anatomy. He won his way by very intelligible modes. His upright conduct
and high mental cultivation gained him friends; and his professional
merits were established by his lectures, which in extent and depth, as
well as eloquence, surpassed any that had yet been delivered. There was
a peculiar ingenuity in his demonstrations, and he had a happy manner
exactly suited to his subject. The vulgar portion of the public saw no
marks of genius in the successful exertions of Dr. Hunter; his eminence
was easily accounted for, and excited no wonder. They saw John Hunter’s
success, without fully comprehending the cause; and it fell in with
their notions of great genius that he was somewhat abrupt and uncourtly.
Dr. Hunter immediately set his brother to work upon the dissection of
the arm. The young man succeeded in producing an admirable preparation,
in which the mechanism of the limb was finely displayed. This at once
showed his capacity, and settled the relation between the two brothers.
John Hunter became the best practical anatomist of the age, and proved
of the greatest use in forming Dr. Hunter’s splendid museum, bequeathed
by the owner to the University of Glasgow. He continued to attend his
brother’s lectures; was a pupil both at St. Bartholomew’s, and St.
George’s Hospitals; and had the farther advantage of attending the
celebrated Cheselden, then retired to Chelsea Hospital. And here we must
point out the advantage which John Hunter possessed in the situation and
character of his elder brother, lest his success should encourage a
laxity in the studies of those who think they are following his
footsteps. It would indeed have been surprising that his efforts for the
advancement of physiology commenced at the precise point where Haller’s
stopped, if he had really been ignorant of the state of science at home
and abroad. But he could not have been so, unless he had shut his eyes
and stopped his ears. In addition to his anatomical collection Dr.
Hunter had formed an extensive library, and possessed the finest cabinet
of coins in Europe. Students crowded around him from all countries, and
every one distinguished in science desired his acquaintance. John Hunter
lived in this society, and at the same time had the advantage of being
familiar with the complete and systematic course of lectures delivered
by his brother. He was thus furnished with full information as to the
actual state of physiology and pathology, and knew in what directions to
push inquiry, whilst the natural capacity of his fine mind was
untrammelled.
In 1755 John Hunter assisted his brother in delivering a course of
lectures; but through life the task of public instruction was a painful
one to him, and he never attained to fluency and clearness of
expression. In 1760 his health seems to have been impaired by his
exertions: and in the recollection that one brother had already died
under similar circumstances, his friends procured him a situation in the
army, as being less intensely laborious than his mode of life. He served
as a staff surgeon in Portugal and at the siege of Bellisle. On
returning to London he recommenced the teaching of practical anatomy.
In 1767 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, having already
gained the good opinion of its members by several papers on most
interesting subjects. There is this great advantage in the pursuit of
science in London, that a man remarkable for success in any branch can
usually select associates the best able to assist him by their
experience and advice. It was through John Hunter’s influence that a
select club was formed out of the fellows of the Royal Society. They met
in retirement and read and criticised each others papers before
submitting them to the general body. This club originally consisted of
Mr. Hunter, Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr. Maskelyne,
Sir George Shuckburgh, Sir Henry Englefield, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr.
Ramsden, and Mr. Watt. To be the associate of such men could not but
have a good effect on a mind like Hunter’s, active and vigorous, but
deficient in general acquirement, and concentrated upon one pursuit.
At this time, and for many years afterwards, he was employed in the most
curious physiological inquiries; and at the same time forming that
museum, which remains the most surprising proof both of his genius and
perseverance. It is strange that Sir Everard Home should have considered
this collection as a proof of the patronage Hunter received. He had many
admirers, and many persons were grateful for his professional
assistance; but he had no patrons. The extent of his museum is to be
attributed solely to his perseverance; a quality which is generally the
companion of genius, and which he displayed in every condition of life.
Whether under the tuition of his brother, or struggling for independence
by privately teaching anatomy, or amidst the enticements to idleness in
a mess-room, or as an army surgeon in active service, he never seems to
have forgotten that science which was the chief end of his life. Hence
the amazing collection which he formed of anatomical preparations; hence
too the no less extraordinary accumulation of important pathological
facts, on which his principles were raised.
It was only towards the close of life that Hunter’s character was duly
appreciated. His professional emoluments were small, until a very few
years before his death, when they amounted to £6000 a year. When this
neglect is the portion of a man of distinguished merit, it has sometimes
an unhappy influence on his profession. Men look for prosperity and
splendour as the accompaniments of such merit; and missing it, they turn
aside from the worthiest models, to follow those who are gaining riches
in the common routine of practice. Dr. Darwin said, that he rejoiced in
Hunter’s late success as the concluding act of a life well spent: as
poetical justice. But throughout life he spent all his gains in the
pursuit of science, and died poor.
His museum was purchased by government for £15,000. It was offered to
the keeping of the College of Physicians, which declined the trust. It
is now, committed to the College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields;
where it is open to the inspection of the public during the afternoons
of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The corporation has enlarged the
museum, instituted professorships for the illustration of it, and is now
forming a library. The most valuable part of the collection is that in
the area of the great room, consisting of upwards of 2000 preparations,
which were the results of Mr. Hunter’s experiments on the inferior
animals, and of his researches in morbid human anatomy. All these were
originally arranged as illustrative of his lectures. The first division
alone, in support of his theory of inflammation, contains 602
preparations. Those illustrative of specific diseases amount to 1084.
There are besides 652 dried specimens, consisting of diseased bones,
joints, and arteries. On the floor there is a very fine collection of
the skeletons of man and other animals; and if the Council of the
College continue to augment this collection with the same liberal spirit
which they have hitherto shown, it will be creditable to the nation. The
osteological specimens amount to 1936. But the most interesting portion,
we might say one of the most interesting exhibitions in Europe to a
philosophical and inquiring mind, is that which extends along the whole
gallery. Mr. Hunter found it impossible to explain the functions of life
by the investigation of human anatomy, unaided by comparison with the
simpler organization of brutes; and therefore he undertook the amazing
labour of examining and preparing the simplest animals, gradually
advancing from the lower to the higher, until, by this process of
synthesis, the structure of the human body was demonstrated and
explained. Let us take one small compartment in order to understand the
effect of this method. Suppose it is wished to learn the importance of
the stomach in the animal economy. The first object presented to us is a
hydatid, an animal, as it were, all stomach; being a simple sac with an
exterior absorbing surface. Then we have the polypus, with a stomach
opening by one orifice, and with no superadded organ. Next in order is
the leech, in which we see the beginning of a complexity of structure.
It possesses the power of locomotion, and has brain, and nerves, and
muscles, but as yet the stomach is simple. Then we advance to creatures
in which the stomach is complex: we find the simple membraneous
digesting stomach; then the stomach with a crop attached to macerate and
prepare the food for digestion; then a ruminating stomach with a
succession of cavities, and with the gizzard in some animals for
grinding the food, and performing the office of teeth; and finally, all
the appended organs necessary in the various classes of animals; until
we find that all the chylopoietic viscera group round this, as
performing the primary and essential office of assimilating new matter
to the animal body.
Mr. Hunter’s papers and greater works exhibit an extraordinary mind: he
startles the reader by conclusions, the process by which they were
reached being scarcely discernible. We attribute this in part to that
defective education, which made him fail in explaining his own thoughts,
and the course of reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusions.
The depth of his reflective powers may be estimated by the perusal of
his papers on the apparently drowned, and on the stomach digested after
death by its own fluids. The importance of discovering the possibility
of such an occurrence as the last is manifest, when we consider its
connexion with medical jurisprudence, and the probability of its giving
rise to unfounded suspicions of poisoning. His most important papers
were those on the muscularity of arteries; a fine piece of experimental
reasoning, the neglect of which by our continental neighbours threw them
back an age in the treatment of wounded arteries and aneurisms. But the
grand discovery of Mr. Hunter was that of the life of the blood. If this
idea surprise our readers, it did no less surprise the whole of the
medical profession when it was first promulgated. Yet there is no doubt
of the fact. It was demonstrated by the closest inspection of natural
phenomena, and a happy suite of experiments, that the coagulation of the
blood is an act of life. From this one fact, the pathologist was enabled
to comprehend a great variety of phenomena, which, without it, must ever
have remained obscure.
Mr. Hunter died of that alarming disease, _angina pectoris_: alarming,
because it comes in paroxysms, accompanied with all the feelings of
approaching death. These sensations are brought on by exertion or
excitement. In St. George’s Hospital, the conduct of his colleagues had
provoked him; he made no observations, but retiring into another room,
suddenly expired, October 16, 1793.
After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high
genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a
family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until
he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal
in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received
early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr.
Baillie, nephew to these brothers, contributed largely to the
improvement of pathology, and afforded an instance of the most active
benevolence joined to a plainness of manner most becoming in a
physician. Joanna Baillie, his sister, still lives, honoured and
esteemed, and will survive in her works as one of our most remarkable
female writers.
The portrait from which the annexed engraving is made was painted at the
suggestion of the celebrated engraver Sharpe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
and was among his last works. There could not indeed be a more
picturesque head, nor one better suited to the burin. The original
picture is in the College of Surgeons. It exhibits more mildness than we
see in the engraving of Sharpe.
[Illustration: Surgeons’ Hall in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._
PETRARCH.
_From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen,
after a Picture by Tofanelli._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
PETRARCH.
Francesco Petrarca, whose real name is said to have been Petracco, was
born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, July 20, 1304. His father was a notary at
Florence, who had been employed in the service of the state; but in the
civil strife excited by Corso Donati, chief of the faction of the Neri,
he, with the rest of the Bianchi, including Dante, whose friend he is
recorded to have been, was banished from the Republic in 1302. When the
death of the Emperor Henry VII. deprived the exiles of all hope of
return, Petracco took his family to Avignon, at that period the seat of
the Pontifical Court. The boy Francesco then saw for the first time
scenes and objects, with which his destiny was irrevocably connected;
and he has left on record the impression which at ten years of age the
fountain and wild solitude of Vaucluse had made upon his imagination. He
was sent to study the canon law at the University of Montpellier, where
he remained four years, devoting his time to Cicero, Virgil, and the
Provençal writers, much more than to the doctors of jurisprudence. From
Montpellier he went to Bologna; and formed an acquaintance with the
celebrated Cino da Pistoia, from whom, although distinguished no less as
a jurist than as a poet, Petrarch learned more poetry than law. On his
father’s death, which occurred when he was about twenty years old, he
returned to Avignon. His mother died soon after; and the moderate
patrimony which he inherited was so much diminished by the dishonesty of
his guardians, that at the age of twenty-two, he found himself without
fortune or profession, and with no resource, but that of entering the
church.
Avignon was then the chosen abode of fashion, luxury, and vice. Petrarch
mingled in its gay society, without yielding to its corruptions, or
withdrawing himself from the philosophical studies which interested him
above all other pursuits. A great conformity of tastes, and a common
superiority to the low objects of ambition with which they were
surrounded, made him the friend of Jacopo Colonna, afterwards Bishop of
Lombez. This prelate introduced Petrarch to his brother, the Cardinal
Colonna, who resided at Avignon; and in whose palace, in 1331, the poet
acquired the friendship of old Stefano Colonna, the illustrious head of
that family, and drew from his discourse a stronger love of Italy, of
freedom, and of glory. But his affectionate, enthusiastic temper was not
to be exhausted even by these objects: soon, without ever being entirely
diverted from the interest of friendship or patriotism, he became the
vassal of that long and illustrious passion to which he owes the
immortality of his name. April 6, 1327, on Easter Monday, in the church
of the Nuns of Santa Clara, Petrarch, being then twenty-three years of
age, saw for the first time, and loved at sight, Laura de Noves, the
bride of Hugo de Sade, a young patrician of Avignon. From this time his
life was passed in wandering from place to place, sometimes at the
several courts of Italian princes; sometimes in solitary seclusion at
Vaucluse; often at Avignon itself, where from the lofty rock on which
stands the old Pontifical Palace, he could see Laura walking in the
gardens below, which with all the adjacent part of the town belonged to
the family of de Sade.
Few subjects have been discussed more largely, with greater minuteness
of examination, or with greater licence of conjecture, than the history
of the love of Petrarch. Some have chosen to treat with ridicule the
idea of a passion, subsisting through a long and eventful life, without
gratification, and nearly without hope; others have thought the
difficulty obviated by supposing, in defiance of all apparent evidence,
that Laura was not so insensible as the laws of morality required. A few
have wished to rescue the character of the poet from the imputation of
having loved a married woman, and have dragged certain obscure spinsters
out of doubtful epitaphs and registers, to dispute the claim of Laura de
Sade. A few more, and but a few, although the race is not extinct, have
denied the existence of Laura altogether; either considering her as a
mere poetical fancy, or still more boldly resolving her into some
allegory, political or religious. But none of these theories, maintained
at various times, and with various degrees of ingenuity, almost from the
age of Petrarch until the present day, have shaken the received opinion
on the four main points of the question; namely, that Laura was no
creation of the poet’s brain, but a woman; that she was married; that
Hugo de Sade was her husband; and that her virtue was proof against the
passion of Petrarch. When all the circumstances of the case, including
the peculiarities of sentiment which characterize the time, are fairly
taken into consideration, there will appear no such miraculous
improbability as has been presumed in the duration of Petrarch’s
attachment. That it partook of the vehement character of true passion,
is evident from many passages in his epistles and philosophical works,
where he may be supposed to speak with less disguise than in his
Canzoniere; but a natural vanity, the habit of refining his feelings
into intellectual notions, and the then prevalent fashion of poetical
constancy to a real object, may have contributed more than he could
himself be aware to the durability of the sentiment. It is not to be
forgotten, however, that at different periods of his life he had two
natural children, a son and a daughter: still he maintained that
notwithstanding these irregularities, he never loved any one but Laura.
The Sonnets and Canzones, which, separately published, now together form
the Canzoniere, soon elevated their author to the highest rank among
living poets, and gave him in the eyes of his admirers a place beside
the “creator della lingua,” the author of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch,
however, whose mind was full of veneration for antiquity, and who was
ardently desirous to recover all the monuments of classic literature
that still preserved a hazardous existence in convents and other
receptacles of the little learning of an ignorant age, for a long time,
if not to the end of life, prided himself more on his Latin
compositions, than on being the founder of a school of poetry in his
native language. At one time he had commenced a Latin history of Rome,
from the foundation of the city to the reign of Titus. But he was
diverted from this work, by conceiving the idea of an epic poem,
entitled ‘Africa,’ founded on the events which marked the close of the
second Punic war, of which Scipio was the hero. For a year he laboured
on it with enthusiasm; and it was received with admiration: but like
most works of imagination composed in languages not rendered familiar to
the writer in all their delicacy by vernacular and hourly use, and on
subjects not consecrated by any feelings of national and domestic
interest, they have long since been forgotten by all but the learned.
On one and the same day, August 23, 1340, he received at Vaucluse a
letter from the Roman Senate, inviting him to accept the honour of a
public coronation in the Capitol, and one from the Chancellor of the
University of Paris, offering the same distinction. It has been said,
and there is at least negative evidence in favour of the assertion, that
this last invitation was unauthorized by any corporate decision of the
university: if so, it probably resulted from the personal enthusiasm of
the chancellor, Roberto Bardi, who was a Florentine, and a private
friend of the poet. Either from a knowledge of this, or from a natural
preference of the Imperial City, Petrarch decided at once in favour of
Rome; and embarked for Naples, to demand a preliminary examination from
Robert of Anjou, the reigning prince, himself devotedly attached to
literature. The King and the Poet conferred on poetical and historical
subjects: during three days questions were formally proposed, and
triumphantly answered; after which Robert pronounced solemnly that
Petrarch was worthy of the honour offered to him, and taking off his own
royal robe, entreated the poet to wear it at the ceremony of his
coronation. On Easter-day, April 8, 1341, Petrarch ascended the stairs
of the Capitol, surrounded by the most illustrious citizens of Rome, and
preceded by twelve young men chosen from the highest families, who
repeated at intervals various passages of his poetry. After a short
oration, he received the crown from the hands of the senator, Orso,
Count of Anguillara, and recited a sonnet on those heroes of the ancient
city, whose triumphal honours, after a cessation of centuries, he first
was come to share, and to renew. Then, amidst the acclamations of the
multitude, he was conducted to the church of St. Peter’s, where, taking
from his head the laurel, he deposited it with religious care on the
altar. After this ceremony he returned by land to Avignon, carrying with
him letters patent of the King of Naples and of the senate and people of
Rome, conferring on him by their joint authorities the full and free
power of reading, discussing, and explaining all ancient books,
composing new works (especially poems), and wearing on all occasions, as
he might prefer, a crown of laurel, of ivy, or of myrtle. Shortly
afterwards he was again at Naples, under very different circumstances.
Appointed by Clement VI. to urge the claims of the Holy See to the
Regency of that state, during the minority of Joanna, the grand-daughter
of Robert of Anjou, he was treated with no less distinction and kindness
than on the former visit; but, unsuccessful in his mission, and
scandalized by the debauchery and cruelty which prevailed in the
dissolute court, he soon quitted Naples and Italy for his beloved
Vaucluse. There, however, at no great distance of time, a new excitement
awaited him. In 1347, Rienzi, the famous demagogue, who began his career
so nobly, and closed it with such circumstances of disgrace, obtained
his brief and singular dominion. All the hopes of Italian independence,
all the reverence for antiquity which had ever animated the spirit of
Petrarch, now strongly impelled him to admire the restorer of those
ancient names, which he trusted would realize his visions of ancient
freedom and majesty. Even the massacre of the Colonna family, which
Petrarch heard at Genoa as he was hastening to join the tribune at Rome,
did not destroy these feelings, although it materially weakened them.
But the fabric of Rienzi’s power was sapped by his own extravagances in
less than a year; and nearly at the same time a more severe affliction
fell upon Petrarch even than the disappointment of his hopes for the
restoration of Italian liberty.