edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, given to the public in 1732. It is a
sad instance of utter perversion of judgment in a man of extraordinary
talent. Fenton first suggested, that the spots in that sun-like
performance might be owing to the misapprehension of the amanuensis, and
the ignorant blunders of a poverty-stricken printer. On this foundation
Bentley, neither himself a poet, nor possessing much taste or feeling
for the higher effusions of even his own favourite authors, the Greek
and Latin poets, undertook to revise the language, remedy the blemishes,
and reject the supposed interpolations of our national epic. He was
peculiarly disqualified for such a task, not only by prosaic temperament
and the chill of advanced years, but by his entire ignorance of the
Italian poets and romance writers, from whose fables and imagery Milton
borrowed his illustrations as freely as from the more familiar stories
and modes of expression of the classical authorities. As usual with him,
his notes were written hastily, and sent immediately to the press. The
public disapprobation was unanimous and just: but even in this
performance many acute pieces of criticism are scattered up and down,
for which the world, disgusted by his audacity and flippancy, allows him
no credit.
We must pass quickly over the ten remaining years of Bentley’s life.
They were embittered by a fresh contest for character and station before
the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. The case between the Bishop of Ely
and Dr. Bentley, respecting the visitatorial jurisdiction over Trinity
College in general, and over the Master in particular, was argued first
in the Court of King’s Bench, and then carried by appeal to the House of
Lords, where it was finally affirmed that the Bishop of Ely was visitor.
In his seventy-second year Bentley underwent a second trial at Ely
House, and was sentenced to be deprived of his mastership; but he eluded
the execution of the sentence, and continued to perform the duties of
the office which he held. At length a compromise was effected between
him and some of his most active prosecutors, many of whom, as well as
himself, were septuagenarians. On his proposed edition of Homer,
distinguished by the restoration of the Digamma, we need not enlarge. It
appears to have been broken off by a paralytic attack, in the course of
1739. In the following year he sustained the severest loss, by the death
of his wife in the fortieth year of their union. His own death took
place July 14, 1742, when he had completed his eightieth year. He was
buried in the chapel; to which he had been a benefactor by giving £200
towards its repairs, soon after he was appointed to the mastership.
Bentley’s literary character is known in all parts of Europe where
learning is known. In his private character he was what Johnson liked, a
good hater: there was much of arrogance, and no little obstinacy in his
composition; but it must be admitted on the other hand, that he had many
high and amiable qualities. Though too prone to encounter hostility by
oppression, he was warm and sincere in friendship, an affectionate
husband, and a good father. In the exercise of hospitality at his lodge
he maintained the dignity of the college, and rivalled the munificence
even of the papal priesthood. His benefactions to the college were also
liberal: but he exacted from it far more than it was willing to pay, or
than any former master had received; and his name would stand fairer if
his generosity had been less distinguished, provided that, at the same
time, his conduct had been less grasping. We shall only add that the
severity of his temper as a critic and controversial writer was
exchanged in conversation for a strain of vivacity and pleasantry
peculiar to himself.
Bentley had three children: a son called by his own name, and two
daughters. The son was bred under his own tuition at Trinity College,
where he obtained a fellowship. His contemporaries acknowledge his
genius, but lament that his pursuits were so desultory and various as to
exclude him from that substantial fame which his talents might have
ensured. Dr. Bentley’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Mr. Humphry
Ridge, a gentleman of good family in Hampshire, but was left a widow in
less than a year, and returned to reside with her father. The youngest,
Joanna, married Mr. Denison Cumberland, grandson to the learned Bishop
of Peterborough. The first issue of this marriage was the late Richard
Cumberland, well known in the republic of letters, and especially as a
dramatic writer. In his memoir of his own life Mr. Cumberland gives some
amusing anecdotes of his grandfather in his old age. His object seems to
have been to paint the domestic character of Bentley in a pleasing
light, and to counteract the prevalent opinion of his stern and
overbearing manners. The old man’s personal kindness towards himself
seems to have produced a deep and well merited feeling of gratitude. His
communications however are of little value, for he neglected his
opportunities of obtaining accurate and more important information from
his mother and other relatives of the great critic.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by F. Mackenzie._
KEPPLER.
_From a Picture in the Collection of
Godefroy Kraenner, Merchant at Ratisbon._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
KEPLER.
The matter contained in this sketch of Kepler’s history, is exclusively
derived from the Life published in the Library of Useful Knowledge. To
that work we refer all readers who wish to make themselves acquainted
with the contents of Kepler’s writings, and with the singular methods by
which he was led to his great discoveries: it will be evident, on
inspection, that it would be useless to attempt farther compression of
the scientific matter therein contained. Our object therefore will be to
select such portions as may best illustrate his singular and
enthusiastic mind, and to give a short account of his not uneventful
life.
John Kepler was born December 21, 1571, Long. 29° 7´, Lat. 48° 54´, as
we are carefully informed by his earliest biographer Hantsch. It is well
to add that on the spot thus astronomically designated as our
astronomer’s birth-place, stands the city of Weil, in the Duchy of
Wirtemberg. Kepler was first sent to school at Elmendingen, where his
father, a soldier of honourable family, but indigent circumstances, kept
a tavern: his education was completed at the monastic school of
Maulbronn, and the college of Tubingen, where he took his Master’s
degree in 1591. About the same time he was offered the astronomical
lectureship at Gratz, in Styria: and he accepted the post by advice, and
almost by compulsion, of his tutors, “better furnished,” he says, “with
talent than knowledge, and with many protestations that I was not
abandoning my claim to be provided for in some other more brilliant
profession.” Though well skilled in mathematics, and devoted to the
study of philosophy, he had felt hitherto no especial vocation to
astronomy, although he had become strongly impressed with the truth of
the Copernican system, and had defended it publicly in the schools of
Tubingen. He was much engrossed by inquiries of a very different
character: and it is fortunate for his fame that circumstances withdrew
him from the mystical pursuits to which through life he was more or less
addicted; from such profitless toil as the “examination of the nature of
heaven, of souls, of genii, of the elements, of the essence of fire, of
the cause of fountains, of the ebb and flow of the tide, the shape of
the continents and inland seas, and things of this sort,” to which, he
says, he had devoted much time. The sort of spirit in which he was
likely to enter on the more occult of these inquiries, and the sort of
agency to which he was likely to ascribe the natural phenomena of which
he speaks, may be estimated from an opinion which he gravely advanced in
mature years and established fame, that the earth is an enormous living
animal, with passions and affections analogous to those of the creatures
which live on its surface. “The earth is not an animal like a dog, ready
at every nod; but more like a bull or an elephant, slow to become angry,
and so much the more furious when incensed.” “If any one who has climbed
the peaks of the highest mountains throw a stone down their very deep
clefts, a sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the
mountain lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will
immediately arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose
of a ticklish animal, it shakes its head, and runs shuddering away. What
so like breathing, especially of those fish who draw water into their
mouths, and spout it out again through their gills, as that wonderful
tide! For although it is so regulated according to the course of the
moon, that in the preface to my ‘Commentaries on Mars’ I have mentioned
it as probable that the waters are attracted by the moon, as iron is by
the loadstone, yet if any one uphold that the earth regulates its
breathing according to the motion of the sun and moon, as animals have
daily and nightly alternations of sleep and waking, I shall not think
his philosophy unworthy of being listened to; especially if any flexible
parts should be discovered in the depths of the earth to supply the
functions of lungs or gills.”
The first fruit of Kepler’s astronomical researches was entitled
‘Prodromus Dissertationis Cosmographicæ,’ the first part of a work to be
called ‘Mysterium Cosmographicum,’ of which, however, the sequel was
never written. The most remarkable part of the book is a fanciful
attempt to show that the orbits of the planets may be represented by
spheres circumscribed and inscribed in the five regular solids. Kepler
lived to be convinced of the total baselessness of this supposed
discovery, in which, however, at the time, he expressed high exultation.
In the same work are contained his first inquiries into the proportion
between the distances of the planets from the sun and their periods of
revolution. He also attempted to account for the motion of the planets,
by supposing a moving influence emitted like light from the sun, which
swept round those bodies, as the sails of a windmill would carry any
thing attached to them: of a genuine central force he had no knowledge,
though he had speculated on the existence of an attractive force in the
centre of motion, and rejected it on account of difficulties which he
could not explain. The ‘Prodromus’ was published in 1596, and the genius
and industry displayed in it gained praise from the best astronomers of
the age.
In the following year Kepler withdrew from Gratz into Hungary,
apprehending danger from the unadvised promulgation of some, apparently
religious, opinions. During this retirement he became acquainted with
the celebrated Tycho Brahe, at that time retained by the Emperor Rodolph
II. as an astrologer and mathematician, and residing at the castle of
Benach, near Prague. Kepler, harassed throughout life by poverty, was
received by his more fortunate fellow-labourer with cordial kindness. No
trace of jealousy is to be found in their intercourse. Tycho placed the
observations which he had made with unremitted industry during many
years in the hands of Kepler, and used his interest with the Emperor to
obtain permission for his brother astronomer to remain at Benach as
assistant observer, retaining his salary and professorship at Gratz.
Before all was settled, however, Kepler finally threw up that office,
and remained, it should seem, entirely dependent on Tycho’s bounty. The
Dane was then employed in constructing a new set of astronomical tables,
to be called the Rudolphine, intended to supersede those calculated on
the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. He was interrupted in this labour
by death, in 1601; and the task of finishing it was intrusted to Kepler,
who succeeded him as principal mathematician to the Emperor. A large
salary was attached to this office, but to extract any portion of it
from a treasury deranged and almost exhausted by a succession of wars,
proved next to impossible. He remained for several years, as he himself
expresses it, begging his bread from the Emperor at Prague, during which
the Rudolphine Tables remained neglected, for want of funds to defray
the expenses of continuing them. He published, however, several smaller
works; a treatise on Optics, entitled a Supplement to Vitellion, in
which he made an unsuccessful attempt to determine the cause and the
laws of refraction; a small work on a new star which appeared in
Cassiopeia in 1604, and shone for a time with great splendour; another
on comets, in which he suggests the possibility of their being planets
moving in straight lines. Meanwhile he was continuing his labours on the
observations of Tycho, and especially on those relating to the planet
Mars: and the result of them appeared in 1609, in his work entitled
‘Astronomia Nova;’ or Commentaries on the motions of Mars. He engaged in
these extensive calculations from dissatisfaction with the existing
theories, by none of which could the observed and calculated motions of
the planets be made to coincide; but without any notion whither the task
was about to lead him, or of rejecting the complicated machinery of
former astronomers—
the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.
His inquiries are remarkable for the patience with which he continued to
devise hypotheses, one after another, and the scrupulous fidelity with
which he rejected them in succession, as they proved irreconcileable
with the unerring test of observation. Not less remarkable is the
singular good fortune by which, while groping in the dark among
erroneous principles and erroneous assumptions, he was led, by careful
observation of Mars, to discover the true form of its orbit, and the
true law of its motion, and the motion of all planets, round the sun.
These are enunciated in two of the three celebrated theorems known by
the name of Kepler’s Laws, beyond comparison the most important
discoveries made in astronomy from the time of Copernicus to that of
Newton, of which the first is, that the planets move in ellipses, in one
of the foci of which the sun is placed the second, that the time of
describing any arc is proportional, in the same orbit, to the area
comprised by the arc itself, and lines drawn from the sun to the
beginning and end of it.
About the year 1613 Kepler quitted Prague, after a residence of eleven
years, to assume a professorship in the University of Linz. The year
preceding his departure saw him involved in great domestic distress.
Want of money, sickness, the occupation of the city by a turbulent army,
the death of his wife and of the son whom he best loved, these, he says
to a correspondent, “were reasons enough why I should have overlooked
not only your letter, but even astronomy itself.” His first marriage,
contracted early in life, had not been a happy one: but he resolved on a
second venture, and no less than eleven ladies were successively the
objects of his thoughts. After rejecting, or being rejected, by the
whole number, he at last settled on her who stood fifth in the list; a
woman of humble station, but, according to his own account, possessed of
qualities likely to wear well in a poor man’s house. He employed the
judgment and the mediation of his friends largely in this delicate
matter: and in a letter to the Baron Strahlendorf, he has given a full
and amusing account of the process of his courtships, and the
qualifications of the ladies among whom his judgment wavered. He
proposed to one lady whom he had not seen for six years, and was
rejected: on paying her a visit soon after, he found, to his great
relief, that she had not a single pleasing point about her. Another was
too proud of her birth; another too old; another married a more ardent
lover, while Kepler was speculating whether he would take her or not;
and a fifth punished the indecision which he had shown towards others by
alternations of consent and denial, until after a three months’
courtship, the longest in the list, he gave her up in despair.
Kepler did not long hold his professorship at Linz. Some religious
opinions relative to the doctrine of transubstantiation gave offence to
the Roman Catholic party, and he was excommunicated. In 1617 he received
an invitation to fill the chair of mathematics at Bologna: this however
he declined, pleading his German origin and predilections, and his
German habits of freedom in speech and manners, which he thought likely
to expose him to persecution or reproach in Italy. In 1618 he published
his Epitome of the Copernican system, a summary of his philosophical
opinions, drawn up in the form of question and answer. In 1619 appeared
his celebrated work ‘Harmonice Mundi,’ dedicated to King James I. of
England; a book strongly illustrative of the peculiarities of Kepler’s
mind, combining the accuracy of geometric science with the wildest
metaphysical doctrines, and visionary theories of celestial influences.
The two first books are almost strictly geometrical; the third treats of
music; for the fourth and fifth, we take refuge from explaining their
subjects in transcribing the author’s exposition of their contents. “The
fourth, metaphysical, psychological, and astrological, on the mental
essence of harmonies, and of their kinds in the world, especially on the
harmony of rays emanating on the earth from the heavenly bodies, and on
their effect in nature, and on the sublunary and human soul; the fifth,
astronomical and metaphysical, on the very exquisite harmonies of the
celestial motions, and the origin of the eccentricities in harmonious
proportions.” This work, however, is remarkable for containing amid the
varied extravagances of its two last books, the third of Kepler’s Laws,
namely, that the squares of the periods of the planets’ revolution vary
as the cubes of their distances from the sun; a discovery in which he
exulted with no measured joy. “It is now eighteen months since I got the
first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn, very few days since
the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze upon, burst out upon me.
Nothing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over
mankind by the honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of
the Egyptians, to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the
confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can
bear it: the die is cast, the book is written; to be read either now or
by posterity, I care not which: it may well wait a century for a reader,
as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.”
The substance of Kepler’s astrological opinions is contained in this
work. It is remarkable that one whose candour and good faith are so
conspicuous, one so intent on correcting his various theories by
observation and experience, should have given in to this now generally
rejected system of imposture and credulity; nay should profess to have
been forced to adopt it from direct and positive observations. “A most
unfailing experience (as far as can be hoped in natural phenomena), of
the excitement of sublunary nature by the conjunctions and aspects of
the planets, has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief.” At the
same time he professed through life a supreme contempt for the common
herd of nativity casters, and claimed to be the creator of a “new and
most true philosophy, a tender plant which, like all other novelties,
ought to be carefully nursed and cherished.” His plant was rooted in the
sand, and it has perished; nor is it important to explain the fine-spun
differences by which his own astrological belief was separated from
another not more baseless. Poor through life, he relieved his ever
recurring wants by astrological calculations: and he enjoyed
considerable reputation in this line, and received ample remuneration
for his predictions. It was principally as astrologers that both Tycho
Brahe and Kepler were valued by the Emperor Rudolph: and it was in the
same capacity that the latter was afterwards entertained by Wallenstein.
One circumstance may suggest a doubt whether his predictions were always
scrupulously honest. From the year 1617 to 1620, he published an annual
Ephemeris, concerning which he writes thus: “In order to pay the expense
of the Ephemeris for these two years, I have also written a _vile
prophesying almanac_, which is hardly more respectable than begging;
unless it be because it saves the Emperor’s credit, who abandons me
entirely, and, with all his frequent and recent orders in council, would
suffer me to perish with hunger.” Poverty is a hard task-master; yet
Kepler should not have condescended to become the Francis Moore of his
day.
In 1620, Kepler was strongly urged by Sir Henry Wotton, then ambassador
to Venice, to take refuge in England from the difficulties which beset
him. This invitation was not open to the objections which had deterred
him from accepting an appointment in Italy: but love of his native land
prevailed to make him decline it also. He continued to weary the
Imperial Government with solicitations for money to defray the expense
of the Rudolphine Tables, which were not printed until 1627. These were
the first calculated on the supposition of elliptic orbits, and contain,
besides tables of the sun and planets, logarithmic and other tables to
facilitate calculation, the places of one thousand stars as determined
by Tycho, and a table of refractions. Similar tables of the planetary
motions had been constructed by Ptolemy, and reproduced with alterations
in the thirteenth century under the direction of Alphonso, King of
Castile. Others, called the Prussian Tables, had been calculated after
the discoveries of Copernicus, by two of that great astronomer’s pupils.
All these, however, were superseded in consequence of the observations
of Tycho Brahe, observations far more accurate than had ever before been
made: and for the publication of the Rudolphine Tables alone, which for
a long time continued unsurpassed in exactness, the name of Kepler would
deserve honourable remembrance.
Kepler was the first of the Germans to appreciate and use Napier’s
invention of logarithms: and he himself calculated and published a
series, under the title ‘Chilias Logarithmorum,’ in 1624. Not long after
the Rudolphine Tables were printed, he received permission from the
Emperor Ferdinand to attach himself to the celebrated Wallenstein, a
firm believer in the science of divination by the stars. In him Kepler
found a more munificent patron than he had yet enjoyed; and by his
influence he was appointed to a professorship at the University of
Rostock, in the Duchy of Mecklenburgh. But the niggardliness of the
Imperial Court, which kept him starving through life, was in some sense
the cause of his death. He had claims on it to the amount of eight
thousand crowns, which he took a journey to Ratisbon to enforce, but
without success. Fatigue or disappointment brought on a fever which put
an end to his life in November, 1630, in his 59th year. A plain stone,
with a simple inscription, marked his grave in St. Peter’s church-yard,
in that city. Within seventy paces of it, a marble monument has been
erected to him in the Botanic Garden, by a late Bishop of Constance. He
left a wife and numerous family ill provided for. His voluminous
manuscripts are now deposited in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg.
Only one volume of letters, in folio, has been published from them; and
out of these the chief materials for his biography have been extracted.
[Illustration]
SIR MATTHEW HALE.
Matthew Hale was born on the 1st of November, 1609, at Alderley, a small
village situated in Gloucestershire, about two miles from
Wotton-under-Edge. His father, Robert Hale, was a barrister of Lincoln’s
Inn, and his mother, whose maiden name was Poyntz, belonged to an
ancient and respectable family which had resided for several generations
at Iron Acton. Hale’s father is represented to have been a man of such
scrupulous delicacy of conscience, that he abandoned his profession,
because he thought that some things, of ordinary practice in the law,
were inconsistent with that literal and precise observance of truth
which he conceived to be the duty of a Christian. “He gave over his
practice,” says Burnet, in his Life of Hale, “because he could not
understand the reason of giving colour in pleadings, which, as he
thought, was to tell a lie.”
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. W. Cook._
HALE.
_From an original Picture in the Library
of Lincolns Inn._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]