(See p. 303)
Many particulars regarding John Gough may be found in Cornelius
Nicholson's _Annals of Kendal_, pp. 355-368 (Whitaker and Coy., 1861).
He was born in 1757 and died in 1825. "Before the completion of his
third year, he was attacked with small-pox, which deprived him of his
sight. The whole globe of the left eye was destroyed: the damage done
to the other was not so extensive: for, though the greater part of the
cornea was rendered opaque, there was a minute pellucid speck to the
right of the pupil, which permitted a ray of light to fall upon the verge
of the retina, and thus he was enabled to distinguish between day and
night: but he had no perception of the form or colour of objects around
him; so that, for all useful purposes, vision was completely lost." But
his marvellous sense of touch, as described by Wordsworth, was in no
degree exaggerated. In his eighth summer, he began the study of botany;
and pursued it systematically in his thirteenth year. "His method of
examining plants must be briefly told. Systems of classification were but
little valued, except so far as they aided him in recognising individual
form. The plant to be examined was held by the root or base in one hand,
while the fingers of the other travelled slowly upwards, over the stem,
branches, and leaves, till they reached the flower. If the species had
been already met with, this procedure was sufficient for its recognition;
if it proved to be a novelty, its class was first determined by the
insertion of the tip of his tongue within the flower: thus he discovered
the number and arrangement of the stamens and pistils. When the flower
was small he requested his reader to ascertain these points with a lens.
The class and order being determined, the genus was next worked out, word
by word of the description, so far at least as the state of the specimen
would allow. But his perceptive power over form was most conspicuous in
the analysis of species. It was truly wonderful to witness the rapidity
with which his fingers ran among the leaves, taking cognizance of their
divisions, shape, serratures, and of the presence or absence of hairs.
The finest down was detected, by a stem or leaf being drawn gently
across the border of his lower lip; so fine, indeed, that a young eye
often required a lens to verify the truth of the perception. Another
peculiarity is worthy of notice. Repeated perusal of descriptions had
enabled him to prefigure in his mind's eye, the form without the presence
of specimens; so that, when a species for the first time came within
his touch, he at once named it from memory.... It was, probably, on one
of these occasions, that Mr. Wordsworth, while describing the little
cushion-like plant, with white roots and purple flowers, growing near
Grisedale Tarn, caught the first glimpse of that conception which was
afterwards expanded into the beautiful picture given of Mr. Gough in _The
Excursion_."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Essay on _The Soul and its Organs of
Sense_, refers to him as "not only an excellent mathematician, but an
infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently, at first feel,
corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsmen, with regard
to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a
variety or rare species, so completely resembling the common one, that it
required great steadiness of observation to detect the difference, even
after it had been pointed out." "Good heavens!" added Coleridge, "why his
face sees all over!"
Gough died in the 69th year of his age; and he was buried, not (as
Wordsworth puts it in _The Excursion_) at Grasmere, but in the churchyard
of Kendal. What is more remarkable is that he lived for ten years after
_The Excursion_ was printed; and Wordsworth must have written the passage
in the Seventh Book referring to Gough in anticipation of his death,
probably 13 years before he died.
Mr. John Watson of Kendal tells me that he has had put into his hands a
MS. autobiography of Gough. Mr. Watson has himself written an interesting
sketch of the blind botanist.
See the passage in _The Excursion_, book vii. l. 492, etc., referring to
Gough.--ED.