Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. The single
instance of blackletter font uses the ‘=’ as a delimiter.
The footnotes have been re-sequenced for uniqueness across the text, and
positioned to follow the paragraph in which they are referenced.
Footnote 95 (originally footnote 1 on p. 227) has two separate
references in the text, both of which are retained.
There were very few and minor typographical flaws in the copy from which
this version is derived. These have been corrected, with no further
notice.
Old Friends at Cambridge
and Elsewhere
[Illustration]
Old Friends at Cambridge
and Elsewhere
by
J. Willis Clark, M.A.
Registrary of the University of Cambridge
formerly Fellow of Trinity College
London
Macmillan and Co. Limited
Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes
1900
All Rights reserved
~Cambridge:~
PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PREFACE.
I have frequently been asked to write my _Memoirs_, or I should rather
say, my _Recollections_. I have serious doubts as to whether I recollect
anything of value; and, even if I do, I have no time at present to
commit it to paper. But, as the University, when I first knew it, was a
very different place from what it is now; and as it has fallen to my lot
to write several biographical notices of distinguished Cambridge men, in
the course of which I have noted incidentally a good many of the
constitutional and social changes of later years, I venture to republish
what I have written. Such compositions, many of which were dashed off on
the spur of the moment, under the influence of strong feeling, with no
opportunity for correction or amplification, are, I am aware, defective
as a serious record of lives which ought to have been told at greater
length. But, that they gain in sincerity what they lose in detail, will,
I hope, be conceded by those who take the trouble to read them.
Most of these articles are reprinted as they were written, with only
obvious and necessary corrections. The Life of Dr Whewell has been
slightly enlarged; and that of Bishop Thirlwall has been revised, though
not substantially altered. Any merit that this Life may possess is due
to the kindness of the late Master of my College, Dr Thompson. I myself
had never so much as seen Thirlwall, and undertook the article with
great reluctance. But my difficulties vanished as soon as I had
consulted Dr Thompson. He had been one of Thirlwall’s intimate friends,
and not only supplied me with information about him which I could not
have learnt from any other source, but revised the article more than
once when in type.
The article on Dr Luard is practically new. Soon after his death I
contributed a short sketch of his Life to the _Saturday Review_, and
afterwards another, in a somewhat different style, to a Trinity College
Magazine called _The Trident_. Out of these, with some additions, the
present article has been composed.
It has been suggested to me that an article on Richard Owen, in a series
devoted entirely, with that exception, to Cambridge men, needs
justification. I would urge in my defence that the Senate coopted Owen
by selecting him, in 1859, as the first recipient of an honorary degree
under the new statutes.
My cordial thanks are due to Dr Jackson, Fellow and Prælector of Trinity
College, for much valuable criticism, and assistance in preparing the
volume for the press.
I have also to thank the proprietors of the _Church Quarterly Review_,
and those of the _Saturday Review_, for their kindness in allowing me to
reprint articles of which they hold the copyright.
JOHN WILLIS CLARK.
SCROOPE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE.
_1 January, 1900._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
WILLIAM WHEWELL 1
_Church Quarterly Review_, April, 1882.
CONNOP THIRLWALL 77
_Church Quarterly Review_, April, 1883.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON 153
_Church Quarterly Review_, July, 1891.
EDWARD HENRY PALMER 201
_Church Quarterly Review_, October,
1883.
FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR 282
_Saturday Review_, 29 July, 1882.
HENRY BRADSHAW 292
_Saturday Review_, 10 February, 1886.
WILLIAM HEPWORTH THOMPSON 302
_Saturday Review_, 9 October, 1886.
COUTTS TROTTER 314
_Saturday Review_, 10 December, 1887.
RICHARD OKES 319
_Saturday Review_, 1 December, 1888.
HENRY RICHARDS LUARD 328
_Saturday Review_, 9 May, 1891.
_The Trident_, June, 1891.
RICHARD OWEN 344
_Church Quarterly Review_, July, 1895.
WILLIAM WHEWELL[1].
Full materials for the life of Dr Whewell are at last before the public.
We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866
before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years
before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults
which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention
to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they
could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of
Dr Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate
portions. It was originally intended that there should be three of these
published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the
domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out
this scheme; and Mr Todhunter published the first instalment before
anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after
repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together,
and entrusted to Mrs Stair Douglas, Dr Whewell’s niece by marriage. The
defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once
are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer
appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the
authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were
compelled to follow.
Few lives, we imagine, have been so many-sided as to need a double, not
to say a triple, narrative in order to set them fully before the public;
and we assert most distinctly that Dr Whewell was the last man whose
biography should have been so treated. His life, notwithstanding his
diverse occupations and his widespread interests, presented a singular
unity, due to his unflinching determination to subordinate his pursuits,
his actions, and his thoughts to what he felt to be his work in the
world, viz. the advancement, in the fullest sense the word can be made
to bear, of his College and his University. He himself made no attempt
to subdivide his time, so as to carry out some special work at the
expense of other occupations. He found time for everything. His
extraordinary energy, and his power of absorbing himself at a moment’s
notice in whatever he had to do, whether scientific research or
University business, enabled him to get through an astonishing amount of
work in a single day. Much of what he did must have been very irksome
and repulsive to him. He particularly disliked detail, especially that
relating to finance. ‘I hate these disgusting details,’ was his way of
putting aside, or trying to put aside, economical discussions at College
meetings; and it was often hard to make him understand the real
importance of these apparently small matters. Again, he always found
time to go into society; to keep himself well acquainted with all that
was going forward in politics, literature, art, music, science; and to
carry on a vast correspondence with relatives, friends, and men of
science in England and on the Continent. A considerable number of these
letters have of course perished; but the extent of the collection is
evident from Mr Todhunter’s statement that he had examined more than
3,500 letters written to Dr Whewell, and more than 1,000 written by him.
His opinion of the latter, after this wide experience, is well worth
quotation:
‘I do not think that adequate justice can be rendered to Dr Whewell’s
vast knowledge and power by any person who did not know him intimately,
except by the examination of his extensive correspondence; such an
examination cannot fail to raise the opinion formed of him by the study
of his published works, however high that opinion may be. The evidence
of his attainments and abilities which is furnished by the fact that he
was consulted and honoured by the acknowledged chiefs of many distinct
sciences is most ample and impressive. United with this intellectual
eminence we find an attractive simplicity and generosity of nature, an
entire absence of self-seeking and assertion, and a warm concern in the
fortunes of his friends, even when they might be considered in some
degree as his rivals.’
The academic side of Dr Whewell’s life has no doubt been imperfectly
related in both the works before us; and the due recognition of his
merits will have to wait until the intellectual history of the
University during the nineteenth century shall one day be written. On
the other hand, we owe our warmest thanks to Mrs Stair Douglas for
having brought prominently into notice, as only an affectionate woman
could do, the softer side of Dr Whewell’s character. No one who did not
know him as she did could have suspected the almost feminine tenderness,
the yearning for sympathy, which were concealed under that rough
exterior. These qualities, though much developed by his marriage, were
characteristic of him throughout his whole life. The following passage,
which has not before been printed, from a letter written in 1836 to the
Marchesa Spineto, his oldest and most valued Cambridge friend, while he
was busy writing his _History of the Inductive Sciences_, shows how
necessary female sympathy was to him even when he was most occupied:
‘It appears to me long since I have seen you, and I am disposed to write
as if your absence were a disagreeable and unusual privation; although
it is very likely that if you had been here I might have seen just as
little of you and might have felt just as lonely. And perhaps if I send
you this sheet of my ruminations, it will find you in the middle of a
new set of interests and employments, with only a little bit of your
thoughts and affections at liberty to look this way; and so I shall be
little the better for the habit you have taught me of depending upon you
for unvarying kindness and love. Perhaps you will tell me I am unjust in
harbouring such a suspicion, but do not be angry with me if I am; for
you know such thoughts come into my head whether I will or no; and then
go away the sooner for being put into words.’
University life changes with such rapidity, that no matter how great a
man may have been, it is inevitable that he should soon become little
more than a tradition to those who succeed him. Few of the present
Fellows of Trinity College can have even seen Dr Whewell; and though his
outward appearance has been handed down to posterity by a picture in the
Lodge, a bust in the Library, and a statue in the Chapel, neither canvas
nor marble, no matter how skilfully they may be handled, can convey the
impression which that king of men made upon his contemporaries. These
portraits give a fairly just idea of his lofty stature, broad shoulders,
and large limbs, but the features are inadequately rendered in all of
them. The proportions are probably correct, but the expression has been
lost. The artists have been so anxious to render the philosopher, that
they have forgotten the man. His expression, except on very solemn
occasions, was never so grave as they have made it. His bright blue eye
had nearly always a merry twinkle in it, and his broad mouth was ever
ready to break into a smile. His nature was essentially joyous; and he
dearly loved a good joke, a funny story, or a merry party of friends, in
which his laugh was always the loudest, and his pleasure the keenest.
Nor did he disdain the pleasures of the table; a good dinner, followed
by a good bottle of port, was not without its charm for him, though it
may be doubted whether he enjoyed these matters for their own sake so
much as for the society they brought with them. He could not bear to be
alone, and was not particular into what company he went, provided he
could get good conversation, and plenty of it. He used to say that he
liked to hear a dinner in ‘full cry’; and, if we may adopt his own
simile without offence to the memory of one whom we love and revere, he
was himself the leader of the pack. He could hardly be called a good
talker; he was too fond of the sound of his own loud cheery voice, and
engrossed the conversation too much. He would take up a subject started
by somebody else, and handle it in a masterly fashion, as if he were in
a lecture room, while the rest sat by and listened. He laid down the
law, too, in a style that did not admit of reply. We remember an
occasion when the conversation turned on Longfellow’s _Golden Legend_,
then just published, and Whewell was asked to say what he thought of it.
‘I think it is a bad echo of a bad original, Goethe’s _Faust_,’
thundered out the great man; after which, of course, there was a dead
silence. Again, he was no respecter of persons, nor was he too careful
to observe the ordinary rules of politeness. If anybody said a silly
thing, even if the person were a lady, and in her own house, he thought
nothing of crushing her with ‘Madam, no one but a fool would have made
that observation’; but his company was so delightful, his stores of
information so varied and so vast, his readiness to communicate them so
unusual, and his memory so retentive, that these eccentricities in
‘Rough Diamond,’ as a clever University _jeu d’esprit_ called him, were
readily forgiven. He was far too well aware of his own supremacy to be
afraid of unbending; and years after he became Master of Trinity he has
been seen to kneel down on the carpet to play with a Skye terrier. He
was a special favourite with young people, especially with young ladies,
from the heartiness with which he threw himself into their pursuits and
pleasures, talked with them, romped with them, wrote verses and riddles
and translated German poems for their amusement, and assisted
approvingly at the musical parties which were the fashion when he was a
young man. There were indeed several houses in Cambridge and its
neighbourhood in which we should have ventured to say that he was ‘a
tame cat,’ had there been anything feline in that rugged and vehement
nature.
Those who wish to draw for themselves a life-like portrait of Whewell in
his best days must take into account the fact that his health was always
excellent. There is a legend that as a boy he was delicate; but, if this
were ever the case, which we doubt, he put it aside with other childish
things. When he came to man’s estate no rebellious liver ever troubled
his repose, or made him look upon life with a jaundiced eye. It was his
habit to sit up late; but, notwithstanding, he appeared regularly at
morning chapel, then at 7 a.m., fresh and radiant, and ready for the
day’s work. This vigour of body enabled him to appreciate everything
with a keenness which age could not dull, nor the most poignant grief
extinguish, except for very brief intervals. He thoroughly appreciated
‘the mere joy of living’; and whatever was going forward attracted him
so powerfully that he was never satisfied until he had found out all
about it. He went everywhere: to public ceremonials and exhibitions; to
new plays, new music, new pictures; to London drawing-rooms and smart
country houses; to quiet parsonages and canonical residences; to foreign
cities and English cathedrals; always deriving the keenest enjoyment
from what he saw, and delighting in new experiences because they were
new. There was but one exception to the universality of his interests.
When he was a resident Fellow of Trinity, it was the fashion for College
Dons to dabble in politics, and more than one of his Trinity friends
made their fortune by their Liberal opinions. He did not imitate their
example. He always described himself as no politician. As a young man he
seemed inclined to take a Liberal line, for he opposed a petition from
the University against the Roman Catholic claims in 1821, and in the
following year voted against ‘our dear, our Protestant Bankes’ for the
same reason. But in those stormy days of the Reform Bill, when so many
ancient friendships were destroyed, he took no decided line; and
latterly he abstained from politics altogether. We do not mean that he
shut his eyes to what was going forward in the world—far from it, but he
seemed to consider that one Administration was as good as another, and
provided no violent change was threatened, he left the destinies of the
Empire to take care of themselves. As he grew older, his mind became
engrossed by thoughts of the suffering which even the most glorious
achievements must of necessity entail. The events of the Indian Mutiny,
for instance, were followed by him with the closest interest; but he was
more frequently heard to deplore the severity dealt out to the natives
than to admire the heroism of their victims.
Whewell’s natural good health was no doubt maintained by his love of
open air exercise. No matter how busy he was, or how bad the weather, he
rarely missed his daily ride. On most afternoons he might be seen on his
grey horse ‘Twilight,’ usually with his inseparable friend Dr Worsley,
either galloping across country, or joining quieter parties along the
roads. He was never a good rider, but a very bold one, as will be seen
from the following story, the accuracy of which we once tested by
reference to Sebright, the veteran huntsman of the Fitzwilliam hounds.
Whewell was staying with Viscount Milton, we believe in 1828. One
morning his host said to him at breakfast, ‘We are all going out
hunting; what would you like to do?’ He replied, ‘I have never been out
hunting, and I should like to go too.’ So he was mounted on a first-rate
horse, well up to his weight, and told to keep close to the huntsman.
Whewell did as he was bid, and followed him over everything. They had an
unusually good run across a difficult country, in the course of which
Sebright took an especially stout and high fence. Looking round to see
what had become of the stranger, he found him at his side, safe and
sound. ‘That, sir, was a rasper,’ he said. ‘I did not observe that it
was anything more than ordinary,’ replied Whewell. So on they went, till
at last his horse pulled up, quite exhausted, to Whewell’s great
indignation, who exclaimed, ‘I thought a hunter never stopped.’
We are not presumptuous enough to suppose that we can add any new facts
to those which have been already collected in the volumes before us; but
we think that even after their publication there is room for a short
essay, which shall bring into prominence certain points in Whewell’s
academic career, and attempt to determine the value of what he did for
science in general, and for his own College and University in
particular. His life divides itself naturally into three periods of
about equal length, the first extending from his birth in 1794 to his
appointment as assistant-tutor of Trinity College in 1818, the second
from 1818 to his appointment as Master in 1841, and the third from 1841
to his death in 1866.
Whewell came up to Cambridge at the beginning of the Michaelmas
Term, 1812. Those who are familiar with the exciting spectacle
presented by the splendid intellectual activity of the Cambridge of
to-day—accommodating itself with flexibility and readiness to
requirements the most diverse, appointing new teachers in
departments of study the most unusual and the most remote on the
bare chance of their services being required, flinging open its
doors to all comers, regardless of sex, creed, or nationality, and
thronged with students whose numbers are increasing year by year,
eager to take advantage of the instruction which their elders are
equally eager to supply them with—will find it difficult, if not
impossible, to imagine the totally different state of things which
existed at that time. Were we asked to express its characteristic by
a single word, we should answer, dulness. It must be remembered that
communication in those days was slow; news did not arrive until it
was stale; travelling, especially for passengers, was expensive, so
that, at least for the shorter vacations, many persons did not leave
Cambridge at all; and some remained there during the whole year—we
might say, in some cases, during their whole lives. For the same
reasons strangers rarely visited the University. The same people
dined and supped together day after day, with no novelty to
diversify their lives or their conversation. No wonder that they
became narrow, prejudiced, eccentric, or that their habits were
tainted with the grosser vices which there was no public opinion to
repudiate. The undergraduates, most of whom came from the upper
classes, were few. In the fifteen years between 1800 and 1815 the
yearly average of those who matriculated did not exceed 205: less
than one-fourth of those who now present themselves[2]. The only
road to the Honour Degree was through the Mathematical Tripos. The
amusements were as little varied as the studies. There was riding
for those who could afford it; and a few boated and played cricket
or tennis; but the majority contented themselves with a walk. With
the undergraduates, as with their seniors, the habit of hard
drinking was unfortunately still prevalent. But the great changes
through which the country passed between 1815 and 1834 produced a
totally different state of things. The old order changed; slowly and
almost imperceptibly at first, but still it changed. As the wealth
of the country increased, a new class of students presented
themselves for education; ideas began to circulate with rapidity;
old forms of procedure and examination were given up; academic
society was purified from its coarseness and vulgarity, and lost
much of its exclusiveness; new studies were admitted upon an all but
equal footing with the old ones; and, lastly, the new political
principles asserted themselves by gradually sweeping away, one after
another, all restrictive enactments. This last change, however, was
not consummated until 1871. The other changes with which what may be
called modern Cambridge was inaugurated are thus enumerated with
characteristic force by Professor Sedgwick in one of his ‘Letters to
the Editor of the _Leeds Mercury_,’ written in 1836, with which he
demolished that infamous slanderer of the University, Mr R. M.
Beverley:
‘It is most strange that in a letter on the present state of Cambridge
no notice should be taken of the noble institutions which have of late
years risen up within it; of the glories of its Observatory; of the
newly-chartered body, the Philosophical Society, organized among its
resident members in the year 1819, and now known to the world of science
by its “Transactions,” the records of many important original
discoveries; of the new Collections in Natural History; of the
magnificent new Press; of the new School and Museum of Comparative
Anatomy; of the noble extension of the collegiate buildings, made at
some inconvenience and much personal cost to the present Fellows, and
entailing on them and their successors the weight of an enormous debt;
of the general spirit of inquiry pervading the members of the academic
body, young and old; of the eight or nine _new courses_ of public
lectures (established within the last twenty-five years) both on the
applied sciences and the ancient languages; of the general activity of
the professors, and of their correspondence with foreign establishments
organized for objects like their own, whereby Cambridge is now, at
least, an integral part of the vast republic of literature and science;
of the crowded class at the lecture of Modern History [by Professor
Smyth]; of the great knowledge of many of our younger members in modern
languages; of the recent Professorship of Political Economy bestowed on
a gentleman [Mr Pryme] who had been lecturing for years, and was a firm
and known supporter of Liberal opinions.’
When Whewell came to the University these improvements had not been so
much as thought of. He was himself to be the prime mover in bringing
several of them about. It must be remembered, however, while we confess
to a special enthusiasm for our hero, that he did not stand alone as the
champion of intellectual development in the University. Indeed it will
become evident as we proceed that he was not naturally a reformer. He
had so strong a respect for existing institutions that he hesitated long
before he could bring himself to sanction any change, no matter how
self-evident or how salutary. As a young man, however, he found himself
one of a large body of enthusiastic workers, who, while they differed
widely, almost fundamentally, on the methods to be employed, were all
animated by the same spirit, and stimulated one another to fresh
exertions in the common cause. It was one of the most remarkable
characteristics of the period of which Professor Sedgwick has sketched
the results, that it was hardly more distinguished for the changes
produced than for the men who brought them about.
But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood,
school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His
father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the
eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His father is mentioned
as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he
unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have
been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched
the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly _Lancaster Gazette_ with occasional
contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his
father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr
Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The
father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than
I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s
reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr Rowley, who
further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of
expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his
schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After
mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds:
‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin
accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward
into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same
age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with
which Whewell mastered the exercises and lessons, raised the tale and
standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now,
Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll
wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with
his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of
the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed.
“Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t
have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a
second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely
ungrateful in _that boy Whewell_ to have discoloured both eyes of her
eldest so shockingly.” But Mr Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he
always let them fight it fairly out.’
In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in
arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr Rowley; but it is believed
that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable;
and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school
at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for
it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50_l._ per annum, at
Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second
school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised
versification in Greek and Latin.
In October 1812 he commenced residence at Trinity College as a
sub-sizar. His first University distinction was the Chancellor’s gold
medal for English Verse, the subject being ‘Boadicea.’ In after years he
was fond of expressing the theory that ‘a prize-poem should be a
prize-poem’: by which he probably meant that the subject should be
treated in a conventional fashion, with no eccentric innovations of
style or metre. It must be admitted that his own work conformed exactly
to this standard. The poem was welcomed with profound admiration in the
family circle at home; but his old master took a different view of the
question. Professor Owen relates that Mr Rowley called one day at his
mother’s house, and began as follows:
‘“I’ve sad news for you, Mrs Owen, to-day. I’ve just had a letter from
Cambridge; that boy Whewell has ruined himself, he’ll never get his
Wranglership now!” “Why, good gracious, Mr Rowley, what _has_ Whewell
been doing?” “Why, he has gone and got the Chancellor’s gold medal for
some trumpery poem, ‘Boadicea,’ or something of that kind, when he ought
to have been sticking to his mathematics. I give him up now. Taking
after his poor mother, I suppose.”’
The letters which he wrote home give us some pleasant glimpses of his
College life, which he evidently thoroughly enjoyed. For the first time
in his life he had access to a good library—that of Trinity College—and
he speaks of ‘an inconceivable desire to read all manner of books at
once,’ adding that at that very moment there were two folios and six
quartos of different works upon his table. The success which he
afterwards achieved is a proof that he entered heartily into the studies
of the place; and among his friends were men who were studious then, and
afterwards became eminent. Among these we may mention Mr, afterwards Sir
John, Herschel, Mr Richard Jones, Mr Julius Charles Hare, and Mr Charles
Babbage. A correspondent of his, writing so late as 1841, recalls the
‘Sunday morning philosophical breakfasts,’ at which they used to meet in
1815; and there are indications in the letters of similar feasts of
reason and flows of soul. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that a
few indications of an opposite character may be produced. He admits, in
a half-bantering, half-serious way, that he had laid himself open to the
charge of idleness; and he describes the diversions of himself and his
friends during the long vacation of 1815 as ‘dancing at country fairs,
playing billiards, tuning beakers into musical glasses,’ and the like.
It need be no matter of surprise that a young man of high spirits and
strong bodily frame, brought up in the seclusion of Lancashire, should
have taken the fullest advantage of the first opportunity which
presented itself of appreciating the lighter and brighter side of
existence. This, however, was all. Whewell knew perfectly well where to
stop. No scandal ever attached itself to his name; and he ‘wore the
white flower of a blameless life’ through a period when the customs
prevalent in the University were such as are more honoured in the breach
than in the observance.
He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1816, when he was
second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize-man. On both occasions he was
beaten by a Mr Jacob, of Caius College, who was his junior by two years.
It is a Cambridge tradition that Mr Jacob’s success was a surprise to
everybody, for he had intentionally affected to be an idle man, and
showed himself on most days riding out in hunting costume, the truth
being that he kept his books at a farm-house, where he pursued his
studies in secrecy and quiet. He was a young man of the greatest
promise; and it was expected that he would achieve a conspicuous success
at the Bar. But his lungs were affected, and he died of consumption at
an early age. As Mr Todhunter remarks, his fame rests mainly on the fact
that he twice outstripped so formidable a competitor as the future
Master of Trinity. Whewell mentions him as ‘a very pleasant as well as a
very clever man,’ and adds, ‘I had as soon be beaten by him as by
anybody else.’
The labours of reading for the degree over, Whewell had leisure to turn
his studies in any direction whither his fancy led him. No doubt he
fully appreciated the, to him, unusual position, for he tells his sister
that few people could be ‘more tranquilly happy than your brother, in
his green plaid dressing-gown, blue morocco slippers, and with a large
book before him.’ The time had come, however, when he was to experience
the first of the inevitable inconveniences of a College life. Two of his
most intimate friends, Herschel and Jones, left Cambridge, and he
bitterly deplores their loss. Indeed it probably needed all the
attachment to the place, which he proclaims in the same letter, to
prevent his following their example. He appears at one time to have
thought seriously of going to the Bar. He began, however, to take
pupils: an occupation which becomes a singularly absorbing one,
especially when the tutor takes the interest in them which apparently he
did. One of those with whom he spent the summer of 1818, in Wales, Mr
Kenelm Digby, afterwards author of the _Broadstone of Honour_, who
admits that he was so idle that his tutor would take no remuneration
from him, has recorded that—
‘I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most generous,
open-hearted, disinterested, and noble-minded men that I ever knew. I
remember circumstances that called for the exercise of each of those
rare qualities, when they were met in a way that would now seem
incredible, so fast does the world seem moving away from all ancient
standards of goodness and moral grandeur.’
This testimony is important, if only for comparison with the far
different feelings with which his more official pupils regarded him in
after years. In these occupations he spent the two years succeeding his
degree; for the amount of special work done for the Fellowship
Examination was probably not great. He was elected Fellow in October
1817; and in the summer of the following year was made one of the
assistant-tutors. With this appointment the first part of his University
career ends, and the second begins.
His connexion with the educational staff of Trinity College, first as
assistant-tutor, then as sole tutor, lasted for just twenty years. These
were the most occupied of his busy life; and in justification of what we
said at the outset of the multifarious nature of his occupations, we
proceed to give a rapid chronological sketch of them. His career as an
author began, in 1819, with an _Elementary Treatise on Mechanics_. It
went through seven editions, in each of which, as Mr Todhunter says,
‘the subject was revolutionized rather than modified; and the preface to
each expounded with characteristic energy the paramount merits of the
last constitution framed.’ The value of the work was greatly impaired by
these proceedings, for an author can hardly expect to retain the
unwavering confidence of his readers while his own opinions are in
constant fluctuation. In 1820 he was Moderator, and travelled abroad for
the first time. In 1821 he was working at geology seriously, and took a
geological tour in the Isle of Wight with Sedgwick, who had been made
Woodwardian Professor three years before. Later in the year he explored
the Lake Country, and was introduced to Mr Wordsworth. Their
acquaintance subsequently ripened into a friendship, which appears in
numerous letters, and notably in the dedication prefixed to the
_Elements of Morality_. A _Treatise on Dynamics_ was published in 1823,
which was treated in much the same fashion as its fellow on _Mechanics_.
The summer vacation was spent in a visit to Paris for the first time,
and an architectural tour in Normandy with Mr Kenelm Digby. In 1824 he
took a prominent part in the resistance to the Heads of Colleges in
their attempt to nominate to the Professorship of Mineralogy; and later
in the year he went again to Cumberland with Sedgwick, ‘rambling about
the country, and examining the strata’; visiting Southey and Wordsworth;
and, in the intervals of geology, seeing cathedrals and churches. In
1825, as the chair of Mineralogy was about to be vacated by Professor
Henslow, promoted to that of Botany, Whewell announced himself a
candidate; and by way of preparation spent three months in Germany,
studying crystallography at the feet of Professor Mohs, of Freiburg: a
subject on which he had already made communications to the Royal Society
and to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This was his first
introduction to Germany, in whose language and literature he
thenceforward took the greatest interest. He even modified his way of
writing English in accordance with German custom, as is shown by the
plentiful scattering of capitals through his sentences, and by a certain
ponderosity of style which savours of German originals. The dissensions
as to the mode of election to the Mineralogical chair caused it to
remain vacant for three years; so that Whewell, about the choice of whom
there never seems to have been any doubt, had no immediate opportunity
of turning to account his newly-acquired knowledge. He therefore, with
even more than characteristic energy, turned his attention to two most
opposite subjects, Theology, and the Density of the Earth.
In the summer of 1826 he commenced a series of investigations on the
latter subject at Dolcoath Mine, Cornwall, in conjunction with Mr Airy.
The essential part of the process was to compare the time of vibration
of a pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of vibration of
the same pendulum at a considerable depth below the surface.
Unfortunately the experiments, which were renewed in 1828, failed to
lead to any satisfactory result, partly through an error in the
construction of the pendulum, partly through a singular fatality, by
which, on both occasions, they were frustrated by a serious accident.
The account he gives of himself, and of the way in which the researches
were regarded by the Cornishmen, is too amusing not to be quoted. It is
contained in a letter to his friend Lady Malcolm, and is dated
‘Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, June 10, 1826:
‘I venture to suppose that you never had a correspondent who at the time
of writing was situated as your present one is. I am at this moment
sitting in a small cavern deep in the recesses of the earth, separated
by 1,200 feet of rock from the surface on which you mortals tread. I am
close to a wooden partition which has been fixed here by human hands,
through which I ever and anon look, by means of two telescopes, into a
larger cavern. That larger den has got various strange-looking machines,
illumined here and there by unseen lamps, among which is visible a clock
with a face most unlike common clocks, and a brass bar which swings to
and fro with a small but never-ceasing motion. I am clad in the garb of
a miner, which is probably more dirty and scanty than anything you may
have happened to see in the way of dress. The stillness of this
subterranean solitude is interrupted by the noise, most strange to its
walls, of the ticking of my clock, and the chirping of seven watches.
But besides these sounds it has noises of its own which my ear catches
now and then. A huge iron vessel is every quarter of an hour let down
through the rock by a chain above a thousand feet long, and in its
descent and ascent dashes itself against the sides of the pit with a
violence and a din like thunder; and at intervals, louder and deeper
still, I hear the heavy burst of an explosion when gunpowder has been
used to rend the rock, which seems to pervade every part of the earth
like the noise of a huge gong, and to shake the air within my prison. I
have sat here for some hours, and shall sit five or six more, at the end
of which time I shall climb up to the light of the sky in which you
live, by about sixty ladders, which form the weary upward path from
hence to your world. I ought not to omit, by way of completing the
picturesque, that I have a barrel of porter close to my elbow, and a
miner stretched on the granite at my feet, whose yawns at being kept
here so many hours, watching my inscrutable proceedings, are most
pathetic. This has been my situation and employment every day for some
time, and will be so for some while longer, with the alternation of
putting myself in a situation as much as possible similar, in a small
hut on the surface of the earth. Is not this a curious way of spending
one’s leisure time? I assure you I often think of Sir John’s favourite
quotation from Leyden, “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity
has brought thee here?” and sometimes doubt whether sunshine be not
better than science.
‘If the object of my companion and myself had been to make a sensation,
we must have been highly gratified by the impression which we have
produced upon the good people in this country. There is no end to the
number and oddity of their conjectures and stories about us. The most
charitable of them take us to be fortune-tellers; but for the greater
part we are suspected of more mischievous kinds of magic. A single loud,
insulated, peal of thunder, which was heard the first Sunday after our
arrival, was laid at our door; and a staff which we had occasion to
plant at the top of the cliff, was reported to have the effect of
sinking all unfortunate ships which sailed past.
‘I could tell you many more such histories; but I think this must be at
least enough about myself, if I do not wish to make the quotation from
Leyden particularly applicable.’
Whewell had been ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 1826, and this
circumstance had probably directed him to a more exact study of theology
than he had previously attempted. The result was a course of four
sermons before the University in February 1827. The subject of these,
which have never been printed, may be described as the ‘Relation of
Human to Divine Knowledge.’ They attracted considerable attention when
delivered; and it was even suggested that the author ought to devote
himself to theology as a profession, and try to obtain one of the
Divinity Professorships; but the advice was not taken. A theological
tone may, however, be observed in most of his scientific works; he loved
to point out analogies between scientific and moral truths, and to show
that there was no real antagonism between science and revealed religion.
In 1828 the new Professor of Mineralogy entered upon his functions, and
after his manner rushed into print with an _Essay on Mineralogical
Classification and Nomenclature_, in which there is much novelty of
definition and arrangement. He was conscious that he had been somewhat
precipitate; for he writes to his friend, Mr Jones, who was trying to
make up his mind on certain problems of political economy, and declined
to print until he had done so:
‘I avoid all your anxieties about authorship by playing for lower stakes
of labour and reputation. While you work for years in the elaboration of
slowly-growing ideas, I take the first buds of thought and make a
nosegay of them without trying what patience and labour might do in
ripening and perfecting them[3].’
At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous
publication entitled _Architectural Notes on German Churches, with
Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture_. The author need not have
tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his
style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three
editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and
enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830,
was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been
from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his
sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the
purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were
undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and
sketch-books (for he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of
the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details.
The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called
it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was
really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved
and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders
learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but
the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests,
‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really
exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the
sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is
certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole
book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the _Remarks on the
Architecture of the Middle Ages_, by Professor Willis. A glance at the
dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of
Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr
Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural
tour with Mr Rickman in Devon and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his
occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated
also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.
In 1831 we find Whewell reviewing three remarkable books: Herschel’s
_Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy_; Lyell’s _Principles of
Geology_, vol. i.; and Jones _On the Distribution of Wealth_. As Mr
Todhunter remarks, scarcely any person but himself could have ventured
on such a task. These reviews are not merely critical; they contain much
of the author’s own speculations, much that went beyond the interest of
the moment, and might be considered to possess a permanent value.
Herschel was delighted with his own share. He writes to Whewell,
thanking him for ‘the splendid review,’ and declaring that he ‘should
have envied the author of any work, if a stranger, which could give
occasion for such a review.’ Lyell wrote in much the same strain; and we
are rather surprised that he did so; for his reviewer not only
stubbornly refused to accept his theory of uniformity of action, in
opposition to the cataclysmic views of the Huttonians, but treated the
whole question in a spirit of good-humoured banter, in which even
Herschel thought that he had gone too far. The article on his friend Mr
Jones’ work—which appeared in the _British Critic_—is rather an
exposition of his views, which were original, than a criticism. It was
Whewell’s first appearance in print on any question of political
economy, except a short memoir in the Transactions of the Cambridge
Philosophical Society, called a _Mathematical Exposition of some
Doctrines of Political Economy_; and therefore marks a period when he
had added yet one more science to those which he had already mastered.
In this year he gave much time to a controversy which was agitating the
University on the question of the best plans to be adopted for a new
Public Library; and contributed a bulky pamphlet to the literature of
the subject, in opposition to his friend Mr Peacock. The whole question
is a very interesting one; but our space will not allow us to do more
than mention it, as another instance of the diversity of Whewell’s
interests.