambridge, where he continued to reside for some years,
notwithstanding the efforts of Locke, and some other distinguished
persons with whom he had become acquainted in London, to fix him
permanently in the metropolis.
During this time he continued to be occupied with philosophical
research, and with scientific and literary correspondence. Chemical
investigations appear to have engaged much of his time; but the
principal results of his studies were lost to the world by a fire in his
chambers about the year 1692. The consequences of this accident have
been very differently related. According to one version, a favourite
dog, called Diamond, caused the mischief, and the story has been often
told, that Newton was only provoked, by the loss of the labour of years,
to the exclamation, “Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the
mischief thou hast done.” Another, and probably a better authenticated
account, represents the disappointment as preying deeply on his spirits
for at least a month from the occurrence.
We have more means of tracing Newton’s other pursuits about this time.
History, chronology, and divinity were his favourite relaxations from
science, and his reputation stood high as a proficient in these studies.
In 1690 he communicated to Locke his ‘Historical account of two notable
corruptions of the Scriptures,’ which was first published long after his
death. About the same time he was engaged in those researches which were
afterwards embodied in his Observations on the Prophecies: and in
December, 1692, he was in correspondence with Bentley on the application
of his own system to the support of natural theology.
During the latter part of 1692 and the beginning of 1693 Newton’s health
was considerably impaired, and he laboured in the summer under some
epidemic disorder. It is not likely that the precise character or amount
of his indisposition will ever be discovered; but it seems, though the
opinion has been much controverted, that for a short time it affected
his understanding, and that in September, 1693, he was not in the full
possession of his mental faculties. The disease was soon removed, and
there is no reason to suppose that it ever recurred. But the course of
his life was changed; and from this time forward he devoted himself
chiefly to the completion of his former works, and abstained from any
new career of continued research.
His time indeed was less at his own disposal than it had been. In 1696,
Mr. Montague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, an early friend of
Newton, appointed him to the Wardenship of the Mint, and in 1699 he was
raised to the office of Master. He removed to London, and was much
occupied, especially during the new coinage in 1696 and 1697, with the
duties of his office. Still he found time to superintend the editions of
his earlier works, which successively appeared with very material
additions and improvements. The great work on Optics appeared for the
first time in a complete form in 1704, after the death of Hooke had
freed Newton from the fear of new controversies. It was accompanied by
some of his earlier mathematical treatises; and contained also, in
addition to the principal subject of the work, suggestions on a variety
of subjects of the highest philosophical interest, embodied in the shape
of queries. Among these is to be found the first suggestion of the
polarity of light; and we may mention at the same time, although they
occur in a different part of the work, the remarkable conjectures, since
verified, of the combustible nature of the diamond, and the existence of
an inflammable principle in water. The second edition of the Principia
appeared under the care of Cotes in 1713, after having been the subject
of correspondence between Newton and his editor for nearly four years.
Dr. Pemberton published a third edition in 1725, and he frequently
communicated about the work with Newton who was then eighty-two years
old.
These were the chief scientific employments of Newton’s latter life: and
it is not necessary to particularize all its minor details. In 1712 he
made some improvements in his Arithmetica Universalis, a work containing
his algebraical discoveries, of which Whiston had surreptitiously
published an edition in 1707. It is also worthy of remark that at the
beginning of the year 1697, John Bernouilli addressed two problems as a
challenge to the mathematicians of Europe, and that Leibnitz in 1716
made a similar appeal to the English analysts; and that Newton in each
case undertook and succeeded in the investigation.
This enumeration of Newton’s philosophical employments has far outrun
the order of time. After his return to London, compliments and honours
flowed in rapidly upon him. In 1699 he was elected one of the first
foreign associates of the Académie des Sciences at Paris; and in 1701 he
was a second time returned to Parliament by the University of Cambridge.
He did not, however, long retain his seat. At the election in 1705 he
was at the bottom of the poll, and he does not appear again to have been
a candidate. In 1703 he was chosen President of the Royal Society, and
held that office till his death. In 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne
upon her visit to Cambridge.
Newton’s life in London was one of much dignity and comfort. He was
courted by the distinguished of all ranks, and particularly by the
Princess of Wales, who derived much pleasure from her intercourse both
with him and Leibnitz. His domestic establishment was liberal, and was
superintended during great part of his time by his niece, Mrs. Barton, a
woman of much beauty and talent, who married Mr. Conduitt, his assistant
and successor at the Mint. Newton’s liberality was almost boundless, yet
he died rich.
The only material drawback to Newton’s enjoyment during this portion of
his life, seems to have arisen from controversies as to the history and
originality of his discoveries; a molestation to which his slowness to
publish them very naturally exposed him. There was a long and angry
dispute with Leibnitz about the priority of fluxions or the differential
calculus; and, after the fashion of most disputes, it diverged widely
from the original ground, and it became necessary for Newton to
vindicate the religious and metaphysical tendencies of his greatest
works. His success was complete on all points. Leibnitz does not appear
to have been acquainted with the method of fluxions at the time of his
own discovery, but there is now no doubt of Newton’s having preceded him
by some years; and the attacks made on the tendency of Newton’s
discoveries have long been remembered only as disgracing their author.
But such discussions had always been distasteful to Newton, and this
controversy, which was conducted with great rancour by his opponents and
some of his supporters, embittered his later years.
The same fate awaited him in another instance. His system of Chronology
had been long conceived, but he had not communicated it to any one until
he explained it to the Princess of Wales. At her desire, he afterwards,
in 1718, drew up a short abstract of it for her use, and sent it to her
on condition that no one else should see it. She afterwards requested
that the Abbé Conti might have a copy of it, and Newton complied, but
still on the terms that it should not be farther divulged. Conti,
however, showed the manuscript at Paris to Freret, who, without the
author’s permission, translated and published it with observations in
opposition to its doctrines. Newton drew up a reply which was printed in
the Philosophical Transactions for 1725, and this was the signal for a
new attack by Souciet. Newton was then roused to his last great
exertion, that of fully digesting his system; which as yet existed only
in confused papers, and preparing it for the press. He did not live to
complete his task, but the work was left in a state of great
forwardness, and was published in 1728 by Mr. Conduitt. Its value is
well known. As a refutation of the systems of chronology then received,
it is almost demonstrative; and the affirmative conclusions, if not
always minutely correct, or even generally satisfactory, are yet among
the most valuable contributions which science has made to history.
With the exception of the attack of 1693, Newton’s health had usually
been very good. But he suffered much from stone during the last few
years of his life. His mental faculties remained in general unaffected,
but his memory was much impaired. From the year 1725 he lived at
Kensington, but was still fond of going occasionally to London, and
visited it on February 28th, 1727, to preside at a meeting of the Royal
Society. The fatigue appears to have been too great: for the disease
attacked him violently on the 4th of March, and he lingered till the
20th, when he died. His sufferings were severe, but his temper was never
soured, nor the benevolence of his nature obscured. Indeed his moral was
not less admirable than his intellectual character, and it was guided
and supported by that religion, which he had studied not from
speculative curiosity, but with the serious application of a mind
habitually occupied with its duties, and earnestly desirous of its
advancement.
Newton died without a will, and his property descended to Mrs. Conduitt
and his other relations in the same degree. He was buried with great
pomp in Westminster Abbey, where there is a monument to his memory,
erected by his relations. His Chronology appeared, as has been already
mentioned, almost immediately after his death; and the Lectiones Opticæ,
the substance of his lectures at Cambridge in the years 1669, 1670, and
1671, were published from his manuscripts in 1729. In 1733, Mr. Benjamin
Smith, one of the descendants of his mother’s second marriage, published
the Observations on the Prophecies. These, in addition to the works
already mentioned, are Newton’s principal writings; there are, however,
several smaller tracts, some of which appeared during his lifetime, and
some after his death, which it is not necessary here to specify. They
would have conferred much honour on most philosophers;—they are hardly
remembered in reckoning up Newton’s titles to fame.
[Illustration: Roubiliac’s Statue from the Chapel of Trinity College.]
Many portraits of Newton are in existence. The Royal Society possesses
two; and Lord Egremont is the owner of one, which is engraved as the
frontispiece to Dr. Brewster’s Life of Newton. Trinity College,
Cambridge, abounds in memorials of its greatest ornament. Almost every
room dedicated to public purposes possesses a picture of him, and the
chapel is adorned by Roubiliac’s noble statue. The library also has a
bust by the same artist, of perhaps even superior excellence. As works
of art these are far superior to any of the paintings extant: but they
have not the claim to authenticity possessed by the contemporary
portraits. It is remarkable, that until the recent publication of Dr.
Brewster’s life, no one had thought it worth while to devote an entire
work to the history of so remarkable a man as Newton. There is, however,
an elaborate memoir of him, written by M. Biot, in the Biographie
Universelle, which has been republished in the Library of Useful
Knowledge.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTI.
_From a Picture by V. Campil, in the possession of the Right Hon. Lord
Dover._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
MICHAEL ANGELO
Michael Angelo Buonaroti was born at the castle of Caprese in Tuscany,
on March 6, 1474–5. He was descended from a noble, though not a wealthy
family; and his father endeavoured to check the fondness for drawing
which he showed at an early age, lest he should disgrace his parentage
by following what was then deemed little better than a mechanical
employment. Fortunately for the arts, the bent of the son’s genius was
too decided to be foiled by the parent’s pride; and in April, 1488,
young Buonaroti was placed under the tuition of Ghirlandaio, then the
most eminent painter in Italy.
He soon distinguished himself above his fellow pupils, and was fortunate
in attracting the notice of Lorenzo de Medici; but the early death of
his patron, and the troubles which ensued in Florence, clouded the
brilliant prospects which seemed open to him. He first visited Rome when
about twenty-two years old, at the invitation of Cardinal St. Giorgio;
and resided in that city for a year, without being employed to execute
anything for his pretended patron. He obtained three commissions,
however, from other quarters; one for a Cupid, a second for a statue of
Bacchus, a third for a Virgin and dead Christ, which forms the
altar-piece of a chapel in St. Peter’s. The latter work was the most
important, and established his character as one of the first sculptors
of the day.
Returning to Florence soon after the appointment of Sodarini to be
perpetual Gonfaloniere, or standard-bearer, an office equivalent to that
of president of the republic, he found ampler room for the development
of his talents in the favour of the chief magistrate; for whom he
executed the celebrated statue of David, in marble, placed in front of
the Palazzo Vecchio; and another statue of David, and a group of David
and Goliath, both in bronze. To this period we are also to refer an oil
picture of a Holy Family, painted for Angelo Doni, and now in the
Florence gallery; the only oil painting which can be authenticated as
proceeding from his hand.
The accounts of Michael Angelo’s early life relate so exclusively to his
skill and practice as a sculptor, that some wonder may be felt as to the
means by which he acquired the technical science and dexterity necessary
to the painter. But it was in composition, and as a draughtsman that he
excelled, not as a colourist; and the same intimate knowledge of the
human figure, and freedom and boldness of hand, which guided his chisel,
often, it is said, without a model, will account for the anatomical
excellence and energy of his drawings. Nevertheless it is surprising to
find him at this early age rivalling, and indeed by general suffrage
excelling in his own art Leonardo da Vinci, not only the first painter
of his generation, but one of the most accomplished persons of his age.
The work to which we allude, the celebrated Cartoon of Pisa, painted as
a companion to a battle-piece of Leonardo, has long disappeared; and is
generally supposed to have been destroyed clandestinely by Baccio
Bandinelli, a rival artist, of whose envious and cowardly temper some
amusing anecdotes are related in Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography. It
represented a party of Florentine soldiers, disturbed, while bathing in
the Arno, by a sudden call to arms. Only one copy of it is said to
exist, which is preserved in Mr. Coke’s collection at Holkham.
When Julius II. ascended the papal chair, he invited Michael Angelo to
Rome, and commissioned him to erect a splendid tomb. The original
design, a sketch of which may be seen in Bottari’s edition of Vasari,
was for an insulated building, thirty-four feet six inches by
twenty-three feet, ornamented with forty statues, many of colossal size,
and a vast number of bronze and marble columns, basso-relievos, and
every species of architectural decoration of the richest sort. This
commission, upon the due execution of which Michael Angelo set his
heart, as a worthy opportunity of immortalizing his name, was destined
to involve him in a long train of vexations. During the life of Julius,
the attention which he wished to concentrate on this one great work was
distracted by a variety of other employments forced on him by his
patron. Upon his death, it was resolved to finish it on a smaller scale:
but its progress was then more seriously interrupted by the eagerness of
successive Popes to employ the great artist on works which should
immortalize their own names as liberal patrons of the arts. Ultimately,
after much dissatisfaction and dispute on the part of Pope Julius’s
heirs, the form of the monument was altered; and as it now stands in the
church of St. Pietro in Vinculis, it consists only of a façade,
ornamented by seven statues, three of which are from the hand of Michael
Angelo, the others are by inferior artists. The central figure is the
celebrated Moses, by many considered the finest modern work of
sculpture; and this is the only part of the original composition.
During the same pontificate, Michael Angelo painted the ceiling of the
Sistine chapel. The employment was not to his taste; but it was forced
upon him by Pope Julius. He had never tried his powers in fresco
painting; and that branch of the art, as is well known, involves many
difficulties, which, though merely mechanical, it requires some practice
and experience to surmount. Having first completed the design in a
series of cartoons, he sent to Florence to engage the ablest assistants
to be found: but their labours were unsatisfactory, and dismissing them,
he set to work himself, and executed the whole vault with his own hands,
in the short space of twenty months.
Julius II. died in 1513. The next nine years, comprehending the
pontificate of Leo X., are an entire blank in Michael Angelo’s life, so
far as regards the practice of his art. He was employed the whole time,
by the Pope’s express order, in superintending some new marble quarries
in the mountains of Tuscany.
During the pontificate of Adrian VI. he resided at Florence, where
Giuliano de Medici, afterwards Clement VII., employed him to build a new
library and sacristy to the church of St. Lorenzo, and a sepulchral
chapel, to serve as a mausoleum for the ducal family. He was also
employed to execute two monuments in honour of Giuliano, the brother,
and Lorenzo de Medici, the nephew, of Leo X. The princes are represented
seated, in the Roman military habit, above two sarcophagi. Below are two
recumbent figures to each monument, one pair representing Morning and
Evening; the other, Day and Night. The reason for this singular choice
of personages is not explained.
We cannot enter upon the maze of Italian politics, which led to the
siege of Florence by the imperial troops in 1529–30. Michael Angelo’s
well-known and varied talent led to his being appointed chief engineer
and master of the ordnance to the city; in which capacity he gained new
honour by his skill, resolution, and patriotism. During this turbulent
time he began a picture of Leda, which was sent to France, and fell into
the possession of Francis I. It has long been lost; the original cartoon
is in the collection of the Royal Academy.
Michael Angelo’s second work in fresco, the Last Judgment, occupying the
east end of the Sistine chapel, seems to have been begun in 1533 or
1534. It was not finished till 1541. His last and only other works of
this kind were two large pictures in the Pauline chapel, representing
the Martyrdom of St. Peter, and the Conversion of St. Paul. These were
not completed till he had reached the advanced age of seventy-five.
In 1546 died Antonio da San Gallo, the third architect employed in the
rebuilding of St. Peter’s. The project of renewing the metropolitan
church of Rome was first suggested to the ambitious mind of Pope Julius
II. by the impossibility of finding any place in the then existing
cathedral, worthy of the splendid monument which he had ordered Michael
Angelo to execute. Bramante, Raphael, and San Gallo, were successively
appointed to conduct the mighty undertaking, and removed by death. San
Gallo had deviated materially from the design of Bramante. Michael
Angelo disapproved of his alterations; but was deterred from returning
to the original plan by its vast extent, and the necessity of
contracting the extent of the work so as to meet the impoverished state
of the Papal treasury, produced by the spreading of the Reformation in
Germany and England. He accordingly gave in the design from which the
present building was erected, which, gigantic as it is, falls short of
the dimensions of that which Julius proposed to raise. Having now
reached the advanced age of seventy-one, it was with reluctance that he
undertook so heavy a charge. It was, indeed, only by the absolute
command of the Pope that he was induced to do so; and on the unusual
condition that he should receive no salary, as he accepted the office
purely from devotional feelings. He also made it a condition that he
should be absolutely empowered to discharge any persons employed in the
works, and to supply their places at his pleasure.
To the independent and upright feelings which led him to insist on this
latter clause, the factious opposition, which harassed the remainder of
his life, is partly to be ascribed. Disinterested himself, he suffered
no peculation under his administration; and he was repaid by the hatred
of a powerful party connected with those whose vanity his appointment
wounded, or whose interests his honesty crossed. Repeated attempts were
made to procure his removal, to which he would willingly have yielded,
but for a due sense of the greatness of the work which he had
undertaken, and reluctance to quit it, until too far advanced to be
altered and spoiled by some inferior hand. This praiseworthy solicitude
was not disappointed. During the life of Paul, and through four
succeeding pontificates, he held the situation of chief architect; and
before his death, in February, 1563–4, the cupola was raised, and the
principal features of the building unalterably determined.
His earlier architectural works are to be seen at Florence. They consist
of the façade and sacristy of the church of St. Lorenzo, left unfinished
by Brunelleschi, the mausoleum of the Medici family, and the Laurentian
library. During the latter part of his life he amused his leisure hours
by working on a group representing a dead Christ, supported by the
Virgin and Nicodemus, which he intended for an altar-piece to the chapel
in which he should himself be interred. It was never finished, however,
and is now in the cathedral of Florence. But, from the time of his
assuming the charge of St. Peter’s, his attention was almost entirely
devoted to architecture. His chief works were the completion of the
Farnese palace, begun by San Gallo; the palace of the Senator of Rome,
the picture galleries, and flight of steps leading up to the convent of
Araceli, all situated on the Capitoline hill; and the conversion of the
baths of Diocletian into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.
Michael Angelo, though he painted few pictures himself, frequently gave
designs to be executed by his favourite pupils, especially Sebastiano
del Piombo. Such was the origin of the magnificent Raising of Lazarus,
in the National Gallery. Like many artists of that age, he aspired to be
a poet. His works consist chiefly of sonnets, modelled on the style of
Petrarch. Religion and Love are the prevailing subjects.
The Life of Michael Angelo, by Mr. Duppa, will gratify the curiosity of
the English reader, who wishes to pursue the subject beyond this mere
list of the artist’s principal works. To the Italian reader we may
recommend the lives of Condivi and Vasari, as containing the original
information from which subsequent writers have drawn their accounts. To
do justice to the versatile, yet profound genius of this great man, is a
task which we must leave to such writers as Reynolds and Fuseli, in
whose lectures the reader will find ample evidence of the profound
admiration with which they regarded him. Nor can we conclude better than
with the short but energetic character given by the latter, of his
favourite artist’s style of genius, and of his principal works:—
“Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are
the elements of Michael Angelo’s style. By these principles he selected
or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as
architect, he attempted, and above any other man, succeeded, to unite
magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the
utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand: character
and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient
to grandeur. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most
perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is
the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine
chapel which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final
dispensations of theocracy. He has personified motion in the groups of
the Cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of S. Lorenzo;
unravelled the features of meditation in the Prophets and Sibyls of the
Sistine chapel; and in the Last Judgment, with every attitude that
varies the human body, traced the master-trait of every passion that
sways the human heart. Though, as sculptor, he expressed the character
of flesh more perfectly than all who came before or went after him, yet
he never submitted to copy an individual, Julius II. only excepted; and
in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In
painting he has contented himself with a negative colour, and as the
painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of
St. Peter’s, scattered into infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and
his successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most
complex gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for
all in all, was M. Angelo, the salt of art: sometimes he no doubt had
his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the
grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy: both met
with armies of copyists; and it has been his fate to be censured for
their folly.”—(Lecture II.)
[Illustration:
JACKSON
From the Monument of Giuliano de Medici.
]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._
MOLIERE.
_From the original Picture of Lebrun’s School, in the collection of
the Musée Royale. Paris._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
MOLIERE
Moliere, the contemporary of Corneille and Racine, whose original and
real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin, was born at Paris on the 15th
January, 1622. His father and mother were both in trade; and they
brought up their son to their own occupation. At the age of fourteen,
young Poquelin could neither read, write, nor cast accounts. But the
grandfather was very fond of him; and being himself a great lover of
plays, often took his favourite to the theatre. The natural genius of
the boy was, by this initiation, kindled into a decided taste for
dramatic entertainments: a disgust to trade was the consequence, and a
desire of that mental cultivation from which he had hitherto been
debarred. His father consented at length to his becoming a pupil of the
Jesuits at the College of Clermont. He remained there five years, and
was fortunate enough to be the class-fellow of Armand de Bourbon, Prince
de Conti, whose friendship and protection proved of signal service to
him in after-life. He studied under the celebrated Gassendi, who was so
impressed by the apparent aptitude of young Poquelin to receive
instruction, that he admitted him to the private lectures given to his
other pupils. Gassendi was in the habit of breaking a lance with two
great rivals: Aristotle, at the head of ancient, and Descartes, then at
the head of modern philosophy. By witnessing this combat, Poquelin
acquired a habit of independent reasoning, sound principles, extensive
knowledge, and that feeling of practical good sense, which was so
conspicuous not only in his most laboured, but even in his lightest
productions.
His studies under Gassendi were abruptly terminated by the following
circumstance. His father was attached to the court in the double
capacity of valet-de-chambre and tapestry-maker; and the son had the
reversion of these places. When Louis XIII. went to Narbonne in 1641,
the old man was ill, and the young one was obliged to officiate for him.
On his return to Paris, his passion for the stage, which had first led
him into the paths of literature, revived with renewed strength. The
taste of Cardinal de Richelieu for theatrical performances was
communicated to the nation at large, and a peculiar protection was
granted to dramatic poets. Many little societies were formed for acting
plays in private houses, for the amusement at least of the performers.
Poquelin collected a company of young stage-stricken heroes, who so far
exceeded all their rivals, as to earn for their establishment the
pompous title of The Illustrious Theatre. He now determined to make the
stage his profession, and changing his name, according to the usage in
such cases, adopted that of Moliere.
He disappears during the time of the civil wars, from 1648 to 1652; but
we may suppose the interval to have been passed in composing some of
those pieces which were afterwards brought before the public. When the
disturbances ceased, Moliere, in partnership with an actress of
Champagne, named La Béjard, formed a strolling company; and his first
regular piece, called L’Etourdi, or the Blunderer, was performed at
Lyons in 1653. Another company of comedians settled in that town was
deserted by the spectators in favour of these clever vagabonds; and the
principal performers of the regular establishment took the hint,
pocketed their dignity, and joined Moliere. The united company
transferred itself to Languedoc, and were retained in the service of the
Prince of Conti. During the Carnival of 1658, the troop, having resumed
their vagrant life, were playing at Grenoble. The following summer was
passed at Rouen. When so near Paris, Moliere made occasional journeys
thither, with the earnest hope of bettering his fortune in the
metropolis, where the market for talent is always brisk and open, the
competition, though severe, fair and encouraging. Once more he received
protection from his august fellow-collegian, who introduced him to
Monsieur, and ultimately to the King himself. The company appeared
before their Majesties and the court for the first time, on the 3d of
November, 1658, on a stage erected in the Hall of the Guards in the Old
Louvre. Their success was so complete that the King gave orders for
their permanent settlement in Paris, and they were allowed to act
alternately with the Italian players in the Hall of the Petit Bourbon.
In 1663 a pension of a thousand livres was granted to Moliere, and in
1665 his company was taken altogether into the King’s service.
As in the course of about fifteen years he produced more than double
that number of dramatic pieces, instead of giving, within our narrow
limits, a mere dry catalogue of titles, we shall make some more detailed
remarks on a few of those masterpieces, in different styles, which not
only raised the character of French comedy to a great height in France
itself, but in a great measure furnished the staple to some of our own
most distinguished writers.
Among many persons of taste and judgment, the Misantrope has borne the
character of being the most finished of all Moliere’s pieces; of
combining the most powerful efforts of united genius and art. The
subject is single, and the unities are exactly observed. The principal
person of the drama is strongly conceived, and brought out with the
boldest strokes of the master’s pencil: it is throughout uniform, and in
strict keeping. The subordinate persons are equally well drawn, and
fitted for their business in the scene, so as to throw an artist-like
light upon the chief figure. The scenes and incidents are so contrived
and conducted as to diversify the main character, and set it in various
points of view. The sentiments are strong and nervous as well as proper;
and the good sense with which the piece is fraught, proves that the
bustle and dissipation of the court and the theatre had not obliterated
the lessons of the college, or the lectures of Gassendi. The title of
the play will at once bring to the mind of an Englishman our own Timon
of Athens; but there are scarcely any other points of resemblance. The
ancient and the modern Man-hater had little in common: the Athenian was
the victim of personal ill-treatment; having suffered by excess of
good-nature and credulity, he runs into the other extreme of suspicion
and revenge. Moliere’s Man-hater owes his character to the severity of
virtue, which can give no quarter to the vices of mankind; to that
sincerity which disdains indiscriminate complaisance, and the
prostitution of the language of friendship to the flattery of fools and
knaves. Wycherley, in his Plain Dealer, has given the French Misantrope
an English dress. Manly is a character of humour, speaking and acting
from a peculiar bias of temper and inclination; but the coarseness of
the _plain dealing_ is not to be tolerated, and what Manly _does_ goes
near to counteract the moral effect of what he _says_.
By way of contrasting the various talents of the author, than whom none
better understood human nature in its various ramifications, or copied
more skilfully every shade and gradation of manners, we may just mention
the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, exhibiting the folly and affectation of a cit
turned man of fashion. If the moral of the Misantrope be pure, the wit
of the Bourgeois is terse and diverting.
In several of his comedies he has treated medicine and its professors
not only with freedom but severity; it was, however, perverted medicine
only, and its quack professors that were the subjects of his ridicule.
The respectable members of the faculty could be no more affected by the
satire, nor displeased by what they could not fear, than a true prophet
by the punishment of imposture. Those who are acquainted with the
history of the science will recollect the state of it at Paris in
Moliere’s time, and the character of the physicians. Their whole
employment was confined to searching after visionary specifics, and
experimental trickery in chemistry. The cause of a disease was never
inquired after, nor the symptoms regarded; but hypothetical jargon and
random prescription were thrown like dust into the eyes of the patient,
to the exclusion of a practice founded on science and observation. Thus
medicine became a pest instead of a remedy; and this state of things
justified the chastisement inflicted.
Les Précieuses Ridicules is a comedy intended to reprove a vain,
fantastical, and preposterous humour prevailing very much about that
time in France. It had the desired effect, and conduced materially
towards rooting out a taste in manners so unreasonable and ridiculous.
Tartuffe, or The Impostor, has occasionally, and even recently,
sometimes to the disturbance of the public peace in France, given great
offence not only to those who felt the justice, and winced under the
severity of the satire; but to others, who suspected that a blow was
aimed at religion, under the mask of an attack upon hypocrisy. But its
intrinsic merit, the truth of the drawing, and the justness of the
colouring, have secured patrons for it among persons of unquestionable
sense, virtue, learning, and taste; and it has always triumphed over the
violence of opposition. Cibber, a vamper of other men’s plays, has
borrowed from it his favourite Nonjuror, and applied it to the purposes
of a political party. On this adaptation has been grafted a more modern
attack on the Methodists, under the title of The Hypocrite. But however
great may be the merit of this celebrated drama, it cannot boast of
entire originality. Machiavelli left behind him three comedies, the
fruits of a statesman’s leisure hours. In all three, the author has
exhibited the hand of a master; he has painted mankind in the spirit of
truth, and unmasked falsehood and hypocrisy in a tone of profound
contempt. Two monks, a brother Timothy and a brother Alberico, are
represented with too much wit and keenness of sarcasm to have been
overlooked by Moliere in his working up of the third specimen. The first
three acts of the Tartuffe were played for the first time at court
before the piece was finished. Masques of pomp, magnificence and
panegyric, such as usually furnish out the amusement of royal saloons,
are forgotten as soon as they have served the purpose of the moment: but
masterpieces like that now in question perpetuate their own renown, and
leave a lasting memorial of what is supposed to be a phenomenon, a
princely taste for genuine wit.
Les Fâcheux was the first piece in which dancing was so connected with
the dramatic action, as to fill up the intervals without breaking the
thread of the story.
Le Mariage Forcé was borrowed from Rabelais, to whom both Moliere and La
Fontaine were deeply indebted. The Aristotelian and Pyrrhonian
philosophy, as travestied by modern doctors, furnishes occasion for
lively satire and clever buffoonery. The horror with which Pancrace
calls down the vengeance of heaven on him who should dare to say the
_form_ of a hat, instead of the _figure_ of a hat, is a pleasant parody
on the unintelligible absurdities of the schools. According to
Marphurius, philosophy commands us to suspend our judgment, and to speak
of every thing with uncertainty; not to say _I am come_, but, _I think
that I am come_.
La Princesse d’Elide, though not one of Moliere’s happiest efforts,
deserves notice on account of its contributing to the festivities of the
court, by an adaptation of ingenious allegories to the manners and
events of the time. This satire was aimed at the illusion of Judicial
Astrology, after which many princes of the period were running mad; and
in particular Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, father of the Duchess of
Burgundy, who kept an astrologer about his person even after his
abdication. The dramatic antiquary may find some amusement in comparing
the fêtes of the French court with the masques of Ben Jonson, Davenant,
and others, exhibited before our James I. and Charles I.; but here the
interest ends. It is sufficient to remark, that the masques of the
English court owed their power of pleasing to the ingenuity of the
machinist and the flattery of the poet. The little dramas performed
before the royal family of France tickled the ears of the audience by
the pungency of their wit and ridicule.
The Miser has been pretty closely translated, for the version is little
more, by Henry Fielding; but not so happily as he himself seems to have
imagined.
The subject of that excellent comedy, Les Femmes Savantes, in which the
ridicule is kept within reasonable bounds, and female faults and virtues
are painted with a proper gradation of colouring, where what the
painters call a _medium tint_ harmonizes the extremes of light and
shade, was taken up by Goldoni with that coarse and abrupt pencilling of
black and white, which has always been the vice of the Italian stage. It
has indeed been advanced as a reproach to Moliere, that he too often
charged his comic pictures with the extravagance of caricature: but if
we compare even the most farcical of his scenes with the speaking
pantomimes and half-improvisations of Italy, we must pronounce him a
model of delicacy and classical propriety.
His last comedy was Le Malade Imaginaire. It was acted for the fourth
time on the 17th February, 1673. The principal character represented is
that of a sick man, who, to carry on a purpose of the plot, pretends to
be dead. This part was played by Moliere himself. The popular story was,
that when he was to discover that it was only a feint, he could neither
speak nor get up, being actually dead. The wits and epigrammatists made
the most of the occurrence; those who could not write good French,
treated it with bad Latin. But unluckily for the stability of their
conceits, they were not built on the foundation of truth. Though very
ill, and obviously in much pain, he was able to finish the play. He went
home, and was put to bed: his cough increased violently; a vessel burst
in his lungs, and he was suffocated with blood in about half an hour
after. He was only in his fifty-second year when this event took place.
The King was extremely affected at this sudden loss, by which, as
Johnson said of Garrick, the gaiety of nations was eclipsed; and as a
strong mark of his regard, he prevailed with the archbishop of Paris to
allow of his being interred in consecrated ground. Nothing short of so
absolute a King’s interposition could have effected this; for,
independently of the general sentence of excommunication then in force
against scenic performers, Moliere had drawn upon himself the resentment
of the ecclesiastics in particular, by exposing the hypocrites of their
cloth, as well as the bigots among the laity. Those who ridicule folly
and knavery in all orders of men must expect to be treated as Moliere
was, and to have the foolish and knavish of all orders for enemies.
During his life, Paris and the court were stirred up and inflamed
against the dramatist; and on more than one occasion, he must have
fallen a sacrifice to the indignation of the clergy, had he not been
protected by the King. The friend of his life did not desert him when he
was dead; but procured for his insensible remains that decent respect,
which all nations have consented to pay, as a tribute even to
themselves.
Voltaire characterizes Moliere as the best comic poet of any nation; and
treats the posthumous hostility which made a difficulty about his burial
as a reproach both to France and to the Catholic religion. Professing to
have reperused the comedians of antiquity for the purpose of comparison,
he gives it as his judgment, that the French dramatist is entitled to
the preference. He grounds this decision on the art and regularity of
the modern theatre, contrasted with the unconnected scenes of the
ancients, their weak intrigues, and the strange practice of declaring by
the mouths of the actors, in cold and unnatural monologues, what they
had done and what they intended to do. He concludes by saying that
Moliere did for comedy what Corneille had done for tragedy; and that the
French were superior on this ground to all the people upon earth. A
country possessing such a comic drama as ours, throughout the course of
about two centuries, with Much ado about Nothing at one end of the list,
and The School for Scandal at the other, will be inclined to demur to
this broad national assumption: but we, in our turn, must in candour
confess, that though the chronological precedence of Shakspeare, Jonson,
Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford, had established a glorious stage for us
before Moliere was born, or while he was yet in petticoats; yet our most
eminent comic writers in the reigns of William III., Anne, and George
I., drank deep and often from the abundant source of French comedy. But
Moliere’s influence was most beneficially exerted in reclaiming his
countrymen from a fondness for such Italian conceits as ringing the
changes upon _odours_ and _ardours_, &c., to which authors like Scudery,
Voiture, and Balzac had given an ephemeral fashion. Boileau and Moliere
principally contributed to arm the French against the invasion from
beyond the Alps, of such madrigal-writers as Marini, Achillini, and
Préti.
It is not true that Moliere, when he commenced his career, found the
theatre absolutely destitute of good comedies. Corneille had already
produced Le Menteur, a piece combining character with intrigue, imported
from the Spanish stage. Moliere had produced only two of his most
esteemed plays, when the public was gratified with La Mère Coquette of
Quinault, than which few pieces were more happy either in point of
character or intrigue. But if Corneille be the first legitimate model
for tragedy, Moliere was so for comedy. The general shaping of his
plots, the connexion of his scenes, his dramatic consistency and
propriety were attempted to be copied by succeeding writers: but who
could compete with him in wit and spirit? His well-directed attacks did
more than any thing to rescue the public from the impertinence of
subaltern courtiers affecting airs of importance; from the affectation
of conceited, and the pedantry of learned, ladies; from the quackery of
professional costume and barbarous Latin on the part of the medical
tribe. Moliere was the legislator of conventional proprieties. That
period might well be called the Augustan age of France, which saw the
tragedies of Corneille and Racine; the comedies of Moliere; the birth of
modern music in the symphonies of Lulli; the pulpit eloquence of Bossuet
and Bourdaloüe. Louis XIV. was the hearer and the patron of all these;
and his taste was duly appreciated and adopted by the accomplished
Madame, by a Condé, a Turenne, and a Colbert, followed by a long train
of eminent men in every department of the state and of society.
Little has come down to us respecting Moliere’s personal history or
habits, excepting that his marriage was not among the happy or
creditable events of his life. So little did he in his own case weigh
the evils of disproportioned age, however sarcastically he might imagine
them in fictitious scenes, that he took for his partner the daughter of
La Béjard, the associate of his strolling career. If his choice were a
fault, it carried its punishment along with it. He was very jealous, and
the young lady was an accomplished coquette. The bickerings of married
life were the frequent and successful topics of his comedies; and his
enemies asserted, that in drawing such scenes, he possessed the
advantage of painting from the life. Of that ridicule which had so often
set the theatre in a roar, he was himself the serious subject, the
repentant and writhing victim.
Fuller accounts of Moliere are to be found prefixed to the best editions
of his works: we may mention those of Joly, Petitot, and Auger. An
article of considerable length, by the last-named author, is devoted to
our poet in the Biographie Universelle.
[Illustration: Scene from Les Précieuses Ridicules.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by I. W. Cook._
CHARLES JAMES FOX.
_From a Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the possession of Lord
Holland._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
FOX
The Right Honourable Charles James Fox was third son of the Right
Honourable Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, and of Lady Georgina
Caroline Fox, eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond. He
was born January 24th, 1749, N. S.
Mr. Fox received his education at Eton; and the favourite studies of the
place had more than ordinary influence over his tastes and literary
pursuits in after-life. Before he left school, his father was so
imprudent as to carry him to Paris and Spa. To his early associations at
the latter place may be ascribed that propensity to gaming, which was
the bane of two-thirds of his life. As the present article is not
designed to be a mere panegyric, we abandon the indulgence of this fatal
passion to the severest censure that can be bestowed upon it by the
philosopher and the moralist: but justice demands it at our hands to
say, that after the adjustment of Mr. Fox’s affairs by his friends,
personal and political, he resolutely conquered what habit had almost
raised into second nature, and abstained from play with scrupulous
fidelity. It may further be remarked, that while the paroxysms of the
fever were most violent, his mind was never interrupted from more worthy
objects of pursuit.
The following anecdote will show the divided empire which discordant
passions alternately usurped over his heart. On a night when he had
sustained some serious losses, his deportment assumed so much of the
character of despair, that his friends became uneasy: they followed him
at distance enough to elude his observation, from the clubhouse to his
home in the neighbourhood. They knocked at his door in time, as they
thought, to have prevented any rash act, and rushed into the library.
There they found the object of their anxiety stretched on the ground
without his coat, before the fire: his hand neither grasping a razor nor
a pistol, but his eyes intently fixed on the pages of Herodotus. The old
historian had engrossed him wholly from the moment when he took up the
volume, and the ruins of his own air-built castles vanished from before
him, as soon as he got sight of the venerable remains of the ancient
world.
At Oxford Mr. Fox distinguished himself by his powers of application, as
well as by the intuitive quickness of his parts. On quitting the
university, he accompanied his father and mother to the south of Europe.
Not finding a good Italian master at Naples, he taught himself that
language during the winter, and contracted a strong partiality for
Italian literature. In a letter from Florence to Mr. Fitz-Patrick, he
conjures that gentleman to learn Italian as fast as he can, if it were
only to read Ariosto; and adds, “There is more good poetry in Italian
than in all other languages I understand put together.” At a later
period of life, if we may judge from the tenor of his correspondence
with eminent scholars, he would have transferred that praise from the
Italian to the Greek tongue. At this time he was very fond of acting
plays, and was in all respects the man of fashion. Those who recollect
the simplicity, bordering on negligence, of his outward garb late in
life, will smile at the idea of Mr. Fox with a powdered toupee and red
heels to his shoes, the hero of private theatricals. During his absence,
in 1768, he was chosen to represent Midhurst, and made his first speech
on the 15th April, 1769. According to Horace Walpole, he spoke with
violence, but with infinite superiority of parts.
Circumscribed as we are as to space, we shall not follow Mr. Fox’s
subaltern career in the House of Commons. It was his breach with Lord
North that raised him into a party leader. He had previously formed an
intimate acquaintance with Mr. Burke. He began by receiving the lessons
of that eminent person as a pupil; but the master was soon so convinced
of his scholar’s greatness of character, and statesman-like turn of
mind, that he resigned the lead to him, and became an efficient
coadjutor in the Rockingham party, of which, in the House of Commons, he
had almost been the dictator. The American war roused all the energies
of Mr. Fox’s mind. The discussions to which it gave rise involved all
the first principles of free government. The vicissitudes of the contest
tried the firmness of the parliamentary opposition. Its duration
exercised their perseverance. Its magnitude and the dangers of the
country called forth their powers. Gibbon says, “Mr. Fox discovered
powers for regular debate, which neither his friends hoped nor his
enemies dreaded.” The following passage, from a letter to Mr.
Fitz-Patrick, written in 1778, illustrates his honourable and
independent character: “People flatter me that I continue to gain rather
than lose estimation as an orator; and I am so convinced this is all I
ever shall gain (unless I choose to be one of the meanest of men), that
I never think of any other object of ambition. I am certainly ambitious
by nature, but I have, or think I have, totally subdued that passion. I
have still as much vanity as ever, which is a happier passion by far,
because great reputation, I think, I may acquire and keep; great
situations I never can acquire, nor, if acquired, keep, without making
sacrifices that I will never make.” In the summer of 1778, he rejected
Lord Weymouth’s overtures to join the ministry, and took his station as
the leading commoner in the Rockingham party, to which he had become
attached on principle long before he enlisted permanently in its ranks.
The conspicuous features of that party, and of Mr. Fox’s public
character, were the love of peace with foreign powers, the spirit of
conciliation in home management, an ardent attachment to civil and
religious liberty.
The day of triumph came at last, when a resolution against the further
prosecution of the American war was carried in the Commons. The King was
compelled, reluctantly, to part with the supporters of his favourite
principles, and had nothing left but to sow the seeds of disunion
between the Rockingham and Chatham or Shelburne party, united on the
subject of America, but disagreeing on many other points both of
external and internal policy. In this he was but too successful. We have
neither space nor inclination to unravel the web of court intrigue; but
we may remark that Lord Rockingham’s demands were too extensive to be
palatable: they involved the independence of America, the pacification
of Ireland, bills for economical and parliamentary reform, to be brought
into Parliament as ministerial measures. But the untimely death of Lord
Rockingham frustrated his enlightened and enlarged designs, by
dissolving the ministry over which he had presided. Mr. Fox has been
blamed for the precipitancy of his resignation. The tone of sentiment in
a letter before quoted will both account and apologise for the rashness
if it were such; and it is obvious that the sacrifice of personal
feeling, or even of political consistency, could not long have deferred
it, amidst the cabals and clashing interests of party. Mr. Fox’s policy
was to detach Holland and America from France, and to form a continental
balance against the House of Bourbon. Lord Shelburne’s system was to
conciliate France, and to treat her allies as dependent powers. Lord
Shelburne had the ear of the King. He strengthened himself with some of
the old supporters of the American war, to fill the vacant offices, and
made Mr. Pitt, just rising into eminence, his Chancellor of the
Exchequer. There were now three parties in the Commons; the ministerial,
the Whig or Rockingham, and the third consisting of those members of the
late war ministry who had not been invited to join the present. A
coalition of some two of these three parties was almost unavoidable: the
public would have most approved of a reunion among the Whigs; but there
had been too much of mutual recrimination and dispute to admit of
reconciliation. Nothing, therefore, remained but a junction of the two
parties in opposition. A judicious friend of Mr. Fox said, “that to
undertake the government with Lord North, was to risk their credit on
very unsafe grounds. Unless a real good government is the consequence of
this junction, nothing can justify it to the public.” Popular feeling
was strongly against this coalition, mainly on account of some personal
acrimony vented by Mr. Fox, in the boiling over of his wrath during the
American contest, which seemed to bear upon the moral character of his
opponent. It is to be considered, however, that the most amiable
persons, if enthusiastic, are apt in the heat of passion to launch out
into invective far more violent than their natural benevolence would
justify in their cooler moments. The question on which Mr. Fox and Lord
North had been so acrimoniously opposed, had ceased to exist: and
perhaps there existed no solid reason against the union of the two
parties. But the measure was almost universally believed to arise from
corrupt motives: it afforded a fine scope for satire and caricature; and
these have no small influence upon the politics of the multitude. And
while the people were displeased, the King was decidedly unfriendly to
the administration which had forced itself upon him. He considered the
Rockingham party as enemies to his prerogative, as well as friends to
American independence. He was forced to take them in, but resolved to
throw them out again. The unpopular India bill, which Mr. Pitt
afterwards adopted with some modifications, furnished the opportunity.
The offence taken by the people against the coalition, made them lend a
ready ear to the charge of ministerial oligarchy: the King disguised his
sentiments till the last moment, procured the rejection of the bill in
the Lords, and instantly dismissed his ministers.
The coalition was still in possession of the House of Commons; but the
voice of the people supported the minister, a dissolution was resorted
to, and the will of the King was accomplished.
From 1784 to 1792, Mr. Fox was leader of a powerful party in the House
of Commons, in opposition to Mr. Pitt. The Westminster Scrutiny, the
Regency, the abatement of Impeachments by a dissolution of Parliament,
the Libel Bill, the Russian Armament, and the Repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts, were the topics which called forth his most powerful
exertions. His force as a professed orator was conspicuously displayed
in Westminster Hall, on the trial of Warren Hastings; but the triumph of
his talents is to be found in those masterly replies to his antagonists,
in which cutting sarcasm and close argument, logical acuteness and
metaphysical subtlety were so combined, as to surpass all that modern
experience had witnessed. The constitutional doctrines of Mr. Fox on the
Regency question were much canvassed, and, by many, severely censured.
The fact was, that the case was new; provided for neither by law,
precedent, nor analogy. Lord Loughborough first suggested the Prince’s
claim of right; and it was hastily adopted by Mr. Fox, who had returned
from Italy just as the discussion was pending. Mr. Fox’s Libel Bill
places him among the most constitutional of our legislators. He saved
his country from an unnecessary, unjust, and expensive war, by his
exertions on occasion of the Russian Armament.
The controversy on the Test and Corporation Acts has lost its interest,
from having since been satisfactorily set at rest. But as, in a sketch
like the present, we have more to do with the character of Mr. Fox’s
mind than with his political history, we will here introduce an anecdote
which the writer of this life heard related many years ago, by Dr.
Abraham Rees, well known both in the scientific world, and as a leading
divine in the dissenting interest. We have already spoken of the
intuitive quickness of Mr. Fox’s parts; and the following anecdote will
set that peculiarity in a strong light.
On the day of the debate, Dr. Rees waited on Mr. Fox with a deputation,
to engage his support in their cause. He received them courteously; but,
though a friend to religious liberty, was evidently unacquainted with
the strong points and principal bearings of their peculiar case. He
listened attentively to their exposition, and, with an eye that looked
them _through and through_, put four or five searching questions. They
withdrew after a short conference, and as they walked up St. James’s
Street, Mr. Fox passed them booted, as going to take air and exercise,
to enable him to encounter the heat of the House and the storm of
debate. From the gallery they saw him enter the House with whip in hand,
as just dismounted. When he rose to speak, he displayed such mastery of
his subject, his arguments and illustrations were so various, his views
so profound and statesman-like, that a stranger must have imagined the
question at issue between the high church party and the dissenters to
have been the main subject of his study throughout life. That his
principles of civil and religious liberty should have enabled him to
declaim in splendid generalities was to be expected; but he entered as
fully and deeply into the fundamental principles and most subtle
distinctions of the question, as did those to whom it was of vital
importance, and that after a short conference of some twenty minutes.
The French revolution is a topic of such magnitude, that we can only
touch upon Mr. Fox’s opinions and conduct with respect to it. After the
taking of the Bastille, he describes it as “the greatest, and much the
best event that ever happened in the world: all my prepossessions
against French connections for this country will be at an end, and
indeed most part of my European system of politics will be altered, if
this revolution has the consequence that I expect.” But it had not that
consequence; and his views were completely changed by the trial and
execution of the King and Queen of France. But because he did not catch
that contagious disease, made up of alarm and desperate violence, which
involved his country in a disastrous war, he was represented as the
blind apologist of injustice and massacre, as the careless, if not
jacobinical spectator of the downfall of monarchy. Mr. Burke was the
first to quarrel with Mr. Fox, and this quarrel led to the temporary
estrangement from him of many of his oldest and most valuable friends.
But “time and the hour” restored the good understanding between the
members of the party, with the exception of Mr. Burke, who died while
the paroxysm of Antigallican mania was at its height.
Mr. Fox opposed to the utmost the war, into which the minister was
unwillingly forced. But as his passions became heated, and the
difficulties of his situation increased, Mr. Pitt adopted all Mr.
Burke’s views, and the rash project of a _bellum internecinum_. Both the
public principles and the personal character of Mr. Fox were the subject
of daily calumnies; and the warmth of his early testimony in favour of
the French revolution was continually thrown in his teeth, after the
10th of August, the massacres of September, and the success of
Dumourier. But his whole conduct during this struggle was clear and
consistent. At the dawn of the revolution, he felt and spoke as a
citizen of the world; but he was the last man alive to have merged
patriotism in the vague generalities of universal benevolence. When his
own country became implicated in the strife, he no longer felt and spoke
as a citizen of the world, but as a British statesman; and endeavoured
to persuade his countrymen, not for French interests but for their own,
to stand aloof from continental politics, relying, for the maintenance
of a proud independence and dignified neutrality, on their insular
situation and their wooden walls. His advice was not listened to, and
his mind grew indisposed towards public business. He says in a letter,
dated April, 1795, “I am perfectly happy in the country. I have quite
resources enough to employ my mind, and the great resource of literature
I am fonder of every day.” After making a vigorous, but unsuccessful
opposition to the Treason and Sedition bills, he and his remaining
friends seceded from parliament. He passed the years from 1797 to 1802,
principally in retirement at St. Ann’s Hill; and they were the happiest
of his life. His mornings passed in gardening and farming, his evenings
over books and in conversation with his family and friends. During this
period, his attention was much given to the Greek Tragedies and to
Homer, whom he read not only with the ardent mind of a poet, but with
the microscopic eye of a critic. His correspondence with an eminent
scholar of the time was full of sagacious remarks on the suggestions and
explanations of the commentators, as well as on the text of the poem. At
this time also he conceived the plan of that history of which he left
only a splendid fragment in a state fit for publication. He had been
diligent in collecting materials, and scrupulous in verifying them. His
partiality for the Greek classics followed him into this pursuit, and
probably retarded his progress. He is considered to have taken for his
model Thucydides, a writer strictly impartial in his narrative, grave
even to severity in his style. He went to Paris with Mrs. Fox in the
summer of 1802, partly to satisfy their mutual curiosity after so long
an estrangement from the Continent, but principally for the purpose of
examining the copious materials for the reign of James II. deposited in
the Scotch college there. Every thing was thrown open to him in the most
liberal manner, and, as the unflinching friend of peace through good and
evil report, he was received with enthusiasm both by the people and the
government. He had several interviews with Buonaparte: the chief topics
of their conversation were the concordat, the trial by jury, the
freedom, amounting in the opinion of the First Consul to licentiousness,
of the English press, the difference between Asiatic and European
society. On one occasion he indignantly repelled the charge against Mr.
Windham, of being accessory to the plot of the _infernal machine_,
alleging the utter impossibility of an English gentleman descending to
so disgraceful a device. During his stay in France, he visited La
Fayette at his country seat of La Grange.
Our limits will not allow us to enter, ever so cursorily, into his
political career after the renewal of the war. His advice was wise, and
consistent with himself; but it was not accepted. The King’s dislike of
him was not to be overcome. The death of Mr. Pitt, however, made the
admission of Mr. Fox and the Whigs, in conjunction with Lord Grenville,
a matter of necessity. Mr. Fox’s desire of peace induced him to take the
office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and, before his fatal
illness, he had begun a negotiation for that main object of his whole
life, with every apparent prospect of success. The hopes entertained
from his accession to power were prematurely cut off; but his short
career in office was honourably marked by the ministerial measure,
determined on during his life, and carried after his decease, of the
abolition of the Slave Trade.
The complaint of which he died was dropsy, occasioned probably by the
duties of office, and the fatigue of constant attendance in the House of
Commons, after the comparative seclusion and learned ease in which he
had lived for several years. He expired on the 13th of September, 1806,
with his senses perfect and his understanding unclouded to the last.
We conclude this brief account of Mr. Fox with the character drawn of
him by one who knew him well, and was fully qualified to appreciate
him,—Sir James Macintosh.
“Mr. Fox united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant
characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In
private life he was gentle, modest, placable, kind, of simple manners,
and so averse from dogmatism, as to be not only unostentatious, but even
something inactive in conversation. His superiority was never felt but
in the instruction which he imparted, or in the attention which his
generous preference usually directed to the more obscure members of the
company. The simplicity of his manners was far from excluding that
perfect urbanity and amenity which flowed still more from the mildness
of his nature, than from familiar intercourse with the most polished
society of Europe. The pleasantry perhaps of no man of wit had so
unlaboured an appearance. It seemed rather to escape from his mind, than
to be produced by it. He had lived on the most intimate terms with all
his contemporaries distinguished by wit, politeness, or philosophy; by
learning, or the talents of public life. In the course of thirty years
he had known almost every man in Europe, whose intercourse could
strengthen, or enrich, or polish the mind. His own literature was
various and elegant. In classical erudition, which by the custom of
England is more peculiarly called learning, he was inferior to few
professed scholars. Like all men of genius, he delighted to take refuge
in poetry, from the vulgarity and irritation of business. His own verses
were easy and pleasant, and might have claimed no low place among those
which the French call _vers de société_. The poetical character of his
mind was displayed by his extraordinary partiality for the poetry of the
two most poetical nations, or at least languages of the west, those of
the Greeks and of the Italians. He disliked political conversation, and
never willingly took any part in it.
“To speak of him justly as an orator, would require a long essay. Every
where natural, he carried into public something of that simple and
negligent exterior which belonged to him in private. When he began to
speak, a common observer might have thought him awkward; and even a
consummate judge could only have been struck with the exquisite justness
of his ideas, and the transparent simplicity of his manners. But no
sooner had he spoken for some time, than he was changed into another
being. He forgot himself and every thing around him. He thought only of
his subject. His genius warmed and kindled as he went on. He darted fire
into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence
swept along their feelings and conviction. He certainly possessed above
all moderns that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence, which
formed the prince of orators. He was the most Demosthenean speaker since
the days of Demosthenes. ‘I knew him,’ says Mr. Burke, in a pamphlet
written after their unhappy difference, ‘when he was nineteen; since
which time he has risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and
accomplished debater the world ever saw.’
“The quiet dignity of a mind roused only by great objects, the absence
of petty bustle, the contempt of show, the abhorrence of intrigue, the
plainness and downrightness, and the thorough good nature which
distinguished Mr. Fox, seem to render him no unfit representative of the
old English character, which if it ever changed, we should be sanguine
indeed to expect to see it succeeded by a better. The simplicity of his
character inspired confidence, the ardour of his eloquence roused
enthusiasm, and the gentleness of his manners invited friendship. ‘I
admired,’ says Mr. Gibbon, after describing a day passed with him at
Lausanne, ‘the powers of a superior man, as they are blended, in his
attractive character, with all the softness and simplicity of a child:
no human being was ever more free from any taint of malignity, vanity,
or falsehood.’
“The measures which he supported or opposed may divide the opinion of
posterity, as they have divided those of the present age. But he will
most certainly command the unanimous reverence of future generations, by
his pure sentiments towards the commonwealth; by his zeal for the civil
and religious rights of all men; by his liberal principles, favourable
to mild government, to the unfettered exercise of the human faculties,
and the progressive civilization of mankind; by his ardent love for a
country, of which the well-being and greatness were, indeed, inseparable
from his own glory; and by his profound reverence for that free
constitution which he was universally admitted to understand better than
any other man of his age, both in an exactly legal and in a
comprehensively philosophical sense.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
BOSSUET.
_From the original Picture by H. Rigaud, in the Collection of the
Institute of France._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
BOSSUET
The life of the Bishop of Meaux, a theologian and polemic familiarly
known to his countrymen as the oracle of their church, forms an
important part of the ecclesiastical history of the seventeenth century.
A short personal memoir of such a man can serve only to excite
curiosity, and in some measure to direct more extended inquiries.
Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, whose father and ancestors were honourably
distinguished in the profession of the law, was born at Dijon, September
27, 1627. He was placed in his childhood at the college of the Jesuits
in his native town; whence, at the age of fifteen, he was removed to the
college of Navarre in Paris. At both these places his progress as a
student was so rapid that he passed for a prodigy. It may be mentioned,
not more as a proof of precocious intellect than as characteristic of
the times, that soon after his removal to Paris, whither the fame of his
genius had preceded him, he was invited to exhibit his powers as a
preacher at the Hotel de Rambouillet in his sixteenth year. His
performance was received with great approbation.
In the year 1652 he was ordained priest, and, his talents having already
made him known, he soon after received preferment in the cathedral
church of Metz, of which he became successively canon, archdeacon, and
dean. It was here that he published his Refutation of the Catechism of
Paul Ferri, a protestant divine of high reputation. This was the first
of that series of controversial writings which contributed, more than
all his other works, to procure for him the high authority which he
enjoyed in the church. He came forward in the field of controversy at a
time when public attention was fixed on the subject, and when the
favourite object both with Church and State was the peaceable conversion
of the Protestants.
Richelieu in the preceding reign had crushed, by the vigour of his
administration, the political power of the Protestant party. He, in
common with many other statesmen, Catholic and Protestant, had conceived
a notion that uniformity of religious profession was necessary to the
tranquillity of the state. But, though unchecked in the prosecution of
his objects by any scruples of conscience or feelings of humanity, he
would have considered the employment of force, where persuasion could be
effectual, to be, in the language of a modern politician, not a crime
but a blunder. When therefore the army had done its work, he put in
action a scheme for reclaiming the Protestants by every species of
politic contrivance. The system commenced by him was continued by
others; and of all those who laboured in the cause, Bossuet was
indubitably the most able and the most distinguished.
His first effort, the Refutation of the Catechism, recommended him to
the notice of the Queen-Mother; and the favour which he now enjoyed at
court was further increased by the fame of his eloquence in the pulpit,
which he had frequent opportunities of displaying at Paris, whither he
was called from time to time by ecclesiastical business. He was summoned
to preach at the chapel of the Louvre before Louis XIV., who was pleased
to express, in a letter to Bossuet’s father, the great delight which he
received from the sermons of his son; for the versatile taste of the
great monarch enabled him in one hour to recreate himself with the wit
and beauty of his mistresses, and in the next to listen with
undiminished pleasure to the exhortations of a Christian pastor. But
Bossuet had still stronger claims on the gratitude of Louis by
converting to the Roman Catholic faith the celebrated Turenne. This
victory is said to have been achieved by his well-known Exposition,
written in the year 1668, and published in 1671.
So great was his influence at this time, that he was requested by the
Archbishop of Paris to interfere in one of those many disputes which the
Papal decrees against the tenets of Jansenius occasioned. The nuns of
Port-Royal, who were attached to the doctrine and discipline of the
Jansenists, were required to subscribe the celebrated Formulary, which
selected for condemnation five propositions said to be contained in a
certain huge work of Jansenius. Those excellent women modestly
submitted, that they were ready to accept any doctrine propounded by the
Church, and even to affix their names to the condemnation of the
obnoxious propositions; but that they could not assert that these
propositions were to be found in a book which they had never seen. In
this difficulty the assistance of Bossuet was requested, who, after
several conferences, wrote a long letter to the refractory nuns, highly
commended for its acute logic and sound divinity. Much of the logic and
divinity was probably thrown away upon the persons for whose use they
were intended; but there was one part of the letter sufficiently
intelligible. He congratulated them on their total exemption from all
obligation to examine, and from the task of self-guidance; and assured
them that it was their bounden duty, as well as their happy privilege,
to subscribe and assent to every thing which was placed before them by
authority. The nuns were not convinced. They escaped however for the
present; but in the end they paid dearly for their passive resistance to
the decision of Pope Alexander VII. on a matter of fact.
In the year 1669, Bossuet was promoted to the bishopric of Condom, which
he resigned the following year on being appointed to the important
office of Preceptor to the Dauphin.
History has told us nothing of the pupil, but that his capacity was
mean, and his disposition sordid. To him, however, the world is indebted
for the most celebrated of Bossuet’s performances. The Introduction to
Universal History was written expressly for his use; and this masterly
work may serve to confirm an opinion, entertained even by his friends,
that Bossuet was not peculiarly qualified for his situation. To compose
such a work for such a boy was worse than a waste of power.
Though devoted closely and conscientiously to the duties of his new
office, he was not altogether withdrawn from what might be called his
vocation, the prosecution of controversy. It was during the period of
his connexion with the Court, that his celebrated conference occurred
with the Protestant Claude. Mlle. de Duras, a niece of Turenne, had
conceived scruples respecting the soundness of her Protestant
principles, from the perusal of Bossuet’s ‘Exposition.’ She consulted M.
Claude, who promised to resolve her doubts in the presence of Bossuet
himself. The challenge was accepted, and the memorable conference was
the result. Both parties published an account of it; and their
statements, as might be expected without suspicion of dishonesty on
either side, did not entirely agree. The lady was content to follow the
example of her uncle.
Bossuet’s engagement with the Dauphin was concluded in the year 1681,
when he was rewarded with the bishopric of Meaux. In so short a memoir
of such a man, where only the most prominent occurrences of his life can
be noticed, there is danger lest the reader should regard him only in
the character of a controversialist, or in the proud station of
acknowledged leader of the Church. It is the more necessary, therefore,
in this place to observe, that, to the comparatively obscure but really
important duties of his diocese, he brought the same zeal and energy
which he displayed on a more conspicuous theatre; and that he could
readily exchange the pen of the polemic for that of the devout and
affectionate pastor.
Louis, however, was not disposed to leave the Bishop undisturbed in his
retirement. He was soon called forth to be the advocate of his temporal
against his spiritual master.
The Kings of France had long exercised certain powers in ecclesiastical
matters, which had rather been tolerated than sanctioned by the Popes.
Louis was determined not only to preserve, but considerably to extend,
what his predecessors had enjoyed. Hence a sharp altercation was carried
on for many years between him and the See of Rome. But, in 1682, in
consequence of a threatening brief issued by that haughty pontiff,
Innocent XII., he summoned, by the advice of his clergy, for the purpose
of settling the matters in debate, a general Assembly of the Church. Of
this famous Assembly Bossuet was deservedly regarded as the most
influential member. He opened the proceedings with a sermon, having
reference to the subjects which were to come under consideration. In
this discourse the reader may find, perhaps, some marks of that
embarrassment which he is supposed to have felt. He had the deepest
sense of the unbounded power and awful majesty of kings in general, and
the highest personal veneration for Louis in particular; but then, on
the other hand, the degree of allegiance which he owed to his spiritual
head it was almost impiety to define. So, after having illustrated, with
all the force of his eloquence, the inviolable dignity of the Church,
and fully established the supremacy of St. Peter, he carries up, as it
were in a parallel line, the loftiest panegyric on the monarchy and
monarchs of France.
The discourse was celebrated for its ability, and without doubt the
conflicting topics were managed with great skill. His difficulties did
not cease with the dismissal of the Assembly. The question of the
Régale, or the right of the King to the revenues of every vacant see,
and to collate to the simple benefices within its jurisdiction, was
settled not at all to the satisfaction of the Pope; and the declaration
of the Assembly, drawn up by Bossuet himself, was fiercely attacked by
the Transalpine divines. It was, of course, as vigorously defended by
its author, who was in consequence accused by all his enemies, and some
of his friends, of having forgotten his duty to the Pope in his
subserviency to the King.
Nothing wearied by his exertions in the royal cause, he had scarcely
left the Assembly, when he resumed his labours in defence of the Church
against heresy. Several smaller works, put forth from time to time,
seemed to be only a preparation for his great effort in the year 1688,
when he published his ‘History of the Variations in the Protestant
Churches.’ In this book he has made the most of what may be called the
staple argument of the Catholics against the Protestants.
The course of the narrative has now brought us beyond the period of the
memorable revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and it will naturally be
asked, in what light Bossuet regarded this act of folly and oppression.
Neither his disposition nor his judgment would lead him to approve the
atrocities perpetrated by the government; but, in a letter to the
Intendant of Languedoc, he labours to justify the use of pains and
penalties in enforcing religious conformity; that is, he justifies the
act of Louis XIV. In this matter he was not advanced beyond his times;
but, whatever may have been his theory of the lawfulness of persecution,
his conduct towards the Protestants was such as to obtain for him the
praise even of his opponents.
Hitherto we have seen Bossuet labouring incessantly to reconcile the
Huguenots of France to the established religion. But, about this time,
he took part in a more grand and comprehensive measure, sanctioned by
the Emperor, and some other sovereign princes of Germany, for the
reunion of the great body of the Lutherans throughout Europe with the
Roman Catholic Church. They engaged the Bishop of Neustadt to open a
communication with Molanus, a Protestant doctor of high reputation in
Hanover. With these negotiators were afterwards joined Leibnitz on the
part of the Protestants, and Bossuet on that of the Roman Catholics.
Between these two great men the correspondence was carried on for ten
years, in a spirit worthy of themselves and the cause in which they were
engaged; and it terminated, as probably they both expected that it would
terminate, in leaving the two Churches in the same state of separation
in which it found them.
It would have been well for the fame of Bossuet if the course of his
latter days had been marked only by this defeat,—if it had not been
signalized, when grey hairs had increased the veneration which his
genius and services had procured him, by an inglorious victory over a
weak woman, and a friend. The history of Madame Guyon, and the revival
of mysticism under the name of Quietism, principally by her means, will
more properly be found in a Life of Fenelon. The part which Bossuet took
in the proceedings respecting her must be here very briefly noticed. As
universal referee in matters of religion, he was called upon to examine
her doctrines, which began to excite the jealousy of the Church. His
conduct towards her, in the first instance, was mild and forbearing; but
either zeal or anger betrayed him at length into a cruel persecution of
this amiable visionary. Fenelon, who had partly adopted her views of
Christian perfection, and thoroughly admired her Christian character,
was required by Bossuet to surrender to him at once his opinions and his
feelings. Fenelon was willing to do much, but would not consent to
sacrifice his integrity to the offended pride of the irritated prelate.
He defended his opinions in print, and the points in debate were, by his
desire, referred to the Pope; and to him they should in common decency
have been left: but we are disgusted with a detail of miserable
intrigues, carried on in the council appointed by the Pope to examine
the matter, and of vehement remonstrances with which his holiness
himself was assailed, with the avowed object of extorting a reluctant
condemnation. The warmest friends of Bossuet do not attempt to defend
him on the plea that these things were done without his concurrence;
they insist only on his disinterested zeal for religion. But let it be
remembered, that this interference with Papal deliberation proceeded
from one who believed the Vicar of Christ to be solemnly deciding, with
the aid of the Holy Spirit, a point of faith for the benefit of the
whole Catholic Church. Bossuet triumphed; and from that moment sunk
perceptibly in the general esteem of his countrymen.
During the few remaining years of his life he maintained his wonted
activity, and in his last illness we find with pleasure that the Bible
was his companion, and that he could employ his intervals of repose from
severe suffering in composing a commentary on the 23d psalm. He died
April 12, 1704, in his 76th year.
The authority which Bossuet acquired was such, that he may be said not
only to have guided the Gallican Church during his life, but in some
measure to have left upon it the permanent impression of his own
character. Of this authority no adequate notion can be formed from the
preceding sketch. Few even of his works, which fill twenty volumes
quarto, have been noticed. It should, however, be mentioned that he was
employed by Louis XIV. in an attempt to overcome the religious scruples
of James II., whose conscience revolted from that exercise of the
prerogative in favour of the Protestant Church, which his restoration to
the throne would have required. The laboured and somewhat extraordinary
letter which Bossuet wrote on this occasion is dated May 22, 1693.
His countrymen claim for Bossuet an exalted place among historians,
orators, and theologians. The honours bestowed by them on his
‘Introduction to Universal History’ have been continued by more
impartial judges; and, even when unsupported by reference to the age in
which it was written, it stands forth on its own merits as a noble
effort of a comprehensive and penetrating mind. His Funeral Orations
come to us recommended by the judgment of Voltaire, who ascribes to
Bossuet alone, of all his contemporaries, the praise of real eloquence.
The English reader will often be rewarded by passages, which in
oratorical power have seldom been surpassed, and which may induce him to
forgive much that is cold, inflated, and unnatural. But the Orations
must be considered also as Christian discourses delivered by a minister
of the Gospel from a Christian pulpit. They were composed, for the most
part, to grace the obsequies of royal persons, and are, in fact,
dedicated to the honour and glory of kings and princes. A text from
Scripture is the peg on which is hung every thing which can minister to
human pride, and dignify the vanities of a court; and the effect is but
slightly impaired by well-turned phrases, proper to the occasion, on the
nothingness of earthly things. But the orator is not content with
general declamation, with prostrating himself before his magnificent
visions of ancient pedigrees;—he descends to the meanest personal
flattery of the living and the dead. When the Duchess of Orleans was
laid in her coffin, her friends might hope that her frailties would be
buried with her; but they could hardly expect that a Christian monitor
should hold her forth as an exquisite specimen of female excellence, the
glory of France, whom Heaven itself had rescued from her enemies to
present as a precious and inestimable gift to the French nation. But on
this occasion Bossuet was not yet perfect in his art, or the subject was
not sufficiently disgraceful to draw forth all his powers. When
afterwards called to speak over the dead body of the Queen, whose heart
had withered under the wrongs which a licentious husband, amidst
external respect, had heaped upon her, he finds it a fitting opportunity
to pronounce at the same time a panegyric on the King. He recounts the
victories won by the French arms, and ascribes them all to the prowess
of his hero. But Louis is not only the taker of cities, he is the
conqueror of himself; and the royal sensualist is praised for the
government of his passions, the despot for his clemency and justice, and
the grasping conqueror for his moderation.
The controversial writings of Bossuet deserve more regard than either
his History or his Orations, if the importance of a book is to be
measured by the extent and permanency of its effects. The Exposition of
the Doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the shortest, but
perhaps the most notable, of his theological works, was published under
circumstances which gave occasion to a story of mysterious suppression
and alteration. But a more serious charge has been brought against the
author, of having deliberately misrepresented the doctrines of his
Church, in order to entrap the Protestants. So grave an accusation ought
not to be lightly entertained; and though suspicion is excited by
symptoms of disingenuous management in the controversy, to which the
publication gave birth; and though it appears to be demonstrable that
the Roman Catholic religion, as commonly professed, and that many of its
doctrines, as expressed or implied in some of its authorised
formularies, differ essentially from the picture which Bossuet has
drawn, yet it should at least be remembered that the book itself was
eventually, though tardily, sanctioned by the highest authority in the
Church. It is possible that Bossuet may by his Exposition have converted
many beside Turenne; but there can be no doubt that he has wrought an
extensive, though a less obvious, change within the bosom of his own
Church. The high authority of his name would give currency to his
opinions on any subject connected with religion; and many sincere Roman
Catholics, who had felt the objections urged against certain practices
and dogmas of their own Church, would rejoice to find, on the authority
of Bossuet, that they were not obliged to own them.
The charge of insincerity has been extended beyond the particular
instance to the general character of the Bishop; and it has been
asserted that he held, in secret, opinions inconsistent with those which
he publicly professed. This charge, which is destitute of all proof,
seems to have been the joint invention of over-zealous Protestants and
pretended philosophers.
Enough has been shown to justify us in supposing that he was not one of
those rare characters which can break loose from all the obstacles that
oppose themselves to the simple love and uncompromising search of truth.
Some men, like his illustrious countryman Du Pin, struggle to be free.
It should seem that Bossuet, if circumstances fettered him, would not be
conscious of his thraldom; that he would exert all the energies of his
powerful mind, not to escape from his prison, but to render it a tenable
fortress, or a commodious dwelling. It would be foolish and unjust to
infer from this that he would persevere through life in deliberately
maintaining what he had discovered to be false, on the most momentous of
all subjects.
A complete catalogue of his works may be found at the end of the Life of
Bossuet in the Biographie Universelle. The Life itself, which is
obviously written by a partial friend, contains much information in a
small compass. The affair of Quietism, and the contest between Bossuet
and Fenelon, are minutely detailed with great accuracy in the Life of
Fenelon by the Cardinal de Bausset, whose impartiality seems to have
been secured by the profound veneration which he entertained for each of
the combatants, though the impression left on the reader’s mind is not
favourable to the character of Bossuet.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: LORENZO DE MEDICI.]
LORENZO DE MEDICI.
Among the genealogists who wasted their ingenuity to fabricate an
imposing pedigree for Lorenzo de Medici, some pretended to derive his
origin from the paladins of Charlemagne, and others to trace it to the
eleventh century. But it is well ascertained that his ancestors only
emerged from the inferior orders of the people of Florence in the course
of the fourteenth century, when, by engaging in great commercial
speculations, and by signalizing themselves as partisans of the populace
of that republic, they speedily acquired considerable wealth and
political importance.
Giovanni di Bicci, his great grandfather, may be regarded as the first
illustrious personage of the family, and as the author of that crafty
system of policy, mainly founded on affability and liberality, by which
his posterity sprung rapidly to overwhelming greatness. By an assiduous
application to trade he made vast additions to his paternal inheritance;
by flattering the passions of the lowest classes he obtained the highest
dignities in the state. He died in 1428, deeply regretted by his party,
and leaving two sons, Cosmo and Lorenzo, from the latter of whom
descended the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
Cosmo was nearly forty when he succeeded to the riches and popularity of
his father; and he had not only conducted for several years a commercial
establishment which held counting-houses in all the principal cities of
Europe and in the Levant, but had also participated in the weightier
concerns of government. The form of the Florentine constitution was then
democratical: the nobility had been long excluded from the
administration of the republic; and the citizens, though divided into
twenty-one guilds, or corporations of arts and trades, from seven of
which alone the magistracy were chosen, had, however, an equal share in
the nomination of the magistrates, who were changed every two months.
The lower corporations, owing principally to the manœuvres of Salvestro
de Medici, had risen in 1378 against the higher, demanding a still more
complete equality, and had taken the direction of the commonwealth into
their own hands; but after having raised a carder of wool to the supreme
power, and involved themselves in the evils of anarchy, convinced at
last of their own incapacity, they had again submitted to the wiser
guidance of that kind of burgher-aristocracy which they had subverted;
and that party, headed by the Albizzi and some other families of
distinction, had, ever since 1382, governed the state with unexampled
happiness and glory. The republic had been aggrandized by the important
acquisition of Leghorn, Pisa, Arezzo, and other Tuscan cities; its
agriculture was in the most prosperous condition; its commerce had
received a prodigious developement; its decided superiority in the
cultivation of literature, the sciences, and the arts, had placed it
foremost in the career of European civilization; and its generous but
wise external policy had constituted it as the guardian of the liberties
of Italy.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
LORENZO DE MEDICI.
_From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen, after a Picture by G. Vasari._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
To this beneficent administration the aspiring Cosmo had long offered a
troublesome opposition; and he now succeeded in ensnaring it into a
ruinous war with Lucca, by which he obtained the double object of
destroying its popularity, and of employing considerable sums of money
with unusual profit. But the reverses of the republic were attributed to
a treasonable correspondence between him and the enemy, and in 1433 he
was seized and condemned to ten years’ banishment, having averted
capital punishment by a timely bribe. The absence of a citizen who spent
more than a great king in acts of piety, benevolence, and liberality,
was, however, severely felt in the small city of Florence, and the
intelligence of the honours he received everywhere in his exile raised
him still more in public estimation. The number of his friends
increased, indeed, so rapidly, that at the September elections in the
following year they completely defeated the ruling party, and chose a
set of magistrates by whom he was immediately recalled. This event,
erroneously considered as a victory of the people over an aristocracy,
was, properly speaking, a triumph of the populace over the more educated
classes of the community, and it proved fatal to the republic. Placed by
fame, wealth, and talent, at an immeasurable elevation above the obscure
materials of his faction, from the moment of his return to that of his
death, August, 1464, Cosmo exercised such an influence in the state,
that, though he seldom filled any ostensible office, he governed it with
absolute authority by means of persons wholly subservient to his will.
But, under the pretence of maintaining peace and tranquillity, he
superseded its free institutions by a junto invested with dictatorial
power; he caused an alarming number of the most respectable citizens to
be banished, ruined by confiscation, or even put to death, on the
slightest suspicion that by their wealth or connexions they might oppose
his schemes of ambition; and he laboured with indefatigable zeal to
enslave his own confiding countrymen, not only by spreading secret
corruption at home, but also by changing the foreign policy of his
predecessors, and helping his great friend, Francesco Sforza, and other
usurpers, to crush the liberties of neighbouring states.
Cosmo is nevertheless entitled to the grateful recollections of
posterity for the efficient patronage he afforded learning and the arts,
though he evidently carried it to excess as a means of promoting his
political designs. He was profuse of favours and pensions to all who
cultivated literature or philosophy with success; he bought at enormous
prices whatever manuscripts or masterpieces of art his agents could
collect in Europe or Asia; he ornamented Florence and its environs with
splendid palaces, churches, convents, and public libraries. He died in
the seventy-fifth year of his age, just after a decree of the senate had
honoured him with the title of Father of his country, which was
subsequently inscribed on his tomb.
Lorenzo de Medici, the subject of the present memoir, was born at
Florence on the 1st of January, 1448. His father was Piero, the son and
successor of Cosmo: his mother, Lucretia Tornabuoni, a lady of some
repute, both as a patroness of learning and as a poetess. He had
scarcely left the nursery when he acquired the first rudiments of
knowledge under the care and tuition of Gentile d’Urbino, afterwards
Bishop of Arezzo. Cristoforo Landino was next engaged to direct his
education; and Argyropylus taught him the Greek language and the
Aristotelian philosophy, whilst Marsilio Ficino instilled into his
youthful mind the precepts and doctrines of Plato. The rapidity of his
proficiency was equal to the celebrity of his masters, and to the
indications of talent that he had given in childhood. Piero, who was
prevented by a precarious state of health from attending regularly to
business, rejoiced at the prospect of soon having in his own son a
strenuous and trusty coadjutor; and on the death of Cosmo, the domestic
education of Lorenzo being completed, he sent him to visit the principal
courts of Italy, in order to initiate him into political life, and to
afford him an opportunity of forming such personal connexions as might
advance the interests of the family. Piero pretended to succeed to
Cosmo’s authority, as if it had been a part of his patrimony; but the
Florentine statesmen, who thought themselves superior to him in age,
capacities, and public services, disdained to pay him the same deference
they had shown the more eminent abilities of his father. Besides, Cosmo
had taken especial care to conciliate the esteem and affection of his
countrymen. He had never refused gifts, loans, or credit to any of the
citizens, and never raised his manners or his domestic establishment
above the simplicity of common life. But Piero seemed to have no regard
for the feelings of others: he ruined several merchants by attempting to
withdraw considerable capital from commerce; he allowed his subordinate
agents to make a most profligate and corrupt monopoly of government; and
he shocked the republican notions of his countrymen by seeking to marry
Lorenzo into a princely family. These causes of discontent arrayed
against him a formidable party, under the direction of Agnolo
Acciajuoli, Niccolo Soderini, and Luca Pitti, the founder of the
magnificent palace, now the residence of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. A
parliament of the people rejected Piero’s proposition of re-appointing
the dictatorial junto, whose power expired in September, 1465. His cause
was evidently lost, had his enemies continued firmly united; but the
defection of the unprincipled Luca Pitti enabled him to recover his
authority, which he soon secured by banishing his opponents, and by
investing five of his dependants with the right of choosing the
magistracy. Lorenzo is said on this occasion to have been of great
assistance to his father; and a letter of Ferdinand, King of Naples, is
still extant, in which that perfidious monarch congratulates him on the
active part he had taken in the triumph, and in the consequent
curtailment of popular rights.
The populace of Florence were now entertained with splendid festivals,
and with two tournaments, in which Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano bore
away the prizes. These tournaments form an epoch in the history of
literature; the victory of Lorenzo having been commemorated by the
verses of Luca Pulci, and that of Giuliano, by a poem of Politian, which
restored Italian poetry to its former splendour. About this period,
1468, Lorenzo became enamoured, or rather fancied himself enamoured, of
a lady whom he described as prodigiously endowed with all the charms of
her sex, and he strove to immortalize his love in song. But, whether
real or supposed, his passion did not prevent him from marrying Clarice
Orsini, of the famous Roman family of that name. The nuptials were
celebrated on the 4th of June, 1469, on a scale of royal magnificence.
The death of Piero, which happened about the end of the same year, was
not followed by any interruption of public tranquillity. The republicans
were now either old or in exile; the rising generation grew up with
principles of obedience to the Medici; and Lorenzo was easily
acknowledged as the chief of the state. An attempt at revolution was
made a few months afterwards at Prato, by Bernardo Nardi and some other
Florentine exiles; but the complete inertness of the inhabitants
rendered it unsuccessful. Nardi and six of his accomplices were executed
at Florence; the remainder at Prato. Surrounded by a host of poets,
philosophers, and artists, Lorenzo, however, left the republic under the
misgovernment of its former rulers, whilst he gave himself up to the
avocations of youth, and indulged an extraordinary taste for pompous
shows and effeminate indulgence, which had a most pernicious influence
on the morals of his fellow-citizens. The ostentatious visit which his
infamous friend Galeazzo Sforza paid him in 1471, with a court sadly
celebrated for its corruption and profligacy, is lamented by historians
as one of the greatest disasters that befell the republic.
Lorenzo went soon afterwards on a deputation to Rome, for the purpose of
congratulating Sixtus IV. on his elevation to the papal chair. He met
with the kindest reception; was made treasurer of the Holy See, and
honoured with other favours; but he could not obtain a cardinal’s hat
for his brother Giuliano. Accustomed to have his wishes readily
gratified, he could not brook the refusal, and he sought his revenge in
constantly thwarting the Pope in his politics, whether they tended to
the advancement of his nephews, or to the liberty and independence of
Italy. A disagreement, which arose in 1472, between the city of Volterra
and the republic of Florence, afforded another instance of the
peremptoriness of his character. He, at first, made some endeavours to
convince the inhabitants of Volterra of their imprudence; but finding
that the exasperated citizens rejected his advice, he prevailed on the
Florentine government to repress them by force, though his uncle Tomaso
Soderini and other statesmen of more experience strongly recommended
conciliatory measures. An army was accordingly sent under the command of
the Count of Urbino, which, after obtaining admission into the
unfortunate city by capitulation, despoiled and plundered its
inhabitants for a whole day.
Though, on his first succeeding to his father, Lorenzo did not attempt
to exercise the sovereign authority in person, he assumed it by degrees,
in proportion as he advanced in manhood; and he even became so jealous
of all those from whom any rivalry might be feared, that he depressed
them to the utmost of his power. His brother, less ambitious and less
arrogant than himself, tried to stop him in his tyrannical career; but
Giuliano was five years younger: his representations had no effect; and
these vexatious proceedings gave origin to the conspiracy of the Pazzi.
The parties engaged in this famous attempt were several members of the
distinguished family of the Pazzi, whom Lorenzo had injured in their
interests as well as in their feelings; Girolamo Riario, a nephew of the
Pope, whose hatred he had excited by continual opposition to his
designs; Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, whom he had prevented
from taking possession of his see; and several other individuals of
inferior note, who were either moved by private or public wrongs. After
vain endeavours to seize the two brothers together, the conspirators
resolved to execute their enterprize in the cathedral of Florence, on
the 26th of April, 1478, in the course of a religious ceremony at which
they were both to be present. At the moment that the priest raised the
host, and all the congregation bowed down their heads, Giuliano fell
under the dagger of Bernardo Bandini, whilst Lorenzo was so fortunate as
to escape, and shut himself up in the sacristy until his friends came to
his assistance. A simultaneous attack on the palace of government failed
of success, and the Archbishop Salviati, who had directed it, was hung
out of the palace windows in his prelatical robes. All those who were
implicated in the conspiracy, or connected in any way with the
conspirators, were immediately put to death. Lorenzo exerted all his
influence to obtain those who had taken refuge abroad; and his wrath was
not appeased until the blood of two hundred citizens was shed. The Pope
pronounced a sentence of excommunication against him and the chief
magistrates for having hanged an archbishop; and sent a crusade of
almost all Italy against the republic, requiring that its leaders should
be given up to suffer for their scandalous misdemeanour. The superior
forces of the enemy ravaged the Florentine territory with impunity: the
people began to murmur against a war in which they were involved for the
sake of an individual; and Lorenzo could not but see that his situation
became every day more critical and alarming. But having been confidently
apprized that Ferdinand was disposed to a reconciliation with him, he
took the resolution of going to Naples, as ambassador of the republic,
in the hope of detaching the King from the league, and of inducing him
to negotiate a peace with the Pope. Through his eloquence and his gold,
he was successful in his mission; and after three months’ absence, at
the beginning of March, 1480, he returned to Florence, where he was
received with the greatest applause and exultation by the populace, to
whom the dangers incurred by him in his embassy had been artfully
exaggerated.
This ebullition of popular favour encouraged Lorenzo to complete the
consolidation of his power by fresh encroachments on the rights of his
countrymen. In 1481 another plot was formed against him; but his
watchful agents discovered it, and Battista Frescobaldi, with two of his
accomplices, were hanged. Tranquil and secure at home, as well as
peaceful and respected abroad, he now diverted his mind from public
business to literary leisure, and spent his time in the society of men
of talent, in philosophical studies, and in poetical composition. But
his rational enjoyments had a short duration. Early in 1492 he was
attacked by a slow fever, which, combined with his hereditary
complaints, warned him of his approaching end. Having sent to request
the attendance of the famous Savonarola, to whom he was desirous of
making his confession, the austere Dominican readily complied with his
wish, but declared he could not absolve him unless he restored to his
fellow-citizens the rights of which he had despoiled them. To such a
reparation Lorenzo would not consent; and he died without obtaining the
absolution he had invoked. Piero, the eldest of his three sons, was
deprived of the sovereignty in consequence of the reaction that the
eloquent sermons of Savonarola produced in the morals of Florence.
Giovanni, whom Innocent VIII., by a prostitution of ecclesiastical
honours unprecedented in the annals of the church, had raised to the
Cardinalship at the early age of thirteen, became Pope under the name of
Leo X., and gave rise to the Reformation by his extreme profligacy and
extravagance; and Giuliano, who afterwards allied himself by marriage to
the royal House of France, was elevated to the dignity of Duke of
Nemours.
Lorenzo de Medici has been extolled with immoderate applause as a poet,
a patron of learning, and a statesman. His voluminous poetical
compositions, embracing subjects of love, rural life, philosophy,
religious enthusiasm, and coarse licentiousness, exhibit an uncommon
versatility of genius, a rich imagination, and a remarkable purity of
language; but in spite of the exaggerated eulogies lavished on them by
his own flatterers and by those of his dependants, they never obtained
any popularity, and are now nearly buried in oblivion. His efforts for
the diffusion of knowledge and taste shine more conspicuous; in this
laudable course he followed the traces of Cosmo and of his father. It
is, however, impossible to conceive any strong reverence or respect for
his memory without forgetting his political conduct, which is far from
deserving any praise.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
GEORGE BUCHANAN.
_From a Picture by Francis Pourbus Sen. in the possession of the Royal
Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
BUCHANAN
George Buchanan was born in February, 1506, at a small village called
Killearn, on the borders of Stirlingshire and Dumbartonshire. He came,
as he says, “of a family more gentle and ancient than wealthy.” His
father dying, left a wife and eight children in a state of poverty.
George, one of the youngest, was befriended, and, perhaps, saved from
want and obscurity, by the kindness of his mother’s brother, James
Heriot, who had early remarked his nephew’s talents, and determined to
foster them by a good education. The ancient friendship between France
and Scotland, cemented by their mutual hate of England, was then in full
force. The Scotch respected the superiority of the French in manners,
arts, and learning; and very commonly sent the wealthier and more
promising of their youth to be educated by their more polished
neighbours. Accordingly Buchanan, at the age of fourteen, was sent by
his uncle to the University of Paris. Here he applied himself most
diligently to the prescribed course of study, which consisted
principally in a careful perusal of the best Latin authors, especially
the poets. This kind of learning was peculiarly suited to his taste and
genius; and he made such progress, as not only to become a sound
scholar, but one of the most graceful Latin writers of modern times.
After having remained in Paris for the space of two years, which he must
have employed to much better purpose than most youths of his age, the
death of his kind uncle reduced him again to poverty. Partly on this
account, partly from ill health, he returned to his own country, and
spent a year at home. Alter having recruited his strength, he entered as
a common soldier into a body of troops that was brought over from France
by John Duke of Albany, then Regent of Scotland, for the purpose of
opposing the English. Buchanan himself says that he went into the army
“to learn the art of war;” it is probable that his needy circumstances
were of more weight than this reason. During this campaign he was
subjected to great hardships from severe falls of snow; in consequence
of which he relapsed into his former illness; and was obliged to return
home a second time, where he was confined to his bed a great part of the
winter. But on his recovery, in the spring of 1524, when he was just
entering upon his 18th year, he again took to his studies, and pursued
them with great ardour. He seems to have found friends at this time rich
enough to send him to the University of St. Andrews, on which foundation
he was entered as a _pauper_, a term which corresponds to the servitor
and sizer of the English Universities. John Mair, better known (through
Buchanan[2]) by his Latinized name of Major, was then reading lectures
at St. Andrews on grammar and logic. He soon heard of the superior
accomplishments of the poor student, and immediately took him under his
protection. Buchanan, notwithstanding his avowed contempt for his old
tutor, must have imbibed from Major many of his opinions. He was of an
ardent temper, and easy, as his contemporaries tell us, to lead
whichever way his friends desired him to go; he was also of an inquiring
disposition, and never could endure absurdities of any kind. This sort
of mind must have found great delight in the doctrines which Major
taught. He affirmed the superiority of general councils over the papacy,
even to the depriving a Pope of his spiritual authority in case of
misdemeanour; he denied the lawfulness of the Pope’s temporal sway; he
held that tithes were an institution of mere human appointment, which
might be dropped or changed at the pleasure of the people; he railed
bitterly against the immoralities and abominations of the Romish
priesthood. In political matters his creed coincides exactly with
Buchanan’s published opinions,—that the authority of kings was not of
divine right, but was solely through the people, for the people; that by
a lawful convention of states, any king, in case of tyranny or
misgovernment, might be controlled, divested of his power, or capitally
executed according to circumstances. But if Major, who was a weak man
and a bad arguer, had such weight with Buchanan, John Knox, the
celebrated Scottish reformer, who was a fellow-student with him at St.
Andrews, must have had still more. They began a strict friendship at
this place, which only ended with their lives. Knox speaks very highly
of him at a late period of his own life: “That notabil man, Mr. George
Bucquhanane, remainis alyve to this day, in the yeir of God 1566 yeares,
to the glory of God, to the gret honor of this natioun, and to the
comfort of thame that delyte in letters and vertew. That singular work
of David’s Psalmes, in Latin meetere and poesie, besyd many uther, can
witness the rare graices of God gevin to that man.” These two men
speedily discovered the absurdity of the art of logic, as it was then
taught. Buchanan tells us that its _proper_ name was the art of
sophistry. Their mutual longings for better reasonings, and better
thoughts to reason upon, produced great effects in the reformation of
their native country.
Footnote 2:
See his epigram. “In Johannem solo cognomento Majorem ut ipse in
fionte libri scripsit.”
Cum scateat nugis solo cognomine Major,
Nec sit in immenso patina sana libro;
Non minem titulis quod se veracibus ornet;
Nec semper mendax fingere Creta solet.
The book was “ane most fulish tractate on ane most emptie subject.”
After Buchanan had finished his studies at St. Andrew’s, and taken the
degree of Bachelor of Arts, he accompanied Major to Paris, where his
attention was more seriously turned towards the doctrines of the
reformation, which at that time were eagerly and warmly discussed; but
whether from fear of the consequences, or from other motives, he did not
then declare himself to be a Lutheran. For five years he remained
abroad, sometimes employed, sometimes in considerable want; at the end
of which time he returned to Scotland with the Earl of Cassilis, by whom
he had been engaged as a travelling companion. His noble patron
introduced him at the court of James V. the father of Mary Stuart. James
retained him as tutor to his natural son, James Stuart, afterwards Abbot
of Kelso. It has been proved that he was _not_ tutor to the King’s other
natural son, James Stuart, afterwards Earl of Murray and Regent of
Scotland, whose first title was Prior of St. Andrews.
While he was at court, having a good deal of leisure, he amused himself
with writing a pretty severe satire on the monks, to which he gives the
name of “Somnium.” He feigns in this piece that Saint Francis d’Assize
had appeared to him in a dream, and besought him to become a monk of his
order. The poet answers, “that he is nowise fit for the purpose; because
he could not find in his heart to become slavish, impudent, deceitful,
or beggarly, and that moreover very few monks had the good fortune, as
he understood, to reach even the gates of paradise.” This short satire
was too well written, and too bitter, to pass unnoticed, and the
sufferers laid their complaint before the king: but as Buchanan’s name
had not been put to it, they had no proof against him, and the matter
dropped. Soon after the Franciscans fell into disgrace at Court; and
James himself instigated the poet to renew the attack. He obeyed, but
did not half satisfy the King’s anger in the light and playful piece
which he produced. On a second command to be still more severe, he
produced his famous satire ‘Franciscanus,’ in which he brings all his
powers of wit and poetry to bear upon the unfortunate brotherhood. The
argument of the poem is as follows:—he supposes that a friend of his is
earnestly desirous to become a Cordelier, upon which he tells him that
he also had had a similar intention, but had been dissuaded from it by a
third person, whose reasons he proceeds to relate. They turn upon the
wretched morals and conduct of those who belonged to the order, as
exhibited in the abominable lessons which he puts in the mouth of an
ancient monk, the instructor of the novices. He does not give this man
the character of a rough and ignorant priest, but makes him tell his
tale cleverly, giving free vent to every refinement in evil which the
age was acquainted with, and speaking the most home truths of his
brethren without fear or scruple. The Latin is pure, and free from the
barbarisms of the time.
After such a caustic production, it is no wonder that the party assailed
made use of every means to destroy its author. The King, who was a weak
and variable man, after much importunity on their part, allowed them to
have Buchanan arrested in the year 1539, on the plea of heresy, along
with many others who held his opinions about the state of the Scottish
church. Cardinal Beatoun, above all others, used his best endeavours to
procure sentence against him; he even bribed the King to effect his
purpose. But Buchanan’s friends gave him timely warning of the prelate’s
exertions, and, as he was not very carefully guarded, he made his escape
out of the window of his prison, and fled to England. He found, however,
that England was no safe place for him, for at that time Henry VIII. was
burning, on the same day and at the same stake, both protestant and
papist, with the most unflinching impartiality. He went over, therefore,
for the third time into France; but on his arrival at Paris, finding his
old enemy the Cardinal Beatoun ambassador at the French court, and being
fearful that means might be taken to have him arrested, he closed with
the offer of a learned Portuguese, Andrea di Govea, to become a tutor at
the new college at Bourdeaux. During his residence there he composed his
famous Latin Tragedies, ‘Jephthes’ and ‘Joannes Baptistes,’ and
translated the Medea and Alcestis of Euripides into Latin metre, for the
youth of his college. The two latter show that his acquaintance with the
Greek language was by no means superficial.
After holding this situation for about three years, Buchanan went with
Govea, at the instance of the King of Portugal, to a lately established
school at Coimbra. Before he ventured into Portugal, however, he took
care to let the King know that his Franciscanus was undertaken at the
command of his sovereign, and therefore ought nowise to endanger his
safety in Portugal. The King promised him his protection. But he had not
been at Coimbra long, before he was accused by the monks of heresy, and
the King, forgetting his promise, allowed them to keep Buchanan prisoner
in a convent, as they declared, for the purpose of reclaiming him. They
gave him as a penance the task of translating the Psalms of David from
the Vulgate into Latin verse. This he accomplished to admiration; and
his production is acknowledged to surpass all works of the like sort.
The metres are chiefly lyrical. He was soon after dismissed from prison,
and took ship for England, and staying there but a short time, he
returned again to France. Here the Marechal de Brissac intrusted him
with the education of his son Timoleon de Cossé. While thus employed he
studied, more particularly than he had hitherto done, the controversies
of the day with regard to religion, and became most probably a confirmed
protestant, though he did not openly renounce catholicism till some time
afterwards. He wrote, and dedicated to his pupil, a much admired piece,
entitled ‘Sphœra,’ during his tutorship. In the year 1560 he returned
again to Scotland, the reformed religion being then prevalent there, and
became publicly a member of the Protestant Kirk.
The most important, because the most public part of Buchanan’s life now
begins. Such a man could not long remain unnoticed by the great in
Scotland, and Mary Stuart herself became one of his best friends. He had
written for her two epithalamia, one on her marriage with the Dauphin,
and one on her marriage with Lord Darnley. Her respect for his abilities
was very great, and she had him appointed tutor to her son a month after
he was born, in the year 1566.
It is a matter of no small wonder, that Buchanan, who was James’s most
influential tutor, for the three others, who were joined in the
commission with him, were under his superintendence, should have
educated him as he did, or made him what he was. A book which Buchanan
published, and which is among the most famous of his works, ‘De jure
Regni apud Scotos,’ being a conversation between himself and Maitland
the Queen’s secretary, contains (though dedicated to his royal pupil)
sentiments totally at variance with all the notions of James. In it
Buchanan follows the ancient models of what was thought a perfect state
of policy. He proves that men were born to live socially,—that they
elected kings to protect the laws which bind them together,—that if new
laws are made by kings, they must be also subjected to the opinion of
the states of the nation,—that a king is the father of his people for
good, not for evil,—that this was the original intention in the choice
of Scottish kings,—that the crown is not necessarily hereditary, and
that its transmission by natural descent but for its certainty is not
defensible,—that a violation of the laws by the monarch may be punished
even to the death, according to the enormity of it,—that when St. Paul
talks of obedience to authorities he spoke to a low condition of
persons, and to a minority in the various countries in which they
were,—that it is not necessary that a king should be tried by his peers.
He concludes by saying, “that if in other countries the people chose to
exalt their kings above the laws, it seems to have been the evident
intention of Scotland to make her kings inferior to them.” In matters of
religion he rails against episcopal authority of all kinds. Now nothing
can be more opposed than all this to the opinions of James, who most
strongly upheld the divine right of kings, and episcopal authority.
Buchanan, when he was accused of making James a pedant, declared it to
be “because he was fit for nothing else.” He was a stern and unyielding
master, and no sparer of the rod, even though applied to the back of
royalty; and this may in some measure account for the want of influence
which he had over the King’s mind. James advises his son, in his
βασίλικον δῷρον not to attend to the abominable scandals of such men as
Buchanan and Knox, “who are persons of seditious spirit, and all who
hold their opinions.”
It might have been well, however, for the unfortunate Charles if he had
been rather more swayed by the opinions of the tutor, and less by the
lessons of the pupil. In the early part of Buchanan’s tutorship he
attached himself strongly to the interests of the Regent, Murray; and as
the patron fell off from the interests of Mary, so did the historian,
till at last he became the bitterest of her enemies. He alone has
ventured to assert in print his belief of her criminal connexion with
David Rizzio, in his ‘Detectio Mariæ Reginæ,’ published in 1571; and he
was her great accuser at the court of Elizabeth, when appointed one of
the commissioners to inquire into Mary’s conduct, she being a prisoner
in England. Buchanan too lies under the serious charge of having forged
the controverted letters, supposed to have passed between Mary and her
third husband Bothwell, while she was yet the wife of Earl Darnley, from
which documents it was made to appear that she was art and part in the
murder of her Royal Consort. Whether he really forged these letters or
not, is a question perhaps too deeply buried in the dust of antiquity to
admit of proof. He offered to swear to their genuineness, however, which
was an ill return, if that were all his fault, to the kindness he had
received from her. His friendship for Murray continued firm all his
life; this man was one of the few persons he seems to have been really
attached to. Through the Earl’s interest, Buchanan was made keeper of
the Scottish seals, and a Lord of Session. Nothing is told us of his
abilities as a practical politician, but it may be supposed that he was
fitted for the office he held, for Murray was very careful in the choice
of his public servants.
Buchanan’s last work, on which he spent the remaining fourteen years of
his life, is yet to be spoken of,—his History of Scotland. In this,
which like the rest of his productions was written in Latin, he has been
said to unite the elegance of Livy with the brevity of Sallust. With
this praise, however, and with that which is due to his lively and
interesting way of relating a story, our commendations of this work must
begin and end. As a history, it is valueless. The early part is a tissue
of fable, without dates or authorities, as indeed he had none to give;
the latter is the work of an acrimonious and able partisan, not of a
calm inquirer and observer of the times in which he lived. The work is
divided into four books. The first three contain a long dissertation on
the derivation of the name of Britain,—a geographical description of
Scotland, with some poetical accounts of its ancient manners and
customs,—a treatise on the ancient inhabitants of Britain, chiefly taken
from the traditionary accounts of the bards, and the fables of the monks
engrafted on them, on the vestiges of ancient religions, and on the
resemblances of the various languages of different parts of the island.
The real history of Scotland does not begin till the fourth book; it
consists of an account of a regular succession of one hundred and eight
kings, from Fergus I. to James VI., a space extending from the beginning
of the sixth century to the end of the sixteenth. The apocryphal nature
of the greater part of these monarchs is now so fully admitted, that it
is unnecessary to dilate upon them. Edward I., as is well known,
destroyed all the genuine records of Scottish history which he could
find. Buchanan, instead of rejecting the absurd traditionary tales of
bards and monks, has merely laboured to dress up a creditable history
for the honour of Scotland, and to “clothe with all the beauties and
graces of fiction, those legends which formerly had only its wildness
and extravagance.”
This work, and his De jure Regni apud Scotos, he published at the same
time, very shortly before his death; and, while he was on his death-bed,
the Scottish Parliament condemned them both as false and seditious
books. We may lay part of this condemnation to James’s account. It is
not probable that he would allow so much abuse of his mother as they
contained, directly and indirectly, to pass without some public stigma.
There remain to be noticed only two small pieces of this author in the
Scottish language, one a grievous complaint to the Scottish peers,
arising from the assassination of the Earl of Murray; the other, a
severe satire against Secretary Maitland, for the readiness with which
he changed from party to party: this has the title of ‘Chameleon.’
Buchanan died at the good old age of seventy-four, in his dotage as his
enemies said, but in full vigour of mind as his last great work, his
History, has proved. Much has been said in his dispraise by enemies of
every class, his chief detractors being the partisans of Mary Stuart and
the Romish priesthood. The first of these accuse him of ingratitude to
Major, Mary, Morton, Maitland, and to others of his benefactors; of
forging the letters above-mentioned, and of perjury in offering to swear
to them. The latter accuse him of licentiousness, of drunkenness, and
falsehood; and one of them has descended so far as to quarrel with his
personal ugliness. Of these charges many are, to say the least,
unproved; many appear to be altogether untrue. But his fame rests rather
on his persevering industry, his excellent scholarship, and his fine
genius, than upon his moral qualities. Buchanan wrote his own life in
Latin two years before his death. To this work, to Mackenzie’s ‘Lives
and Characters of the most eminent writers of the Scots Nation,’ to the
Biographia Britannica, and the numerous authorities on insulated points
there quoted, we may refer those who wish to pursue this subject.
Buchanan’s works were collected and edited by the grammarian Ruddiman,
and printed by Freebairn, at Edinburgh, in the year 1715, in two
volumes, folio.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Thomson._
FÉNÉLON.
_From the original Picture by Vivien in the Collection at the Louvre._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
FENELON
Francois de Salignac de Lamothe-Fenelon was born August 6th, 1651, at
the Castle of Fenelon, of a noble and ancient family in the province of
Perigord.
Early proofs of talent and genius induced his uncle, the Marquis de
Fenelon, a man of no ordinary merit, to take him under his immediate
care and superintendence. By him he was placed at the seminary of St.
Sulpice, then lately founded in Paris for the purpose of educating young
men for the church.
The studies of the young Abbé were not encouraged by visions of a stall
and a mitre. It seems that the object of his earliest ambition was, as a
missionary, to carry the blessings of the Gospel to the savages of North
America, or to the Mahometans and heretics of Greece and Anatolia. The
fears, however, or the hopes of his friends detained him at home, and
after his ordination he confined himself for several years to the duties
of the ministry in the parish of St. Sulpice.
At the age of twenty-seven he was appointed superior of a society which
had for its object the instruction and encouragement of female converts
to the Church of Rome; and from this time he took up his abode with his
uncle. In this house he first became known to Bossuet, by whose
recommendation he was intrusted with the conduct of a mission, charged
with the duty of reclaiming the Protestants in the province of Poitou,
in the memorable year 1685, when the Huguenots were writhing under the
infliction of the dragonnade, employed by the government to give full
effect to the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Fenelon had no mind to
have dragoons for his coadjutors, and requested that all show of martial
terror might be removed from the places which he visited. His future
proceedings were in strict conformity with this gentle commencement, and
consequently exposed him to the harassing remonstrances of his
superiors.
His services in Poitou were not acknowledged by any reward from the
government, for Louis XIV. had begun to look coldly upon him; but it was
not his fortune to remain long in obscurity. Amongst the visitors at his
uncle’s house, whose friendship he had the happiness to gain, was the
Duke de Beauvilliers, a man who could live at the court of Louis without
ceasing to live as a Christian. This nobleman was appointed in the year
1689 Governor of the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of Louis, and heir,
after his father the Dauphin, to the throne of France. His first act was
to appoint Fenelon preceptor to his royal charge, then in his eighth
year, and already distinguished for the frightful violence of his
passions, his insolent demeanour, and tyrannical spirit. The child had,
however, an affectionate heart and a quick sense of shame. Fenelon
gained his love and confidence, and used his power to impress upon him
the Christian’s method of self-government. His headstrong pupil was
subdued, not by the fear of man, but by the fear of God. In the task of
instruction less difficulty awaited him; for the young prince was
remarkably intelligent and industrious. The progress of a royal student
is likely to be rated at his full amount by common fame; but there is
reason to believe that in this case it was rapid and substantial.
In 1694 he was presented to the Abbey of St. Valery, and two years
afterwards promoted to the Archbishopric of Cambray, with a command that
he should retain his office of preceptor, giving personal attendance
only during the three months of absence from his diocese which the
Canons allowed. In resigning his abbey, which from conscientious motives
he refused to keep with his archbishopric, he was careful to assign such
reasons as might not convey an indirect censure of the numerous
pluralists among his clerical brethren. Probably this excess of
delicacy, which it is easy to admire and difficult to justify, was
hardly requisite in the case of many of the offenders. One of them, the
Archbishop of Rheims, when informed of the conscientious conduct of
Fenelon, made the following reply: “M. de Cambray with his sentiments
does right in resigning his benefice, and I with my sentiments do very
right in keeping mine.” This mode of defence is capable of very general
application, and is in fact very generally used, being good for other
cases beside that of pluralities.
This preferment was the last mark of royal favour which he received.
Louis was never cordially his friend, and there were many at court eager
to convert him into an enemy. An opportunity was afforded by Fenelon’s
connexion with Madame Guyon.
It is well known that this lady was the great apostle of the Quietists,
a sect of religionists, so called, because they studied to attain a
state of perfect contemplation, in which the soul is the passive
recipient of divine light. She was especially noted for her doctrine of
pure love; she taught that Christian perfection consisted in a
disinterested love of God, excluding the hope of happiness and fear of
misery, and that this perfection was attainable by man. Fenelon first
became acquainted with her at the house of his friend the Duke de
Beauvilliers, and, convinced of the sincerity of her religion, was
disposed to regard her more favourably from a notion that her religious
opinions, against which a loud clamour had been raised, coincided very
nearly with his own. It has been the fashion to represent him as her
convert and disciple. The truth is, that he was deeply versed in the
writings of the later mystics; men who, with all their extravagance,
were perhaps the best representatives of the Christian character to be
found among the Roman Catholics of their time. He considered the
doctrine of Madame Guyon to be substantially the same with that of his
favourite authors; and whatever appeared exceptionable in her
expositions, he attributed to loose and exaggerated expression natural
to her sex and character.
The approbation of Fenelon gave currency to the fair Quietist amongst
orthodox members of the church. At last the bishops began to take alarm:
the clamour was renewed, and the examination of her doctrines solemnly
intrusted to Bossuet and two other learned divines. Fenelon was avowedly
her friend; yet no one hitherto had breathed a suspicion of any flaw in
his orthodoxy. It was even during the examination, and towards the close
of it, that he was promoted to the Archbishopric of Cambray. The blow
came at length from the hand of his most valued friend. He had been
altogether passive in the proceedings respecting Madame Guyon. Bossuet,
who had been provoked into vehement wrath, and had resolved to crush
her, was sufficiently irritated by this temperate neutrality. But when
Fenelon found himself obliged to publish his ‘Maxims of the Saints,’ in
which, without attacking others, he defends his own views of some of the
controverted points, Bossuet, in a tumult of zeal, threw himself at the
feet of Louis, denounced his friend as a dangerous fanatic, and besought
the King to interpose the royal arm between the Church and pollution.
Fenelon offered to submit his book to the judgment of the Pope.
Permission was granted in very ungracious terms, and presently followed
by a sentence of banishment to his diocese. This sudden reverse of
fortune, which he received without even whispering a complaint, served
to show the forbearance and meekness of his spirit, but it deprived him
of none of his powers. An animated controversy arose between him and
Bossuet, and all Europe beheld with admiration the boldness and success
with which he maintained his ground against the renowned and veteran
disputant; and that, too, in the face of fearful discouragement. The
whole power of the court was arrayed against him, and he stood alone;
for his powerful friends had left his side. The Cardinal de Noailles and
others, who had in private expressed unqualified approbation of his
book, meanly withheld a public acknowledgment of their opinions. Whilst
his enemy enjoyed every facility, and had Louis and his courtiers and
courtly bishops to cheer him on, it was with difficulty that Fenelon
could find a printer who would venture to put to the press a work which
bore his name. Under these disadvantages, harassed in mind, and with
infirm health, he replied to the deliberate and artful attacks of his
adversary with a rapidity which, under any circumstances, would have
been astonishing. He was now gaining ground daily in public opinion. The
Pope also, who knew his merit, was very unwilling to condemn. His
persecutors were excited to additional efforts. He had already been
banished from court; now he was deprived of the name of preceptor, and
of his salary,—of that very salary which some time before he had eagerly
offered to resign, in consideration of the embarrassed state of the
royal treasury. The flagging zeal of the Pope was stimulated by threats
conveyed in letters from Louis penned by Bossuet. At length the sentence
of condemnation was obtained; but in too mild a form to satisfy
altogether the courtly party. No bull was issued. A simple brief
pronounced certain propositions to be erroneous and dangerous, and
condemned the book which contained them, without sentencing it in the
usual manner to the flames.
It is needless to say that Fenelon submitted. He published without delay
the sentence of condemnation, noting the selected propositions, and
expressing his entire acquiescence in the judgment pronounced; and
prohibited the faithful in his diocese from reading or having in their
possession his own work, which up to that moment he had defended so
manfully. Protestants, who are too apt in judging the conduct of Roman
Catholics, to forget every thing but their zeal, have raised an outcry
against his meanness and dissimulation. Fenelon was a sincere member of
a Church which claimed infallibility. We may regret the thraldom in
which such a mind was held by an authority from which the Protestant
happily is free; but the censure which falls on him personally for this
act is certainly misplaced.
The faint hopes which his friends might have cherished, that when the
storm had passed he would be restored to favour, were soon extinguished
by an event, which, whilst it closed against him for ever the doors of
the palace, secured him a place in history, and without which it is
probable that he would never have become the subject even of a short
memoir.
A manuscript which he had intrusted to a servant to copy, was
treacherously sold by this man to a printer in Paris, who immediately
put it to the press, under the title of Continuation of the Fourth Book
of the Odyssey, or Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, with the
royal privilege, dated April 6, 1699. It was told at court that the
forthcoming work was from the pen of the obnoxious archbishop; and
before the impression of the first volume was completed, orders were
given to suppress it, to punish the printers, and seize the copies
already printed. A few however escaped the hands of the police, and were
rapidly circulated. One of them, together with a copy of the remaining
part of the manuscript, soon after came into the possession of a printer
at the Hague, who could publish it without danger.
So eager was the curiosity which the violent proceedings of the French
court had excited, that the press could hardly be made, with the utmost
exertion, to keep pace with the demand. Such is the history of the first
appearance of Telemachus.
Louis was persuaded to think that the whole book was intended to be a
satire on him, his court, and government; and the world was persuaded
for a time to think the same. So, whilst the wrath of the King was
roused to the uttermost, all Europe was sounding forth the praises of
Fenelon. The numerous enemies of Louis exulted at the supposed
exhibition of his tyranny and profligate life. The philosophers were
charmed with the liberal and enlightened views of civil government which
they seemed to discover. It is now well known that the anger and the
praise were alike undeserved. The book was probably written for the use
of the Duke of Burgundy, certainly at a time when Fenelon enjoyed the
favour of his sovereign, and was desirous to retain it. He may have
forgotten that it was impossible to describe a good and a bad king, a
virtuous and a profligate court, without saying much that would bear
hard upon Louis and his friends. As for his political enlightenment, it
is certain that he had his full share of the monarchical principles of
his time and nation. He wished to have good kings, but he made no
provision for bad ones. It is difficult to believe that Louis was
seriously alarmed at his notions of political economy. That science was
not in a very advanced state; but no one could fear that a prince could
be induced by the lessons of his tutor to collect all the artificers of
luxury in his capital, and drive them in a body into the fields to
cultivate potatoes and cabbages, with a belief that he would thus make
the country a garden, and the town a seat of the Muses.
Nothing was now left to Fenelon but to devote himself to his episcopal
duties, which he seems to have discharged with equal zeal and ability.
The course of his domestic life, as described by an eyewitness, was
retired, and, to a remarkable degree, uniform. Strangers were
courteously and hospitably received; but his society was confined for
the most part to the ecclesiastics who resided in his house. Amongst
them were some of his own relations, to whom he was tenderly attached,
but for whose preferment, it should be noticed, he never manifested an
unbecoming eagerness. His only recreation was a solitary walk in the
fields, where it was his employment, as he observes to a friend, to
converse with his God. If in his rambles he fell in with any of the
poorer part of his flock, he would sit with them on the grass, and
discourse about their temporal as well as their spiritual concerns; and
sometimes he would visit them in their humble sheds, and partake of such
refreshment as they offered him.
In the beginning of the 18th century we find him engaged at once in
controversy and politics. The revival of the old dispute with the
Jansenists, to whom he was strongly opposed, obliged him to take up his
pen; but in using it he never forgot his own maxim, that “rigour and
severity are not of the spirit of the Gospel.” For a knowledge of his
political labours we are indebted to his biographer, the Cardinal de
Bausset, who first published his letters to the Duke de Beauvilliers on
the subject of the war which followed the grand alliance in the year
1701. In them he not only considers the general questions of the
succession to the Spanish monarchy, the objects of the confederated
powers, and the measures best calculated to avert or soften their
hostility, but even enters into details of military operations,
discusses the merits of the various generals, stations the different
armies, and sketches a plan of the campaign. Towards the close of the
war he communicated to the Duke de Chevreuse heads of a very extensive
reform in all the departments of government. This reform did not suppose
any fundamental change of the old despotism. It was intended, doubtless,
for the consideration of the Duke of Burgundy, to whose succession all
France was looking forward with sanguine hopes, founded on the
acknowledged excellence of his character, which Fenelon himself had so
happily contributed to form. But amongst the other trials which visited
his latter days, he was destined to mourn the death of his pupil.
Fenelon did not long survive the general pacification. After a short
illness and intense bodily suffering, which he seems to have supported
by calling to mind the sufferings of his Saviour, he died February 7th,
1715, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. No money was found in his
coffers. The produce of the sale of his furniture, together with the
arrears of rent due to him, were appropriated, by his direction, to
pious and charitable purposes.
The calumnies with which he was assailed during the affair of Quietism
were remembered only to the disadvantage of their authors. The public
seem eventually to have regarded him as a man who was persecuted because
he refused to be a persecutor; who had maintained, at all hazards, what
he believed to be the cause of truth and justice; and had resigned his
opinion only at that moment when conscience required the sacrifice.
Universal homage was paid by his contemporaries to his talents and
genius. In the grasp and power of his intellect, and in the extent and
completeness of his knowledge, none probably would have ventured to
compare him with Bossuet; but in fertility and brilliancy of
imagination, in a ready and dexterous use of his materials, and in that
quality which his countrymen call esprit, he was supposed to have no
superior. Bossuet himself said of him “Il brille d’esprit, il est tout
esprit, il en a bien plus que moi.”
It is obvious that his great work, the Adventures of Telemachus, was, in
the first instance, indebted for some portion of its popularity to
circumstances which had no connexion with its merits; but we cannot
attribute to the same cause the continued hold which it has maintained
on the public favour. Those who are ignorant of the interest which
attended its first appearance still feel the charm of that beautiful
language which is made the vehicle of the purest morality and the most
ennobling sentiments. In the many editions through which it passed,
between its first publication and the death of the author, Fenelon took
no concern. Publicly he neither avowed nor disavowed the work, though he
prepared corrections and additions for future editors. All obstacles to
its open circulation were removed by the death of Louis; and in the year
1717, the Marquis de Fenelon, his great-nephew, presented to Louis XV. a
new and correct edition, superintended by himself, from which the text
of all subsequent editions has been taken.
The best authority for the life of Fenelon accessible to the public is
the laborious work of his biographer, the Cardinal de Bausset, which is
rendered particularly valuable by the great number of original documents
which appear at the end of each volume. Its value would be increased if
much of the theological discussion were omitted, and the four volumes
compressed into three.
[Illustration]
WREN
Christopher Wren, the most celebrated of British architects, was born at
East Knoyle in Wiltshire, October 20, 1632. His father was Rector of
that parish, Dean of Windsor, and Registrar of the Order of the Garter:
his uncle, Dr. Matthew Wren, was successively Bishop of Hereford, of
Norwich, and of Ely; and was one of the greatest sufferers for the royal
cause during the Commonwealth, having been imprisoned nearly twenty
years in the Tower without ever having been brought to trial. The
political predilections of Wren’s family may be sufficiently understood
from these notices; but he himself, although his leaning probably was to
the side which had been espoused by his father and his uncle, seems to
have taken no active part in state affairs. The period of his long life
comprehended a series of the mightiest national convulsions and changes
that ever took place in England—the civil war—the overthrow of the
monarchy—the domination of Cromwell—the Restoration—the Revolution—the
union with Scotland—and, finally, the accession of a new family to the
throne; but we do not find that in the high region of philosophy and art
in which he moved, he ever allowed himself to be either withdrawn from
or interrupted in his course by any of these great events of the outer
world.
His health in his early years was extremely delicate. On this account he
received the commencement of his education at home under the
superintendence of his father and a domestic tutor. He was then sent to
Westminster School, over which the celebrated Busby had just come to
preside. The only memorial which we possess of Wren’s schoolboy days, is
a dedication in Latin verse, addressed by him to his father in his
thirteenth year, of an astronomical machine which he had invented, and
which seems from his description to have been a sort of apparatus for
representing the celestial motions, such as we now call an orrery. His
genius is also stated to have displayed itself at this early age in
other mechanical contrivances.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN.
_From the original picture by Sir G. Kneller, in the possession of the
Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
In 1646 he was sent to Oxford, and entered as a gentleman commoner at
Wadham College. Of his academical life we can say little more than that
it confirmed the promise of his early proficiency. He was especially
distinguished by his mathematical acquirements, and gained the notice
and acquaintance of many of the most learned and influential persons
belonging to the university. Several short treatises and mechanical
inventions are assigned to this period of his life: but as these have
long ceased to interest any but curious inquirers into the history of
literature or science, we can only indicate their existence, and refer
to other and more comprehensive works. In 1650 Wren graduated as
Bachelor of Arts. He was elected Fellow of All Souls on the 2d of
November, 1653, and took the degree of Master of Arts on the 12th of
December in the same year. Of the subjects which engaged his active and
versatile mind at this time, one of the chief was the science of
Anatomy; and he is, on apparently good grounds, thought to have first
suggested and tried the interesting experiment of injecting liquids of
various kinds into the veins of living animals,—a process of surgery,
which, applied to the transfusion of healthy blood into a morbid or
deficient circulation, has been revived, not without some promise of
important results, in our own day. Another subject which attracted much
of his attention was the Barometer; but he has no claim whatever, either
to the invention of that instrument, or to the detection of the great
principle of physics, of which it is an exemplification. The notion
which has been taken up of his right to supplant the illustrious
Torricelli here, has arisen merely from mistaking the question with
regard to the causes of the fluctuations in the height of the
barometrical column, while the instrument continues in the same place,
for the entirely different question as to the cause why the fluid
remains suspended at all; about which, since the celebrated experiments
of Pascal, published in 1647, there never has been any controversy. It
was the former phenomenon only which was attributed by some to the
influence of the moon, and which Wren and many of his contemporaries
exercised their ingenuity, as many of their successors have done, in
endeavouring to explain.
In carrying on these investigations and experiments, Wren’s diligence
was stimulated and assisted by his having been admitted a member, about
this period, of that celebrated association of philosophical inquirers,
out of whose meetings, begun some years before, eventually arose the
Royal Society. But, like several others of the more eminent members, he
was soon removed from the comparative retirement of Oxford. On the 7th
of August, 1657, being then only in his twenty-fifth year, he was chosen
to the Professorship of Astronomy in Gresham College. This chair he held
till the 8th of March, 1661, when he resigned it in consequence of
having, on the 31st of January preceding, received the appointment of
Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. On the 12th of September,
1661, he took his degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and was soon
after admitted _ad eundem_ by the sister university. During all this
time he had continued to cultivate assiduously the various branches of
mathematical and physical science, and to extend his reputation both by
his lectures and by his communications to the “Philosophical Club,” as
it was called, which, in 1658, had been transferred to London, and
usually met on the Wednesday of every week at Gresham College, in Wren’s
class-room, and, on the Thursday, in that of his associate Rooke, the
Professor of Geometry. The longitude, the calculation of solar eclipses,
and the examination and delineation of insects and animalcula by means
of the microscope, may be enumerated among the subjects to which he is
known to have devoted his attention. On the 15th of July, 1662[3], he
and his associates were incorporated under the title of the Royal
Society; and Wren, who drew out the preamble of the charter, bore a
chief part in the effecting of this arrangement.
Footnote 3:
In the Life of Boyle this event is stated to have occurred in 1663. A
_second_ charter was granted to the Society, in that year, on the 22d
of April.
The future architect of St. Paul’s had already been called upon to
devote a portion of his time to the professional exercise of that art
from which he was destined to derive his greatest and most lasting
distinction. Sir John Denham, the poet, had on the Restoration been
rewarded for his services by the place of Surveyor of the Royal Works;
but although, in his own words, he then gave over poetical lines, and
made it his business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to
his Majesty, and he hoped more lasting, it soon became apparent that his
genius was much better suited to “build the lofty rhyme” than to
construct more substantial edifices. In these circumstances Wren, who
was known among his other accomplishments to be well acquainted with the
principles of architecture, was sent for, and engaged to do the duties
of the office in the capacity of Denham’s assistant or deputy. This was
in the year 1661. It does not appear that for some time he was employed
in any work of consequence in his new character; and in 1663 it was
proposed to send him out to Africa, to superintend the construction of a
new harbour and fortifications at the town of Tangier, which had been
recently made over by Portugal to the English Crown, on the marriage of
Charles with the Infanta Catherine. This employment he wisely declined,
alleging the injury he apprehended to his health from a residence in
Africa. Meanwhile, the situation which he held, and his scientific
reputation, began to bring him something to do at home. Sheldon,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Chancellor of the University of
Oxford, had resolved to erect at his own expense a new theatre, or hall,
for the public meetings of the University; and this building Wren was
commissioned to design. The Sheldonian Theatre, celebrated for its
unrivalled roof of eighty feet in length by seventy in breadth,
supported without either arch or pillar, was Wren’s first public work,
having been begun this year, although it was not finished till 1668.
About the same time he was employed to erect a new chapel for Pembroke
College, in the University of Cambridge, to be built at the charge of
his uncle, the Bishop of Ely.
But, while he was about to commence these buildings, he was appointed to
take a leading part in another work, which ultimately became the
principal occupation of the best years of his life, and enabled him to
afford to his contemporaries and to posterity by far the most
magnificent display of his architectural skill and genius. Ever since
the Restoration, the repair of the Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Paul’s,
which during the time of the Commonwealth had been surrendered to the
most deplorable desecration and outrage, had been anxiously
contemplated; and on the 18th of April, 1663, letters patent were at
length issued by the King, appointing a number of Commissioners, among
whom Wren was one, to superintend the undertaking. Under their direction
a survey of the state of the building was taken, and some progress was
made in the reparation of its most material injuries, when, after the
sum of between three and four thousand pounds had been expended, the
great fire, which broke out on the night of Sunday, the 2d of September,
1666, on the following day reduced the whole pile to a heap of ruins.
A considerable part of the year before this Wren had spent in Paris,
having proceeded thither, it would seem, about Midsummer, 1665, and
remained till the following spring. The object of his visit was to
improve himself in the profession in which he had embarked, by the
inspection and study of the various public buildings which adorned the
French capital, where the celebrated Bernini was at this time employed
on the Louvre, with a thousand workmen under him, occupied in all the
various departments of the art, and forming altogether, in Wren’s
opinion, probably the best school of architecture to be then found in
Europe. He appears accordingly to have employed his time, with his
characteristic activity, in examining everything deserving of attention
in the city and its neighbourhood; and lost no opportunity either of
making sketches of remarkable edifices himself, or of procuring them
from others, so that, as he writes to one of his correspondents, he
hoped to bring home with him almost all France on paper. The terrible
visitation, which a few months after his return laid half the metropolis
of his native country in ashes, opened to him a much wider field whereon
to exercise the talent which he had been thus eager to cultivate and
strengthen by enlarged knowledge, than he could, while so engaged, have
expected ever to possess. He was not slow to seize the opportunity; and
while the ashes of the city were yet alive, drew up a plan for its
restoration, the leading features of which were a broad street running
from Aldgate to Temple Bar, with a large square for the reception of the
new cathedral of St. Paul; and a range of handsome quays along the
river. The paramount necessity of speed in restoring the dwellings of a
houseless multitude, prevented the adoption of this project; and the new
streets were in general formed nearly on the line of the old ones. But
they were widened and straightened, and the houses were built of brick
instead of wood.
Soon after the fire, Wren was appointed Surveyor-General and principal
Architect for rebuilding the parish churches; and on the 28th of March,
1669, a few days after the death of Sir John Denham, he was made
Surveyor-General of the Royal Works, the office which he had for some
time executed as deputy. On the 30th of July he was unanimously chosen
Surveyor-General of the repairs of St. Paul’s (another office which
Denham had also held) by the commissioners appointed to superintend that
work, of whom he was himself one. At first it was still thought possible
to repair the cathedral; and a part of it was actually fitted up as a
temporary choir, and service performed in it. After some time, however,
it became evident that the only way in which it could ever be restored
was by rebuilding the whole from the foundation. Before the close of the
year 1672 Wren had prepared and submitted to the King different plans
for the new church; and his Majesty having fixed upon the one which he
preferred, a commission for commencing the work was issued on the 12th
of November, 1673. On the 20th of the same month, Wren, who had been
re-appointed architect for the work, and also one of the commissioners,
was knighted at Whitehall, having resigned his professorship at Oxford
in the preceding April.
During the space of time which had elapsed since the fire, the
Surveyor-General of Public Works had begun or finished various minor
buildings connected with the restoration of the city, and also some in
other parts of the kingdom. Among the former may be mentioned the fine
column called the Monument; the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside,
the spire of which is considered the most beautiful he ever constructed,
and a masterpiece of science, both begun in 1671, and finished in 1677;
and the church of St. Stephens, Walbrook, begun 1672, and finished in
1679, the interior of which is one of the most exquisite specimens of
architectural art which the world contains, and has excited, perhaps,
more enthusiastic admiration than anything else that Wren has done.
During the whole of this time, too, notwithstanding the little leisure
which his professional avocations must have left him, he appears to have
continued his philosophical pursuits, and his attendance on the Royal
Society, of which, from the first, he had been one of the most active
and valuable members. His communications, and the experiments which he
suggested, embraced some of the profoundest parts of astronomy and the
mathematics, as well as various points in anatomy and natural history,
and the chemical and mechanical arts.
The design which Wren had prepared for the new Cathedral, and which had
been approved by the King, being that of which a model is still
preserved in an apartment over the Morning-Prayer Chapel, did not in
some respects please the majority of his brother-commissioners, who
insisted that, in order to give the building the true cathedral form,
the aisles should be added at the sides as they now stand, although the
architect is said to have felt so strongly the injury done by that
alteration, that he actually shed tears in speaking of it. This
difficulty, however, being at length settled, his Majesty, on the 14th
May, 1675, issued his warrant for immediately commencing the work; and
accordingly, after a few weeks more had been spent in throwing down the
old walls and removing the rubbish, the first stone was laid by Sir
Christopher, assisted by his master-mason, Mr. Thomas Strong, on the
21st of June. From this time the building proceeded steadily till its
completion in 1710; in which year the highest stone of the lantern on
the cupola was laid by Mr. Christopher Wren, the son of the architect,
as representing his venerable father, now in the seventy-eighth year of
his age.
The salary which Sir Christopher Wren received as architect of St.
Paul’s was only £200 a year. Yet in the last years of his
superintendence a moiety of this pittance was withheld from him by the
Commissioners, under the authority of a clause which they had got
inserted in an act of parliament entitling them to keep back the money
till the work should be finished, by way of thereby ensuring the
requisite expedition in the architect. Even after the building had been
actually completed, they still continued, on the same pretence, to
refuse payment of the arrears due, alleging that certain things yet
remained to be done, which, after all, objections and difficulties
interposed by themselves alone prevented from being performed. Like his
great predecessor, Michael Angelo, Wren was too honest and zealous in
the discharge of his duty not to have provoked the enmity of many
persons who had their private ends to serve in the discharge of a great
public duty. He was at last obliged to petition the Queen on the subject
of the treatment to which he was subjected; but it was not till after a
struggle of some years that he succeeded in obtaining redress. The
faction by whom he was thus opposed even attempted to blacken his
character by a direct charge of peculation, or at least of connivance at
that crime, in a pamphlet entitled ‘Frauds and Abuses at St. Paul’s,’
which appeared in 1712, and in reference to which Sir Christopher deemed
it proper to appeal to the public in an anonymous reply published the
year after, wherein he vindicated himself triumphantly from the
aspersions which had been thrown upon him.
The other architectural works which he designed and executed during this
period, both in London and elsewhere, are far too numerous to be
mentioned in detail. Among them were the parish church of St. Bride, in
Fleet Street, which was finished in 1680, and the beautiful spire of
which, originally two hundred and thirty-four feet in height, has been
deemed to rival that of St. Mary-le-Bow; the church of St. James,
Westminster, finished in 1683, a building in almost all its parts not
more remarkable for its beauty than for its scientific construction; and
of which the roof especially, both for its strength and elegance, and
for its adaptation to the distinct conveyance of sound, has been
reckoned a singularly happy triumph of art; and the church of St.
Andrew, Holborn, a fine specimen of a commodious and an imposing
interior: besides many others of inferior note. In 1696 he commenced the
building of the present Hospital at Greenwich, of which he lived to
complete the greater part. This is undoubtedly one of the most splendid
erections of our great architect. Among his less successful works may be
enumerated Chelsea Hospital, begun in 1682, and finished in 1690, a
plain, but not an inelegant building; his additions to the Palace of
Hampton Court, carried on from 1690 to 1694, which are certainly not in
the best taste; and his repairs at Westminster Abbey, of which he was
appointed Surveyor-General in 1698. In his attempt to restore and
complete this venerable edifice, his ignorance of the principles of the
Gothic style, and his want of taste for its peculiar beauties, made him
fail perhaps more egregiously than on any other occasion. In 1679 he
completed the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most
magnificent of his works; and in 1683, the Chapel of Queen’s College,
and the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford. The same year he began the erection
of the extensive pile of Winchester Castle, originally intended for a
royal palace, but now used as a military barrack. To these works are to
be added a long list of halls for the city companies, and other public
buildings, as well as a considerable number of private edifices. Among
the latter was Marlborough House, Pall-Mall. Indeed scarcely a building
of importance was undertaken during this long period which he was not
called upon to design or superintend. The activity both of mind and body
must have been extraordinary, which enabled him to accomplish what he
did, not to speak of the ready and fertile ingenuity, and the
inexhaustible sources of invention and science he must have possessed,
to meet the incessant demands that were made for new and varying
displays of his contriving skill. It appears, too, in addition to all
this, that the duties imposed upon him by his place of Surveyor of
Public Works, for which he only received a salary of £100 a year, were
of an extremely harassing description, and must have consumed a great
deal of his time. Claims and disputes as to rights of property, and
petitions or complaints in regard to the infringement of the building
regulations in every part of the metropolis and its vicinity, seem to
have been constantly submitted to his examination and adjudication; and
Mr. Elmes has printed many of his reports upon these cases from the
original manuscripts, which afford striking evidence both of the
promptitude with which he gave his attention to the numerous calls thus
made upon him, and of the large expenditure of time and labour they must
have cost him.
The long series of years during which Wren was occupied in the
accomplishment of his greatest work, and which had conducted him from
the middle stage of life to old age, brought to him also of course
various other changes. He had been twice married, and had become the
father of two sons and a daughter, of whom the eldest, Christopher, was
the author of Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens. In
1680, he was elected to the Presidency of the Royal Society, on its
being declined by Mr. Boyle; and this honourable office he held for two
years; during which, notwithstanding all his other occupations, we find
him occupying the chair in person at almost every meeting, and still
continuing to take his usual prominent part in the scientific
discussions of the evening. In 1684 there was added to his other
appointments that of Comptroller of the Works at Windsor. In May, 1685,
he entered parliament as one of the members for Plympton; and he also
sat for Windsor both in the convention which met after the revolution,
and in the first parliament of William III. He afterwards sat for
Weymouth in the parliament which met in February, 1700, and which was
dissolved in November of the year following.
The evening of Wren’s life was marked by neglect and ingratitude. In the
eighty-sixth year of his age he was removed from the office of
Surveyor-General, which he had held for forty-nine years, in favour of
one Benson, whose incapacity and dishonesty soon led to his disgrace and
dismissal. Fortunately Wren’s temper was too happy and placid to be
affected by the loss of court favour, and he retired to his home at
Hampton Court, where he spent the last five years of his life chiefly in
the study of the Scriptures, and the revision of his philosophical
works. He died February 25, 1723, in the ninety-first year of his age.
More minute accounts of his life are to be found in the Parentalia,
already mentioned, and in Mr. Elmes’s quarto volume. We may also refer
the reader to a longer memoir in the Library of Useful Knowledge.
[Illustration: Interior of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._
CORNEILLE.
_From an original Picture by C. Lebrun in the possession of the
Institute of France._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
CORNEILLE
Peter Corneille was born at Rouen, on the 6th of June, 1606. His father
was in the profession of the law, and held an office of trust under
Louis XIII. Young Corneille was educated in the Jesuits’ College at
Rouen; and, while there, formed an attachment to that society, which he
maintained unimpaired in after-life. He was destined for the bar, at
which he practised for a short time, but had no turn for business; and
with better warrant than the many, who mistake a lazy and vagabond
inclination for genius and the muse, he quitted the path of ambition and
preferment for a road to fame, shorter, and therefore better suited to
an aspiring, but impatient mind. A French writer congratulates his
country, that he who would have made an obscure and ill-qualified
provincial barrister, became, by change of place and pursuits, the glory
and ornament of a great empire in its most splendid day. Corneille “left
his calling for an idle trade,” without having bespoken the favour of
the public by any minor specimens of poetical talent. He seems indeed to
have hung loose upon society, till a petty affair of gallantry
discovered the mine of his natural genius, though not in his purest and
richest vein. The story is told by Fontenelle, and has been related of
many others with nearly the same incidents; being the common-place of
youthful adventure. One of Corneille’s friends had introduced him to his
intended wife; and the lady, without any imputation of treachery on the
part of the supplanter, took such a fancy to him, as induced her to play
the jilt towards his introducer. Corneille moulded the embarrassment
into a comedy entitled Melite. The drama had hitherto been at a low ebb
among the French. Their tragedy was flat and languid: to comedy,
properly so called, they had no pretensions. The theatre therefore had
hitherto been little attended by persons of condition. Racine describes
the French stage when Corneille began to write, as absolutely without
order or regularity, taste or knowledge, as to what constituted the real
merits of the drama. The writers, he says, were as ignorant as the
spectators. Their subjects were extravagant and improbable; neither
manners nor characters were delineated. The diction was still more
faulty than the action; the wit was confined to the lowest puns. In
short, all the rules of art, even those of decency and propriety, were
violated. This description gives us the history of the infant drama in
all ages and countries; of Thespis in his cart, and of Gammer Gurton’s
needle.
While the French theatre was in this state of degradation, Melite
appeared. Whatever its faults might be, there was something in it like
originality of character; some indications of a comic vein, and some
ingenious combinations. The public hailed the new era with delight, and
the poet was astonished at his own success. The stage seemed all at once
to flourish and to have taken its proper station among the elegant arts
and rational amusements. On the strength of this acquisition, a new
company of actors was formed; and the successful experiment was followed
up by a series of pieces of the same kind, between the years 1632 and
1635. Imperfect as they were, we may trace in them some sketches of new
character, which the more methodical and practised dramatists of a later
period filled out with more skill and higher colouring, but with little
claim to invention.
We owe to Corneille one of the most entertaining personages in modern
comedy,—the Chambermaid; who has succeeded to the office of the Nurse in
the elder drama. This change was partly, perhaps principally, produced
by that great revolution in the modern stage which introduced women upon
the boards. While female characters were consigned to male
representatives, the poet took every opportunity of throwing his
heroines into breeches to slur over the awkwardness of the boys; and the
subordinate instruments of the plot were duly enveloped in the hoods and
flannels of decrepit age, while the hard features of the adult male were
easily manufactured into wrinkles. But when once real women were brought
forward, they had their own interests to manage as well as those of the
author; and the artificial disguise of their persons would ill have
accorded with those speculations, of which personal beauty formed a main
ingredient. It was their business therefore, while they conducted the
love-affairs of their mistresses, to interweave an underplot between
themselves and the valets. Less attractive perhaps than their young
ladies in outward show, they obtained compensation in the piquancy of
wit intrusted to their delivery, and thus divided the interest among the
spectators in no disadvantageous proportion.
Corneille was also the first who brought the dialogue of polished
society upon the French stage, which had hitherto been confined to the
vulgarities of low comedy or the bombast of inflated tragedy. But it is
time to rescue him from the obscurity of his own early compositions.
His first tragedy was Medea, copied principally from the faulty model of
Seneca, whose prolix declamation, thus early adopted, probably exercised
an unfavourable influence on the after fortunes of the national tragedy.
His nephew Fontenelle, indeed, says that “he took flight at once, and
soared instantly to the sublime.” But this sentence has not been
confirmed by more impartial critics. The Continent has condemned the
witchcraft; but we are bound to uphold it in defence of our own
Shakspeare, who has clothed his hags with more picturesque and awful
attributes than the magnificent and imperial sorceries of Corneille,
Seneca, or even Euripides himself have exhibited.
The year 1637 was the era of the production of the Cid; the play not
only of France, but of Europe, for it has been translated into most
languages. But a sudden reputation involves its possessor in many
vexations. Poets were in those days compelled to be courtiers, if they
would prosper. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, an assembly was held,
consisting of courtly and fashionable authors, who wasted their time in
composing _thèses d’amour_ and other fopperies of romantic literature.
Over this society, as well as over the politics of Europe, Richelieu
chose to be umpire. He was also the founder of the French Academy, and
the avowed patron of its members. With this hold upon their good
manners, he kept four authors in pay, for the purpose of filling out his
own dramatic and poetical skeletons. Corneille consented to be one of
the party, and was so ignorant of the ways of courts as to fancy that he
might exercise his judgment independently. He was even simple enough to
be astonished that the well-meant liberty of making some alterations in
the plot of one of these ministerial dramas should give offence: but as
he was too proud to surrender his own judgment, or to risk future
affronts from the revulsion of the Cardinal’s goodwill, he withdrew from
the palace, and abandoned himself to uncontrolled intercourse with the
Muse. Richelieu therefore became the principal instigator of a cabal,
which the envy of the wits sufficiently inclined them to form. Under
such auspices, they entered into a conspiracy against the uncourtly
offender. The prime minister could not endure that the successful
intriguer in political life should be taxed with failure in unravelling
the intricacies of a fictitious interest: he therefore looked at the
real defects in a performance approved by the public with a jaundiced
eye, and with but a half-opened one at its unrivalled beauties. As
universal patron, he had settled a pension on the poet; but he levelled
insidious and clandestine shafts against his fame. The “irritable tribe”
willingly ran to arms, with Scuderi at their head, who wrote hostile
remarks on the Cid, addressed to the Academy in the form of an appeal,
in the course of which he quaintly termed himself _the evangelist of
truth_. According to the statutes of the Academy, that august body could
not take upon itself the decision, without the consent of both parties.
Corneille, however indignant professionally, was under too many personal
obligations to the Cardinal to spurn the authority of a tribunal erected
by him. He therefore gave his assent to the reference, but in terms of
considerable haughtiness. The Academy drew up a critique, to which they
gave the modest title of “Sentiments of the French Academy on the
tragicomedy of the Cid.” In the execution of this delicate commission,
the learned members contrived to reconcile the demands of sound taste
and criticism with the tact and suppleness of courtiers. They gratified
the splenetic temper of the minister by censures, the justice of which
could not be gainsayed: but they praised the beauties of the great
scenes with a nobleness of panegyric, which took from the author all
right to complain of partiality. This solemn judgment was given after
five months of debate and negotiation between the Cardinal and the
academicians, who dreaded official frowns if they wholly acquitted, and
public disgust if they condemned against evidence. If it be considered
that this infant institution owed its birth to Richelieu, and depended
on him for its future growth, the verdict is highly honourable to the
individuals, and creditable to the literary character, even when
disadvantageously circumstanced by being entangled in the trammels of a
court.
Our limits will not permit the examination of insulated passages, nor
even individual tragedies: but independently of the splendour of the
execution, other circumstances attending the career of the _Cid_
produced a strong impression on the remainder of Corneille’s dramatic
life. The Cid was taken from two Spanish plays, and several passages
were actual translations; but not in sufficient number to invalidate the
author’s claim to a large share of originality. To set that question at
rest, in the editions published by himself, he gave the passages taken
from the Spanish at the bottom of the page. Yet it was objected by his
rivals and libellers, that the author of Medea and the Cid could only
imitate or translate: that he had stolen the first of his tragedies from
Seneca, the second from Guillen de Castro: a clever borrower, without a
spark of tragic genius or invention! Unluckily for this bold assertion,
among other European languages, this French play was translated into
Spanish; and the nation, whence the piece was professedly derived,
thought it worth while to recover it in the dress given to it by an
illustrious foreigner. Against such unfounded censures it will be
sufficient to quote the authority of Boileau, who speaks of the Cid as a
_merveille naissante_.
Having achieved his first great success on a Spanish subject and after a
Spanish model, it is not improbable that, had all gone smoothly, he
would have continued to draw his resources from the same fountain. But
vexation and resentment, usually at variance with good policy, now
conspired with it; and put him on seeking a new road to fame. He had, as
it should seem, intended to transplant a succession of Spanish histories
and fables, with all the entanglement of Spanish contrivance in the
weaving of plots. But in weighing the objections started against his
piece, he found that they applied rather to his Spanish originals than
to his own adaptation; he therefore determined to cut the knot of future
controversy, by adopting the severity of the classical model. To this we
owe Horace, Pompée, Cinna, and Polyeucte;—masterpieces which his more
polished but more feeble successors in vain aspired to emulate. Thus did
this eager war of criticism produce a crisis in the dramatic history of
France. Its stage would probably, but for this, have been heroic and
chivalrous, not, as it is, Roman, and after the manner of the ancients.
It might even have rivalled our own in tragicomedy;—that monster
stigmatized by Voltaire as the offspring of barbarism, although, and
perhaps because, he “pilfered snug” from it; and might hope, by
undervaluing the article, to escape detection as the purloiner.
At the end of three years, devoted to the study of the ancients, the
injured author avenged the injuries levelled against the Cid by the
production of Horace. Although the impetuous poet had not yet subdued
his genius to the trammels of just arrangement, unity of action, and the
other severe rules of the classic drama, such was the originality of
conception, the force of character, and grandeur of sentiment displayed
in this performance, that new views of excellence were opened to the
astonished audience. Voltaire, with all the pedantry of mechanical
criticism, objects to Horace, that in it there are three tragedies
instead of one. Whatever may be the force of this objection with the
French, it will weigh little with a people inured to the irregular
sublimity and unfettered splendour of Shakspeare. Cinna redeemed many of
the errors of Horace, and improved upon its various merits. The
suffrages of the public were divided between it and Polyeucte, as the
author’s masterpiece. But Dryden considered the Cid and China as his two
best plays; and speaks of Polyeucte sarcastically, as “in matters of
religion, as solemn as the long stops upon our organs.”
Before the performance of Polyeucte, Corneille read it at the Hotel de
Rambouillet. That tribunal affected sovereign authority in affairs of
wit. Even the reputation of the author, now in all its splendour, could
no further command the civilities of the critics, than to “damn with
faint praise.” Some days afterwards, Voiture called on Corneille, and,
after much complimentary circumlocution, took the liberty of just
hinting, that its success was not likely to answer expectation: above
all, that its _Christian spirit_ was calculated to give offence.
Corneille, much alarmed, was about to withdraw it from rehearsal: the
persuasions of an inferior player spirited him up to risk the
consequences of avowing himself a Christian in an infidel court. Thus,
probably, a hanger-on of the theatre had the honour of preventing a
repetition of that malice, by which rival wits attempted to arrest the
career of the Cid.
The winter of 1641–42 produced La Mort de Pompée and Le Menteur.
The opening of La Mort de Pompée has been frequently commended for
grandeur of conception and originality; and the skill cannot be denied,
by which the enunciation of the circumstances producing the interest of
the piece is rendered consistent with the dignity of the subject and
characters. The same praise cannot be conceded to the inflation of the
dialogue and the intolerable length of the speeches. But the concluding
speech of Cæsar to the second scene of the third act, and the whole of
the fourth act, notwithstanding the censure of Dryden, both on this
tragedy and the Cinna, that “they are not so properly to be called
plays, as long discourses of reason and state,” may be selected as
favourable specimens of the style and power of French dialogue.
A short notice will be sufficient for the comedy of Corneille; and the
production of Le Menteur, his most celebrated piece, affords the fittest
opportunity. As the Cid was imitated from Guillen de Castro, Lopé de
Vega furnished the groundwork of Le Menteur. It is considered to be the
first genuine example of the comedy of intrigue and character in France;
for Melite was at best but a mere attempt. Before this time, there was
no unsophisticated nature, no conventional manners, no truth of
delineation. Mirth was raised by extravagance, and curiosity by
incidents bordering on the impossible. Corneille appealed to nature and
to truth: however imperfect the execution, in comparison with that of
his next successor in comedy, he proved that he knew how Thalia as well
as Melpomene ought to be drawn. The greatest compliment, perhaps, that
can be paid to his genius is, that he pointed out the road both to
Racine and Moliere.
The year 1645 gave birth to Rodogune, in which, having before touched
the springs of wonder and pity, he worked on his audience by the more
powerful engine of terror. His subsequent pieces were below his former
level, and betrayed, not so much the decay of genius from the growing
infirmities of nature, as that fatal mistake in _writing themselves
out_, so common to authors in the province of imagination. The cold
reception of Pertharite disgusted the poet, and he renounced the stage
in a splenetic little preface to the printed play, complaining that “he
had been an author too long to be a fashionable one.” The turmoil of the
court and the gaiety of the theatre had not effaced his early sentiments
of piety and religion; he therefore betook himself to the translation of
Kempis’s Imitation of Jesus Christ, which he performed very finely. This
gave rise to a ridiculous and unfounded story, that the first book was
imposed on him as a penance; the second, by the Queen’s command; and the
third, by the terrors of conscience during a severe illness.
As the mortification of failure faded away with time, his passion for
the theatre revived. Notwithstanding some misgivings, he was encouraged
by Fouquet Destrin in 1659, after six years’ absence. He began again,
with more benefit to his popularity than to his true fame, with
Œdipus;—the noblest and most pathetic subject, most nobly treated, of
ancient tragedy. La Toison d’Or came next; a spectacle got up for the
King’s marriage;—a species of piece in which the poet always plays a
subordinate part to the scene-painter and the dressmaker. Sertorius is
to be noticed as having given scope to the fine declamatory powers of
Mademoiselle Clairon, the Siddons of the French stage.
Berenice rose to an unenviable fame, principally in consequence of the
following circumstances. Henrietta of England, then Duchess of Orleans,
whom Fontenelle had the good manners to compliment as “a princess who
had a high relish for works of genius, and had been able to call forth
some sparks of it _even in a barbarous country_,” privately set
Corneille and Racine to work on the same subject. Their pieces were
represented at the same time; and the struggle between a worn-out
veteran and a champion in the vigour of youth, terminated, as might have
been expected, in the victory of the latter. This literary contest was
known by the title of “the duel.” The experiment proves the love of
mischief, but says little for the good taste or benevolence of the royal
instigator. Pulchérie and Surena were his last productions: both better
than Berenice, with sufficient merit to render the close of his literary
life respectable, if not splendid.
The personal history of Corneille furnishes little anecdote; we have
only further to state, that he was chosen a Member of the French Academy
in 1647, and was Dean of that society at the time of his death, which
took place in 1684, in his seventy-ninth year.
He is said to have been a man of a devout and melancholy cast. He spoke
little in company, even on subjects which his pursuits had made his own.
The author of ‘Melanges d’Histoire et du Literature,’ a work published
under the name of Vigneut Marville, but really written by the Pêre
Bonaventure d’Ayounne, a Cistercian monk of Paris, says, that “the first
time he saw him, he took him for a tradesman of Rouen. His conversation
was so heavy as to be extremely tiresome if it lasted long.” But
whatever might be the outward coarseness or dulness of the man, he was
mild of temper in his family, a good husband, parent, and friend. His
worth and integrity were unquestionable; nor had his connexion with the
court, of which he was not fond, taught him that art of cringing so
necessary to fortune and promotion. Hence his reputation was almost the
only advantage accruing to him from his productions. His works have been
often printed, and consist of more than thirty plays, tragedies and
comedies.
Those who wish for a more detailed account of this great writer will
find it in his life, by Fontenelle, in Voltaire’s several prefaces, in
Racine’s Speech to the French Academy on the admission of his brother
Thomas, and in Bayle. Many scattered remarks on him may also be found
throughout Dryden’s critical prefaces.
[Illustration: Tragic Masks, from Pompeii.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. T. Fry._
HALLEY
_From an original Picture ascribed to Dahl in the possession of the
Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
HALLEY
Edmund Halley, one of the greatest astronomers of an age which produced
many, was born at a country house named Haggerston, in the parish of St.
Leonard, Shoreditch, October 29, 1656. His father, a wealthy citizen and
soap-boiler, intrusted the care of his son’s education to Dr. Gale,
master of St. Paul’s School. Here young Halley applied himself to the
study of mathematics and astronomy with what was then considered great
success; for, before he left school, he understood the use of the
celestial globe, and could construct a sun-dial; and, as he has himself
informed us, had already observed the variation of the needle. In 1673,
being in the seventeenth year of his age, he was entered of Queen’s
College, Oxford, and two years afterwards gave the first proof of his
astronomical genius by publishing, in the Philosophical Transactions,
1676, “a direct and geometrical method of finding the Aphelia and
Eccentricities of the Planets.” His father, who seems to have had none
of that antipathy to a son’s engaging in literary or scientific
pursuits, which is represented as common to men of commerce by the
writers of that age, supplied him liberally with astronomical
instruments. Thus assisted, he made many observations, particularly of
Jupiter and Saturn, by means of which he discovered that the motion of
Saturn was slower, and that of Jupiter quicker than could be accounted
for by the existing tables; and made some progress in correcting those
tables accordingly. But he soon found that nothing could be done without
a good catalogue of the stars. This, it appears, he had some intention
of forming; but finding that Hevelius and Flamsteed were already
employed on the same work, he proposed to himself to proceed to the
southern hemisphere, and to complete the design by observing those stars
which never rise above the horizons of Dantzic and Greenwich. Having
obtained his father’s consent, and an allowance of £300 a-year; and
having fixed upon St. Helena as the most convenient spot, he applied to
Sir Joseph Williamson and Sir Jonas Moor, the Secretary of State and the
Surveyor of the Ordnance. These gentlemen represented his intention in a
favourable light to Charles II., and also to the East-India Company, who
promised him every assistance in their power. Thus protected, he set out
for St. Helena in 1676; his principal instruments being a sextant of
five feet and a half radius, and a telescope of twenty-four feet in
length. He found the climate not so favourable as he had been led to
believe, and moreover describes himself as disgusted with the treatment
he received from the Governor. Under these disadvantages, he
nevertheless formed a catalogue of 350 stars, which he afterwards
published under the name of ‘Catalogus Stellarum Australium.’ He called
a new constellation which he had observed, by the title of _Robur
Carolinum_, in honour of the well-known oak of Charles II. While at St.
Helena he also observed a transit of Mercury, and suggested the use
which might be made of similar phenomena in the determination of the
sun’s distance from the earth. He first observed the necessity of
shortening the pendulum as it approached the equator; or, at least, when
Hook afterwards mentioned the circumstance to Newton, it was the first
time the latter had heard of the fact.
Soon after his return to England, in November, 1678, Halley obtained the
degree of M.A. from the University of Oxford, by royal mandate, and was
elected Fellow of the Royal Society. This body had been requested by
Hevelius to select some person who might add the southern stars to his
catalogue. A dispute was also pending between him and Hook, as to the
use of telescopes in observing the stars, to which the former objected.
To aid Hevelius, as well as to decide upon the character of his
observations, Halley went to Dantzic, and it is related, as a proof of
the energy of his character, that in one month from the time of his
landing in England he published his catalogue, procured a mandate, took
the degree, was elected F.R.S., arranged to go to Dantzic, and wrote to
Hevelius. He arrived on the 26th of May, 1679, and the same night
entered upon a series of observations with Hevelius, which he continued
till July, when he returned to England, fully satisfied of his
coadjutor’s accuracy.
In 1680 he again visited the continent. Between Paris and Calais he had
a sight of the celebrated comet of that year, well known as the one by
observations of which the orbit of these bodies was discovered to be
nearly a parabola. He returned from his travels in the year 1681, and
shortly after married the daughter of a Mr. Tooke then Auditor of the
Exchequer, which union lasted fifty-five years. He settled at Islington,
where, for more than ten years, he occupied himself with his usual
pursuits, of the results of which we shall presently speak more
particularly.
In 1691 the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy became vacant, and, as
Whiston relates, on the authority of Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet
was requested to recommend Mr. Halley. But the astronomer’s avowed
disbelief of Christianity interfered with his election in this instance,
and the Professorship was given to Dr. Gregory. It is related by Sir
David Brewster that Halley, when inclined to enter upon religious
subjects with Newton, always received a check in words like the
following, “You have not studied the subject—I have.”
After the above-mentioned failure, our astronomer received from King
William the commission of Captain in the Navy, with command of a small
vessel. The singularity of the reward need not surprise us, when the
same monarch offered a company of dragoons to Swift: indeed the pursuits
of Captain Halley were nearly akin to those of navigation, and he
himself might be almost as well qualified for sailing, though perhaps
not for fighting a ship, as most of his brother officers. In his new
character Halley made two voyages, the first to the Mediterranean, the
Brazils, and the West Indies, for the purpose of ascertaining the
variation of the magnet, a subject in which he was much interested, and
of which he afterwards published a chart; the second to ascertain the
latitudes and longitudes of the principal points in the British Channel,
and the course of the tides. In 1703 he was elected Savilian Professor
of Geometry, on the death of the celebrated Wallis. He received, about
the same time, the degree of Doctor of Laws, which is conferred without
requiring subscription to the Articles of the Church. In his connexion
with the University he superintended several parts of the edition of the
Greek Geometers, which was printed at the University press.
Halley succeeded Sir Hans Sloane, in 1713, as Secretary to the Royal
Society; and, in 1719, on the death of Flamsteed, he was appointed
Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. In this employment he continued till his
death, under the patronage of Queen Caroline, wife of George II., who
procured for him the half-pay of the rank he formerly held in the navy.
In 1737 he was seized with a paralytic disorder; but nevertheless
continued his labours till within a short time of his death, which took
place in January, 1742, at the age of eighty-five. He was interred at
Lee, near Blackheath, where a monument was erected to him and his wife
by their two daughters.
In person Dr. Halley was rather tall, thin, and fair, and remarkable as
well for energy as vivacity of character. He cultivated the friendship
and acquired the esteem of his most distinguished contemporaries, and
particularly of Newton, spite of their very different opinions. Indeed
it may be said that to him we owe, in some degree, the publication of
the ‘Principia;’ for Halley being engaged upon the consideration of
Kepler’s law, as it had been discovered by observation, viz., that the
squares of the periodic times of planets are as the cubes of their
distances, and suspecting that this might be accounted for on the
supposition of a centripetal force, varying inversely as the square of
the distance, applied himself to prove the connexion geometrically, in
which he was unable to succeed. In this difficulty he applied to Hook
and Wren, neither of whom could help him, and was recommended to consult
Newton, then Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Following this advice, he
found in Newton all he wanted; and did not rest until he had persuaded
his new acquaintance to give the results of his discoveries to the
world. In about two years after this, the first edition of the
‘Principia’ was published, and the proofs were corrected by Halley, who
supplied the well-known Latin verses which stand at the beginning of the
work.
In conversation, Halley appears to have been of a jocose and somewhat
satirical disposition. The following anecdote of him, which is told by
Whiston, displays the usual modesty of the latter, when speaking of
himself: “On my refusal from him of a glass of wine on a Wednesday or
Friday, he said he was afraid I had a pope in my belly, which I denied,
and added somewhat bluntly, that had it not been for the rise now and
then of a Luther or a Whiston, he would himself have gone down on his
knees to St. Winifred or St. Bridget, which he knew not how to
contradict.” It is related that when Queen Caroline offered to obtain an
increase of Halley’s salary as Astronomer Royal, he replied, “Pray, your
Majesty, do no such thing, for should the salary be increased, it might
become an object of emolument to place there some unqualified needy
dependant, to the ruin of the institution.” And yet the sum which he
would not suffer to be increased was only £100 a-year.
To give even a catalogue of the various labours of Halley, would require
more space than we can here devote to the subject. For a more detailed
account both of his life and discoveries, we must refer the reader to
the Biographia Britannica, to Delambre, Histoire de l’Astronomie au
dix-huitième Siecle, livre II., and the Philosophical Transactions of
the time in which he lived; or better perhaps to the Miscellanea
Curiosa, _London_, 1726, a selection of papers from the Transactions,
containing the most remarkable of those written by Halley. We shall,
nevertheless, proceed briefly to notice a few of the discoveries on
which the fame of our astronomer is built.
The most remarkable of them, to a common reader, is the conjecture of
the return of a comet. Some earlier astronomers, as Kepler, had imagined
the motion of these bodies to be rectilinear. Newton, in explaining the
principle of universal gravitation, showed how a comet might describe a
parabola, and also how to calculate its motion, and compare it with
observation. Hevelius had already indicated the curvature of a comet’s
path, and Dörfel, a Saxon clergyman, had calculated the path of the
comet of 1680 upon this supposition. Halley, in computing the parabolic
elements of all the comets which had been well observed up to his time,
suspected, from the general likeness of the three, that the comets of
1531, 1607, and 1682, were the same. He was the more confirmed in this,
by knowing that comets had been seen, though no good observations were
recorded, in the years 1305, 1380, and 1456, giving, with the former
dates, a chain of differences of 75 and 76 years alternately. Halley
supposed, therefore, that the orbit of this comet was, not a parabola,
but a very elongated ellipse, and that it would return about the year
1758. The truth of his conjecture was fully confirmed in January, 1759,
by Messier. The first person, however, who saw Halley’s comet, as it is
now called, was George Palitzch, a farmer in the neighbourhood of
Dresden, who had studied astronomy by himself, and fitted up a small
observatory.
But a much more useful exertion of Halley’s genius and power of
calculation is to be found in his researches on the lunar theory. It is
to him that we are indebted for first starting the idea of finding the
longitude at sea by means of the moon’s place, which is now universally
adopted. The principle of this problem is as follows. An observer at sea
can readily find the time of day by means of the sun or a star, and can
thereby correct a watch. If he could at the same moment in which he
finds his own time, also discover that at Greenwich, the difference
between the two, turned into degrees, minutes, and seconds, would be his
longitude east or west of Greenwich. If, therefore, he carries with him
a Nautical Almanac, in which the times of various astronomical phenomena
are registered, as they will take place at Greenwich, or rather as they
will be seen by an observer placed at the centre of the earth with a
Greenwich clock, he can observe any one of these phenomena, and reduce
it also to the centre. He will then know the corresponding moments of
time, for his own position and that of Greenwich. The moon traverses the
whole of its orbit in little more than 27 days, and therefore moves
rapidly with respect to the fixed stars, its motion being nearly a whole
sign of the zodiac in 48 hours. If we observe the distance between the
moon and a star, and find it to be ten degrees, the longitude of the
place in which the observation is made can be known as aforesaid, if the
almanac will tell what time it was at Greenwich when the moon was at
that same distance from the star. In the time of Halley, though it was
known that the moon moved nearly in an ellipse, yet the elements of that
ellipse, and the various irregularities to which it is subject, were
very imperfectly ascertained. It had, however, been known even from the
time of the Chaldeans, that some of these irregularities have a
_period_, as it is called, of little more than eighteen years, that is,
begin again in the same order after every eighteen years; the periods
and quantities of several other errors had also been discovered with
something like accuracy. To make good lunar tables, that is, tables from
which the place of the moon might be correctly calculated beforehand,
became the object of Halley’s ambition. He therefore observed the moon
diligently during the whole of one of the periods of eighteen years,
that is, from the end of 1721 to that of 1739, and produced tables which
were published in 1749, after his death, and were of great service to
astronomers. He also made another observation on the motion of the moon,
which has since given rise to one of the finest discoveries of Laplace.
In calculating from our tables the time of an ancient eclipse, observed
at Babylon, B. C. 720, he found that, had the tables been correct, it
would have happened three hours sooner than, according to Ptolemy, it
did happen. This might have arisen from an error in the Babylonian
observation; but on looking at other eclipses, he found that the ancient
ones always happened later than the time indicated by his table, and
that the difference became less and less as he approached his own time.
From hence he concluded that the moon’s average daily motion is subject
to a very small acceleration, so that a lunar month at present is in a
very slight degree shorter than a month in the time of the Chaldeans.
This was afterwards shown by Laplace to arise from a very slow
diminution in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, caused by the
attraction of the planets. For a further account of Halley’s
astronomical labours, we may refer to the History of Astronomy in the
Library of Useful Knowledge, page 79.
We must also ascribe to Halley the first correct application of the
barometer to the measurement of the heights of mountains. Mariotte, who
first enunciated the remarkable law that the elastic forces of gases are
in the inverse proportion of the spaces which they occupy, had
previously given a formula for the determination of these same heights,
entirely wrong in principle, and inapplicable in practice. Halley, whose
profound mathematical knowledge made him fully equal to the task,
investigated and discovered the common formula, which, with some
corrections for the temperature of the mercury in the barometer and the
air without it, is in use at this day. We have already mentioned that
Halley sailed to various parts of the earth with a view to determine the
variation of the magnet. The result of his labours was communicated to
the Royal Society in a map of the lines of equal variation, and also of
the course of the trade-winds. He attempted to explain the phenomena of
the compass by supposing that the earth is one great magnet, having four
poles, two near each pole of the equator; and further accounts for the
variation which the compass undergoes from year to year in the same
place, by imagining a magnetic sphere, interior to the surface of the
earth, which nucleus or inner globe turns on an axis with a velocity of
rotation very little differing from that of the earth itself. This
hypothesis has shared the fate of many others purely mathematical; that
is, invented to show how the observed phenomena might be produced,
without any ground of observation for believing that they really are so
produced. If we put together the astronomical and geographical
discoveries of Halley, and remember that the former were principally
confined to those points which bear upon the subjects of the latter, we
shall be able to find a title for their author less liable to cavil than
that of the Prince of Astronomers, which has sometimes been bestowed
upon him; we may safely say that no man, either before or since, has
done more to improve the theoretical part of navigation, by the diligent
observation alike of heavenly and earthly phenomena.
We pass over many minor subjects, such as his improvement of the
diving-bell, or his measurement of the quantity of fluid abstracted by
evaporation from the sea, to come to an application of science in which
he led the way,—the investigation of the law of mortality. From
observations communicated to the Royal Society of the births and deaths
in the city of Breslau, he constructed the first table of mortality,
which was in a great measure the foundation of the celebrated hypothesis
of De Moivre, that the decrements of human life are nearly equal at all
ages; that is, that out of eighty-six persons born, one dies every year,
until all are gone. Halley’s table as might be expected, was not very
applicable to human life in England, either then or now, but the effect
of example is conspicuous in this instance. Before the death of Halley
the tables of Kerseboom were published, and four years afterwards, those
of De Parcieux.
We will not enlarge on the purely mathematical investigations of Halley,
which would possess but little interest for the general reader. We may
mention, however, his method for the solution of equations, his ‘Analogy
of the Logarithmic Tangents to the Meridian Line, or sum of the
secants,’ his algebraic investigation of the place of the focus of a
lens, and his improvement of the method of finding logarithms. From the
latter we quote a sentence, which, to the reader, for whose benefit we
have omitted entering upon any discussion of these subjects, will appear
amusing enough, if indeed he does not shrink to see how much he has
degenerated from his ancestors. After describing a process which
contains calculation enough for most people; and which further directs
to multiply sixty figures by sixty figures, he adds, “If the curiosity
of any gentleman that has leisure, would prompt him to undertake to do
the logarithms of all prime numbers under 100,000 to 25 or 30 figures, I
dare assure him that the facility of this method will invite him
thereto; nor can anything more easy be desired. And to encourage him, I
here give the logarithms of the first prime numbers under 20 to 60
places.” One look at these encouraging rows of figures would be
sufficient for any but a calculating boy.
No one who is conversant with the mathematics and their applications can
read the life of the mathematicians of the seventeenth century without a
strong feeling of respect for the manner in which they overcame
obstacles, and of gratitude for the labour which they have saved their
successors. The brilliancy of later names has, in some degree, eclipsed
their fame with the multitude; but no one acquainted with the history of
science can forget, how with poor instruments and imperfect processes,
they achieved successes, but for which Laplace might have made the first
rude attempts towards finding the longitude, and Lagrange might have
discovered the law which connects the coefficients of the binomial
theorem. But even of these men the same thing may one day be said; and
future analysts may wonder how Laplace, with his paltry means of
investigation, could account for the phenomenon of the acceleration of
the moon’s motion; and future astronomers may, should such a sentence as
the present ever meet their eyes, be surprised that the observers of the
nineteenth century should hold their heads so high above those of the
seventeenth.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
SULLY.
_From the original Picture by an unknown Artist in the private
collection of Louis Philippe, King of the French._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
SULLY
The Duc de Sully is celebrated as the companion, minister, and historian
of Henry IV., the most popular of French monarchs. Eminent among his
contemporaries both as a soldier and as a financier, it is his especial
glory that he laboured to promote the welfare of the industrious
classes, when other statesmen regarded them but as the fount from which
royal extravagance was to be supplied.
Maximilian, son of François de Bethune, Baron de Rosny, and of Charlotte
Dauvet, daughter of a President of the Chamber of Accounts at Paris, was
born at Rosny in the year 1559. His family was ancient, illustrious, and
once wealthy, but his paternal grandfather had almost ruined it by his
extravagance, his maternal grandfather disinherited him because he
embraced the reformed religion; and with a slight annual allowance young
Rosny had to seek his own fortune in the extravagant profession of arms.
By a sage economy and order he, however, supported himself, and escaped
the dependence and dishonour consequent on extravagance in a poor man.
When thirteen years of age he was presented by his father to the young
Prince of Navarre, who was only seven years older than himself, and who
at once conceived that affection for him which was destined to cease
only with his own life.
On the memorable day of St. Bartholomew, Rosny was in Paris, engaged in
the prosecution of his studies. A known member of the Protestant Church,
his life was in jeopardy: his servant and his tutor fell victims to the
rage of the Papists, and he himself, obliged to quit his chambers for a
safer hiding-place, and exposed to imminent dangers in traversing the
streets, owed his deliverance more than once to a union of courage and
coolness not very common in a youth of thirteen. After this event he, as
well as his patron and friend Henry of Navarre, conformed for a time to
the observances of the Roman Catholic religion; but in 1576, when Henry
escaped from the thraldom in which he had been held, abjured Catholicism
and placed himself at the head of a Protestant army, Rosny was the
companion of his flight, and first began to carry arms in his service.
His noble birth, and the favour of his master, would at once have
secured him military rank, but Rosny preferred to serve as a simple
volunteer, in order, as he said, to learn the art of war by its
elements.
At the surprise of Réde, at the siege of Villefranche, at the taking of
Eause and Cahors, at the battle of Marmande, and in all the dangerous
affairs in which Henry engaged, Rosny was always at his side. His good
services, and the affection borne him by his master, did not, however,
prevent a quarrel, which, it must be said, was provoked by his own
imprudence and aggravated by his own pride. In spite of the commands of
the Prince of Navarre, who had wisely prohibited the practice of
referring private quarrels to the arbitrement of the sword, Rosny acted
as second in a duel, in which one of the principals was desperately
wounded. The Prince’s anger at the breach of discipline was exasperated
by a strong personal regard for the wounded man. He sent for Sully,
rebuked him in harsh terms, and said that he deserved to lose his head
for what he had done. The pride of the young soldier was touched; he
replied that he was neither vassal nor subject of Navarre, and would
henceforth seek the service of a more grateful master. The Prince
rejoined in severe terms and turned his back on him; and Rosny was
quitting the court, when the Queen, who knew his value, interfered, and
reconciled him with her son.
Not long after he quitted Henry’s service, alleging that he had pledged
his word to accompany the Duc d’Alençon, afterwards Duc d’Anjou, brother
of Henry III., in his contest for the sovereignty of Flanders; where, in
case of success, he was to be put in possession of the estates which had
belonged to his maternal grandfather. In this campaign he gained neither
honour nor profit, and soon returned to his original master. Henry
received him with open arms, and, as if to prove that absence had not
affected his confidence and esteem, sent him a few days after on an
important mission to Paris.
In the troubled times which followed, Rosny was unshaken in devotion to
the cause which he had espoused. He accompanied Henry, when that prince,
with only nineteen followers, threw himself, as a last resource, into La
Rochelle. He undertook an embassy from that city to Henry III., then
almost as much persecuted by the League as the King of Navarre himself.
In his Memoirs he has left a striking description of the degraded
condition of that sovereign, who had entirely abandoned himself to
favourites and menials of the court. “His Majesty was in his cabinet; he
had his sword by his side, a hood thrown over his shoulders, a little
bonnet on his head, and a basket full of little dogs hung round his neck
by a broad riband.” He listened to Rosny with vacant stupidity, neither
moving his feet, his hands, nor his head. When he spoke, he complained
of the audacity and insults of the League—said that nothing would go
well in France until the King of Navarre went to mass—but agreed,
finally, that Rosny might treat with the envoys of the Protestant
Cantons of Switzerland, in his name as well as the King of Navarre’s,
for the raising of twenty thousand Swiss troops, to be employed between
the two sovereigns.
Henry, through his imprudence, lost all the advantages which his
faithful servant’s treaty with the Swiss might have secured to him; but
neither disgusted nor dispirited by this folly, Rosny persevered in his
attachment to a cause which seemed altogether desperate to most others.
He was at the siege of Fontenay, and at the brilliant victory of
Coutras, for which the King of Navarre was materially indebted to the
artillery under Rosny’s command. His next great undertaking was to
effect an entire reconciliation between his master and the King of
France. Having succeeded in this, the eyes of all France thenceforward
rested upon him as the only man who could re-establish the distracted
kingdom. Such was the enthusiasm of many of the French at the time, that
they called him “Le Dieu Rosny.”
The desired reconciliation had not long been made when Henry III. was
assassinated by a fanatic monk, and the King of Navarre laid claim to
the vacant throne. But much remained to be done ere he could tranquilly
seat himself upon it. His religion was an insurmountable obstacle to the
mass of the nation, and the League was all-powerful in many parts of
France and held possession of Paris.
Rosny fought with his accustomed valour at the battles of Arques and
Ivry. At the latter he well nigh lost his life: he received five wounds,
had two horses killed under him, and fell at last among a heap of slain.
The manner in which he retired from this field, with four prisoners of
the highest distinction and the standard of the enemy’s
commander-in-chief, is one of the most romantic incidents to be found in
authentic history.
After the victory of Ivry, Rosny did not receive the rewards he merited,
and he remained for some time at his estate under pretence of ill
health, but secretly disinclined to return to the service of one who had
shown little real gratitude for his long and faithful adherence. No
sooner, however, did he learn that Henry was about to undertake the
siege of Paris, than he left his retreat and hastened again to his
master’s side. His wounds were still uncured: he appeared before the
King leaning on crutches and with an arm in a sling. Touched by his
devotedness and his melancholy state, Henry loaded him with caresses,
and insisted that he should not expose himself for the present but
remain near his person to assist him with his counsels.
When Henry first meditated his recantation of the Protestant faith, he
consulted Rosny on this all-important subject. The honest soldier after
reviewing the state of the parties opposed to the King, and holding out
the hope that they would disagree among themselves and fall to pieces,
said, “With regard to your change of religion, it cannot be otherwise
than advantageous to you, seeing that your enemies have no other pretext
for their hostility, but, sire, it is between you and your conscience to
decide on this important article[4].” Shortly after this conversation
the death of the Duke of Parma relieved Henry from one of his most
formidable enemies; but the implacable Leaguers, now becoming meanly
desperate, laid plots against his life, and, it is said, even sent
assassins to Mantes, where the King was residing. Henry thought to
provide for his personal safety by continually surrounding himself by a
corps of faithful English soldiers who were in his service; but Rosny,
knowing the craft and audacity of fanaticism, and warned of the danger
which menaced the competitor for the crown by the untimely fate of its
last wearer, was kept in a state of continual alarm. At last, sinking
his attachment to the reformed religion in his attachment to his King
and his friend, he supplicated, on his knees, that he would conform to
the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. And this the King did almost
immediately after. Rosny continued a Protestant. Many of the cities of
France now submitted to Henry, but Rouen, one of the most important of
the number, was only gained over by the skilful negotiations of Rosny,
who shortly after treated, and with equal success, with the Duke de
Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, and other formidable enemies of the King.
In return for these valuable services, he was admitted into the Councils
of War and Finance, where his honesty and the favour of his master soon
roused the corrupt and jealous members of those departments of
government against him. So great, indeed, were his annoyances that in
the absence of Henry he withdrew again to his estates, and was only
induced to return to his post by a personal visit from his sovereign.
Footnote 4:
Mémoires de Sully.
The King, who was now strong enough to attack the Spaniards in their
dominions in the Low Countries, laid siege to Arras: but through the bad
conduct of those who administered the finances of the state, he not only
found himself unprovided with all that was necessary to prosecute his
undertaking with success, but was left in a state of entire and even
personal destitution. In these difficulties he called Rosny to his
assistance, and placed him at the head of the finances. Under the new
minister’s able and honest management, affairs soon changed their
aspect: the treasury was replenished, while at the same time the people
found their burdens lightened by economy. Rosny had prepared himself for
this office, in the discharge of which he became a true benefactor of
France, by a profound study of accounts and of the revenues and
resources of the country; and when the post was given to him, for a
considerable time he laboured night and day to detect the impolicy and
the peculation of those who preceded him, and to re-establish the
finances of the country.
In 1601 Rosny visited England, under pretence of travelling for his
amusement, but in reality to ascertain the political views, and to
secure the friendship of Elizabeth. On the Queen’s death, a formal
embassy to James I. was contemplated, but a dangerous illness which the
King suffered at Fontainebleau delayed this measure. Henry, who thought
he was dying, sent for the long-tried Rosny to his bed-side, and in his
presence he desired the Queen to retain his faithful minister, as the
welfare of herself, her family, and of the nation were dear to her. The
King, however, recovered, and in the month of June, 1603, Rosny, with a
numerous suite, departed on his mission. After a residence of several
weeks in England, he succeeded in concluding an advantageous treaty with
James I.
The following year he composed a treatise on religious tolerance, which
he at one time hoped might reconcile the animosities of the Catholics
and Protestants. If he failed in this, he left an example, rare at that
time, of an enlightened and liberal spirit. Shortly after he wrote a
memorial indicating the means by which the commerce and finances of
France might be still further improved. At that time the political
sciences could scarcely be said to exist; and it is not to be supposed
that the minister’s views were at all times just and enlarged. They
show, at all events, that he looked to the industry of the people as the
source of national wealth; and to their welfare as one, at least, of the
objects of government. “Tillage and pasturage,” it was a favourite
saying of his, “are the two paps by which France is nourished—the real
treasures of Peru.” To manufactures he was less favourable, and his
obstinacy on this head retarded many of Henry’s schemes for the
encouragement of national industry. His real glory as a minister is to
be sought in the exactness which he introduced into the management of
the finances; and in the vigour with which he repressed peculation in
his subordinates, and gave the whole weight of his influence to check
the needless expenditure of a profligate court, to curtail those feudal
claims which bore hardest on the vassals, and to oppose all privileges
and monopolies, commonly bestowed upon courtiers in those days, which
cramp the prosperity of a nation, to put a comparatively trifling sum
into the pocket of a single person. One day the Duchesse de Verneuil,
one of Henry’s favourites, remonstrated with him for his severity in
this respect, alleging that the King had a good right to make presents
to his mistresses and nobility. His answer should be generally known.
“This were well, Madam, if the King took the money from his own purse;
but it is against reason to take it from the shopkeepers, artisans, and
agricultural labourers, since it is they who support the King and all of
us, and they would be well content with a single master, without having
so many cousins, relations, and mistresses to maintain.” His enemies
insinuated that in the service of the state he had not neglected his own
interest; and it is certain that he acquired immense wealth. Cardinal
Richelieu, however, no friend to him, contents himself with the
insinuation that if the last years of his administration were less
austere than the first, it could not, at least, be said that they were
profitable to himself without being very profitable to the state also.
To his other offices he added those of Grand Master of the Ordnance, and
Surveyor-General of Public Works. The artillery had always been a
favourite branch of the service with him; and he was esteemed one of the
best generals of the age for the attack or defence of fortified places.
As Master of the Ordnance he mainly contributed to the success of the
war with the Duke of Savoy. The army was well paid and provided, the
artillery always at its place at the proper time, and a general reform
was felt throughout the service. In peace he was not less active in
superintending the construction and repair of fortifications; and in
those still more valuable labours which tend to facilitate intercourse,
and provide for the internal wants of a nation. One of his chief works
was a canal to join the Seine and Loire. There were few good engineers
in those times, and Rosny, with his usual industry and earnestness, went
himself to the spot and superintended the commencement of the work he
had projected.
In 1606, after many brief quarrels between him and his master, caused
chiefly by the intrigues of Henry’s mistresses and worthless courtiers,
Rosny was created Duc de Sully and a Peer of France.
The licentiousness of the King, and the power he allowed his mistresses
to obtain over him, had continually thwarted Sully and undone much of
the good they had together proposed and executed. The minister’s
remonstrances were frequent, bold, and at times even violent; indeed,
his whole life had been distinguished by an honest bluntness; but the
propensities of the amorous monarch were incurable, and his faithful
servant had the mortification of seeing him disgrace the last years of
his life by an infatuation for the Princess of Condé. Henry had already
determined on a war with his old enemies the Spaniards, when the flight
of this lady with her husband, who took refuge in the states of the
house of Austria, induced him to hurry on his preparations to attack
both the Emperor and the King of Spain. Sully, at this time, had amassed
forty millions of livres in the treasury of the state, and he engaged
moreover to increase this sum to sixty or to seventy millions without
laying on any new taxes. He had also provided the most numerous and
magnificent corps of artillery that had ever been seen in Europe. But in
the midst of these grand preparations Henry’s mind was agitated by his
insane passion for the Princess of Condé, and oppressed by a
presentiment of his fate. He was indeed told on every hand that plots
were laid against his life; his romantic courage forsook him, he became
absent and suspicious, and at last distrusted even his faithful
minister.
Sully now no longer saw his master except at short intervals, and lived,
retired from the court, at the Arsenal, his official residence as Grand
Master of the Artillery.
The naturally confident and noble nature of Henry, and his old
attachment for the sharer in all his fortunes, triumphed however over
his weaknesses and illusions, and he determined to pay Sully a visit and
to excuse himself for his late coldness. With these amiable intentions
the King left his palace, and was on his way to the Arsenal in an open
carriage, when he was stabbed to the heart by the fanatic Ravaillac.
On the death of Henry IV. Sully would have continued his valuable
services under the Queen-widow, Mary de’ Medici, who was appointed
Regent, but that Princess resigning herself and the government of the
state to intriguing Italians, headed by the unpopular Concini, the
honest and indignant minister quitted office and the court for ever, and
retired to his estates.
The life Sully led in his retreat was most rational and dignified.
Unmoved by the ingratitude of the court, of which he was continually
receiving fresh proofs, he continued to love the country he had so long
governed; and though a zealous Protestant to the last, he would never
join in the intrigues of the Hugonots, which he dreaded might renew the
horrors of civil war. To find occupation for his active mind he dictated
his Memoirs to four secretaries, whom, for many years, he retained in
his service, and who, in the ‘Economies Royales,’ better known under the
title of ‘Mémoires de Sully,’ preserved not only the most interesting
details of the life of their noble master and of Henry IV., but the
fullest account of the history and policy, manners and customs, of the
age in which Sully lived. Neither the occupations of war nor of
politics, in which he had been absorbed for thirty-four years, had
eradicated his original taste for polite literature; and in his
retirement he composed many pieces not only in prose but in verse. One
of his poetical compositions, which is a parallel between Henry IV. and
Julius Cæsar, was translated into Latin and much admired throughout
Europe.
After having lived thirty years in this retirement, the great Sully
expired at his Château of Villebonne, in the eighty-second year of his
age, on the 22d December, 1641—the same year in which Lord Strafford,
the minister of Charles I., was beheaded in London, and in which the
grave closed over the widow of Henry IV., Mary de’ Medici, who died at
Cologne in obscurity and great poverty.
It is to be regretted that no author has yet produced a life of Sully
worthy of the subject. The ‘Economies Royales’ is the great storehouse
of information, but its prolixity and singularity of style render it
little attractive to the general reader. The following works, however,
may be consulted:—’Les Vies des Hommes Illustres de la France,’ by M.
D’Auvigny, and the memoir in the ‘Biographie Universelle.’
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._
N. POUSSIN.
_From the original Picture by himself in the Gallery of the Louvre._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
POUSSIN
Truth and compliment are happily united in Poussin’s observation to a
noble amateur, “You wanted but the stimulus of necessity to have become
a great painter.” The artist had himself felt this stimulus, and he knew
its value in producing resolution and habits of industry. His family was
noble, but indigent: John, his father, a native of Soissons, and a
soldier of fortune, served during the reigns of Charles IX., Henry III.,
and Henry IV., with more reputation than profit. At last, finding that
in the trade of arms his valour was likely to be its own reward, he
married the widow of a solicitor, resigned his military employments, and
fixed his abode at Andelys in Normandy, where, in June 1594, his son
Nicholas, the subject of the present memoir, was born.
The district in which Andelys is situated is remarkable for its
picturesque beauty, and from the scenery which surrounded him the genius
of Poussin drew its first inspiration. His sketches of landscape
attracted the notice and commendation of Quintin Varin, an artist
residing in the neighbourhood. Animated by praise, young Poussin
earnestly solicited his father that he might become Varin’s pupil: a
request to which the prudent parent, after long hesitation, reluctantly
acceded. He knew that in such a pursuit as that of the fine arts, much
of the aspirant’s life must be expended before a just estimate of his
professional talents can be formed, and that even where talent exists,
the success of the possessor is not always commensurate to its claims.
The youth, however, was fortunate in meeting, in the first instance,
with a preceptor whose instructions, founded on just principles, left
him nothing to unlearn. He remained with Varin until his eighteenth
year, when he went to Paris, and studied under Ferdinand Elle, and
L’Allemand, two artists then in fashion, from whom he learned nothing.
In the mean time he had become acquainted with several persons who
appreciated his dawning talents, and felt an interest in his fortunes.
Among the rest, a young nobleman of Poitou manifested an almost
fraternal attachment towards him, relieved his pecuniary wants, and
among other services introduced him to Courtois, the King’s
mathematician, who possessed a fine collection of prints by Marc
Antonio, and a great number of drawings and sketches by Raffaelle,
Giulio Romano, and other great masters of the Roman school. These
treasures Poussin studied and copied with sedulous zeal and attention,
and he was frequently heard to advert to this circumstance as one of the
most fortunate of his life, inasmuch as the contemplation of these fine
examples had fixed his taste, and determined the bent of his powers
towards the higher branches of art, at a time when his mind was
fluctuating between the attractions of different schools.
The young Poitevin, being summoned to return home, invited Poussin to
become his companion, and to undertake a series of pictures, calculated,
by its extent as well as its excellence, to do honour to his paternal
mansion. But his mother regarded the fine arts and those who patronised
them with equal and unqualified contempt: and suffering in her house the
exercise of none but what she considered useful talents, she assigned to
Poussin the office of house-steward, and his visions of fame were at
once dispelled by the humble occupation of overlooking the servants, and
keeping accounts. It may easily be supposed that the young artist did
not deport himself very meekly under the new appointments which had thus
unexpectedly been thrust upon him. Without asking the sympathy or
assistance even of his friend, who, it would appear, had acquiesced too
readily in his mother’s arrangements, he quitted the house and made his
way to Paris on foot; having no other means of support on the road than
the extemporaneous productions of his pencil. In consequence of the
hardships which he experienced during this journey, he was attacked by a
fever on reaching Paris, which obliged him to return to Andelys. After
the lapse of a year, having recruited his health, he made arrangements
to execute a long-cherished purpose of a journey to Rome. But with an
improvidence not uncommon in artists, and sometimes falsely said to be
characteristic of genius, he calculated his resources so inaccurately
that in two successive attempts he was obliged to return, leaving his
purpose unaccomplished. In the first instance he reached Florence, but
in the second, he got no farther than Lyons. The disappointment,
however, was attended with good results, for on his return to Paris, a
circumstance occurred which at once raised him into high reputation.
The Jesuits had ordered a set of pictures for a high festival, which
were to display the miracles worked by their patron saints, Ignatius
Loyola, and Francis Xavier. Of these, six were executed by Poussin, in a
very short space of time; the pictures were little more than sketches,
but they exhibited such powers of composition and expression, that he
was at once acknowledged to have distanced all competitors. His
acquaintance was now sought by amateurs and literati; but the chief
advantage which accrued to him was the friendship of the Chevalier
Marini, a distinguished Italian, who had settled in Paris, and engaged
with interest in the cultivation of elegant literature and the arts. His
mind was stored with classical erudition, and he delighted to exercise
his poetic talent on the then fashionable fables of heathen mythology.
Such pursuits were congenial to Poussin’s turn of mind; and by the
advice, and with the assistance of Marini, he entered deeply into the
study of the Latin and Italian authors. Hence he drew the elements of
that knowledge of the customs, manners, and habits of antiquity, by
which his works are so eminently distinguished. Marini, soon after, went
to Rome, and was anxious that Poussin should accompany him; but this the
artist found impossible, from the number of unfinished commissions on
his hands. In the ensuing year, however, 1624, his long-cherished wish
was accomplished, and he trod the streets of the Eternal City.
Among the innumerable pilgrims who have thronged to that mighty shrine,
no one ever, perhaps, approached it with deeper reverence than Poussin,
or studied in the school of antiquity with more zeal and success. He
commenced his labours with that enthusiasm which the objects around him
could not fail to inspire, and comprehended in the round of his studies
the different sciences which bore collaterally upon his art. Some of his
finest works are among those which he produced at this period; but his
talents were not at first appreciated in Rome, and the spectre of penury
still haunted his study. His friend Marini had gone to Naples, where he
died, and the Cardinal Barberini, to whose favour he had been especially
recommended, was absent on a legation in Spain. Among other works which
his necessities compelled him to dispose of at this time for a trifling
sum, was “The Ark of God in the hands of the Philistines,” which was
purchased from him for fifty crowns, and sold shortly afterwards to the
Duc de Richelieu for one thousand. Accident and ill health combined with
poverty to overcloud the early part of his abode in Rome. The French
were then very unpopular, on account of some differences existing
between the Court of France and the Holy See. Poussin was assaulted in
the streets by some of the Pope’s soldiery, severely wounded by a
sabre-cut in the hand, and only escaped more serious injury by the
spirit and resolution with which he defended himself. After recovering
from this injury, he was again rendered unable to pursue his art by a
lingering illness; in the course of which a fellow-countryman, named
Jean Dughet, took him to his own home, and treated him with care, which
soon restored him to health. Six months afterwards he married the
daughter of his host, and subsequently adopted his wife’s brother,
Gaspar, who assumed his name, and has shared its honours by his splendid
landscapes. With part of his wife’s portion Poussin purchased a house on
the Pincian Hill, which is still pointed out as an object of interest to
travellers and students.
From this period the fortune of Poussin began to improve. Relieved from
his embarrassments, and tranquillized by domestic comfort, he proceeded
in the calm exercise of his powers; and the fine works on which his
reputation is founded were painted in rapid succession. Cardinal
Barberini, who had returned to Rome, engaged him to execute one of the
large paintings ordered to be copied in mosaic for St. Peter’s Church.
The subject was the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus; but the picture, which is
now in the Vatican, furnishes no reason for regret that Poussin did not
more frequently employ himself on works of large dimensions. A
circumstance occurred at this time which it is gratifying to relate, as
it exhibits two distinguished men engaged in the honourable task of
promoting the success and vindicating the reputation of each other. When
Poussin arrived at Rome, he found the lovers of art divided into two
parties, composed respectively of the admirers of Guido and Domenichino.
Two pictures had been painted by those artists, which, as if to decide
their rival claims, were hung opposite to each other in the church of
San Gregorio. The subjects were similar; the one the Flagellation, the
other the Martyrdom of the Saint from whom the church is named. The
performance of Guido was the one most generally preferred: but Poussin
formed a different judgment, and sat down to copy the picture of the
less popular artist. Domenichino, on being informed of this, although he
was then suffering from illness, ordered himself to be carried to the
church, where he entered into conversation with Poussin, to whom he was
personally unknown, and who indeed imagined him to be dead. A friendly
intimacy was the consequence of this interview, which was exceedingly
advantageous to Poussin, as Domenichino took pleasure in communicating
all that knowledge of art, which long experience had enabled him to
acquire. Shortly after this Domenichino quitted Rome for Naples, and the
storm of envy and detraction seemed to gather force in his absence. So
much was his reputation injured, that the monks of the convent of San
Girolamo della Carità, who had in their possession his superb picture of
the Communion of St. Jerome, ordered it to be removed from the walls and
consigned to a cellar as a thing utterly contemptible. This anecdote,
were it not attested by unquestionable evidence, would be difficult to
believe; for the merits of the picture require no deep knowledge of art
to be duly appreciated: it is not less admirable in colour and effect
than in sentiment and character. The intelligent monks, however, wishing
for a picture to supply its place, engaged Poussin to paint one,
acquainting him at the same time that they could save him the expense of
canvass, by sending him a worthless daub, over which he might paint. The
astonishment of Poussin on receiving the picture may be easily
conceived. He immediately directed it to be carried to the church from
whence it had been taken, and announced his intention to deliver a
public disquisition on its merits. This he accordingly did to a large
auditory, and with such force of reasoning and illustration, that malice
was silenced and prejudice convinced; and the name of Domenichino
assumed from that time its just rank in public estimation.
The pictures of Poussin, as he advanced in his career, were eagerly
purchased by connoisseurs from all countries, and his fame was at length
established throughout Europe. In 1638 a project was suggested to Louis
XIII., by Cardinal Richelieu, for finishing the Louvre, and adorning the
royal palaces, according to the magnificent plans of Francis I. The high
reputation of Poussin marked him out as the person best qualified for
the partial execution and entire superintendence of these splendid
works; and accordingly a letter was transmitted to him by order of the
French monarch, appointing him his principal painter, and requesting his
immediate attendance at Paris. But so absorbed was the artist in his
studies, and so unambitious was his temper, that he allowed two years to
elapse before he attended to this flattering requisition; nor is it
probable that he would have quitted Rome at all, had not a gentleman
been despatched from the court of France to bring him. On his arrival,
he was presented to the King, who received him with courtesy, and
assigned him a liberal income. Placed in the full enjoyment of fame and
wealth, Poussin’s situation might well appear enviable to his less
favoured brethren in art. But his station, brilliant as it was, proved
ill-suited to his disposition: and his letters to his friends in Rome
were soon filled with the language of disappointment and complaint. He
felt that he was no longer exercising his genius as an artist, but
labouring as an artisan. Commissions were poured in upon him from the
court with merciless rapidity, without the slightest calculation of the
time requisite to the production of works of art. On one occasion he was
required to execute a picture containing sixteen figures, larger than
life, within six weeks. Nor was this the worst: the triflers of the
court obtruded on him, with irritating politeness, the most
insignificant employments; designs for chimney-pieces, ornamental
cabinets, bindings for books, repairing pictures, &c. To complete the
catalogue of annoyances, his coadjutors in the public works, Le Mercier
the architect, and the painters Vouet and Fouquieres, thwarted and
opposed him in every particular; until at length, worn out and
disgusted, he applied for permission to return to Rome. This he obtained
with some difficulty, and not without a stipulation that he should
revisit Paris within twelve months. It is not improbable that the
condition would never have been fulfilled; but the King’s death in the
following year released him from the obligation. The last works executed
by Poussin in Paris were two allegorical subjects: the one, Time
bringing Truth to light, and delivering her from the fiends, Malice and
Envy; in which an allusion was most probably meant to the controversies
in which he had been engaged: the other, in which his intention is less
equivocal, is an imitation of bas-relief, in the ceiling of the Louvre,
where his opponents, Fouquieres, Le Mercier, and Vouet, are consigned to
the derision of posterity under the figures of Folly, Ignorance, and
Envy.
Perhaps the happiest, and not an inconsiderable, portion of Poussin’s
life, was that which intervened between his return to Rome and his
death. Experience of the cabals and disquietudes of Paris had no doubt
taught him to value the classical serenity of his adopted home. Although
in possession of great and undisputed fame, and sufficiently affluent,
he continued to labour in his art with unrelaxing diligence, if that may
be called labour which constituted his highest gratification. His
talents and moral worth drew round him a large circle of the learned and
the polite, who anxiously sought his society during his leisure hours;
and in his evening walks on the Pincian Hill, he might have been said to
resemble one of the philosophers of antiquity, surrounded by his friends
and disciples. Thus he descended, with tranquil dignity, into the vale
of life. In 1665 he suffered from a stroke of the palsy, and, shortly
after, the death of his wife plunged him into the deepest affliction. He
perceived his own end to be approaching, and awaited it with calm
resignation. He died in his 72d year, A. D. 1665, and was buried with
public honours in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.
The pictures of Poussin are so numerous, and so generally dispersed,
that every one, whose attention has been directed to the arts, must have
a pretty accurate impression of his style. It is a style of perfect
originality, reminding us somewhat of ancient art, but without a
tincture of imitation of any modern master. For a short time Poussin
sought a model in the school of Titian, but turned from that task to
copy the pictures discovered among the ruins of ancient Rome. Apparently
he wished to give his works something of the subdued tone which Time has
communicated to those relics; and hence, in some of his pictures, there
is a singular discrepancy between the subject and the effect. He
delighted to paint antique revels, bacchanalians, dancing nymphs, &c.;
but his tints never accord with gay subjects, nor exhibit the vivacity
and freshness proper to such scenes. The solemn and sombre hue of his
colouring is far better adapted to grand or pathetic subjects.
Considering the implicit and almost idolatrous admiration with which
Poussin regarded the antique statues, it is astonishing that he should
not have infused into his own forms more of the spirit in which these
are conceived; for, in this point, imitation could not have been carried
too far. But the reverse is the case: his figures are direct transcripts
of individual models, usually correct in proportion, but seldom rendered
ideal, or generalized into beauty. A still greater defect is chargeable
on his composition, which is almost invariably scattered and confused,
without a centre of interest or point of unity. His principal figures
are mixed up with the subordinate ones, and those again with the
accessories in the back-ground. What, then, are the qualities by which
Poussin has acquired his high reputation? The principal one we conceive
to consist in that very simplicity and severity, by which perhaps the
eye is at first offended. He appears to feel himself above the necessity
of superficial ornament. He is always thoroughly in earnest; his figures
perform their business with an emphasis which rivets our attention, we
become identified with the subject, and lose all thought of the painter
in his performance. This is a result never produced by an inferior
artist. On the whole, although we cannot assign Poussin a place by the
side of Raffaelle, Rubens, Titian, and some others, who may be
considered the giants of art, and compose the foremost rank, he
certainly stands among those who are most eminent in the second. His
compositions, which are very numerous, are varied with great skill, and
surprise us, not unfrequently, with novel and striking combinations; and
several among them—we may adduce particularly the Ark of God among the
Philistines, the Deluge, and the Slaughter of the Innocents—could only
have originated in a mind of a very exalted order.
Several of Poussin’s finest works are in this country. In the Dulwich
Gallery there is, we believe, the largest number to be found in any one
collection. Among those, the subject of the Angels appearing to Abraham
is treated with considerable grace and beauty. The picture of Moses
striking the rock, in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford, is one
of Poussin’s most profound and elaborate performances; and, in the
National Gallery, the two Bacchanalian subjects will furnish a full idea
both of his powers and deficiencies in treating that favourite class of
compositions.
The reader will find a more detailed account of the life and works of
Poussin in Lanzi’s ‘Storia Pittorica dell’Italia,’ and Bellori’s ‘Vite
di Pittori moderni.’ There is an English life of him written by Maria
Graham. Much critical information concerning his style and performances
will be found in the writings of Mengs, Reynolds, and Fuseli.
[Illustration: [Holy Family; from a picture by Poussin.]]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
W. HARVEY, M.D.
_From the original Picture by C. Jansen in the possession of the Royal
Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
HARVEY
William Harvey was born on the 1st of April, 1578, at Folkstone, on the
southern coast of Kent. He was the eldest of nine children; of the rest
little more is known than that several of the brothers were among the
most eminent merchants in the city of London during the reigns of the
two first Stuarts. His father, Thomas Harvey, followed no profession. He
married Joanna Falke at the age of twenty, and lived upon his own estate
at Folkstone. This property devolved by inheritance upon his eldest son;
and the greatest part of it was eventually bequeathed by him to the
college at which he was educated.
At ten years of age he commenced his studies at the grammar school in
Canterbury; and upon the 31st of May, 1593, soon after the completion of
his fifteenth year, was admitted as a pensioner at Caius College,
Cambridge.
At that time a familiar acquaintance with logic and the learned
languages was indispensable as a first step in the prosecution of all
the branches of science, especially of medicine; and the skill with
which Harvey avails himself of the scholastic form of reasoning in his
great work on the Circulation, with the elegant Latin style of all his
writings, particularly of his latest work on the Generation of Animals,
afford a sufficient proof of his diligence in the prosecution of these
preliminary studies during the next four years, which he spent at
Cambridge. The two next were occupied in visiting the principal cities
and seminaries of the Continent. He then prepared to address himself to
those investigations to which the rest of his life was devoted; and the
scene of his introduction to them could not have been better chosen than
at the University of Padua, where he became a student in his
twenty-second year.
The ancient physicians gathered what they knew of anatomy from
inaccurate dissections of the lower animals; and the slender knowledge
thus acquired, however inadequate to unfold the complicated functions of
the human frame, was abundantly sufficient as a basis for conjecture, of
which they took full advantage. With them every thing became easy to
explain, precisely because nothing was understood; and the nature and
treatment of disease, the great object of medicine and of its subsidiary
sciences, was hardily abandoned to the conduct of the imagination, and
sought for literally among the stars. Nevertheless, so firmly was their
authority established, that even down to the close of the sixteenth
century the naturalists of Europe still continued to derive all their
physiology, and the greater part of their anatomy and medicine, from the
works of Aristotle and Galen, read not in the original Greek, but
re-translated into Latin from the interpolated versions of the Arabian
physicians. The opinions entertained by these dictators in the republic
of letters, and consequently by their submissive followers, with regard
to the structure and functions of the organs concerned in the
circulation, were particularly fanciful and confused, so much so that it
would be no easy task to give an intelligible account of them that would
not be tedious from its length. It will be enough to say, that a
scarcely more oppressive mass of mischievous error was cleared away from
the science of astronomy by the discovery of Newton, than that from
which physiology was disencumbered by the discovery of Harvey.
But though the work was completed by an Englishman, it is to Italy that,
in anatomy, as in most of the sciences, we owe the first attempts to
cast off the thraldom of the ancients. Mundinus had published a work in
the year 1315, which contained a few original observations of his own;
and his essay was so well received that it remained the text-book of the
Italian schools of anatomy for upwards of two centuries. It was enriched
from time to time by various annotators, among the chief of whom were
Achillini, and Berengarius, the first person who published anatomical
plates. But the great reformer of anatomy was Vesalius, who, born at
Brussels in 1514, had attained such early celebrity during his studies
at Paris and Louvain, that he was invited by the republic of Venice in
his twenty-second year to the chair of anatomy at Padua, which he filled
for seven years with the highest reputation. He also taught at Bologna,
and subsequently, by the invitation of Cosmo de’ Medici, at Pisa. The
first edition of his work ‘De Corporis Humani fabricâ,’ was printed at
Basle in the year 1543; it is perhaps one of the most successful efforts
of human industry and research, and from the date of its publication
begins an entirely new era in the science of which it treats. The
despotic sway hitherto maintained in the schools of medicine by the
writings of Aristotle and Galen was now shaken to its foundation, and a
new race of anatomists eagerly pressed forward in the path of discovery.
Among these no one was more conspicuous than Fallopius, the disciple,
successor, and in fame the rival, of Vesalius, at Padua. After him the
anatomical professorship was filled by Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the
last of the distinguished anatomists who flourished at Padua in the
sixteenth century.
Harvey became his pupil in 1599, and from this time he appears to have
applied himself seriously to the study of anatomy. The first germ of the
discovery which has shed immortal honour on his name and country was
conceived in the lecture-room of Fabricius.
He remained at Padua for two years; and having received the degree of
Doctor in Arts and Medicine with unusual marks of distinction, returned
to England early in the year 1602. Two years afterwards he commenced
practice in London, and married the daughter of Dr. Launcelot Browne, by
whom he had no children. He became a fellow of the College of Physicians
when about thirty years of age, having in the mean time renewed his
degree of Doctor in Medicine at Cambridge; and was soon after elected
Physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which office he retained till a
late period of his life.
On the 4th of August, 1615, he was appointed Reader of Anatomy and
Surgery to the College of Physicians. From some scattered hints in his
writings it appears that his doctrine of the circulation was first
advanced in his lectures at the college about four years afterwards; and
a note-book in his own handwriting is still preserved at the British
Museum, in which the principal arguments by which it is substantiated
are briefly set down, as if for reference in the lecture-room. Yet with
the characteristic caution and modesty of true genius, he continued for
nine years longer to reason and experimentalize upon what is now
considered one of the simplest, as it is undoubtedly the most important,
known law of animal nature; and it was not till the year 1628, the
fifty-first of his life, that he consented to publish his discovery to
the world.
In that year the ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis’ was
published at Frankfort. This masterly treatise begins with a short
outline and refutation of the opinions of former anatomists on the
movement of the animal fluids and the function of the heart; the author
discriminating with care, and anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of
the truth to be met with in their writings; as if he had not only kept
in mind the justice due to previous discoveries, and the prudence of
softening the novelty and veiling the extent of his own, but had
foreseen the preposterous imputation of plagiarism, which, with other
inconsistent charges, was afterwards brought forward against him. This
short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the
circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments; and
the new theory is finally maintained in a strain of close and powerful
reasoning, and followed into some of its most important consequences.
The whole argument is conducted in simple and unpretending language,
with great perspicuity, and scrupulous attention to logical form.
The doctrine announced by Harvey may be briefly stated thus:—
When the blood supplied for the various processes which are carried on
in the living body has undergone a certain degree of change, it requires
to be purified by the act of respiration. For this purpose it is urged
onwards by fresh blood from behind into the veins; and returning in them
from all parts of the body, enters a cavity of the heart called the
_right auricle_. At the same time the purified blood returning from the
lungs by the pulmonary veins, passes into the _left auricle_. When these
two cavities, which are distinct from each other, are sufficiently
dilated, they contract, and force the blood which they contain into two
other much more muscular cavities called respectively the right and left
_ventricle_, all retrogression into the auricles being prevented by
valves, which admit of a passage in one direction only. The ventricles
then contract in their turn with great force, and at the same instant;
and propel their blood, the right, by the pulmonary artery into the
lungs; the left, which is much the stronger of the two, into all parts
of the body, by the great artery called the _aörta_, and its branches;
all return being prevented as before by valves situated at the orifices
of those vessels, which are closed most accurately when the ventricles
relax, by the backward pressure of the blood arising from the elasticity
of the arteries. Thus the purified blood passes from the lungs by the
pulmonary veins through the left auricle into the ventricle of the same
side, by which it is distributed into all parts of the body, driving the
vitiated blood before it; and the vitiated blood is pushed into and
along the veins to the right auricle, and thence is sent into the right
ventricle, which propels it by the pulmonary artery through the lungs.
In this manner a double circulation is kept up by the sole agency of the
heart, through the lungs, and through the body; the contractions of the
auricles and ventricles taking place alternately. To prevent any
backward motion of the blood in the superficial veins, which might
happen from their liability to external pressure, they are also provided
with simple and very complete valves which admit of a passage only
towards the heart. They were first remarked by Fabricius ab
Aquapendente, and exhibited in his lectures to Harvey among the rest of
his pupils; but their function remained a mystery till it was explained
by the discovery of the circulation. It is related by Boyle, upon
Harvey’s own authority, that the first idea of this comprehensive
principle suggested itself to him when considering the structure of
these valves.
The pulmonary circulation had been surmised by Galen, and maintained by
his successors; but no proof even of this insulated portion of the
truth, more than amounted to strong probability, had been given till the
time of Harvey; and no plausible claim to the discovery, still less to
the demonstration, of the general circulation has ever been set up in
opposition to his. Indeed its truth was quite inconsistent with the
ideas everywhere entertained in the schools on the functions of the
heart and other viscera, and was destructive of many favourite theories.
The new doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by
most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with
surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it; but their objections
turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most
frivolous cavils: the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal
abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is at
issue with reason. To such opposition Harvey for some time did not think
it necessary to reply; but some of his friends in England, and of the
adherents to his doctrine on the Continent, warmly took up his defence.
At length he was induced to take a personal share in the dispute in
answer to Riolanus, a Parisian anatomist of some celebrity, whose
objections were distinguished by some show of philosophy, and unusual
abstinence from abuse. The answer was conciliatory and complete, but
ineffectual to produce conviction; and in reply to Harvey’s appeal to
direct experiment, his opponent urged nothing but conjecture and
assertion. Harvey once more rejoined at considerable length; taking
occasion to give a spirited rebuke to the unworthy reception he had met
with, in which it seems that Riolanus had now permitted himself to join;
adducing several new and conclusive experiments in support of his
theory; and entering at large upon its value in simplifying physiology
and the study of diseases, with other interesting collateral topics.
Riolanus, however, still remained unconvinced; and his second rejoinder
was treated by Harvey with contemptuous silence. He had already
exhausted the subject in the two excellent controversial pieces just
mentioned, the last of which is said to have been written at Oxford
about 1545; and he never resumed the discussion in print. Time had now
come to the assistance of argument, and his discovery began to be
generally admitted. To this indeed his opponents contributed by a still
more singular discovery of their own, namely, that the facts had been
observed, and the important inference drawn long before. This was the
mere allegation of envy, chafed at the achievements of another, which,
from their apparent facility, might have been its own. It is indeed
strange that the simple mechanism thus explained should have been
unobserved or misunderstood so long; and nothing can account for it but
the imperceptible lightness as well as the strength of the chains which
authority imposes on the mind.
In the year 1623 Harvey became Physician Extraordinary to James I., and
seven years later was appointed Physician to Charles. He followed the
fortunes of that monarch, who treated him with great distinction, during
the first years of the civil war, and he was present at the battle of
Edgehill in 1642. Having been incorporated Doctor of Physic by the
University of Oxford, he was promoted by Charles to the Wardenship of
Merton College in 1645; but he did not retain this office very long, his
predecessor Dr. Brent being reinstated by the parliament after the
surrender of Oxford in the following year.
Harvey then returned to London and resided with his brother Eliab at
Cockaine-house in the Poultry. About the time of Charles’s execution he
gave up his practice, which had never been considerable, probably in
consequence of his devotion to the scientific, rather than the practical
parts of his profession. He himself, however, attributed his want of
success to the enmity excited by his discovery. After a second visit to
the Continent, he secluded himself in the country, sometimes at his own
house in Lambeth, and sometimes with his brother Eliab at Combe in
Surrey. Here he was visited by his friend Dr. Ent in 1651, by whom he
was persuaded to allow the publication of his work on the Generation of
Animals. It was the fruit of many years of experiment and meditation;
and though the vehicle of no remarkable discovery, is replete with
interest and research, and contains passages of brilliant and even
poetical eloquence. The object of his work is to trace the germ through
all its changes to the period of maturity; and the illustrations are
principally drawn from the phenomena exhibited by eggs in the process of
incubation, which he watched with great care, and has described with
minuteness and fidelity. The microscope had not at that time the
perfection it has since attained; and consequently Harvey’s account of
the first appearance of the chick is somewhat inaccurate, and has been
superseded by the observations of Malpighi, Hunter, and others. The
experiments upon which he chiefly relied in this department of natural
history had been repeated in the presence of Charles I., who appears to
have taken great interest in the studies of his physician.
In the year 1653, the seventy-fifth of his life, Harvey presented the
College of Physicians with the title-deeds of a building erected in
their garden, and elegantly fitted up at his expense, with a library and
museum, and commodious apartments for their social meetings. Upon this
occasion he resigned the Professorship of Anatomy, which he had held for
nearly forty years, and was succeeded by Dr. Glisson.
In 1654 he was elected to the Presidency of the College, which he
declined on the plea of age; and the former President, Sir Francis
Prujean, was re-elected at his request. Two years afterwards he made a
donation to the college of a part of his patrimonial estate to the
yearly value of £56, as a provision for the maintenance of the library
and an annual festival and oration in commemoration of benefactors.
At length his constitution, which had long been harassed by the gout,
yielded to the increasing infirmities of age, and he died in his
eightieth year, on the 3d of June, 1657. He was buried at Hempstead in
Essex, in a vault belonging to his brother Eliab, who was his principal
heir, and his remains were followed to the grave by a numerous
procession of the body of which he had been so illustrious and
munificent a member.
The best edition of his works is that edited by the College of
Physicians in 1766, to which is prefixed a valuable notice of his life,
and an account of the controversy to which his discovery of the
circulation gave rise. All that remain of his writings in addition to
those which have been already mentioned, are an account of the
dissection of Thomas Parr, who died at the age of 153, and a few letters
addressed to various Continental anatomists. His lodgings at Whitehall
had been plundered in the early part of the civil war, of many papers
containing manuscript notes of experiments and observations, chiefly
relating to comparative anatomy. This was a loss which he always
continued to lament. The missing papers have never been recovered.
In person he was below the middle size, but well-proportioned. He had a
dark complexion, black hair, and small lively eyes. In his youth his
temper is said to have been very hasty. If so he was cured of this
defect as he grew older; for nothing can be more courteous and temperate
than his controversial writings, and the genuine kindness and modesty
which were conspicuous in all his dealings with others, with his
instructive conversation, gained him many attached and excellent
friends. He was fond of meditation and retirement; and there is much in
his works to characterize him as a man of warm and unaffected piety.
There are several histories of his life; a very elegant one has lately
been published in a volume of the Family Library, entitled ‘Lives of
British Physicians.’
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
SIR J. BANKS.
_From a Picture by J. Phillips, in the possession of the Royal
Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
BANKS
Posterity is likely to do scanty justice to the merits of Banks, when
the grateful recollections of his contemporaries shall have passed away.
His name is connected with no great discovery, no striking improvement;
and he has left no literary works from which the extent of his industry,
or the amount of his knowledge can be estimated. Yet he did much for the
cause of science; much by his personal exertions, more by a judicious
and liberal use of the advantages of fortune. For more than half a
century a zealous and successful student of natural history in general,
and particularly of botany, the history of his scientific life is to be
found in the records of science during that long and active period. We
shall not attempt to compress so intricate and extensive a subject
within the brief limits of three or four pages; but confine ourselves to
a short sketch of his character and personal adventures. Some fitting
person will, it is to be hoped, ere too late, undertake to write the
life of our distinguished countryman upon a scale calculated to do
justice to his merits: at present this task is not only unperformed, but
unattempted.
Joseph Banks was born in London, February 13, 1743. Of his childhood we
find few memorials. He passed through the ordinary routine of education;
having been first committed to the care of a private tutor at home, then
placed at Harrow, afterwards at Eton, and finally sent to complete his
studies at Christchurch, Oxford. Born to the inheritance of an ample
fortune, and left an orphan at the age of eighteen, it is no small
praise that he was not allured by the combined temptations of youth,
wealth, and freedom, to seek his happiness in vicious, or even idle
pleasures. Science, in one of its most attractive branches, the study of
animated nature, was his amusement as a schoolboy, and the favourite
pursuit of his mature years: and he was rewarded for his devotion, not
merely in the rank and estimation which he obtained by its means, but
also in his immunity from the dangers which society throws in the way of
those who have the means of gratifying their own passions, and the
vanities and interests of their friends.
He quitted the university in the year 1763. In 1766 he gave a proof of
his zeal for knowledge by engaging in a voyage to Newfoundland. He was
induced to choose that most unattractive region, by having the
opportunity of accompanying a friend, Lieutenant Phipps, afterwards Lord
Mulgrave, well known as a navigator of the Polar Seas, who was sent out
in a ship of war to protect the fisheries. Soon after his return a much
more interesting and important field of inquiry was opened to him by the
progress of discovery in the southern hemisphere. In 1764 Commodore
Byron, in 1766 Captains Wallis and Carteret were sent into the South
Sea, to investigate the geography of that immense and then unfrequented
region. These expeditions were succeeded in 1768 by another under the
command of Captain Cook, who first obtained celebrity as a navigator
upon this occasion. Lord Sandwich, then First Lord of the Admiralty,
possessed an estate in Lincolnshire on the borders of Whittlesea Mere.
Mr. Banks’s chief property lay in the same neighbourhood: and it so
chanced that similarity of tastes, and especially a common predilection
for all aquatic amusements, had produced a great intimacy between the
statesman and his young country neighbour. To this fortunate
circumstance it may probably be ascribed, that on Mr. Banks expressing a
wish to accompany the projected expedition, his desire was immediately
granted. His preparations were made on the most liberal scale. He laid
in an ample store of such articles as would be useful or acceptable to
the savage tribes whom he was about to visit: and besides the usual
philosophical apparatus of a voyage of discovery, he engaged two
draughtsmen to make accurate representations of such objects as could
not be preserved, or conveyed to England; and he secured the services of
Dr. Solander, a Swedish naturalist, a pupil of Linnæus, who had
previously been placed on the establishment of the British Museum. The
history of this voyage belongs to the life of Cook. The expedition bent
its course for the Southern Ocean, through the Straits of Le Maire, at
the southern end of America. Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander landed on the
desolate island of Terra del Fuego, where the severity of the cold had
very nearly proved fatal to several of their party. Dr. Solander in
particular was so entirely overcome by the drowsiness consequent on
extreme cold and exhaustion, that it was with great difficulty, and by
the unwearied exertion and resolution of his more robust companion, that
he was prevented from falling into that sleep which is the forerunner of
death. Their farther course lay through the islands of the Pacific Ocean
to Otaheite, which had been selected as a fitting place for the main
object of the voyage, the observing of the passage of Venus over the
sun’s disk. At that island their stay was consequently prolonged for
several months, during which the Europeans and the natives mingled
together, generally on the most friendly terms. In this intercourse Mr.
Banks took a very leading part. His liberality, and the high station
which he evidently held among the strangers, conciliated the attachment
and respect of the unpolished islanders: and the mingled suavity and
firmness of his temper and demeanour rendered him singularly fitted both
to protect the weaker party from the occasional wantonness or
presumption of their visitors, and to check their knavery, and obtain
satisfaction for the thefts which they not unfrequently committed. Once
the astronomical purposes of the navigators were nearly frustrated by
the loss of the large brass quadrant; and the recovery of this important
instrument was chiefly due to the exertions and influence of Mr. Banks.
Both hemispheres owe to him a tribute of gratitude; for while he gave
the savages the improved tools, the esculent vegetables, and the
domesticated animals of Europe, his exertions led to the introduction of
the breadfruit, and of the productive sugar-cane peculiar to Otaheite,
into our West-India colonies.
After the lapse of three years the voyagers returned home, and were
received with lively interest by all classes of society. Part of their
collections were lost through an accident which happened to the vessel:
but the greater portion was preserved, and their novelty and beauty
excited the admiration of naturalists. George III., who delighted in
everything connected with horticulture and farming, manifested a warm
interest in inquiring into the results of the expedition, and conceived
a liking for the young traveller, which continued unimpaired even to the
close of his public life.
It was Mr. Banks’s intention to accompany Captain Cook in his second
voyage, in 1772: but the Navy Board showed no willingness to provide
that accommodation which the extent of his preparations and the number
of his scientific followers required, and he gave up the project, which
indeed he could not satisfactorily execute. In the summer of that year
he went to Iceland. Passing along the western coast of Scotland, he was
led to visit Staffa, in consequence of local information; and to his
description that singular island was first indebted for its general
celebrity. He spent a month in Iceland. An account of this visit has
been published by M. Von Troil, a Swedish clergyman, who formed one of
the party. On this, as on other occasions, Mr. Banks, unwearied in quest
of knowledge, seemed careless of the fame to which most would have
aspired as the reward of their labours. Of none of his travels has he
himself given any account in a separate publication; indeed, a few
papers in the Horticultural Transactions, and a very curious account of
the causes of mildew in corn, not printed for sale, constitute the mass
of his published works. But his visit was productive of much good to the
Icelanders, though it remained uncommemorated in expensive quartos. He
watched over their welfare, when their communication with Denmark was
interrupted by war between that country and England; and twice sent
cargoes of corn, at his own expense, to relieve their sufferings in
seasons of scarcity. His benevolence was warmly acknowledged by the
Danish Court.
Returning to England, Mr. Banks, at the early age of thirty, entered on
that tranquil and useful course of life, from which during a long series
of years he never deviated. His thirst for travel was checked or
satiated; he undertook no more distant expeditions, but he ceased not to
cultivate the sciences, for which he had undergone so many hardships. It
was long hoped that he would publish some account of the rich harvest of
vegetable productions which he had collected in the unknown regions of
the Pacific; and for this purpose it was known that he had caused a very
large number of plates to be engraved at a great expense: but, most
probably owing to the death of Solander, these have never been given to
the world. But if he hesitated to communicate himself to the public the
results of his labours, in amends his museum and his library were placed
most freely at the command of those who sought, and were able to profit
by his assistance; and to these sources many splendid works, especially
on botany, have mainly owed their merits, and perhaps their existence.
From the period of his return from Iceland Mr. Banks took an active part
in the affairs of the Royal Society. His house was constantly open to
men of science, whether British or foreign, and by the urbanity of his
manners, and his liberal use of the advantages of fortune, he acquired
that popularity which six years afterwards led to his election as
President of that distinguished body. Two or three years afterwards a
dangerous schism had nearly arisen in the Society, chiefly in
consequence of the unreasonable anger of a party of mathematicians,
headed by Dr. Horsley, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, who looked with
contempt on sciences unsusceptible of mathematical proof, and loudly
exclaimed against the chair of Newton being filled, as they phrased it,
by an amateur. It would be little profitable to rake up the embers of an
ancient and unworthy feud. We shall only state therefore that Banks was
elected in November, 1778; that for some time a violent opposition was
raised against him; and that in January, 1784, the Society, by a formal
resolution, declared itself satisfied with the choice which it had made.
Horsley and a few others seceded, and for the rest of his life Banks
continued the undisputed and popular president; a period of forty-one
years from the epoch of his election.
We have said that at an early age Mr. Banks was fortunate in gaining the
royal favour; marks of which were not wanting. In 1781 he was created a
baronet; in 1795 he received the Order of the Bath, then very rarely
bestowed upon civilians and commoners; and in 1797 he was made a Privy
Councillor. The friendship between the King and the subject was cemented
by similarity of pursuits; for the latter was a practical farmer as well
as a philosopher, and under his care the value of his estates in
Lincolnshire was considerably increased by improvements in the drainage
of that singular country, in the direction of which Sir Joseph took an
active part. He is said to have possessed such influence over the King’s
mind, that ministers sometimes availed themselves of it to recommend a
measure unpalatable to their honest but somewhat obstinate master. We
know not whether this be better founded than most other stories of
back-stairs influence, easily thrown out and difficult to be refuted: it
is at least certain that if Banks possessed such power, he deserves
great credit for the singular moderation with which he used it. For
himself he asked and received nothing: fortunately his station in
society was one which renders disinterestedness an easy, if not a common
virtue. His influence was directed to facilitate scientific
undertakings, to soften to men of science the inconveniences of the long
war of the Revolution, to procure the restoration of their papers and
collections when taken by an enemy, or the alleviation of their
sufferings in captivity. The French were especially indebted to him for
such services. It is said by an eminent member of the Institute, in his
Eloge upon Banks, that no less than ten times, collections addressed to
the Jardin du Roi at Paris, and captured by the English, were restored
by his intercession to their original destination. He thought that
national hostility should find no entrance among followers of science;
and the delicacy of his views on this subject is well displayed in a
letter written on one of these occasions to Jussieu, where he says that
he would on no account rob of a single botanical idea a man who had gone
to seek them at the peril of his life. In 1802 the National Institute of
France, being then re-modelled, elected him at the head of their Foreign
Associates, whose number was limited to eight. Cavendish, Maskelyne, and
Herschel were also members of this distinguished list. In replying to
the letter which announced this honour, Sir Joseph Banks expressed his
gratitude in terms which gave offence to some members of that
distinguished Society over which he himself presided. This exposed him
to a virulent attack from an anonymous enemy, who published the letter
in question in the English papers, accompanied by a most acrimonious
address to the author of it; prompted, it is evident, not so much by a
reasonable and patriotic jealousy, as by ancient pique, and a bitter
detestation even of the science of revolutionary France.
Towards the close of life Sir Joseph Banks, who in youth had possessed a
robust constitution, and a dignified and prepossessing figure, was
grievously afflicted by gout. He endured the sufferings of disease with
patience and cheerfulness, and died May 19, 1820, leaving no children.
Lady Banks, whom he had married in 1779, survived him several years. His
magnificent library he devised to the British Museum; and among other
bequests for scientific purposes, he left an annuity to Mr. Frederic
Bauer, an artist whom he had long employed in making botanical drawings
from the garden at Kew, upon condition that he should continue the
series.
[Illustration: Banksia ericifolia.]
END OF VOL. I.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed “he had a numerous offspring” to “he had numerous offspring”
on p. 3.
2. Changed “campaigns bolder style” to “campaigns a bolder style” on p.
70.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
6. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 1 (of 7)" ***
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