,s^r CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY arV15285 Comell Onlverslty Library Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031240702 THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. F:>'m .' n.-t.,„ /).:, r >^y//^Kf/ l/lr' f/'/YJ^t^ THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. ./or GEORGE L/XRAIK, M.A., LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, HELFAS*; A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED, LONDON: ' BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET, GOVENT GARDEN. 1872. WKDOtl 1 PBISTBD Br WirilAM CI.OWHS AND SONS, STAMTOItr STRSKT AND CILAIUNG CBOSi. PREFACE. This book was originally published, in 1830, under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; and it was repro- duced in another form, under my own care, in 1845. The revision which it underwent on that occasion, however, extended only to such statements as were affected by the lapse of time. Appearing now with the name of the writer, it is restored throughout more nearly to the state in which it first left my hands ; and I have also taken the oppor- tunity of introducing a few additional notices of eminent individuals, some of them still living, wh,o have distinguished themselves by one form or another of what may be called the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. Of that happy title, however, which has had the fortune to become a sort of proverbial phrase, or "household word," and to which the book, no doubt, owes much of whatever success it has had, I ought to say that I cannot claim the credit ; it belongs, I have always understood, to Lord Bbottgham, who, finding time for everything, honoured the little work by going over the proof-sheets, at least of the first volume, and some other touches of whose expressive pen, it may interest the reader to know, are elsewhere to be found in it ; although I would not have his Lordship, or any one but myself, to be held responsible for either its statements as to matters of fact, or any indica- tions of opinion on controverted questions ; of which last, however, there are really none, I believe, that can give pain or offence to anybody. G. L. C. By the hind permission of Mr. Charles Knight, we are enabled to print the following extract from His " Passages of a Worhing Life " (vol. ii., p. 133), giving a detailed account of the origin of this volume : — It waa not only in the meetings of our committees that I had the advantage for my editorial guidance of the opinions of men of accurate minds and sound information ; but 1 was frequently also in correspondence with those who took a more than common interest in particular works. Such a work was that well-known contribution to the " Library of Enter- taining Knowledge," which first established the reputation of Mr. George Lillie Craik as a sound thinker and an accomplished writer. To myself. Individually, the recollection of that Autumn of 1828 is especially dear, for it was the commencement of an intimacy which ripened into the unbroken friendship of six and thirty years. In the preliminary stages of discussion on the objects and mode of treatment of a book such as this, which was to embrace a vast number of illustrative anecdotes of the love of knowledge overcoming the opposition of circumstances, there were necessarily different estimates of the value of scientific and literary studies, whether " for use," or " for delight," or " for ornament." The great distinction be- vi Preface. tween the love of knowledge for its own sake, and the love of knowledge as the means of worldly advancement, may be traced very distinctly In the two popular volumes of Mr Craik, and the equally popular ," Self Help " of Mr. Smiles. Mr. Craik's views upon this cardinal point are very clearly expressed in a letter written to me by him' in the Autumn of 1829, but having nj date except the day of the week (a very perplexing custom for the historian or biographer). His views are so interesting that I make no apology for the length of the quotation : — « Our concern, it appears to me, Is neither with individuals who have in amy way been exalted &om one region of society to another, nor even with such as have been chiefly the authors of their own exaltation ; for the fact of their exaltation is not at all the one upon which we wish to fix attention, even although we should make it out to have been in every case the consequence of their abilities and attainments. What, then, Is our subject ? Not the triumphs of genius, nor of perseverance, nor even of perseveranoe in the pursuit of knowledge, because it is not the success of the effort, at least in a gross and worldly sense, we would point attention to ; nor is it by any means what is called genius to which we are exclusively to confine ourselves, while we still less mean to include every species of per- severance. But we want a category which shall embrace, for example, the cases at once of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, of Franklin — of all, in short, who, whether in humble or high life, have pursued Knowledge with ardour, and distinctly evidenced, by the seductions they resisted, or the difficulties they encountered and overcame for her sake, that she was the first object of theii* affections : and that the pursuit of her, even without any reference to either the wealth, the power, or the distinction which she might bring them, was, in their estimation. Its own sufficient reward. It appears to me, then, clearly that our title mnst be not anecdotes of self-taught genius at all, for that is greatly too limited, but Anecdotes of the Love of Knowlec^e — that being in truth the one distinction which we find common to all the examples we would embrace, as well as the disposition which we mean to excite and foster." Mr. Craik had written a preliminary dissertation, in the sound views of which Mr. Brougham expressed himself to me as generally coinciding. But in a portion of a letter, dated from Westmoreland, in September, 1828 (and I judg^ the.-efore, to have preceded by a month or two the letter from Mr. Craik which I have quoted), Mr. Brougham takes adiffcrent view of the range of such a work as that propo ed. " His (Mr. Craik's) idea of the line to be drawn as to self-educated men in modern tunes is also quite correct ; but we must, neverthe- less, confine the examples to cases which are quite plainly those of men who have greatly altered their situation by force of merit— as Watt, Arkwright, Franklin, Bums, Bloomfiteld, Jlendelsohn— making the ground of division or classification, self-exaltation rather than self- education, though they often will comcide. This field is quite large enough for one book ; but the work might be followed by another comprehending the rest of it, and including all self-taught genius in the larger sense. To give an example: I should certainly excluds Newton, though, like Pascal, he taught himself mathematics : also Granville Sharpe, thdugh he raised himself by his merit to great fame ; but he was grandson of the Archbishop of York, and could not be said to alter his station in life. I look forward to Mr. Craik's labours as of the greatest use to the Society, and to the good caiae, having the greatest confidence in his sound principles, and a very high opinion of his talents." This interesting discussion was continued between Mr. Brougham, Mr. Hill, Mr. Craik, and myself, till it was seen how the opposite views could be resolved into a general agreement J. have before me Mr. Brougham's j)?w/ of Mr. Craik's fii-st volume. To Mr. Brougham is to be assigned the merit of giving to the book in this proof the title which has come to be one of the commonest forms of speech, — TiiK PoKSurr of Knowledge ukder Difficulties. The title originally stood— The Love op Knowledge ovKitcoMiKG DnrFicuLxiES m its Puksuit. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I, Faga Classification-of DiflBculties.— Our natural Love of Knowledge. — Tne Philosophy that lies in Common Things. Newton ; Gravitation.— Galileo ; the Pendulum.— Torricelli and Pascal ; the Barometer.— Prince Rupert ; Mezzotinto. — ^Montgolfier ; the Balloon. — Self-TeachlUg . . . ' , 1 CHAPTER II. Strength of the Pas^on for Knowledge: — Pythagoras; Archimedes; Leibnitz; Galileo; Heyne 15 CHAPTER HI. Jbscure Origin and Humble Station : — Epictetns ; Protagoras ; Cleanthes ; Haiiy ; Winckelman ; Arnigio ; Duval ; Bandinelli ; Scaliger ; Protogenes ; Baudouin ; Gelli ; Metastasio ; Haydn ; Opie ; Parinl ; Prideaux ; Inigo Jones ; Chief Justice Saunders ; Linnfflua ; Lomonosoff : Ben Jonson ; the Milners ; John Hunter . , , .23 CHAPTER IV. Artists risirg from the Lower to the Higher Branches : — B. Cellini ; Q. Matsys ;. Ibbetson ; Kent ; Towne ; Kirby ; Schiavoni ; Hogarth ; Sharp ; Thew ; Caslon.— Late Learners :— Cromwell; Sir W.Jones; Cato the Censor ; Alfred; Moliere; Valerianus; Tondel; Pitot; Paucton; Ogilby, .... .... 39 CHAPTER V. Early Age at which Greatness has been achieved:— Newton; James Gregory; Torri- celli ; Pascal ; Sidney ; Otway ; Collins, etc ; Mozart ; Raphael ; Correggio ; Politian ; Mirandola . . . . ' 49 CHAPTER VI. Self-educated Men:— T.Simpson; Edmund Stone; Jerome Stone . , ,61 CHAPTER VII Pursuit of Knowledge united with that of Business :— Cicero ; Sir William Jones ; Julins Caesar ; Frederick the Great ; Sully ; De Thou ; Bacon ; Clarendon ; Selden ; Hale ; Grotius . 12 viii Contents, CHAPTER Tin. Page Literary Soldiers :— Descartes ; Ben Jonson ; Buchanan ; Cervantes.— Sailors :— Dampier Davis; Drury; Falconer; Giordani; Fransham; Oswald; Columbus; Cook; Van- couver; ColUngwood 85 CHAFTEE IX. Literary Pursnits of Merchants-— Solon; Guys; Dudley North; Eicardo . , ,95 CHAPTER X. Literary Pursuits of Booksellers and Printers :— Solomon Gesner ; Aldus Manutius, Paul, and Aldus the Younger; R. Stephens; H.Stephens; Scapula; Colinseus; Radius; Froben; Oporinus; Raddiman; Bowyer; Nichols; Richardson . . , .104 CHAPTER XI. Booksellers aiid Printers continued:— W. Button; R. Dodsley; Almon; Cruden; the Panckouckes; Rothscholtz; Bagford; Ames; Herbert; Patersou. — Pursuitof Litera- ture In other Trades :— Walton ; Defoe ; LUlo ,116 CHAPTER XIL Self-educated Men-continued:— Ferguson .—Influence of Accident In directing Pursuits: — Rennle; Linnaeus ; Vemet ; Caravaggio; Tassie; Chatterton; Harrison; Edwards; Villara; Joly; Jourdain; Bandinelli; Palissy . , • . . 132 CHAPTER Xin. Benjamin Franklin , 146 CHAPTER XiV. Franklin's Electrical Discoveries , , .161 CHAPTER XV. Devotion to Knowledge in Extreme Poverty: — Erasmus; Kepler; Schaeffer; Bullinger; Musculas; Postellus; Castalio; Adrian VI.; Perrier; Claude Lorraine; Salvator Rosa; Marmontel; Hoche; Li^range; Dr. Johnson; Dr. Parr; Spagnoletto; Le Jay; Castell; Davies; Tytler; William Davy.— In Exile and Imprisonment:— Ovid; Boethius; Buchanan; Tasso; Smart; Maggl; Le Maistre; Lorenzini; Prynne; Madame Roland ; Ealeigh; Lady Jane Grey ; James I. (of Scotland) ; Lovelace 174 CHAPTER XVI. Defects of the Senses or other Natural Bodily Powers overcome : — ^Demosthenes • De Beaumont; Navarete; Saunderson; Rugendas; Diodotus; Didymus; Eusebius* Nicasius de Voerda ; De Pagan ; Galileo ; Euler ; Moyes . . . , ' j^qs \ ^ CHAPTER XVII. Distinction acquired by the Blind in other Intellectual Fields: — ^Homer; Milton* Salinas; Stanley; Metcalf; Henry the Minstrel; Scapinelli; Blacklock* Anna Williams ; Huher ' 20l CHAPTER XVIIL Mr. Prescott; M. Augustlu Thierry; M. Mory-Lafon ... . „, Contents. ix 1 CHAPTER XIX. Pase Accotmtof James Brindley; Canals, — Other Examples of Self-taught Mechanicians:— Bannequln; Zabaglla; Ferraciao; Harrison . . . . . . .219 CHAPTER XX. Acquisition of Languages: — MagUabecchi; Hill; Wild; Acam; Purver; Pendrell . 235 CHAPTER XXI. Dr. Alexander Murray 24T CHAPTER XXIL Self-tuition of Poets: — Shakespeare; Bums CHAPTER XXI.n. Gifibrd; Holcroft CHAPTER XXrV. Enjoyment attending the Pursuit of Knowledge. Pursuit of Knowledge by Persons of rank or wealth : — Democritus; Anaxagoras; Nicephorus Alphery; Marcus Aurelius ; Julian; Charlemagne ; Alfred ; James J. (of Scotland); Elizabeth; AlphonsoX. . 281 CHAPTER XXV. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia . . 295 CHAPTER XXVI. Advantagesof Wealth in the Pursuit of Knowledge; — Napier . . , '306 CHAPTER XXVII. Intellectual Pursuits by Men of Wealth and Station continued: — Drummond of Haw- thomden ; Tycho Brahe ; Tschirnhausen. — The Air-Pump : — Boyle ; Cavendlshi— Other Persons of Bank distinguished in Literature and Science .... 322 CHAPTER XXVm. Self-educated Cultivators of Science : — Parkes ; Davy 343 CHAPTER XXIX. Mr. Faraday ; M. Lament 363 CHAPTER XXX. Diversities of Intellectual F«r«Ilence. Painters: — Benjamin West , . .371 CHAPTER XXXI. Other English Painters: — Spencer; Highmore; Hannani ; Wright; Gilpin; Qalns- borongh; Barry; Lawrence 386 X Contents. CHAPTER XXXII. Pag» Foreign Painters : — Giotto; Batonl; Greuze; Ebret; Solario. — Other Cnltlvators of the Fine Arts; — Canova; Bewiclc 402 CHAPTEE XXXm. Usefulness of such Encourag^nents as the Examples here given are calculated to afford to youthful Genius in every Department of Study. Self-educated Foete : — John Taylor; Antonio Blanclii; Kamsay; Bioomfield 416 CHAPTEE XXXIV. H. K. White; Hawkesworth; Goldsmith; Mendelsohn 430 CHAPTER XXXV. John of Salisbury ; Roger Bacon 445 CHAPTER XXXVL Progress of Optical Discovery: — Doliond; Ramsden; Herscbel; } of all sorts of observation, that which exhibits the most pene- trating and watchful philosophy is, when, out of the facts and incidents of every-day experience, a gifted mind extracts new and important truths, simply by its new manner of looking at them, and, as it were, by the aid of a light of its own which it sheds upon their worn and obliterated lineaments. Prom one of these simple incidents Sir Isaac Newton is said to have read to the world, for the first time, the system of the universe. It appears to have been in the twenty-third year of his age, or the autumn of 1665, that this extraordinary man was sitting, as we are told, one day in his garden, when an apple fell from a tree be- side hlm.^ His mind was perhaps occupied, at that fortunate moment, with one of those philosophical speculations on space and motion which are' known to have, about this time, engaged much of his attention; and the little incident which interrupted him was instantly seized upon by his eager spirit, and, by that power which is in genius, assimilated with the 'substance of his thoughts. The existence of gravitation, or a tendency to fall towards the centre of the earth, was already known, as aftotingall bodies in the immediate vicinity of our planet : and the great Galileo had even ascertained the law, or rate, according to which their motion is accelerated as they continue their descent. But no one had yet dreamed of the gra,vitation of the heavens, — till the idea now first dimly rose in the mind of Newton. The same power, he may be sup- posed to have said to himself, which has drawn this apple from its branch, would have drawn it from a position a thousand times as high. Wherever we go, we find this gravitation reigning over all things. If we ascend even to the top of the highest mountains, we discover no sensible diminution of its power. Why may not its influence extend far beyond any height to which we can make our way ? Why may it not reach to the moon itself ? Why may not this be the very power 1 It " was doubtless," writes Sir David served by Mr. Tumor of Stoke Rocheford. Brewster, " in the same remarkable year See Voltaire's Phitosophie de Newton^ 3me 1666, or perhaps in the autimm of 1665, that pari chap. iii. ; Green's Philosophy of Ex* Newton's mind was first directed to the pansive and Contractive Forces, p. 9V2 ; and subject of gravity. He appears to have left Bigaud's Stst. Essay, p. 2," — Memoirs of Cambridge some time before the 8th of Life, Writings, a/nd Viicmieries of Sir Isaac August, 1665, when the College was ' dis- Newton, 1355. VoL I., pp. 25, 26, 21. —All miKed ' on account of the plague, and it was that Pemberton says is — " The first thoughts therefore in the autumn of that year, and not which gave rise to his Frincipia he had in tbat of 1666, that the apple is said to have when he retired from Cambridge in 1666, on fallen from the tree at Woolsthorpe, and account of the plague. As he sat dUme in a suggested to Newton the idea of gravity, garden, he fell into a speculation on the Neither Pemberton nor Wistou, who re- power of gravity ; that, as this power is not ceived from Newton himself the history of found sensibly diminished at the remotest his first ideas of gravity, records the story of distance from the centre of the earth to the falling apple. It was mentioned, how- which we can rise, neither at the tops of the ever, to Voltaire by Catharine Barton, loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of Newton's niece, and to Mr. Green by Martin the highest mountains, it appeared to him Folkes, the President of the Eoyal Society, reasonable to conclude that this po^er must We saw the apple-tree in 1814, and brought extend much farther than was usually away a portion of one of its roots. The tree thought. Why not as high as the moon ? was so much decayed tliat it was taken down said he to himself," &c. — View of sir Isaac bi 1820, and the wood of it carefully pre- Newton's Philosophy; Pr^aoe, 6 The Pursuit of Knowledge. which retains that planet in its orbit, and keeps it revolving as it does around our own earth? It was a splendid conjecture, and we may be' sure that Newton instantly set all his sagacity at work to verify it. If • the moon, he considered, be retained in her orbit by a gravitation to- wards the earth, it is in the highest degree probable that the earth itself, and the other planets which revolve around the sun, are, in like manner, retained in their orbits by a similar tendency towards their central and ruling luminary. Proceeding then, in the meantime, upon this suppo- sition, he found by calculation, and by comparing the periods of the several planets and their distances from the sun, that, if they were really held in their courses by the power of gravity, that power must decrease in a certain proportion, according to the distance of the body upon which it operated. This result he had already anticipated from the considera- tion that, although we could not detect any such diminution within the cosaparatively small distance to which our experience was limited, the fact was yet consistent with the whole analogy of nature. Supposing, then, this power, when extended to the moon, to decrease at the same rate at which it appeared to do in regard to the planets which revolved around the sun, he next set himself to calculate whether its force, at such a distance from the earth, would in reality be sufficient to retain that satellite in its orbit, and to account for its known rate of motion. This step of the discovery was marked by a very singular circumstance, and one strikingly illustrative of the truly philosophic character of this great man's mind. In the computations which he undertook for the purpose of his investigation, he naturally adopted the common estimate of the magnitude of the earth, which was at that time in use among our geographers and seamen. Indeed, no other yet existed for him to adopt : but it was even then known to scientific men to be loose and inaccurate. It allowed only sixty English miles to a degree of latitude, instead of sixty-nine and a half, which is the true measurement. The consequence was, that the calculation did not answer ; it indicated, in fact, a force of gravity in the moon towards the earth, less by one-sixth than that which was necessary to give the rate of motion actually pos- sessed by that satellite. Another might have thought this but a trifling discrepancy, and, in such circumstances, might have taxed his ingenuity to account for it in a variety of ways, so as still to save the beautiful and magnificent theory which it came so unseasonably to demolish. But Newton was too true a philosopher, too single-hearted a lover of truth, for this. In his mind the refutation was a complete one, and it was admitted as such at once. He had made his calculation with care, although one of its elements was false ; it did not present the result it ought to have d.one, had his hypothesis been as trae as it was brilliant ; and, in his own estimation, he was no longer the discoverer of the secret mechanism of the heavens. By an act of self-denial, more heroic than (^alileo, 7 any other recorded in the annals of intellectual pursuit, he dismissed the whole speculation from his mind, even for years. We need hardly state how gloriously this sacrifice was in due time rewarded. Had Newton, instead of acting as he did, obstinately persevered in the par- tially erroneous path into which he had thus been misled, it is impos- sible to say into how many additional misconceptions and mis-statements he might have been seduced, in order to cover the consequences of his first blunder : or how much the simplicity of the grand truth which had revealed itself to him, as it were, for a moment in the distance, might have been eventually complicated and disfigured by the vain imaginations of the very mind which had discovered it. The progress of science would, no doubt, at last have swept away all these useless and encumbering fictions ; but that honour would, probably, have been reserved for another than Newton. Committed to the maintenance of his adopted errors, and with his mental vision even unfitted in some measure for the perception of the truth, he might in that case have been the last to take in the full brightness of the day, the breaking of which he had been the first to descry. But by keeping his mind unbiassed, he was eventually enabled to verify all, and more than all, that he had originally suspected. No other speculator had yet followed him in the same path of conjecture ; when, a few years after, upon obtaining more correct data, he repeated his calculation, and found it terminate in the very result he had formerly anticipated. And what a moment of triumph and inconceivable delight must that have been, when he saw at last that the mighty discovery was indeed all his own ! It is said, that such was his agitation as he proceeded, and perceived every figure bringing him nearer to the object of his hopes, that he was at kst actually unable to continue the operation, and was obliged to request a friend to con- clude it for him. Another very beautiful example of the way in which some of the most valuable truths of philosophy have been suggested, for the first time, by the simplest incidents of common life, is afforded by Galileo's discovery of wh,at is called the isochronism of the pendulum, or the equality of its oscillations in point of time. It was while standing one day in the metropolitan church at Pisa, that his attention was first awakened to this most important fact, by observing the movements of a lamp suspended from the ceiling, which some accident had disturbed and caused to vibrate. Now this, or something of the same kind, was a phenomenon which, of course, had been observed many, thousands of times before. But yet nobody had ever viewed it with the philosophic attention with which it was on this occasion examined by Galileo. Or if, as possibly was the case, any one had been half unconsciously struck for a moment by that apparent equability of motion which arrested so forcibly the curiosity of Galileo, the idea had been allowed to escape 8 The Pursuit of Knowledge. 33 soon as it had been caught, as relating to a matter not worth a second thought. The young philosopher of Italy (for he had not then reached his twentieth year) saw at once the important applications which might be made of the thought that had suggested itself to him. He took care, therefore, to ascertain immediately the truth of his conjecture by care- ful and repeated experiment ; and the result was the complete discovery of the principle of the most perfect measure of time which we yet pos- sess. How striking a lesson is this for us when we discover, or think we discover, any fact in the economy of nature which we have reason to believe has not previously been observed ! Let it be at least verified and recorded. No truth is altogether barren ; and even that which looks at first sight the simplest and most trivial may turn out fruitful in precious results. It seems, after it is stated and described to us, to have been an ex- ceedingly obvious thought which struck Galileo, when, after having Galileo. 9 ascertained the regular oscillation of the pendulum, he proposed employ- ing it as a measure of time. Some, indeed, may imagine that there was no such extraordinary merit as is generally supposed, even in the grand conjecture of Newton, and that it amounted, after all, merely to the application of a law to the movements of the heavenly hodies, which was already known to affect at least every body in the immediate neighbourhood of the earth. But these things are only simple after they are explained. Slight and transparent as we may think the veil to have been which covered the truths alluded to, and others of a simi- lar nature, immediately before they were detected, it is yet an unques- tionable fact that this veil had been sufficient to conceal them, for thousands of years, from the observations of all the world. The pheno- menon of a heavy body swinging to and fro from a point of suspension, had been famili^ to every generation from the very earliest times; and yet, although men had long been very desirous of possessing an accurate and convenient measure of time, and had resorted in different countries to a great variety of contrivances to attain that object, nobody before Galileo had thought of effecting it by means of the pendulum. And, in the same manner, with regard to the law of gravitation : the fact of bodies generally having a tendency to fall to the earth, must of course have forced itself upon the attention of the very earliest inhabi- tants of our globe, every day and hour of their existence. But yet Newton's application and extension of this law had occurred to nobody, not even to Galileo himself, who had not many years before been engaged in investigating the exact amount of its influence within the field in which alone it had hitherto been supposed to operate. And Newton not only applied the law of gravitation to the heavenly bodies ; but, as the principle, when affecting bodies in the neighbourhood of the earth, was that of a force apparently constant, he had to discover and demonstrate the law of its variation.' ■ But, perhaps, the most striking illustration we can give of the strange manner in which important truths will sometimes hide themselves for a long while from observation, even after science has approached almost BO near as to touch them, is to be found in the history of the different discoveries relating to the mechanical properties of the air. The know- 1 « The assumption of an attractive force certainly none appear to have attempted to emanating from the sun," says .the writer of establish that the forces which retain the the article on Newton in the Fenny Cydo- planets in their orbs were identical, as to pffidio, " was at this time far from being a their nature, with that which draws a stone, novelty; and it had even been asserted by when let fall, to the surface of the earth. Bouillaud , [in his Astronmnio PhiUtlaica, Newton showed that the law of the inverse published in 1645] that, if such a force square of the distance is that which really really existed, its intensity would vary exists in nature ; and, further, that this law inversely as the square of the distance from was a necessary consequence of the analogy the attracting body; but neither Bouillaud already discovered by Kepler between the nor those who entertained sunilar opinions periodic times and the mean distances of the had given any proof, either empirically or planets." otherwise, of what they had asserted ; and 10 The Pv/r8uit of Knowledge. ledge of its positive weight, or gravity, is as old as tlie days of Aristotle. Even its elasticity was well known to the ancients ; one of whose philo- sophers, Hbbo of Alexandria, had, about a century before the birth of Christ, constructed upon that principle the fountain, or Jet d^eau, which still goes by his name. The common suction-pump is a still older in- vention, the effect of which, depending, as it does, entirely on the pressure of the atmosphere, might have suggested the true philosophy of that subject, it may be thought, to some one of its innumerable ob- servers. But, in reality, although all the while the air was known to be really a heavy body, nobody for two thousand years found out the true reason why, on its removal from the barrel of the pump by the elevation of the piston, the water rose into the vacant space. The un- learned multitude attributed the phenomenon to a stiction, or power of draught, in" the pump, and gave it the name of the suction-pnmp accord- ingly. They saw a phenomenon which they did not understand, and they called its cause, of which they were ignorant, suction. But the theory of the philosophers was more irrational than that of the multi- tude : only that, professing to rest upon one of the great laws of nature, it looked somewhat more solemn and imposing. The water rises in the pump, it was said, upon the removal of the air, because Nature ahlurrs a vacuum; and thus the matter rested, as we have said, for nearly twenty centuries — the alleged abhorrence of nature for a vacuum never having been established, either by experiment or reasoning, or in any other way, but at the same time being always so gravely pro- poiinded as a universal truth, that it never was questioned by anybody. Let us not, however, deride with too much levity these errors and follies of the old interpreters of Nature. We ourselves are only yet casting off the yoke of that ignorance, in the guise of wisdom, under which the men of other times were wont so submissively to bow ; and, if not in physics, at least in other departments of knowledge, we are still too much given to accept mere words and phrases, in the place of philosophy. At least let what we are now to relate restrain a little the expression of our contempt for the philosophy of the schoolmen, as to the present matter, and our exultation in a superiority over them which we do not owe to ourselves. , The illustrious Galileo himself, unquestionably one of the greatest men that ever lived, even after advancing to the very confines of all we now know, stopped there, and could find nothing better to offer than the old solution of the difficulty, in a case attended with circiimstances which to us would seem to have made the necessity for abandoning it obvious. A pump of more than thirty-two feet in heiglit having chanced to be erected at Florence, while Galileo resided in that city, the philosopher, finding that the water would not rise as usual to its top, set himself immediately to endeavour to account for the unexpected Torricelli — Pascal. 11 phenomenon ; and, after examining the case, came to the conclusion, that Nature certaiply abhorred a vacuum, but for the first two-and~thirfy feet only 1 It waa his pupil, Torbicelli, who first demonstrated the true cause of the phenomenon, by a most happily-imagined experiment. The water, rising as it does only to a certain height, must in fact, he remarked, be not drawn, but pushed up into the barrel of the pump; and it can only be so pushed by the pressure of the atmosphere on the exposed portion of it. The thirty-two feet of water in the body of the pump are merely a counterbalance to a column of air of equal basis, reaching to the top of the atmosphere. But, if so, it then occurred to him, another liquid, heavier or lighter than water, will, in similar cir-< cumstances, ascend to a correspondingly less or greater height, a less or greater quantity of it being, of course, required to balance the atmo-i spheric column. Mercury, for example, is about thirteen times and; arhalf as heavy as water ; it ought to mount, therefore, only to the height of about twenty-eight inches, instead of thirty-two feet. So,, taking a glass tube of about three feet in length, and hermetically sealed (that is, made air-tight) at one end, he first filled it completely with mercury, and then closing it with his finger reversed it, and plunged it into a basin of the same liquid metal : when, withdrawing his finger, he had the gratification of seeing the liquid in the tube, now forming one body with that in the basin, descend, until, exactly as he had anti^ cipated, there remained suspended a column of twenty-eight, inches only. Well, by this experiment, in every way a most ingenious an^ beautiful one, Torricelli had in reality invented the instrument we now. call the Barometer : and yet, strange to say, it was left to another to discover that he had done so. It was the great Pascal, a man of sublime and universal genius, who, upon hearing of Torricelli's experi^ ment, first made the remark, that the inference which he had deduced from it might, if true, be confirmed beyond the possibility of dispute, by carrying the mercurial tube to a considerable elevation above the earth, when, the atmospheric column being diminished, that of the mercury, which was supposed to be its balance, ought to be shortened likewise in a corresponding proportion. We had thus, therefore, a measure of the weight of the atmosphere in all circumstances, and con- sequently of the height of any position to which we could carry the instrument. The experiment was performed, and the result was what Pascal had anticipated. In this way, at length, was completed a dis- covery, the first steps towards which had been made two thousand years before : during the whole of which period the phenomena best fitted ta suggest it were matter of daily observation to every one ; but which, neverthelesSj at last escaped even several of the greatest philosophers *ho had made the nearest approaches to its development. To return, however, for a moment to the subject of the happy appli- 12 The Pursuit of Knowledge. cation to philosophical purposes of common facts. This subject is th( more worth our attention, as it opens a field of invention and discovery to which all men have, in one sense, equal access ; although it is only the mind which has been rightly prepared, by previous knowledge and reflection, that is in a condition to profit by the opportunity. Another example which may be given is that of the discovery of the mode of engraving called Mezzotinto, if we are to accept the account which ascribes it to the famous Peince Eupebt. It is said to have been sug- gested to him by his observing a soldier one morning rubbing off from the barrel of his musket the rust which it had contracted from being exposed to the night dew. The prince perceived, on examination, that the dew had left on the surface of the steel a congeries of very minute holes, so as to form the resemblance of a dark engraving, parts of which had been here and there already rubbed away by the soldier. He im- mediately conceived the idea that it would be practicable to find a way of covering a plate of copper in the same manner with little holes, which being inked and laid upon paper, would undoubtedly produce a black impression ; while, by cutting or scraping away, in different degrees, such parts of the surface as might be required, the paper would be left white wherever there'were no holes. Pursuing this thought, he at last, after a variety of experiments, invented a species of steel roller, covered with points, or salient teeth, which, being pressed against the copper- plate, indented it in the manner he wished ; and then the roughness thus occasioned had only to be scraped down, where necessary, in order to produce any gradation of shade that might be desired.' The celebrated modern invention of the Balloon is said to have had an origin still rnore simple. According to some authorities, the idea was first suggested to Stephen Montgolfiek, one of the two brothers to whom we owe the contrivance, by the waving of a linen shirt, which was hanging before the fire, in the warm and ascending air. Others tell us, that it was his brother Joseph who first thought of it, on perceiving the smoke ascending his chimney one day, during the memorable siege of Gibraltar, as he was sitting alone, and musing on the possibility of penetrating into the place, to which his attention had been called at the moment by a picture of it, on which he had acciden- tally cast his eyes. It is known, however, that the two brothers, who were paper-makers, and as such conversant with an apparently conve- nient material for their proposed experiment, had, before this, studied and made themselves familiar with Priestley's work on the different kinds of air ; and it is even said that Stephen had conceived the idea of navigating I This Is the account given by Vertue the and that Prince Enpert leamt the art of him. engraver. But othera mohitoin that mezzo- and carried it into England, where he much ' tlnto scraping was the invention of Lieut- improved it. See Heineoken, I " In point of fact, the first balloon sent before this the idea of rising into the sky tiy up by the Montgolfiers at Annouay, near means of a ball formed of some light sub- Lyons, the place where they carried on their stance, and filled with inflammable air (or paper manufactory, on the 5th of June, 1783, hydrogen), had occurred to Dr. Blacic of was raised simply by means of common air Edinburgh immediately on reading Mr heated. It was not till the 27th of August Cavendish's announcement of the great levity following that the first balloon filled with of that gas, which was pubUshed in the hydrogen ascended from the Champs de Mars, Fhilosiphical TranSQ£twng for 1766. Lord Paris. The first attempt, nevertheless, of the Brougliam states {Lives of Men of Science, Montgolfiers had been with hydrogen, but it First Series, p. 337 ) that Black actually showed proved a failure, as a similar attempt had to a party of his friends the ascent of a bladder done in the hands of Cavallo, at London, filled with inflammable air in that same year about the same time, in the year 1782. Long 14 The Pursuit of Knowledge, Above all, tooks, and especially elementary books, have, in our day, Inultiplied. to an extent that puts them within the reach almost of the poorest student ; and books, after all, are, at least to the more mature understanding, and in regard to such subjects as they are fitted to ex- plain, the best teachers. He who can read, and is possessed of a good elementary treatise on the science he wishes to leam, hardly, in truth, needs a master. With only this assistance, and sometimes with hardly this, some of the greatest scholars and philosophers that ever appeared have formed themselves, as the following pages will show. And let him who, smitten by the love of knowledge, may yet conceive himself to be on any acooimt unfortunately circumstanced for the business of mental cultivation, bethink him how often the eager studeijt has made his way through a host of impediments, much more formidable in all probability than any by which he is surrounded. Want of leisure, want of instruc- tors, want of books, poverty, ill-health, imprisonment, uncongenial ot distracting occupations, the force of opposing example, the discourage- ment of friends or relations, the depressing consideration that the better part of life was already spent and gone — these have all, separately or in various combinations, exerted their influence either to check the pursuit of knowledge, or to prevent the very desire of it from springing up. But they opposed the force of the strong natural passion and upward- tending determination in vain. Here then is enough both of encourage- ment and of direction for all. To the illustrious vanquishers of fortune, whose triumphs we are about to record, we would point as pioneers and guides for all who, similarly circumstanced, may aspire to follow in the same honourable path. Their lives are lessons tiiat cannot be read without profit. Nor are they lessons for the perusal of one class of society only. All, even those who are seemingly the most happily situated for the cultivation of their minds, may derive a stimulus from such anecdotes. No situation, in truth, is altogether without its un- favourable influences. If there be not poverty to crush the spirit, there may be too much wealth and too much ease, to relax and enervate it. He who is left to educate himself in everything, may have many diffi- culties to struggle with ; but he who is permitted to educate himself in nothing is perhaps still more unfortunate. If one mind be in danger of starving for want of books, another may be surfeited by too many. If a laborious occupation leave to some but little time for study, there are temptations, it should be remembered, attendant upon rank and afflu- ence, which are to the full as hard to escape from as any occupation. Or should there be any one who stands free, or comparatively free, from every kind of impediment to the cultivation of his intellectual faculties, he especially may be expected to feel a peculiar interest in the account of what the love of knowledge has achieved in circumstances so opposite to his own. It can hardly fail to stimidate his own exertions, and to Pythagoras. 15 remind him that his acquisitions ought to he in some degree commen- surate to his advantages. Finally, for all who love to read of bold and successful adventure, and to follow daring ambition in its career to greatness, it cannot but be interesting to contemplate the exploits of some of the most enterprising spirits of our race, — the adventurers, namely, of the world of intellect, whose ambition, while it has soared ar high, and performed feats as brilliant as any other, never excites in us an interest which it is dangerous to indulge, nor holds up to us an ex- ample which it would be criminal to follow. CHAPTER II. STEBNaTH OP THE PASBION FOB KNOWLEDGE. — PTTHAQOEAS ; ABCHIMEDBS ; LEIBNITZ ; GALILEO ; HBYNB. The ardour with which knowledge has frequently been pursued amidst all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, is the best evidence we can offer of the strength of the passion which has sprung up and lived in circumstances so unfavourable to its growth, and therefore of the exqui- site pleasure which its gratification is found to bring with it. If the permanence of any pleasure, indeed, is to be looked upon as one of the elements of its preciousness, there are certainly none but those of virtue and religion that can he compared with the pleasures of intellectual exertion. Nor is successful study without its moments, too, of as keen and overpowering emotion, as any other species of human enjoyment is capable of yielding. We have seen how Newton was affected on ap- proaching the completion of his sublime discovery ; when the truth shone full upon him,. and not a shade remained to create a doubt that it was indeed the truth which he had found and was looking upon. Every other discoverer, or inventor, or creator of any of the -great works of literature or art, has had, doubtless, his moments of similar ecstasy. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoeas is said to have been the first who found out, or at least demonstrated, the great geometrical truth, that the' square described on the hypothenuse, or side opposite to the right angle. Of a right-angled triangle is exactly equal in area to the two squares de- scribed on the other two sides ; and such was his joy, we are told, on the occasion, that he offered up a hecatomb, or sacrifice of a hundred oxen, to the gods, in testimony of his gratitude and exultation. When Aeohimbdes, the Sicilian, the most renowned geomet.er of antiquity, achieved what we may call the completion of the methoa ol ascertaining specific gravities, or the comparative weights of equal bulks of different substances, he is said to have rushed (orih naked from the bath in which 1 6 The Pursuit of Knowledge. he chanced to be when the idea struck him, and to have run about in that state through the streets of Syracuse, exclaiming, in his native Greek, Emekal Ewrekal (I have found it! I have found it!) No better example can be given, than is afforded by this anecdote, of the manner in which the most common and apparently insignificant fact will sometimes yield to the contemplation of genius the richest produce of philosophy. It was the simple circumstance of the water chancing to run over the sides of the bath that revealed to him what he sought. His friend and patron. Hiero, king of Syracuse, had set him a problem to solve. It was suspected that a crown, which Hiero had employed an artist to make for him out of a certain quantity of gold, was composed partly of some inferior metal. The weight was the same with that of the gold, but the bulk was apparently too great. The question really was merely to obtain an exact measure of the bulk ; for, of course, the bulk of any given weight of pure gold was known, or could easily be ascertained. If the crown could have been melted and the metal reduced to a regular shape, there would have been no difficulty ; but it was ne- cessary that its exact bulk should be determined without breaking it up. As soon as Archimedes saw how a portion of the water in the bath was displaced by the immersion of his body, he perceived that he had found what was wanted ; the quantity of water, or any other liquid, which the crown similarly immersed should displace would at once give the bulk of the crown. All the rest was matter of the simplest calculation. Assuming the alloy, when it was found that there was an alloy, to be silver, the exact proportions in which the two metals had been mixed together would be an easy and immediate deduction from the compari- son of the bulk of the crown, ascertained in the manner that has been described, with that of the same weight of gold on the one hand and that of the same weight of silver on the other. The discovery consisted solely in the manner of ascertaining the bulk of the crown, or of any other body however irregular in figure. This, indeed, is not tlie method of finding the specific gravity of bodies that is now commonly employed ; the modern method, by means of the contrivance called the hydrostatic balance, is not even founded upon the same principle with that disco- vered by Archimedes. But it is evident that his would equally answer, at least for all such cases as the one which was first solved by it. It was not the specific gravities of gold and silver which Archimedes dis- covered on this occasion, but only a way of ascertaining the specific gravity of irregularly-shaped bodies. It is said that Hiero, who was himself a man of science, was so much struck with the decisive solution of his problem, that he declared he should never from that moment be able to refuse his belief to anything that Archimedes might tell him. U'he illustrious Leibnitz, when only in his sixteenth year, conceived the brilliant idea of reducing the elements of thought to a species of Leibnitz. 17 alphabet, which should consist of the representatives or characters, as it were, of all our simplest ideas, and. serve to express distinctly their different combinations, just as the sounds of speech are expressed by the common letters. Without attempting to maintain the practicability of this notion, it is impossible to deny that it evidenced great subtilty and originality of mind in the young metaphysician : and we can well con- ceive the delight with which such a conception must have been contem- plated by a spirit like his, ardent in the pursuit both of knowledge and of distinction ; and beholding, as it were, in this dazzling speculation a new and untraversed continent of thought in the distance, wherein it might spend its first strength, and rear for itself immortal trophies. In a paper, written many years after, his History (in Latin) of a Universal Language, Leibnitz himself describes to us what he calls the infantine joy which this idea brought with it, when it first suggested itself to him, filling his mind, as it did, with the hope and confused vision of the great discoveries to which it promised to conduct him ; and although, in the multiplicity of his subsequent pursuits, he had never been able to ac- complish the high enterprise which he 'had so early planned, he declares that, the deeper he had carried his reflections and inquiries, he had only become the more convinced of its practicability. Such allurement is there even in the veiled countenance of a new truth ! But beyond all, perhaps, that a discoverer ever felt, must have been the surprise and rapture of Galileo, when, having turned for the first time to the heavens the wonderful instrument which his own ingenuity had invented, he beheld that crowd of splendours which had never be- fore revealed themselves to the eye, nor even been dreamed of by the imagination, of man. While Galileo resided at Venice, a report was brought to that city, that a Dutchman had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument, by means of which distant objects were made to appeay as if they were near ; and this was all that the rumour stated. But it was enough for Galileo. The' philosopher immediately set him- self to work to find out by what means the thing must have been effected ; and in the course of a few hours satisfied himself that, by a certain arrangement of spherical glasses, he could repeat the new miracle. In the course of two or three days, he presented several telescopes to the Senate of Venice, accompanied with a memoir on the immense import- ance of the instrument to science, and especially to astronomy. He afterwards greatly improved his invention ; and brought it to such a state of perfection, that he was in a condition to commence, by means of it, the examination of the far-off firmament itself. It was then that, to his unutterable astonishment, he saw, as a celebrated French astrono- mer has expressed it, " what no mortal before that moment had seen — the surface of the moon, like another earth, ridged by high mountains, and furrowed by deep valleys — ^Venus, as well as it, presenting phases 18 The Pursuit of Knowledge. demonstrative of a spherical form ; Jupiter surrounded by four satellites, which accompanied him in his orbit; the milky way; the nebuls; finally, the whole heaven sown over with an infinite multitude of stars, too small to be discerned by the naked eye." (Biographie Umverselle: Art. " Galileo.") Half a century afterwards our own Milton, who had seen Galileo, thus sung some of these new wonders in immortal num- bers : — " The mooUt whose orb, Through optic glass, the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesol^, Or in Valdarao, to deeory new lands. Elvers, or mountains, in her spotty globe." A few days — what days of intoxicating delight they must have been ! — were spent by Galileo in rapidly reviewing the successive wonders that presented themselves to him; and then he proceeded to announce his discoveries to the world by the publication of a paper, which he entitled the Nuneim Sidereus, or Herald of the Heavens, which he continued from time to time, as he found new objects to describe. From this period the examination of the heavens became the sole object of Galileo's thoughts, and the occupation of his life. He wrote, he talked of nothing else. Every mind which is yet a stranger to science, is, in some respects, in the same situation with Galileo, before he turned his telescope to the heavens ; and such a mind has a world of wonders to learn, many of which are as extraordinary as those which then revealed themselves to the philosopher. It has, in fact, to behold all that he beheld ; not cer- tainly, like him, for the fiist time that any one of the human race had been admitted to that high privilege, but yet for the first time, too, in so far as itself alone is concerned. The thrilling consciousness of dis- covery was Galileo's alone; the novelty and sublimity of the sight remain the same for all by whom it has been yet unenjoyed. And so it is with every other sort of knowledge. Although it may have been in reality discovered for the first time a thousand years ago, it remains as new a pleasure as if it had only, been found out yesterday, for him who has not yet acquired it. Such pleasures, in truth, are the only ones thai admit of being indefinitely multiplied. The enjoyments of sense, to say nothing of their comparatively brief endurance, their certainty to pall upon repetition, and the positively injurious and destroying tendency of many of them, are, from the nature of things, necessarily extremely limited in point of number ; for the senses themselves are but few, and no one of them has many varieties of enjoyment to communicate. Wh.it were even the highest pleasures brought us by the eye, or the ear, apart from that character which they derive from the moral or intellectual Rpsociatious they awaken? Momentary excitements for the child, but Heyne. 19 hardly the gratifications even of a moment to the man — as is abundantly evidenced by the case of many a one in whom the mere corporeal organ is as perfect as usual, but who, nevertheless, hardly receives from it any pleasure worth naming, owing to the uncultivated state of those mental faculties, which are truly the great creators and bestowers of human happiness. But When did we hear of any one who, having fairly com- menced the pursuit of literature or science, ever became tired of it ; or would not have gladly devoted his whole life to it, if he could ? There may be other passions to which men will deliver themselves up, in the first instance, with greater precipitation and impetuosity ; there is none, of a merely terrestrial nature, assuredly, which will detain them so long, or eventually absorb their being so entirely, as the passion for knowledge. We have numberless instances of persons, in every rank of life, who, for the sake of gratifying it, have contended with, and overcome, such difficulties and impediments of all sorts as certainly would have worn out the strength of almost any other impulse with which we are ac- quainted. But this is an impulse which, we may venture to affirm, when once truly awakened, no discouragements that the most unfavour- able circumstances have interposed have ever been able effectually to subdue. The late Professor Heyne, of Gottingen, was one of the greatest classical scholars of his own or of any age, and during his latter days enjoyed a degree of distinction, both in his own country and throughout Europe, of which scarcely any contemporary name, in the same depart- ment of literature, could boast. Yet he had spent the first thirty-two or thirty-three years of his life, not only in obscurity, but in an almost incessant struggle with the most depressing poverty. He had been born amidst the miseries of the lowest indigence, his father being a poor weaver, with a large family, for whom his best exertions were often unable to provide bread. In an account which he has given of his early life, he himself says, " Want was the earliest companion of my child- hood. I well remember the painful impressions made on my mind by witnessing the distress of my mother when without food for her children. How often have I seen her, on a Saturday evening, weeping and wring- ing her hands, as she returned home from an unsuccessful effort to sell the goods which the daily and nightly toil of my father had manufac- tured!" His parents managed, however, to send him to a children's school in the suburbs of the small town of Chemnitz, in Saxony, where they lived ; and he soon exhibited an uncommon desire of acquiring information. He made so rapid a progress in the humble branches ot knowledge taught in the school, that, before he had completed his tenth year, he was paying a portion of his school fees by teaching a little girl', the daughter of a wealthy neighbour, to read and write. Having learned everything comprised in the usual course of the school, he felt a strong c 2 20 The Pursuit of Knowledge. desire to learn Latin. A son of the schoolmaster, who had studied at Leipsic, was willing to teach him at the rate of fourpenoe a week ; but the difBoulty of paying so large a fee seemed quite insurmountable. One day he was sent to one of his godfathers, who was a baker in pretty good circumstances, for a loaf. As he went along, he pondered sorrow- fully on this great object of his wishes, and entered the shop in tears. The good-tempered baker, on learning the cause of his grief, undertook to pay the required fee for him, at which, Heyne teUs us, he was per- fectly intoxicated with joy ; and as he ran, all ragged and barefoot, through the streets, tossing the loaf in the air, it slipped from his hands and rolled into the gutter. This accident, and a sharp reprimand from his parents, who could ill afford such a loss, brought him to his senses. He continued his attendance for about two years, when his teacher ac- knowledged that he had taught him all he himself knew. His father now pressed him to adopt some trade, but the boy felt an invincible desire to go on with his literary education ; and fortunately his mother, proud of the talents of her son> was not unwilling that, if it were possible, he should be allowed to gratify his own anxious desires, and continue his studies. He had another godfather, who was a clergyman in the neighbourhood ; and this person, upon receiving the most flattering accounts of Heyne from his last master, agreed to be at the expense of sending him to the principal seminary of his native town of Chemnitz. His new patron, however, although a well-endowed churchman, doled out his bounty with most scrupulous parsimony ; and Heyue, without the necessary books of his own, was often obliged to borrow those of his companions, and to copy them over for his own use. At last he obtained the situation of tutor to the son of one of the citizens ; and this for a short time rendered his condition more comfortable. But the period was come when, if he was to proceed in the career he had chosen, it was necessary for him to enter the university ; and he resolved to go to Leipsic. He arrived in that city accordingly, vrith only two florins (about four shillings) in his pocket, and nothing more to depend upon except the small assistance he might receive from his godfather, who had promised to continue his bounty. He had to wait so long, however, for his expected supplies from this source, which came accompanied with much grudging and reproach when they did make their appearance, that, destitute both of money and books, he would have been without bread too, had it not been for the compassion of the maid-servant of the house where he lodged. What sustained his courage in these circum- stances (we use his own words) was neither ambition nor presumptiouj nor even the hope of one day taking his place among the learned. The stimulus that incessantly spurred him on was the feeUng of the humilia- tion of his condition — the sliamo with which he shrank from the thought of that degradation which the want of a good education would impose Seyne. 21 npoa him — ^above all, the determined resolution of battling couragecosly with fortune. He was resolved to tiy, he says, whether, although she had thrown him among the dust, he should not be able to rise up by his own efforts. His ardour for study grew the stronger as his diffi- culties increased. For six months he only allowed himself two nights' sleep in the week ; and yet all the whjle his surly and avaricious god- father scarcely ever wrote to him but to inveigh against his indolence — often addressing his letters on the outside, " To Mr. Seyne, Idler, at Leipsic." In the meantime, while his distress was every day becoming more intolerable, he was offered, by one of the professors, the situation of tutor in a family at Magdeburg. Desirable as the appointment would have been in eveiy, other respect, it would have removed him from the scene of his studies, and he declined it. He resolved rather to remain in the midst of all his miseries at Leipsic. He was, however, in a few- weeks after, recompensed for this noble sacrifice, by procuring, through the recommendation of the same professor, a situation in the university town similar to the one he had refused. This, of course, relieved for a time his pecuniary wants ; but still the ardour with which he pursued his studies continued so great, that it at last brought on a dangerous ill- ness, which obliged him to resign his situation, and very soon completely exhausted his trifling resources, so that on his recovery he found himself as poor and destitute as ever. In this extremity, a copy of Latin verses which he had written having attracted the attention of one of the Saxon ministers, he was induced, by the advice of his friends, to set out for the court at Dresden, where it was expected this high patronage would make his fortune. But he was doomed only to fresh disappointments. After having borrowed money to pay the expenses of his journey, all he ob- tained from the courtier was a few vague promises, which ended in nothing. He was obliged eventually, after having sold his books, to accept the place of copyist in the library of the Count de Bruhl, at the miserable annual salary of one hundred crowns (about 111. sterling) — a sum which, even in that cheap country, was scarcely sufficient to keep him from perishing of hunger. However, with his industrious habits, he found time, beside performing the duties of his situation, to do a little work for the booksellers. He first translated a French romance, for which he was paid twenty crowns. For a learned and excellent edition which he prepared of the Latin poet Tibullus, he received, in successive payments, one hundred crowns, with which he discharged the debts he had contracted at Leipsic. In this way he contrived to exist for a few years, all the while studying hard, and thinking himself amply compensated for the hardships of his lot by the opportunities he had of pursuing his favourite researches, in a city so rich in collections of books and antiquities as Dresden. After he had held his situation in the 22 The Pursuit of Knowledge. library for aTaove two years, his salary was doubled ; but before he derived any benefit from the augmentation, the Seven Years' War had com- menced. Saxony was overrun by the forces of Frederick the Grreat, and Heyne's place, and the library itself to which it was attached, were swept away at the same time. He was obliged to fly from Dresden, and wandered about for a long time without any employment. At last he was received into a family at Wittenberg ; but in a short time the pro- gress of the war drove him from this asylum also, and he returned to Dresden, where he still had a few articles of furniture, purchased with the little money he had saved while he held his place in the library. He arrived just in time to witness the bombardment of that capital, in the conflagration of which his furniture perished, as well as some property which he had brought with him from Wittenberg, belonging to a lady, one of the family in whose house he lived, for whom he had formed an attachment during his residence there. Thus left, both of them, without a shilling, the yonng persons never- theless determined to share each other's destiny ; civil convulsions nerve or harden people to the encountering of strange risks ; and they were accordingly united. By the exertions of some common friends, a retreat was procured for Heyne and his wife in the establishment of a M. de Leoben, where he spent some years, during which his time was chiefly occupied in the management of that gentleman's property. At last, at the general peace in 1763, he returned to Dresden ; and here ended his hard fortunes. Some time before his arrival in that city, the Professor- ship of Eloquence in the University of Gbttingen had become vacant, by the death of the celebrated John Mathias Gresner. The chair had been offered, in the first instance, to David Ruhnken, one of the first scholars of the age, who declined, however, to leave the University of Leyden, where he had lately succeeded the eminent Hemsterhuys as Professor of Greek. But fortunately for Heyne, Euhnken was one of the few to whihn his edition of Tibullus, and another of the Enchiridion (or Philosophical Manual) of Epictetus, which he had published shortly after, had made his obscure name and great merits known ; and with a generous anxiety to befriend one whom he considered to be so deserving, he ventured, of his own accord, to recommend him to the Hanoverian minister, as the fittest person he could mention for the vacant office. Such a testimony from Ruhnken was at once the most honourable and the most efficient patronage Heyne could have had. He was Immedi- ately nominated to the Professorship ; although he had been as yet so little heard of, that it was with considerable difficulty he was found. He held this appointment for nearly fifty years ; in the course of which, as we have already remarked, he may be said, by his successive publica tions, and the attraction of his lectures, to have placed himself nearly at the head of the classical scholars of his age ; while he was at the Epidetus. 23 same time loved and venerated almost as a father, not only by his numerous pupils, but by all ranks of his fellow-citizens, who, on his death, in 1812, felt that their University and city had lost the man who had been for half a century its chief distinction. CHAPTER III. OBSCURB 'OKTGIN AND HTTMBLB STATION : — EPICTBTUS ; PBOTAGOBAS ; CLBANTHES ; HAUY ; WINCKBLMAN ; ABNIGIO ; DUVAL ; BANDINBLLI ; SCALIGBR ; PKOTOGBNES ; BATTDOUIlSr ; GELLI ; METASTASIO ; HATDN ; OPIB ; PAEINI ; PBIDBAUX ; INIGO JOffES ; CHIEF JUSTICE SAUNDERS ; LINNiEUS ; LOMONOSOPF ; BBN JONSON; THE MILNEB8 ; JOHN HUNTER. Heyne's first disadvantage, of being born in a sphere of life unfavourable even to the awakening of the passion for knowledge, is one which aspiring minds have often overcome. Not to mention the cases of ^sop, PcBLius Syeus, and Tebbnob, all of whom were originally slaves, Ei'iCTETUs, the celebrated Stoic philosopher, was bom in the same con- dition, and spent many years of his life in servitude. Having been at last fortunate enough to obtain his freedom, he retired to a small hut ; and, when he was barely able to procure the necessaries of life, devoted himself to the study of philosophy. We have seen that the principal record of the doctrines of this philosopher was one of the works edited by Heyne, while at Dresden ; and he used to relate that his fortitude, amid the difficulties that he had to struggle with at the time, was not a little strengthened and upheld by the precepts of severe virtue and determined endurance which he found in the system of the old Stoic. Epictetus's own conduct was strikingly in conformity with the lessons he taught, at least if we may believe one of the stories which are told of him. It is said, that before he had obtained his liberty, his master, a brutal man, chose one day to amuse himself by twisting the leg of the slave. " You will break it," remarked Bpictetus ; and the next moment snap" it went. " I told you so," added the philosopher, with aU the indifference in the world. He lived at Rome in' a house without a door, and with no furniture, except a table, a smaU bedstead, and a wretched coverlet; and this even at a time when he enjoyed the greatest familiarity with the Emperor Adrian. One day he was extravagant enough to purchase for himself a lamp made of iron ; but he was punished for this deviation from his usual habits, by a thief soon after finding his way into the house, and ruiming off with it. " He shall be cheated," said Epictetus, " if he come back to-morrow 24 27*6 Pursuit of Knowledge. for he shall find only an earthen one.'' Pbotagokas, the celebrated sophist, had been a common porter before he applied to study. He lived at Abdera, in Thrace, the same town in which resided the famous Democritus, commonly called the Laughing Philosojiher, who one day met him carrying into the city a very heavy load of wood on his back, and was a good deal surprised on perceiving that the pieces were piled on one another exactly in the way best adapted to make the burden rest easily on the shoulders. In order to discover whether this geome- trical arrangement was the effect of skill or chance, he requested the young man to unbind the load, and make it up again in the same manner : this Protagoras immediately did with great dexterity ; upon which Democritus, convinced that his talents were of a superior order, admitted him forthwith among his disciples, and spared no pains in instructing him in the different branches both of natural and moral philosophy. And, to mention no more instances, Cleanthes, another of the Stoics, was brought up to the profession of a pugilist, and used to exhibit himself in that character at the public games ; till, longing to study philosophy, he betook himself for that purpose to Athens, where he arrived with only three drachms (about three shillings and sixpence) in his pocket. In these circumstances he was obliged, for his support, to employ himself in drawing water, carrying burdens, and other such humble and laborious occupations. He contrived, however, to proceed with his studies at the same time, bringing his fee of an oboliis, or penny, every day to his master, Zeno, with great punctuality. On the death of Zeno, he succeeded him in his school, but still continued his menial labours as usual. " I draw water," he was wont to say, "and do any other sort of work which presents itself, that I may give myself up to philosophy without being a burden to any one." He was so poor, indeed, that, the wind having blowm aside his mantle one day when he happened to be present at one of the public shows, his fellow-citizens perceived he had no tunic, or under garment, and gave him one. He was always treated, notwithstanding his poverty, with the greatest respect at Athens. In modem times we have many examples, also, of pei-sons whom the love of knowledge has found in the lowest obscurity, and who have possessed themselves of the highest acquirements in science or litera- ture, in spite of every disadvantage of birth. Heyne, as we have mentioned, was the son of a poor weaver. So was the Abb^ Hauy who died at Paris in 1822, celebrated for his writings and discoveries in crystallography — a science, indeed, of which he may be almost con- sidered as the founder. It is the science which treats of those curious regular figures which so many solid bodies are found to possess in their natural state, or which they may be made to assume artificially, by dissolving or fusing them, and then allowing their particles to return to Winckelman — Duval. 25 a state of solidity, which latter process is called their crystallization. Now it happens that the same substance is not found to have always the same figure externally when in a crystallized state, but is susceptible of several different forms, some of which do not appear at first to have any resemblance to each other. All preceding inquirers had been very much perplexed by this circumstance, in their attempts to establish a , theory of crystallized bodies ; and various principles had been succes- sively adopted and rejected as the foundations of a scientific arrangement of them. At length Haiiy had his attention directed to the subject, by haying accidentally picked up an uncommonly beautiful specimen of calcareous spar, w hich presented the figure of a six-sided prisr.), and had been detached from a group of similar crystals. By trying to split this specimen in various directions with the blade of a knife, and dividing it only where he found a natural joint, he at last reduced it to the form of a rhomboid, or oblongated cube, which it retained in spite of all subsequent sections. Now this is exactly the form in which another calcareous spar, called Iceland Spar, is commonly found ; whence Hatty was led to suspect that, by the application of the pro- cess he had employed, all crystallized substances of the same species might be reduced to the same primitive form. This idea he pursued with exceeding ingenuity; till, by means not only of his unparal- leled dexterity, in the dissection of crystals, but of a most masterly combination of algebraical and geometrical reasoning, he made it highly probable that the principle of his theory is of universal appli- cation, and that it is only necessary to strip them of their external coatings to discover the same radical figure in all crystals of the same But, to proceed : the celebrated Winckelman, the distinguished writer on classical antiquities and the fine arts, was the son of a shoe- maker. His father, after vainly endeavouring for some time, at the expense of many sacrifices, to give him a learned education, was at last obliged, from age and ill-health, to retire to an hospital, where he was, in his turn, supported for several years in part by the hard labours of his son, who, aided by the kindness of his professors, contrived to keep himself at college chiefly by teaching some of his younger or less advanced fellow-students. Baetholombw Aenigio, an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, of considerable genius and learning, followed his father's trade of a blacksmith till he was eighteen years old, when ho began of his own accord to apply to his studies ; and by availing himself of the aid sometimes of one friend, and sometimes of another, prepared himself at last for entering the University of Padua. Valen- tine Jameeat Dotal, a very able antiquary of the last century, who at the time of his death held the office of keeper of the imperial medals at Vienna, as well as that of one of the preceptors to the prince, and after- 26 The Ptt/rsiut of Knowledge, wards the Emperor Joseph II.,was the son of a poor peasant of Champ^ne, and lost his father when he was ten years of age. He was then taken into the service of a farmer in the village ; but, being soon after turned off for some petty fault, he resolved to leave his native place altogether, that he might not he a burden to his mother. So he set out on his ■travels, without knowing in what direction he was proceeding, in the beginning of a dreadful winter ; and for some time begged in vain even for a crust of bread and shelter against the inclemency of the elements, till, worn out with hunger, fatigue, and a tormenting headache, he was at last taken in by a poor shepherd, who permitted him to lie down in the place where he shut up his sheep. Here he was attacked by small-pox, and lay ill nearly a month ; but having at last recovered, chiefly through the kind attentions of the village clergyman, he pro- ceeded on his wanderings a second time, thinking that by getting farther to the east he should be nearer the sun, and therefore suffer less from the cold. Having arrived in this way at the foot of the Vosges mountains, nearly a hundred and fifty miles from his native village, he remained there for two years in the service of a farmer, who gave him his flocks to keep. Chancing then to make his appearance at the hut of a hermit, the recluse was so much struck by the intelligence of his answers, that he proposed he should take up his abode with him, and share his labours ; an offer which Duval gladly accepted. Here he had an opportunity of reading a few books, chiefly devotional. After some time he was sent with a letter of recommendation from his master to another hermitage, or religious house, near Lundville, the inmates of which set him to take charge of their little herd of cattle, consisting only of five or six cows, while one of them took the trouble of teaching him to write. He had here also a few books at command, which he perused with great eagerness. He sometimes, too, procured a little money by the produce of his skill and activity in the chase, and this he always bestowed in the purchase of books. One day, while pursuing his occupation, he was lucky enough to find a gold seal, which had been dropped by an English traveller of the name of Forster. Upon this gentleman coming to claim his property, Duval jestingly told him that he should not have the seal, unless he could describe the armorial bearings on it in correct heraldic phrase. Surprised at any appearance of an acquaintance with such subjects in the poor cow-herd, Forster, who was a lawyer, entero' into conversation with him, and was so much struck by bis information and intelligence, that he both supplied him with a number of books and maps, and instructed him in the manner of studying them. Some time after this, he was found by another stranger sitting at the foot of a tree, and apparently absorbed in the contemplation of a map which lay before iiim. Upon beiag asked what he was about, he rephed that he was study- inggeography, " And whereabouts in the study may you be at present?" Bandinetli — Lc^e de Vega — Scaliger, 27 inquired the stranger. " I am seeking the way to Quehec,'' answered Duval. " To Quebec ? What should you want there ?" " I wish to go to continue my studies at the university of that city." The stranger belonged to the establishment of the young princes of Lorraine, who, returning from the chase, came up with their suite at the, moment ; and the result was, that, after putting a great many questions to Duval, they were so delighted with the vivacity of his replies, that they proposed to Send him immediately to a Jesuits' college in the neighbourhood. Here he continued for some time, until he was at last taken by his patron, the Duke of Lorraine, afterwards the Emperor Francis L, to Paris, where he speedily distinguished himself, and eventually acquired a high place among the literary men of the day. He never forgot, however, either his early benefactors, or that simpUcity of character and manners which the humble nature of his origin and first fortunes had given him. It is gratifying indeed to have to tell, that even after he had become a courtier, and was living in intimate familiarity with the emperor, he took a journey to his native village, purchased the cottage in which his father had lived, and erected on its site, at his own expense, a com- modious dwelling-house for the parish schoolmaster. He always kept up a correspondence, too, with the good hermits at Lundville ; and, in particular, on paying a visit to Brother Marin, who had taught him writing, and not finding his hut so comfortable as he could have wished, teft with him a sum of money to rebuild it. Duval died in 1775, at the age of eighty. Men are proud, and it is very intelligible why they should be so, of an illustrious ancestry ; but to those who have achieved their own advancement in the face of disadvantages such as the individuals we have named, and many others, have had to struggle with, the obscurity of their origin is their most honourable distinction. Nothing, therefore, can be weaker, or more absurd, than the vanity which has led even some distinguished men, of humble or at least not high birth, to attempt to conceal their real extraction from the world, by the most unfounded and sometimes ridiculous fictions. Bandinelli, the Italian sculptor, was the son of a goldsmith, and the grandson of a common coalman ; but having in the course of his life acquired great wealth, and having been created by the Emperor Charles V. a knight of the order of St. James, he is said to have repeatedly changed his name, in order to hide his parentage, and to have fixed at last upon that by which he is generally known, in order that he might appear to have sprung from the noble family of the Bandinelli of Sienna. A similiar anxiety to secure for himself the reputation of noble descent is also recorded to have been one of the foibles of the celebrated Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega. But, perhaps, the most extravagant pretensions of this kind *hat were ever brought forward, were those advanced by the famous 28 The Pursuit of Knowledge Julius CiESAE Scaliger, one of the greatest scholars and critics of the sixteenth century. This eminent person actually took the trouble of composing an elaborate memoir of his own life, in which he pretended to be the last surviving descendant of the princely house of La Scala of Verona, and qpnsequently the lineal heir of that sovereignty, which, having been some time before conquered by the Venetians, had been incorporated by them with their own territory. In order to support this story, he went the length of inventing a series of adventures, which he paid had befallen him, giving out that, having been preserved by big mother from the general persecution of his race, he had, after being care- fully educated, been presented at the court of the Emperor Maximilian, who made him one of his pages. He added that he subsequently dis- tinguished himself gi'eatly ; first in the wars of Italy, and then, in the service of France, in Piedmont : till, after passing through a succession of other fortunes, which we cannot afford space to relate, he was induced by the solicitations of La Eovere, Bishop of Agen, to accompany that prelate to his episcopal seat, and thus at last to terminate his vain endea- vours to recover his lost principality. Now the truth is, as has been since abundantly proved, that Scaliger's real name was Bordoni ; that he was in all probability the son of a miniature painter who resided at Padua ; and that he never even assumed the name of Scaliger till he was pretty far advanced in life, having borne it only in conjunction with his own in his forty-fourth year, when he obtained letters of naturalization in France, which are still extant. Even at this time it would appear that the fable of his descent from the house of Verona, if it had entered his head at all, had certainly not been conceived in anything like the form which he afterwards gave it. It was, at least in all its wilder im- probabilities, the romance of his old age. He persisted in it, however, as long as he lived, and left it as a legacy to his son, the learned Joseph Justus Scaliger, who, with an excess of filial observance, both maintained its truth as obstinately as his father had done, and augmented it by many additional fictions of his own invention. It is a wiser and nobler spirit which, without despising such distinc- tions where they really exist, considers it more honourable to have achieved fame and eminence without the advantage of high birth than with their assistance ; and does not disdain, therefore, where they have not been possessed, to find its best triumph in their absence. Such was the feeling in which the old Greek painter Pkotogenes acted, who, having passed the earlier years of his life in such obscurity and poverty, that he was obliged to spend the greater part of his time in merely painting the coarse ornaments on the prows of ships, was so far from showing himself ashamed of his humble origin, when he rose at last to fame and more honourable as well as lucrative employment, that he was wont to 'ntroduce representations of the different parts of ships round his Gelli — Meiastaaio — Saydn. 23 pictures, as symbols and memorials of his old occupation. Benedict Baudouin (or Balduinus), a learned l<'renchman of the sixteenth cen- tury, went still farther than thi'S. His father had been a shoemaker, and he had himself worked for some time at the same profession — circumstances which he was so little anxious to have forgotten, thatj many years after, he wrote and published a very elaborate work on the Shoemaking of the Ancients, in which we find the history of that craft traced with a profusion of eradition, up to the time of Adam himself. But, perhaps, the most extraordinary example on record of indifference to such matters, is that afforded by the conduct of the Italian writer GiAMBATiSTA Gelli, who, even after he had obtained so much distinc- tion by his writings as to have been elected to the high dignity of Consul of the Florentine Academy, and appointed by the grand duke to deUver a course of lectures on Dante, still continued to work at his original profession of a tailor, which he had inherited from his father. He alludes to the circumstance, with much modesty and even dignity, in the introductory oration of his course delivered before the Academy, which has been published. It would be easy to continue to a much greater length our enumera^ tion of individuals who, smitten by the love of knowledge, have nobly surmounted the impediments thrown in the way of its acquisition by a humble birth or early indigence. Many of the most remarkable of these cases we shall have an opportunity of introducing under other heads of our subject ; at present we shall merely mention a few of those which we may not afterwards find so convenient an occasion of noticing. The celebrated Italian poet Mbtastasio was the son of a common mechanic, and used when a little boy to sing his extemporaneous verses about the streets. The father of Haydn, the great musical composer, was a wheel- wright, and filled also the humble occupation of sexton, while his mother was at the same time a servant in the establishment of a neigh homing nobleman. The father of our own painter, Opib, was a working car- penter in Cornwall. The following is the account that Dr. Wolcot, better known by his assumed name of Peter Pindar, gives us, in his peculiar style, of the circumstances in which he discovered the unedu- cated artist : — " Being on a visit to a relation in Cornwall, 1 saw either the drawing or print of a farm -yard in the parlour, and, after looking at it slightly, remarked that it was a busy scene, but ill executed. This point was immediately contested by a she-cousin, who observed that it was greatly admired by many, and particularly by John Opie, a lad of great genius. Having learned the place of the artist's abode, I imme- diately sallied forth, and found him at the bottom of a sawpit, cutting wood by moving the lower part of an instrument which was regulated above by another person. Having inquired in the dialect of the country so The Pursuit of Knowledge. if he could paint ? ' Can you paient ?' — I was instantly answered from below in a similar accent and language, that he could 'paient Queen Charlotte and Duke William ' (William Duke of Cumberland), 'and Mrs. Somebody's cat.' A specimen was immediately shown me, which was rude, incorrect, and incomplete. But when I learned that he was such an enthusiast in his art, that he got up by three o'clock of a summer's morning to draw with chalk and charcoal, I instantly con- ceived that he must possess all that zeal necessary for obtaining emi- nence. A gleam of hope then darted through my bosom ; and I felt it possible to raise the price of his labours from eightpence or a shilling to a- guinea a-day. Actuated by this motive, I instantly presented him with pencils, colours, and canvas, to which I added a few instructions." After some time, the Doctor adds, his pupil became so celebrated in. the neighbourhood, that he obtained as much employment as he could undertake in painting heads at half-a-guinea each, and at last resolved to raise his price to a guinea. He afterwards came to London, and attained great eminence as a portrait painter: upon which he was admitted as an Associate oi the Eoyal Academy, and was eventually elected Professor of Painting in that institution. " Bom in a rank of hfe in which the road to eminence is rendered infinitely difficult," says another Academician, speaking of Opie, " unassisted by partial pati-onage, scorning with virtuous pride all slavery and dependence, he trusted alone for his reward to the force of his natural powers, and to well- directed and umremitting study. The toils and difficulties of his pro- fession were by him considered as matter of honourable and delightful contest ; and it might be said of him, that he did not so much paint to live, as live to paint." The parents of Sebastian Castaiio, the elegant Latin translator of the Bible, were poor peasants, who lived among the mountains in Dauphiny. The Abb6 Hautefbuille, who distinguished himself in the seventeenth century by his inventions in clock and watch making, was the son of a baker. Pakuti, the modern Italian satiric poet, was the son of a peasant, who died when he was in his boyhood, and left him to be the only support of his widowed mother ; while, to add to his difficulties, he was attacked in his nineteenth year by a paralysis, which rendered him a cripple for life. The parents of Dr. John PiuBEAnx, who afterwards rose to be Bishop of Worcester, were in such pooi circumstances, that they were with difficulty able to keep him at school till he had learned to read and write ; and he obtained the rest of his education by walking on foot to Oxford, and getting employed in the first instance as assistant in the kitchen of Exeter College, in which society he remained till he gradually made his way to a fellowship. The father of Iniqo Jones, the great architect, who built the Banquet- Saunders — Linnceus — Lomonosoff — Ben Jonson — Ramus. 31 ing-House at Whitehall, and many other well-known edifices, was a, cloth-worker ; and he himself was also destined originally for a mecha- INIGO JONES, nioal employment. Sir Edmund Satjndeks, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of Charles II., was in early life an errand- hoy at the inns of Court, and gradually acquired the elements of his knowledge of the law by heing employed to copy precedents. Link^eus, the founder of modern Botany, although the son of a Swedish clergy- mao, and himself originally intended for holy orders, was, from his neglect of his theological studies, about to be taken from school and apprenticed to a shoemaker, when he was rescued from his fate by acci- dentally meeting one day a physician named Eothman, who, having entered into conversation with him, was so much struck with his intelli- gence, that he sent him to the university. The father of Michael LoMONOBOFP, one of the most celebrated Eussian poets of the last century, who eventually attained the highest literary dignities in his own country, was only a simple fishermen. Young Lomonosoff had great difficulty in acquiring as much education as enabled him to read and write ; and it was only by running away from his father's house, and taking refuge in a monastery at Moscow, that he found means to obtain, an acquaintance with the higher branches of literature. The famous Ben Jonson worked for some time as a bricklayer or mason; " and let not them blush," says Puller, speaking of this circumstance in his ' English Worthies,' with his usual amusing, but often also expres- sive, quaintness, " let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." Petbb Eamus (or, in the original French form of the name, Pierre B2 The Pm-suit of Knowledge. de fii Eam^e), one of the most intrepid thinkers of the sixteenth century, and especially famous in the history of philosophy for the novelty and audacity of his logical speculations, began his life, which was afterwards BO distinguished, in the humble capacity of a shepherd boy, and was only at last, after a succession of efforts and disappointments, enabled to become a student at the College of Navarre, in the University of Paris, by hiring himself at the same time as a valet. When he had spent his day, one of his biographers tells us, in attendance on his master, follow- ing somewhat the example of the old Greek philosopher Cleanthes, he made such good use of his oil and his lamp in the night that he very soon acquired as much of the light of learning as procured him his degree of Master of Arts. " I confess," he says himself in one of his tracts, " that I have been tossed all my life on waves of sorrow. Scarcely was I out of the cradle when I had to begin the struggle, assailed at once by two contending calamities " (he means, apparently, poverty and exile, or possibly, it may be, ill-health) ; " when I was become a young man, with fortune cross and fighting against me in every way, I resorted to Paris to obtain for myself a liberal education, and was twice compelled to leave by the violence of the time, twice returned when the tempest somewhat abated, and ever felt the love of learning burn the stronger within me the greater the opposition with which it had to contend." At last he fought his way so successfully through all obstacles that in the year 1551, while he was still in early manhood (for he was born in 1515), he was, by the favour of the Cardinal de Lorraine, appointed Professor of Eloquence and Philosophy in the College de Prance, a new royal chair estabhshed for his behoof. In a remarkable address which he delivered on entering upon this of6ce, before a throng, it is said, of some two thousand eager listeners, he thus manfully referred to his early diffi- culties : — " It has been cast in my teeth that my father was a charcoal- vendor. True it is, that my grandfather — of one of the first families about Lifege — was compelled to take refuge in the Vermandois, when Charles of Burgundy committed his native city to the flames, and that jMverty drove him to deal in charcoal, and my father to stand behind the plough. I myself was in yet harder straits than either. And hence it is that some ill-conditioned Dives, whoso father and fatherland nobody has ever heard of, has cast censure on the poverty of my highborn ancestry. To this I reply, that I am a Christian, and so have never considered poverty a reproach. . . . Through stress of fortune, I passed many years of my life in lowly servitude. Nevertheless, my mind was ever free, was never despondent or cast down. Therefore, Lord God Almighty, who out of stones oouldest raise up children unto Abraham, raise up, in this charcoal-vendor's grandson, this labourer's son, not great wealth or fortune — for these I need but little to get me the tools of my waft, pen, ink, and paper — hot rather vouchsafe to him, unto his liiia'» nv^i-avod b>'.T.Wri0Ki, .J«»iIll.N IIIUITS'TIKIIS. rjl8.,s;. Longomaatanus—MoMox — Milncr — Hunter. 33 end, a right mind, and a diligent industry which shall never wax faint." The celebrated Danish astronomer, Longomontanus, was the son of a labuurer, and, while attending the academical lectures at Wyburg through the day, was obliged to work for his support during a part of the night _ The elder David Parbus, the eminent German Protestant divine,, who was afterwards Professor of Theology ,at Heidelberg^ was placed iiTj his youth as an apprentice, first vsdtk an apothecary, and then witha shoemaker. Hans (or JbAm), Sachs, the most famous of the old German Meistersingers,, or. Burgher poets, of the sixteenth century, was the son of a tailor, and served an apprenticeship himself, first to a shoe- maker, and afterwards to a weaver, at which last trade, indeed, he con- tinued to work during the rest of his life. John Folcz, another old German poet, was, a barber. Luca§ Cobnblisz, a Dutch painter of the sixteenth century,: who visited England during the reign of Henry YIII., and was patronised, by .that mona,rch, was obliged, while in. his own country, in order, to support his large family, to betake himself to the profession of a cook. Dr. Isaac Maddox, who, in the reign of George II., became bishop,- first of St. Asaph,, and then of Worcester, stud who is well known by his work in.defeuoe of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, lost both his parents, who belonged to a very humble rank of Ufe, at an early age, and was in., tie very first instance placed by his friends, .with a pastrycpok. . The latfe Dr. Isaac Milneb, Dean of Carlisle,, and President of Queens' College, and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics^ at Cambridge, who held a distinguished place ainong the scientific men of his day, was bred a woollen -weaver ; as was also his younger brother Joseph, well known for his " History Of the Church." So was the late Dr. Joseph White, Professor of Arabic at. Oxford. Cassbeio, a wellrinown Italiananatomist,, was initiated in the elements of medical science by; a surgeon of Padua, with whorn he had lived originally as a domestic servant. JpHN Christian Thbden, who rose to be chief surgeon tp the Prussian army under Frederick II., had in his youth been apprenticed to a tailor. The celebrated John Hunter, one of the greatest anatomists that ever lived, scarcely received any education whatever until he was twenty years old. He was born in the year 1728, in Lanarkshire ; and being the youngest of a family of ten, and the child of his father's old age, was brought up with much foolish indulgence. When he was only ten years old his father died ; and under the charge of his mother it is pro- bable that he was left to act as he chose, with still less restraint than before. Such was his aversion at this time to anything like regular application, that it was with no small difficulty, we are told, he had been taught even the eletnents of reading and writing ; while an attempt that was made to give him some knowledge of Latin — according to the D 84 The Pursuit of Knowledge. plan of education then almost universally followed in regard to the sons of even the smallest landed proprietors in Scotland — had, after a short space, to be abandoned altogether. Thus he grew up, spending his time merely in country amusements, and for many years without even think- ing, as it would appear, of any profession by which he might earn a livelihood. It was, however, found necessary at l^st that something shoAld be determined upon in regard to this point ; for the family estate, such as it was, had gone to his eldest brother, and the father had made no provision for maintaining John any longer in idleness. So, destitute as he was of all literary acquirements, there was no other resource for him except some business that would give employment to his hands rather than his head; and, one of his sisters having married a cabinet- maker, or carpenter, in Glasgow, it was resolved to bind him apprentice to his brother-in-law. With this person, accordingly, he continued for some time, learning to make chairs and tables ; and this probably might have been, for life, the employment of the genius that afterwards dis- tinguished itself so greatly in one of the highest walks of scientific dis- covery, but for circumstances which, at the time when they occurred, were doubtless deemed unfortunate. His master failed, and John was left without any obvious means of pursuing even the humble line of life in which he had set out. He was at this time in the twentieth year of his age. His elder brother, William, afterwards the celebrated Dr. Hunter, had very recently settled as a medical practitioner in London ; but had already begun to distinguish himself as a lecturer and ana- tomical demonstrator. "To him John determined to address himself. The rumour of the one brother's success and growing reputation had probably, even before this time, awakened somethingjof ambition in the other to escape from the obscure lot to which he seemed doomed. John now wrote to his brother, offering him his services as an assistant in his dissecting-room, and intimating, that if this proposal should not be accepted, he meant to enlist in the army. Fortunately for science, his letter brought a favourable answer. On his brother's invitation he set out for the metropolis in company with a friend of the family, the two pursuing their journey, as was then the custom, on hoi-seback. He was now put to work in the manner in which he had requested to be employed. His brother, we are informed by Sir Everard Home, his earliest biographer, gave him an arm to dissect, so as to display the muscles, with directions how it should be done ; and the performance of the pupil, even in this his commencing essay, greatly surprised his instructor. The doctor then put into his hands another arm, in which all the arteries were injected, and these, as well as the muscles, were to bo exposed and preserved. So well satisfied was Dr. Hunter with his brother's performance of this task, that he did not hesitate to assure him he would in time became an excellent anatomist, and would not want John Himter, 35 employment. Perhaps, although we do not find it so stated by any of his biographers, he may have felt an advantage, in making these pre- parations, in the habits of manual dexterity acquired during his appi'en- ticeship to his first business. So rapid, at all events, was the progress which he made in the study of anatomy, that he had not been ft year in London when he was con- sidered by his brother as qualified to teach others, and was attended accordingly by a class of his own. His talents, and the patronage of his brother together, brought him now every day more ahd more into notice. It does not belong to our purpose to trace the progress of his success after this point. We may merely remark, that long before his death he had placed himself, by universal acknowledgment, at the head of living anatomists ; and was regarded, indeed, as having done more for surgery, and physiology than any other investigator of these branches of science that had ever existed. The important discoveries, and peculiar and most original views, by which John Hunter succeeded in throwing so much new light upon the subject of the functions of animal Hfe, were derived, as is well known, principally from the extraordinary zeal, patience, and ingenuity, with which he pursued the study of comparative anatomy, or the examina- tion of the structure of the inferior animals as compared with that of man. To this study he devoted his time, his Ubour, and it may be said, his fortune ; for nearly every shilling that he could save from his pro- fessional gains was expended in collecting those foreign animals and other rare specimens, by means of which he prosecuted his inquiries. When his income was yet far from being a large one, he purchased a piece of ground at Earl's Court, near the village of Bromptoff, and built a house on it, to serve as a place of deposit for his collections. The space around it was laid out as a zoological garden for such of his strange animals as be kept alive. Even when most extensively engaged in practice, he used to spend every miming, from sunrise till eight o'clock, in his museum. Yet, in addition to his private practice, and a very long course of lectures which he delivered every winter, he had for many years to perform the laborious duties of surgeon to St. George's Hospital, and deputy surgeoU-general tO' the army — superintending, at this time also, a school of practical anatomy at his own house. Still he found leisure, in the midst of all these avocations, not only for his experiments upon the animal economy, but for the composition of various works of importance, and for taking an active part both in the deliberations of the Royal Society, of which he had been early elected a Fellow, and in other schemes for the promotion and diffusion of natural k^iowledge. He was the originator, in particular, of the Lyceum Medicum Londinense ■■ — a medical society, comprising many eminent individuals, which met »t his lecture rooms, and rose to great reputation. That he might have 36 The Pursuit of Em&wledge. lime for these multiplied otjects of attention, he used to allow himself to sleep only four hours in the night, and an hour after dinner. One plan which he adopted to procure suhjects for his researches in comparative anatomy, was to an-ange with the keeper of the wild beasts in the Tower, and the proprietors of the other menageries in town, to have the bodies of such of their animals as died, for which he used to give them other rare animals to exhibit, on condition of also receiving their remains at their death. His friends and former pupils, too, were wont to send him subjects for his favourite investigations from every part of the world. " In this retreat [at Brompton], he had collected," says Sir Bverard Home, " many kinds of animals and birds ; and it was to him a favourite amusement in his walks to attend to their actions and their habits, and to make them familiar with him. The fiercer animals were those to *hich he was most partial, and he had several of the bull kind from diflferent parts of the world. Among these was a beautiful small bull he had received from the Queen, with which he used to wrestle in play, and entertain himself with its exertions in its own defence. In one of these conflicts the bull overpowered him and got him down ; and had not one of the servants accidentally come by, and frightened the animal away, this frolic would probably have cost him his life." On another occasion, "two leopards," says the same biographer, " that were kept chained in an out-house, had broken from confinement, and got into the yard among some dogs, which they immediately attacked. The howling thus produced alarmed the whole neighbourhood. Mr. Hunter ran into the yard to see what was the matter, and found one of them getting up the wall to make his escape, the other surrounded by the dogs. He immediately laid hold of them both, and carried them back to their den ; but as soon as they were secured, and he had time to reflect upon the risk of his own situation, he was so much affected that he was in danger of fainting." Mr. Hunter died, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, in 1793. After his death, his museum was purchased by Parliament for the sum of fifteen thousand pounds ; and it is now deposited in the hall belonging to the Eoyal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Large addi- tions have since been made to the collection ; but, as left by Hunter, it contained above ten thousand preparations, an-anged so as (in the lan- guage of Sir Everard Home) " to expose to view the gradations of nature, from the most simple state in which life is found to exist, up to the most perfect and most complex of the animal creation — man himself." The extreme beauty of these preparations is striking even to an un- learned eye ; and their scientific value is unrivalled. The whole forms certainly one of the most splendid monuments of labour, skill, and munificence, ever raised by an individual. It is important to remark, tliat, with all his powers, this wonderful Application of Examples. 37 man never entirely overcame the disadvantages entailed upon him by the neglect in which he had been allowed to spend his early years. Ht used to dwell, we are told, on the advantage which is gained in regard to clearness of conception by the committing of one's ideas to writing — comparing the process to the taking of stock by a tradesman, without -which he cannot know with certainty either what he has or what he wants. Yet he himself continued to the end of his life an awkward, though by no means an unpractised, writer. After coming to London, he entered himself of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, probably with the view of being able to maintain at least some pretension to scholarship, but it does not , appear that he carried his assumption of the academical character much further. He attained httle acquaintance with the literature even oi his own profession ; and it not infrequently happened, indeed, we are told, that upon communicating a supposed discovery of his own to some one of his more erudite friends, he had to suffer the disappointment of learning that the same thing had been already found out by some other well-known anatomist. But he felt his literary deficiencies chiefly as a lecturer, the capacity in which his more regularly-educated brother go greatly excelled. It is asserted by Dr. Adams, who has written a life of John Hunter, that he always used to swallow thirty drops of laudanum before going to lecture. If these were heavy penalties, however, which ,he had to pay for what was not so much his fault as that of others, the eminence to which he attained in spite of them is only the more .demonstrative of his extraordinary natural powers, and his determined perseverance. We do not quote these names as those of individuals, the single or