1820. In this year died Dr. Isaac Milner,[575] President of Queens'
College, Cambridge, one of the class of rational paradoxers. Under this
name I include all who, in private life, and in matters which concern
themselves, take their own course, and suit their own notions, no matter
what other people may think of them. These men will put things to uses they
were never intended for, to the great distress and disgust of their
gregarious friends. I am one of the class, and I could write a little book
of cases in which I have incurred absolute reproach for not "doing as other
people do." I will name two of my atrocities: I took one of those
butter-dishes which have for a top a dome with holes in it, which is turned
inward, out of reach of accident, when not in use. Turning the dome
inwards, I filled the dish with water, and put a sponge in the dome: the
holes let it fill with water, and I had a penwiper, always moist, and worth
its price five times over. "Why! what do you mean? It was made to hold
butter. You are always at some queer thing or other!" I bought a leaden
comb, intended to dye the hair, it being supposed that the application of
lead will have this effect. I did not try: but I divided the comb into two,
separated the part of closed prongs from the other; and thus I had two
ruling machines. The lead marks paper, and by drawing the end of one of the
machines along a ruler, I could rule twenty lines at a time, quite fit to
write on. I thought I should have killed a friend to whom I explained it:
he could not for the life of him understand how leaden _lines_ on paper
would dye the hair.
But Dr. Milner went beyond me. He wanted a seat suited to his shape, and he
defied opinion to a fearful point. {252} He spread a thick block of putty
over a wooden chair and sat in it until it had taken a ceroplast copy of
the proper seat. This he gave to a carpenter to be imitated in wood. One of
the few now living who knew him--my friend, General Perronet
Thompson[576]--answers for the wood, which was shown him by Milner himself;
but he does not vouch for the material being putty, which was in the story
told me at Cambridge; William Frend[577] also remembered it. Perhaps the
Doctor took off his great seal in green wax, like the Crown; but some soft
material he certainly adopted; and very comfortable he found the wooden
copy.
[Illustration]
The same gentleman vouches for Milner's lamp: but this had visible
_science_ in it; the vulgar see no science in the construction of the
chair. A hollow semi-cylinder, but not with a circular curve, revolved on
pivots. The curve was calculated on the law that, whatever quantity of oil
might be in the lamp, the position of equilibrium just brought the oil up
to the edge of the cylinder, at which a bit of wick was placed. As the wick
exhausted the oil, the cylinder slowly revolved about the pivots so as to
keep the oil always touching the wick.
Great discoveries are always laughed at; but it is very often not the laugh
of incredulity; it is a mode of distorting the sense of inferiority into a
sense of superiority, or a mimicry of superiority interposed between the
laugher and his feeling of inferiority. Two persons in conversation {253}
agreed that it was often a nuisance not to be able to lay hands on a bit of
paper to mark the place in a book, every bit of paper on the table was sure
to contain something not to be spared. I very quietly said that I always
had a stock of bookmarkers ready cut, with a proper place for them: my
readers owe many of my anecdotes to this absurd practice. My two
colloquials burst into a fit of laughter; about what? Incredulity was out
of the question; and there could be nothing foolish in my taking measures
to avoid what they knew was an inconvenience. I was in this matter
obviously their superior, and so they laughed at me. Much more candid was
the Royal Duke of the last century, who was noted for slow ideas. "The rain
comes into my mouth," said he, while riding. "Had not your Royal Highness
better shut your mouth?" said the equerry. The Prince did so, and ought, by
rule, to have laughed heartily at his adviser; instead of this, he said
quietly, "It doesn't come in now."