Those who are unaccustomed to the labours of the closet are unacquainted
with the secret and silent triumphs obtained in the pursuits of studious
men. That aptitude, which in poetry is sometimes called _inspiration_,
in knowledge we may call _sagacity_; and it is probable that the
vehemence of the one does not excite more pleasure than the still
tranquillity of the other: they are both, according to the strict
signification of the Latin term from whence we have borrowed ours of
_invention_, a finding out, the result of a combination which no other
has formed but ourselves.
I will produce several remarkable instances of the felicity of this
aptitude of the learned in making discoveries which could only have been
effectuated by an uninterrupted intercourse with the objects of their
studies, making things remote and dispersed familiar and present.[263]
One of ancient date is better known to the reader than those I am
preparing for him. When the magistrates of Syracuse were showing to
Cicero the curiosities of the place, he desired to visit the tomb of
Archimedes; but, to his surprise, they acknowledged that they knew
nothing of any such tomb, and denied that it ever existed. The learned
Cicero, convinced by the authorities of ancient writers, by the verses
of the inscription which he remembered, and the circumstance of a sphere
with a cylinder being engraven on it, requested them to assist him in
the search. They conducted the illustrious but obstinate stranger to
their most ancient burying-ground: amidst the number of sepulchres, they
observed a small column overhung with brambles--Cicero, looking on while
they were clearing away the rubbish, suddenly exclaimed, "Here is the
thing we are looking for!" His eye had caught the geometrical figures on
the tomb, and the inscription soon confirmed his conjecture. Cicero long
after exulted in the triumph of this discovery. "Thus!" he says, "one of
the noblest cities of Greece, and once the most learned, had known
nothing of the monument of its most deserving and ingenious citizen, had
it not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum!"
The great French antiquary, Peiresc, exhibited a singular combination of
learning, patient thought, and luminous sagacity, which could restore an
"airy nothing" to "a local habitation and a name." There was found on an
amethyst, and the same afterwards occurred on the front of an ancient
temple, a number of _marks_, or indents, which had long perplexed
inquirers, more particularly as similar marks or indents were frequently
observed in ancient monuments. It was agreed on, as no one could
understand them, and all would be satisfied, that they were secret
hieroglyphics. It occurred to Peiresc that these marks were nothing more
than holes for small nails, which had formerly fastened little
_laminae_, which represented so many Greek letters. This hint of his own
suggested to him to draw lines from one hole to another; and he beheld
the amethyst reveal the name of the sculptor, and the frieze of the
temple the name of the god! This curious discovery has been since
frequently applied; but it appears to have originated with this great
antiquary, who by his learning and sagacity explained a supposed
hieroglyphic, which had been locked up in the silence of seventeen
centuries.[264]
Learned men, confined to their study, have often rectified the errors of
travellers; they have done more, they have found out paths for them to
explore, or opened seas for them to navigate. The situation of the vale
of Tempe had been mistaken by modern travellers; and it is singular,
observes the Quarterly Reviewer, yet not so singular as it appears to
that elegant critic, that the only good directions for finding it had
been given by a person who was never in Greece. Arthur Browne, a man of
letters of Trinity College, Dublin--it is gratifying to quote an Irish
philosopher and man of letters, from the extreme rarity of the
character--was the first to detect the inconsistencies of Pococke and
Busching, and to send future travellers to look for Tempe in its real
situation, the defiles between Ossa and Olympus; a discovery
subsequently realised. When Dr. Clarke discovered an inscription
purporting that the pass of Tempe had been fortified by Cassius
Longinus, Mr. Walpole, with equal felicity, detected, in Caesar's
"History of the Civil War," the name and the mission of this very
person.
A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply indebted, does not
read Herodotus in the original; yet, by the exercise of his
extraordinary aptitude, it is well known that he has often corrected the
Greek historian, explained obscurities in a text which he never read, by
his own happy conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the
subsequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded.
Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India and of Persia, at
a time when our country had no immediate interests with those ancient
empires, would have been placed by a cynical observer among the curious
idleness of a mere man of letters. These studies were indeed
prosecuted, as Mr. Mathias observes, "on the disinterested principles of
liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regulation of
trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of permanent establishments,
but simply and solely on the grand view of what is, and of what is past.
They were the researches of a solitary scholar in academical
retirement." Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been
carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel and Dr. Vincent,
who have opened to the classical and the political reader all he wished
to learn, at a time when India and Persia had become objects interesting
and important to us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their
author was no more, became valuable!
The studies of the "solitary scholar" are always useful to the world,
although they may not always be timed to its present wants; with him,
indeed, they are not merely designed for this purpose. Gray discovered
India for himself; but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped
to a particular end, will never fail being useful to the world; though
it may happen that a century may elapse between the periods of the
discovery and its practical utility.
Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical subject offers an
instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am alluding to; it may also
serve as a demonstration of the peculiar and supereminent advantages
possessed by mathematicians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed
relations, which form the objects of their science, and the
correspondent precision in their language and reasoning:--as matter of
literary history it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard accidentally
discovered in the Bodleian Library an Arabic version of Apollonius _de
Sectione Rationis_, which he determined to translate in Latin, but only
finished about a tenth part. Halley, extremely interested by the
subject, but with an entire ignorance of the Arabic language, resolved
to complete the imperfect version! Assisted only by the manuscript which
Bernard had left, it served him as a key for investigating the sense of
the original; he first made _a list of those words_ wherever they
occurred, with the _train of reasoning_ in which they were involved, to
decipher, by these very slow degrees, the import of the context; till at
last Halley succeeded in mastering the whole work, and in bringing the
translation, without the aid of any one, to the form in which he gave
it to the public; so that we have here a difficult work translated from
the Arabic, by one who was in no manner conversant with the language,
merely by the exertion of his sagacity!
I give the memorable account, as Boyle has delivered it, of the
circumstances which led Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of
the blood.
"I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only discourse I
had with him, which was but a little while before he died, what were the
things which induced him to think of a circulation of the blood, he
answered me, that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so
many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free passage to the
blood towards the heart, but opposed the passage of the venal blood the
contrary way, he was invited to think that so provident a cause as
nature had not placed so many valves without design; and no design
seemed more probable than that, since the blood could not well, because
of the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it should
be sent through the arteries and return through the veins, whose valves
did not oppose its course that way."
The reason here ascribed to Harvey seems now so very natural and
obvious, that some have been disposed to question his claim to the high
rank commonly assigned to him among the improvers of science! Dr.
William Hunter has said that after the discovery of the valves in the
veins, which Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab
Aquapendente, the remaining step might easily have been made by any
person of common abilities. "This discovery," he observes, "set Harvey
to work upon the _use_ of the heart and vascular system in animals; and
in the _course of some years_, he was so happy as to discover, and to
prove beyond all possibility of doubt, the circulation of the blood." He
afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery should have
been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges it occupied "a course of
years;" adding that "Providence meant to reserve it for _him_, and would
not let men _see what was before them, nor understand what they read_."
It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their
simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these
occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!
It is said that a recent discovery, which ascertains that the Niger
empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, was really anticipated by the
geographical acumen of a student at Glasgow, who arrived at the same
conclusion by a most persevering investigation of the works of
travellers and geographers, ancient and modern, and by an examination of
African captives; and had actually constructed, for the inspection of
government, a map of Africa, on which he had traced the entire course of
the Niger from the interior.
Franklin _conjectured_ the identity of lightning and of electricity,
before he had _realised_ it by decisive experiment. The kite being
raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of
its being electrified. One very promising cloud had passed over it
without any effect. Just as he was beginning to despair of his
contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to
stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been
suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance,
he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let the reader
judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that moment when
_the discovery was complete_! We owe to Priestley this admirable
narrative; the strong sensation of delight which Franklin experienced as
his knuckle touched the key, and at the moment when he felt that a new
world was opening, might have been equalled, but it was probably not
surpassed, when the same hand signed the long-disputed independence of
his country!
When Leibnitz was occupied in his philosophical reasonings on his _Law
of Continuity_, his singular sagacity enabled him to predict a discovery
which afterwards was realised--he _imagined_ the necessary existence of
the polypus!
It has been remarked of Newton, that several of his slight hints, some
in the modest form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions,
and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many
have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the
close of his Optics, that "If natural philosophy should be continued to
be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy
would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most important of human
discoveries--it gave rise to Hartley's _Physiological Theory of the
Mind_. The queries, the hints, the conjectures of Newton, display the
most creative sagacity; and demonstrate in what manner the discoveries
of retired men, while they bequeath their legacies to the world, afford
to themselves a frequent source of secret and silent triumphs.