The Secretary of the Admiralty was completely extinguished. I can recall
but two instances of demolition as complete, though no doubt there are many
others. The first is in
Simon Stevin[678] and M. Dumortier. Nieuport, 1845, 12mo.
M. Dumortier was a member of the Academy of Brussels: there was a
discussion, I believe, about a national Pantheon for Belgium. The name of
Stevinus suggested itself as naturally as that of Newton to an Englishman;
probably no Belgian is better known to foreigners as illustrious in
science. Stevinus is great in the _Mecanique Analytique_ of Lagrange;[679]
Stevinus is great in the _Tristram Shandy_ of Sterne. M. Dumortier, who
believed that not one Belgian in a thousand knew Stevinus, and who
confesses with ironical shame that he was not the odd man, protested
against placing the statue of an obscure man in the Pantheon, to give
foreigners the notion that Belgium could show nothing greater. The work
above named is a slashing retort: any one who knows the history of science
ever so little may imagine what a dressing was given, by mere extract from
foreign writers. The tract is a letter signed J. du Fan, but this is a
pseudonym of Mr. Van de Weyer.[680] The Academician says Stevinus was a man
who was not {314} without merit for the time at which he lived: Sir! is the
answer, he was as much before his own time as you are behind yours. How
came a man who had never heard of Stevinus to be a member of the Brussels
Academy?
The second story was told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long
connected with the _Times_, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682]
When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a
stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in
that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a
gentleman?"--"Eh?"--"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding,
and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The bumpkin raised his
muscular figure on its feet, patted his menacer on the head, and said, very
quietly,--"Young man! I'm Cribb."[683] W*** seized the great pugilist's
hand, and shook it warmly, got him to his own rooms in college, collected
some friends, and had a symposium which lasted until the large end of the
small hours.