THE LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[1]

Lord Brougham has resumed his memoirs of the eminent writers of England;

and every lover of literature will feel gratified by this employment of

his active research and of his vigorous pen.

One of the most striking distinctions of English public life from that

of the Continent, is in the condition of statesmen after their casual

retirement from power. The Foreign statesman seems to exist only in

office. The moment that sees him "out of place," sees him extinguished.

He is lost as suddenly to the public eye, as if he were carried to the

tomb of his ancestors. He retires to his country-seat, and there

subsides into the garrulous complainant against the caprices of fortune,

or buries his calamities in the quiet indulgence of his appetites;

smokes away his term of years, subsides into the lean and slippered

pantaloon, occupies his studies with the _Court Gazette_, and his

faculties with cards; and is finally deposited in the family vault, to

continue the process of mouldering which had been begun in his

arm-chair, to be remembered only in an epitaph. France, at the present

day, alone seems to form an exception. Her legislature affords a new

element in which statesmanship in abeyance can still float: the little

vessel is there at least kept in view of mankind; if it makes no

progress, it at least keeps above water; and, however incapable of

reaching the port by its own means, the fluctuations of the national

surge, sometimes so powerful, and always so contemptuous of calculation,

may at some time or other carry the craziest craft into harbour. But the

general order of continental ministers, even of the highest rank, when

abandoned by the monarch, are like men consigned to the dungeon. They go

to their place of sentence at once. The man who to-day figured in the

highest robe of power, to-morrow wears the prison costume. His rise was

the work of the royal will--his fall is equally the work of the royal

will. Having no connexion with the national mind, he has no resource in

the national sympathies. He has been a royal instrument: when his edge

becomes dull, or the royal artificer finds a tool whose fashion he likes

better, the old tool is flung by to rust, and no man asks where or why,

his use is at an end, and the world and the workman, alike, "knoweth it

no more."

But, in England, the condition of public life is wholly different. The

statesman is the creation of the national will, and neither in office,

nor in opposition, does the nation forget the product of its will. The

minister is no offspring of slavery, no official negro, made to be sold,

and, when sold, separated from his parentage once and for ever. If he

sins in power, he is at worst but the Prodigal Son, watched in his

career, and willingly welcomed when he has abjured his wanderings.

Instead of being extinguished by the loss of power, he often more than

compensates the change, by the revival of popularity. Disencumbered of

the laced and embroidered drapery of office, he often exhibits the

natural vigour and proportion of his faculties to higher advantage;

cultivates his intellectual distinctions with more palpable success;

refreshes his strength for nobler purposes than even those of ambition;

and, if he should not exert his renewed popularity for a new conquest of

power, only substitutes for place the more generous and exalted

determination of deserving those tributes which men naturally offer to

great abilities exerted for the good of present and future generations.

We must allude, for the national honour, to this characteristic of

English feeling, in the changes of public men. On the Continent, the

hour which deprived a statesman of office, at once deprived him of every

thing. All the world ran away from him, as they would from a falling

house. The crowded antechamber of yesterday, exhibited nothing to-day

but utter solitude. The fallen minister was a leper; men shrank from his

touch; the contagion of ill-luck was upon him; and every one dreaded to

catch the disease. It was sometimes even worse. The loss of power was

the ruin of fortune. The Dives had been suddenly transformed into the

Lazarus; the purple and fine linen were "shreds and patches," and not

even the dogs came to administer to his malady. But, among us, the

breaking up of a cabinet often only gives rise to a bold and brilliant

opposition. It is not like the breaking up of a ship, where the wreck is

irreparable, and the timbers are shattered and scattered, and good for

nothing; it is often more like the breaking up of a regiment in one of

our colonies, where the once compact mass of force, which knew nothing

but the command of its colonel, now takes, each man his own way,

exhibits his own style of cleverness; instead of the one manual exercise

of musket and bayonet, each individual takes the axe or the spade, the

tool or the ploughshare, and works a new fertility out of the soil,

according to his own "thews and sinews."

The moral of all this is, that the distinguished author of these Memoirs

is now devoting himself to a career of literature, to which even his

political services may have been of inferior utility. He is recalling

the public memory to those eminent achievements, which have so

powerfully advanced the mental grandeur of our era; and, while he thus

gives due honour to the labours of the past, he is at once encouraging

and illustrating the nobleness of the course which opens to posterity.

But Lord Brougham's influence cannot be contented, we should hope, with

merely speculative benefits; it is for him, and for men like him, to

look with interest on the struggles of literary existence at the hour;

to call the attention of government and the nation to the neglects, the

narrowness, and the caprices of national patronage; to demand protection

for genius depressed by the worldliness of the crowd; to point out to

men of rank and wealth a path of service infinitely more honourable to

their own taste, and infinitely more productive to their country, than

ribands and stars; than the tinkling of a name, than pompous palaces, or

picture galleries of royal price; to excite our nobles to constitute

themselves the true patrons of the living genius of the land, and

disdain to be content with either the offering of weak regrets or the

tribute of worthless honours to the slumberers in the grave. A tenth

part of the sums employed in raising obelisks to Burns, would have

rescued one half of his life from poverty, and the other half from

despair. The single sum which raised the monument to Sir Walter Scott in

Edinburgh, would have saved him from the final pressure which broke his

heart, elastic as it was, and dimmed his intellect, capable as he still

was of throwing a splendour over his native soil.

This neglect is known and suffered in no other province of public

service. The soldier, the sailor, the architect, the painter, are all

within sight of the most lavish prizes of public liberality. Parliament

has just given titles and superb pensions to the conquerors of the

Sikhs. The India Company has followed its example. We applaud this

munificent liberality in both instances. Two general officers have thus

obtained the peerage, with L7000 and L5000 a-year. They deserved those

rewards. But the whole literary encouragement of the British empire,

with a revenue of fifty-two millions sterling, is L1200, little more

than the tenth part of the pensions allotted to those two gallant men.

L1200 for the whole literary encouragement of England! There can be no

greater scandal to the intellectual honour of the country. The pettiest

German principality scarcely limits its literary encouragement to this

sum. We doubt whether Weimar, between literary offices and pensions, did

not give twice the sum annually. But named in competition with the

liberality of the leading sovereigns, it is utterly mean. Louis XIV.,

two hundred years ago, allotted 80,000 francs a-year to his forty

members of the Academy, a sum equivalent in _that day_, and in _France_,

to little less than L5000 a-year in our day, and in England. Frederic

II. gave pensions and appointments to a whole corps of literary men. At

this moment, there is scarcely a man of any literary distinction in

Paris, who has not a share in the liberal and wise patronage of

government, either in office or public pension.

But if we are to be answered by a class, plethoric with wealth and rank;

that literature ought to be content with living on its own means; must

not the obvious answer be--Is the author to be an author, down to his

grave? Is there to be no relaxation of his toil? is there to be no

allowance for the exhaustion of his overworked faculties? for the

natural infirmities of years? for the vexations of a noble spirit

compelled to submit to the caprices of public change? and with its full

share of the common calamities of life, increasing their pressure at

once by an inevitable sense of wrong, and by a feeling that the delight

of his youth must be the drudgery of his age? When the great Dryden, in

his seventieth year, was forced, in the bitterness of his heart, to

exclaim, "Must I die in the harness!" his language was a brand on the

common sense, as well as on the just generosity, of his country. We now

abandon the topic with one remark. This want of the higher liberality of

the nation has already produced the most injurious effects on our

literature.

All the great works of our ancestral literature were the works of

leisure and comparative competence. All the great dramatic poetry of

France was the work of comparative competence. Its writers were not

compelled to hurry after the popular tastes; they followed their own,

and impressed its character upon the mind of the nation. The plays of

Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Voltaire, are nobler trophies to the

greatness of France than all the victories of Louis the XIV., than

Versailles, than all the pomps of his splendid reign. Louis Philippe has

adopted the same munificent policy, and it will be followed by the same

honour with posterity. But, in England, the keeping of a stud of

racehorses, the building of a dog-kennel, or the purchase of a foreign

picture, is ignominiously and selfishly suffered to absorb a larger sum

than the whole literary patronage of the most opulent empire that the

sun ever shone upon. We recommend these considerations to Lord Brougham:

they are nobler than politics; they are fitter for his combined

character of statesman and philosopher; they will also combine with that

character another which alone can give permanency to the fame of any

public man--that of the philanthropist. His ability, his knowledge of

human nature, and his passion for public service--qualities in which his

merits are known to Europe--designate him as the founder of a great

system of public liberality to the enterprise of genius. And when party

is forgotten, and cabinets have perished; when, perhaps, even the

boundaries of empire may have been changed, and new nations rise to

claim the supremacy of arts and arms; the services of the protector of

literature will stand out before the eye with increased honour, and his

name be rescued from the common ruin which envelopes the memory of

ostentatious conquerors and idle kings.

The present volume contains biographies of Johnson, Adam Smith,

Lavoisier, Gibbon, Sir Joseph Banks, D'Alembert. We shall commence with

the lives less known to the generality of readers than those of our

great moralist and great political economist, reserving ourselves for

sketches of their career, as our space may allow.

* * * * *

Lord Brougham commences his life of Sir Joseph Banks by a species of

apology, for placing in the ranks of philosophers a man who had never

written a book. But no one has ever doubted that a man may be a

philosopher, without being an author. Some of the greatest inventions of

philosophy, of science, and of practical power, have been the work of

men who never wrote a book. In fact, the inventor is generally a man of

few words; his disciples, or rivals, or imitators, are the men of

description. The inventor gives the idea, the follower gives the

treatise; but the inventor is the philosopher after all. The question,

however, with Sir Joseph Banks is, whether he was any more an inventor

than a writer. It does not appear that he was either. Of course, he has

no right to rank among men of science. But he had merits of his own, and

on those his distinctions ought to have been placed. He was a zealous,

active, and influential friend of philosophers. He gave them his time,

he received them in his house, and he assisted their progress. He

volunteered to be the protector of their class; he sympathised with

their pursuits; and, while adding little or nothing to their

discoveries, he assisted in bringing those discoveries before the world.

He loved to be thought the patriarch of British science; and, like the

patriarch, he retained his authority even when he was past his labour.

If he filled the throne of science feebly, none could deny that he

filled it zealously. The true definition of him was, an English

gentleman occupying his leisure with philosophical pursuits, and

encouraging others of more powerful understanding to do the same.

Sir Joseph Banks was of an old and wealthy family, dating so far back as

Edward III.; first settled in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and

afterwards in the county of Lincoln. He was born in London in January

1743. At the age of nine he was sent to Harrow, and at thirteen to Eton,

where the tutors observed, as has happened in many other instances, that

he was fonder of play than of books. In about a twelvemonth, however, he

became studious, though not to the taste of his schoolmasters. The

origin of this change was described by himself, in a letter to Sir

Everard Home, as accidental. One afternoon he had been bathing with some

of the Eton boys, and, on returning to dress himself, found that they

had left him alone. Walking down a green lane, whose sides exhibited the

wild-flowers of the season, the thought occurred to him, how much more

natural and useful would be the knowledge of plants, than of Greek and

Latin. From this time he devoted himself to the study of botany, though

still continuing that of the classics. On returning to his father's

house, he found a copy of Gerard's _Herbal_, which fixed his taste. He

now added to his collecting of plants that of butterflies and other

insects. Lord Brougham mentions that his father was one of Banks's

associates at this period, and that they employed themselves together in

natural history.

Natural history has been so frequently the pursuit of studious triflers,

that it is difficult to exempt it from the charge of trifling. To gather

plants which have been gathered a thousand times before, to ascertain

their names from an herbal, and classify them according to its list,

seems to be little more than a grave apology for playing the fool. A

determination to gather all the butterflies and blue-bottles within the

limits of the realm, certainly has nothing that can dignify it with the

name of scientific pursuit. The collecting of pebbles and shells, or

even the arranging of animals in the cases of a museum, are

accomplishments of so easy an order, and of so little actual use, that

they serve for little else than to wile away the time. But this trifling

assumes a more important shape when it rises to the acquisition of

actual knowledge; when, instead of classifying plants, it develops their

medicinal virtues, and, instead of embalming animals, it examines their

structure, as throwing light on the conformation or diseases of man.

But Sir Joseph Banks was fortunately relieved from subsiding into this

foppery, by circumstances which forced him into vigorous and useful

exertion. An approaching transit of Venus had been long looked to, as

giving an opportunity for ascertaining the distance of the sun from the

earth. It was recommended, that observations on this phenomenon should

be made from different stations on the globe. Accordingly, in 1761, the

British government sent out two observers, one to the Cape and the other

to St Helena. The French government at the same time sent out three--to

Pondicherry, Siberia, and the Mauritius. But the weather was

unfavourable, and the observations were to be regarded as a failure. But

there was a second transit in 1769, and the leading powers of Europe

sent out observers; England sending a vessel to the South Seas, an

observer to India, and two to Hudson's Bay. Captain Wallace having

lately made several discoveries in the Pacific, public attention had

been strongly drawn to that hitherto scarcely known portion of the

globe. The celebrated Captain Cook was appointed commander, and Sir

Joseph Banks, stimulated by an honourable zeal and a rational desire of

knowledge, obtained leave from his friend, Lord Sandwich, to join the

expedition. He took with him Dr Solander the botanist, and two

draughtsmen.

On the 25th of August 1768, Cook's vessel, the Endeavour, sailed from

Plymouth Sound, and the first point of land at which they touched was

the Terra del Fuego, the southern extremity of the American continent.

There they encountered such severity of cold, that, although it was the

summer of those regions, Banks and Solander, in one of their botanical

excursions, had nearly shared the fate of three of their attendants, who

perished from the intensity of the cold. The effect of this excess of

low temperature has been often felt and often described. It was a

general torpor of the frame, producing an almost irresistible propensity

to sleep. Every exertion was painful, and the strongest desire was to

lie down in the snow and give way to slumber. Solander, who had acquired

his experience in botanizing among the Swedish mountains, warned the

party of their danger. "Whoever," said he, "sits down, will sleep;

whoever sleeps, will wake no more." Yet he himself was one of the first

to yield; he insisted on lying down, fell asleep before he could be

brought to the fire which Banks had kindled, and was restored with

difficulty. His companion had felt a similar inclination, but resisted

it, by the greater energy of youth, and probably of a more vigorous

mind.

Cook then sailed for Otaheite, which he reached in April. The contrast

of the luxurious climate with the inclement region which they had left

behind them, was doubly striking to men who, for upwards of half a year,

had seen nothing but the ocean or the deserts of Cape Horn. They now

proceeded vigorously to the chief purposes of their voyage. The captain

and his officers prepared their instruments to observe the transit,

while Banks and his botanical attendants ranged the island, made

themselves acquainted with its natural productions, and conciliated the

natives. The effect of his intelligence and intrepidity was conspicuous

on an occasion which might have involved the scientific fate of the

expedition. The quadrant, though under charge of a sentinel, had been

stolen by the adroitness of some of the natives. But without it no

observation could be taken. Banks volunteered to go in search of it into

the woods, made himself master of it, and conveyed it in safety to the

observatory; though followed by parties of the natives, and occasionally

compelled to keep them at bay by exhibiting his pistols.

The transit was successfully observed, but it took six hours for the

operation. As the period approached, even the crew had felt the

strongest anxiety for its success. The state of the sky was reported

every half hour during the night before, and their spirits rose and fell

as the report gave its answer, clear or cloudy. But at dawn the sky was

brilliant, and the day passed without a cloud. Four other observations

had been simultaneously made, in Siberia, Lapland, Hudson's Bay, and

California. The general result gave the sun's distance at nearly

ninety-four millions of miles.

The next object of the voyage was a search for the great southern

continent, which the philosophers of the day had conceived to exist, as

a "necessary balance" to the mass of land in the northern hemisphere.

But conjectural philosophy is often at fault, and necessary as this

terrestrial balance was asserted to be, no "great" southern continent

has yet been found. For a while, even Cook's sagacity seems to have been

deceived by the mountains of New Zealand, which had been discovered, in

1620, by Tasman. Cook sailed round it, and explored its shores for six

months. He then, on his homeward voyage, examined the east coast of New

Holland. Of course, it is not the intention of this paper to trace a

career so well known as that of the celebrated navigator. We refer to

its incidents, merely as connected with Sir Joseph Banks. They had run

about thirteen hundred miles of the coast, when, after having received

some alarm from the neighbourhood of coral reefs, the vessel suddenly

struck. It was Cook's sagacious habit, nightly, to give all his orders

and precautions before he went to rest; and thus, after having done all

that prudence could do, he undressed, went to bed, and such was the

composure of his mind that he instantly fell asleep. But immediately on

the vessel's striking, the captain was on deck, and giving his orders

with his characteristic coolness. The light of the moon showed the

sheathing boards of the ship floating all round, and at last her false

keel. Their fate appeared imminent, but it was only when the day broke,

that they became fully sensible of their forlorn condition. The land was

at eight leagues' distance. There were no intermediate islets on which

the crew might be saved, and the boats were wholly insufficient to take

them all at once. To lighten the ship was their first object. Guns,

ballast, stores, every thing was thrown over. After two tides they were

enabled to get the ship afloat. To their great relief, the leak did not

seem to gain upon them, though to keep it down required the labour of

the men night and day. At length a midshipman fortunately suggested an

expedient which he had once seen adopted at sea. This was to draw under

the ship's bottom a sail, to which were fastened oakum, flax, and other

light substances. The sail thus covered the leak, and enabled the ship

to swim. On pursuing their voyage, and reaching a river, in which they

attempted to repair the ship, they found that her preservation, in the

first instance, was owing to the extraordinary circumstance of a large

fragment of rock which had stuck into the vessel, and thus partially

stopped up the leak. In this most anxious emergency Sir Joseph Banks and

his party exhibited all the coolness and intrepidity which were

required; and in the subsequent account of the voyage, received from

Cook himself well-merited praises.

Another peril likely to be attended with still more certain ruin, now

assailed the crew. The scurvy began to make its appearance. The

devastations of this dreadful disease, in the early history of our

navigation, fortunately now appear almost fabulous. It was a real

plague; it seemed almost to dissolve the whole frame; teeth fell out,

limbs dropped off, and the sufferer sank into a rapid, and, as it was

once thought, an inevitable grave. It is a remarkable instance of the

powers which man possesses to counteract the most formidable evils, that

this terrible disease is now scarcely known. It has been overpowered

solely by such simple means as fresh meat and vegetables, and a drink

medicated with lemon-juice. Simple as those expedients are, they have

saved the lives of thousands and tens of thousands of the sea-going

population of England.

But new hazards, arising alike from the imperfect condition of the

vessel and their ignorance of the coast, continued to pursue them. Never

was a voyage attempted with greater difficulties to surmount, or

achieved with more triumphant success; after having explored two

thousand miles of this perilous coast, Cook took possession of it in the

name of his king, giving it the title of New South Wales.

At length he arrived at Batavia, where, on laying up his ship to repair,

it was discovered that their preservation throughout this long voyage

had been little less than miraculous, her planks having been in many

instances worn "as thin as the sole of a shoe." But their trials were

not yet over: the marsh fever quickly laid up the crew; the captain,

Banks, and Solander, were taken seriously ill. They set sail from this

pestilential island as soon as possible; but before they reached the

Cape, three-and-twenty had died, including Green the astronomer, and the

midshipman whose suggestion had saved the ship. At length, on the 12th

of July 1771, they cast anchor in the Downs, and Cook and his companions

were received with national acclamation.

The triumph of the navigation was naturally due to Cook, but the most

important part of the knowledge which had been communicated to the

empire was due to the labours of Banks. It was from his journals, that

the chief details of the habits, manners, and resources of the natives

were derived. The vegetable, mineral, and animal products of the Society

Islands, and of New Holland, New Zealand, and New Guinea, had been

explored, and a vast quantity of general intelligence was obtained

relative to countries, which now form an essential portion of the

British empire. The novelty of those possessions has now worn off, their

value has made them familiar. We are fully acquainted with their

products, however we may be still ignorant of their powers. But, at the

period of this memorable voyage, the Southern Hemisphere was scarcely

more known than the hemisphere of the moon. Every league of the coasts

of New Holland, and the islands of the Great Southern Ocean, abounded

with natural perils, heightened by the necessary ignorance of the

navigator. Even to this day, many a fearful catastrophe attests the

difficulties of the navigation; the coral rocks were a phenomenon wholly

new to nautical experience; and, in all the modern improvements of

nautical science, full room is left for wonder, at the skill, the

intelligence, and the daring, which carried Cook and his companions safe

through the perils of this gigantic navigation.

A new expedition was soon demanded at once by the curiosity of the

people and the interests of science. The dream of a great southern

continent was still the favourite topic of all who regarded themselves

as philosophers in England, although Cook had sailed over an

unfathomable ocean, in the very tract where he ought, according to this

adventurous theory, to have found a continent. Sir Joseph Banks again

gallantly volunteered to join the expedition which was equipped for the

discovery. His large fortune enabled him to make unusual preparations;

but such was his zeal, that he even raised a loan for the purpose. He

engaged Zoffani, the painter, with three assistant draughtsmen. He

selected two secretaries and nine attendants, instructed in the art of

preserving plants and animals; he also provided books, drawings, and

instruments. But his natural ambition was suddenly thwarted by the

opposition of Sir Hugh Palliser, controller of the navy. For whatever

reason--and it is now difficult to imagine any, except some jealousy too

contemptible to name--so many obstructions were thrown in the way, that

Banks relinquished the pursuit, and turned his attention to a voyage to

Iceland. His suite, seamen and all, amounting to forty persons, reached

the island in 1772, examined its chief natural phenomena, Hecla and its

hot springs, and furnished its historian, Von Troil, with the materials

for the most accurate history of this outpost of the northern world.

On his return to England, he commenced the career, natural to an opulent

man of a cultivated mind, but yet so seldom followed in England by

individuals of even higher means than his own. He fitted up a large

house in Soho Square with all the preparatives for a life of literary

association--a copious library, collections of natural history, and

philosophical instruments. He held frequent conversaziones, gave

dinners, and easily and naturally constituted himself the leader of the

men of science in London. In Lincolnshire, where his chief property

lay, he performed the part of the liberal and hospitable country

gentleman on a large scale; while in London, he was the first person to

whom scientific foreigners were introduced, and the principal patron and

protector of ingenious men.

On the resignation of Sir John Pringle as President of the Royal

Society, Sir Joseph Banks was placed in the chair, in 1778, almost by

acclamation. He had some obvious qualifications for the office, but he

as obviously wanted others. His opulence, his hospitality, and his zeal

for science, were valuable, and are nearly indispensable in the

president of a body which concentrates the chief intellectual force of

the community. But his favourite pursuit, botany, has never deserved the

name of a science, and inevitably bears a character of triviality in the

eyes of the mathematician and the philosopher. The distinction given to

a comparatively young man, known to the world only as a voyager, and a

collector of plants and animals, not unnaturally tended to breed

scoffing among the professors of the severe sciences. The feeling

spread, and the opportunity for its expression was soon found. Dr

Hutton, the mathematical professor at Woolwich, happened to be secretary

for foreign correspondence. His residence at Woolwich was said to

produce some inconvenience in his intercourse with the president; and

the council passed a resolution, in 1783, recommending that "the foreign

secretary should reside in London." The secret history of this

transaction is, that Hutton was one of the mathematical party; though we

cannot distinctly ascertain whether he had actually gone so far as to

sneer at the president. Upon this Hutton resigned the office; to accept

which, the emolument could not have been his object, the salary being

but L.20 a-year--a sum that cannot be mentioned without a sense of

disgrace to a society reckoning among its members some of the wealthiest

men of England.

Hutton's resignation, or rather dismissal, produced an open war in the

society. The mathematicians ranged themselves on the Huttonian side; the

cultivators of natural history, and the cultivators of nothing, ranged

themselves on the side of the president. The mathematicians were headed

by Horsley, afterwards the bishop--a man whom Lord Brougham

characterizes as extremely arrogant, of violent temper, and intoxicated

with an extravagant sense of his own scientific merits, which his noble

biographer pronounces to be altogether insignificant, heading this

charge with the unkindest cut of all, namely, that he was "a priest."

Horsley was certainly no great mathematician, as his publication of the

_Principia_ unluckily shows; but the picture is high coloured, which

represents him as a hot-tempered, loud-tongued, bustling personage--a

sort of bravo of science and theology, who took up the first opinion

which occurred to him, scorned to rectify it by any after-thought, and

plunged from one absurdity into another, for the sake of consistency.

The eloquence of his attacks upon the chair, of whose possession he was

supposed to be foolishly ambitious, was vaunted a good deal by his

partisans. But, as the only evidence of his rhetoric in these squabbles

ever quoted, is one sentence, it is like the pretension to wit on the

strength of a single pun, and may be easily cast aside. This boasted

sentence was uttered, in threatening the secession of the mathematical

party. "The president will then be left with his train of feeble

amateurs, and that toy (the mace) upon the table--the ghost of the

Society in which Philosophy once reigned, and Newton officiated as her

minister."

Horsley's theology was too nearly on a par with his mathematics--he

_was_ harsh and headlong. The fortunate folly of Priestley in

challenging the English clergy to a trial of strength in the old arena

of Unitarianism, gained him an opportunity of crushing an antagonist

whose presumption was in proportion to his ignorance. Accordingly, the

Unitarian was speedily put _hors-de-combat_, and Horsley was rewarded

with a mitre.

The president had long felt that the purpose of this violent lover of

parallelograms was, to unseat him. The question was therefore brought to

a decision, in the shape of a resolution "approving of Sir Joseph Banks

as president, and resolving to support him in his office." This

resolution was carried by 119 to 43.

Honours began now to gather upon him. In 1788 he had been made a

baronet. In 1795 he received the order of the Bath, then generally

restricted to soldiers and diplomatists. In two years after, he was

called to the Privy Council. On the death of the Duke of Ancaster he was

chosen recorder of Boston; but, though often solicited to stand an

election, he was never a member of Parliament. Though professing himself

a Tory, he seems never to have taken any active part in politics,

preserving a curious practical neutrality in Lincolnshire, and giving

his interest to Mr Pelham, a Whig, and Mr Chaplin, a Tory. This, which

his noble biographer curiously seems to consider as a happy proof of the

absence of all party feelings, we should be apt to look upon as a proof

of a degenerate wish to consult his own ease, and of a sluggish

neutrality discreditable to the character of an Englishman.

However, he had more honourable distinctions. In the furious

Revolutionary war--a war of principles and passions, not less than of

public interests, the president of the Royal Society largely exerted his

interest with both governments, to alleviate the sufferings of

scientific men who happened to fall into the hands of the belligerents,

and to effect the restoration of scientific property captured by our

ships of war. In 1802 he was chosen one of the foreign members of the

Institute of France; and his letter of thanks, a little too ardent in

its gratitude, was said to have involved the baronet in some vexations

peculiarly felt by his courtly temperament. He was instantly attacked

for his Gallican panegyric, by a portion of the Royal Society. Cobbett,

who was then looking out for a victim, and whose loyalty was at that

period peculiarly glowing, flew at him like a tiger-cat; and, last and

most dreaded of all, he was said to have received at Windsor some of

those frowns, which to a courtier are a total eclipse of the sun. But

the nation soon had higher things to think of than a slip of the

President's pen, or a little betrayal of his vanity. Napoleon ascended

the throne; and, when the thunderbolts began to fall, the squibs and

crackers flung from hand to hand of little men are of necessity

forgotten.

His latter years were signalized by acts of unequivocal public service.

He is designated by Lord Brougham, and no one can have a better right to

be informed of the fact, as the real founder of the African

Association.--His lordship also regards him as the real founder of the

colony of Botany Bay.--He was the first to suggest the transfer of the

tropical fruits to the West India islands.--British horticulture owed

him great services.--And the British Museum, during forty-two years of

his trusteeship, was the object of his peculiar care, and finally

received the bequest of his excellent library and of all his

collections.

His career, however, was now, by the course of nature, drawing to its

close. Yet, he had lived seventy-eight years in this anxious and

disappointing world, in opulence, in peace, and in public estimation.

But his lot had been singularly fortunate. Few men are without their

share of those troubles which characterize the general condition of

human nature. Sir Joseph Banks had _his_ trial, in physical suffering.

In the first portion of his life he had been remarkable for robust

health and activity; but, from about his fortieth year, he suffered

severely from attacks of gout, which increased so much, that for his

last fourteen years he was scarcely able to walk. His robust mind,

however, enabled him to encounter his disease by increased and extreme

temperance. He gave up all fermented liquors and animal food. He seems

to have derived considerable benefit from D'Huisson's medicine. But his

hour was come; and on the 19th of June 1820, in the seventy-eighth year

of his age, he died--just one year after his honoured and royal friend,

George III.

Thus passed through the world one of those men who are among the most

useful in their generation. It would be idle to pronounce him a genius,

a discoverer, or a profound philosopher. But he served an important

purpose in society; he suggested philosophical enterprise, he protected

the honourable ambition of men whose career, without that protection,

might have closed in obscure suffering: he gave the philosophy and

literature of his time a leader, and formed it into a substantial shape.

In this spirit he employed his life; and he accomplished his purpose

with the constancy and determination of a sagacious and systematic mind.

He might not be a pillar of the philosophical temple of his country, nor

its architrave; but he performed the office of the clamp--he bound

together the materials of both pillar and architrave, and sustained the

edifice alike in its stateliness and in its security.

Lord Brougham's biography of D'Alembert commences with a brief

dissertation on the interest which the mind takes in the study of

mathematics. This study he regards as superior in gratification to every

other, from its independence of external circumstances. In all other

studies, he observes truly, that a large portion of the researches must

depend upon facts imperfectly ascertained from the reports of others,

and upon knowledge impeded by the capricious chances of things; while in

pure science, the principles, the premises, and the conclusions, are

wholly within our own power.

In a passage exhibiting the affluence of the noble lord's language, he

says, "The life of a geometrician may well be supposed an uninterrupted

calm, and the gratification which is derived from its researches, is of

a pure and also of a lively kind--whether he contemplates the truths

discovered by others, with the demonstrative evidence on which they

rest, or carries the science further, and himself adds to the number of

the interesting truths before known. He may be often stopt in his

researches by the difficulties that beset his path; he may be frustrated

in his attempts to discover relations, depending on complicated data,

which he cannot unravel or reconcile; but his study is wholly

independent of accident, his reliance is on his own powers. Contestation

and uncertainty he never can know; a stranger to all controversy, above

all mystery, he possesses his mind in unruffled peace. Bound by no

authority, regardless of all consequences as of all opposition, he is

entire master of his conclusions as of his operations, and feels even

perfect indifference to the acceptance or objection of his doctrines,

because he confidently looks forward to their universal and immediate

admission the moment they are comprehended."

All this is strikingly expressed, yet it is after all but a showy

hypothesis. That pure mathematics have nothing to do with external

existence, may be easily granted; but that mathematicians are exempt

from controversy, is no more a matter of experience than that all

mathematical assertions are self-evident. The history of science is a

direct contradiction of this halcyon hypothesis. The bitterest

controversies, and the most ridiculous too, have been raised on

mathematical opinions. Universal experience tends strongly to the proof,

that no exclusive exertion of the mind is more fatal to its general

vigour, more apt to narrow its range of conception; more distinctly

operative, by its very exclusiveness, and by its making minute truths

the especial object of the mind, in rendering it incapable of those

loftier and broader truths on which depend all the great concerns of

society, all the efficient progress of civilisation, and all the nobler

growth of human powers--than the mere study of mathematics. A spider

drawing his web out of his own fibres, and constructing his little lines

and circles in his dusty corner, is the fittest emblem of the mere

mathematician. In this language, we acknowledge the use of the science;

we protest only against its pretence of superiority. Every man's

experience of college studies may supply him with examples; but we have

room but for one, and that of a sufficiently high order.

When Napoleon assumed the French throne, in his ambition of being

regarded as the universal patron of science he appointed the author of

the _Mechanique Celeste_ a member of his privy council. But La Place,

then and since, the first scientific name of France, was found utterly

inadequate to even the almost sinecure duties of his office. Napoleon

soon found that he could make no use of him. He accordingly consulted

him no longer. "I found his mind," said he, "like his book, full of

_infiniments petits_." Or if we look for further illustration among the

French geometers--the only men among whom the trial can be made, from

their opportunities of power in the Revolution--there was not one of

them who exhibited any qualification for the higher duties of public

life. Bailly, Condorcet, and their tribe, proved themselves utterly

feeble, helpless, and trifling, where manliness, activity, and

intelligence of mind were required. The Savans were swept away like a

swarm of mice, or crushed like musquitoes, when they dared to buzz in

the presence of the public. That they were first-rate mathematicians

there can be no question; that they quarrelled about their mathematical

theories with the bitterness, and not a little in the style of village

gossips, is equally certain; and that, though the Encyclopedists had

chiefly died off before the Revolution, their successors and imitators

were extinguished by their preposterous combination of an avarice of

power, and of an inadequacy to exertion, is a fact written unanswerably

in the history of their trifling career, and of their early scaffolds.

The ridiculous figure made in politics by the first astronomer of

France, at this moment, only strengthens the conclusion.

The life of D'Alembert is, however, one of the happiest illustrations of

the use to which science may be applied, in raising an obscure

individual into public fame. Yet, it is not to be forgotten, that

D'Alembert's European celebrity commenced only when he had laid aside

the exclusive study of mathematics, and devoted himself to general

literature, and, shaking off the dust of his closet, he became a man of

the world.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert was born in November 1717, and was exposed as a

foundling near the church of St Jean le Rond in Paris, and thus called

by the name of the parish. The commissary of the district, taking pity

upon the infant's apparently dying condition, instead of sending it to

the hospital, where it would have inevitably died, gave it to be nursed

by the wife of a poor glazier. In a few days, however, a person named

D'Estouches, a commissary of artillery, came forward, acknowledged the

child, and made provision for its support. The habits of foreign life

are generally so scandalous, that they can scarcely be alluded to

without offending our sense of delicacy. The mother of this infant was

an unmarried woman, living in the very highest circles of Paris, the

sister of Cardinal Tencin, archbishop of Lyons. This woman thus added to

her vice the cruelty of exposing her unfortunate offspring to die of

cold and hunger in the streets. It does not appear that her profligacy,

though notorious, ever affected her position in society. Her coteries

were as gay, her circle was as complete, and her rank as high, as ever.

In the Paris of those days, "throwing the first stone" was unheard of;

its reaction would have been an avalanche; there was no scandal where

there was no concealment; there was no crime where there was no

conscience; and thus danced the world away, until the scourge of a

higher power swept the whole noblesse of France into beggary and exile.

D'Alembert seems to have taken his surname from that of his nurse, and

was sent, when twelve years old, to the College of La Nation, then in

the possession of the Jansenists. There he learned mathematics. On

leaving the college, he returned to the glazier's house, there had one

room for his bedroom and study, lived on the family fare, supported

himself on a pension of L50 a-year left to him by his father, and in

that house lived for forty years. He once made an abortive attempt to

study the law and medicine, but soon grew weary of both, and returned to

mathematics, for which he had a decided predilection. His application to

this study, however, by no means pleased the homely sense of his old

nurse. "You will never be any thing better than a philosopher," was her

usual saying. "And what's a philosopher?--a fool, who wears out his

life, to be spoken of after he is dead."

But D'Alembert had evidently a passion for science; and in his

twenty-third year he sent to the Academy of Sciences an analytical

paper, which attracted general notice. This was followed by his

admission into the society, at the unusually early age of twenty-four.

From this period, he proceeded for eighteen years, constantly furnishing

the Academy with papers, which added greatly to its reputation and his

own. In a note on the presumed discovery of Taylor's Theorem by

D'Alembert, the noble biographer alludes to what he regards as a similar

event, the discovery of the "Binomial Theorem" by himself. We must

acknowledge, that we cannot easily comprehend how any student, within

the last hundred years, could have had this "discovery" to make--the

Binomial Theorem being one of the very first which meets the eye of the

algebraist, in Newton's, and every other treatise on analysis. It seems

to us very like an English reader's "discovery" of the alphabet, or, at

least, of the recondite art of spelling words of two syllables. But

D'Alembert was at length to find, that if he was to obtain either fame

or fortune, he must seek them in some other road. At this period,

infidelity had become the distinction of all who arrogated to themselves

intellectual accomplishment. The power of the crown, and the power of

the clergy, had hitherto made its expression dangerous; but the new

liberalism of the throne having enfeebled its power, the reign of the

libeller, the rebel, and the sceptic openly commenced. The opulence of

the clergy increased the bitterness of their enemies; and the blow which

was intended to lay the throne in the dust, was nominally aimed at

religion. Voltaire had commenced this crusade half a century before; but

the arch-infidel lived beyond the dominion of France, possessed an

independent income, had acquired the reputation of the wittiest man in

Europe, and had established a species of impunity by the pungency of his

perpetual sneers. During this period, French infidelity had been silent

through fear, but it was not the less virulent, active, and general. It

appeared in the result, that almost the whole of the French higher

orders were either deists or total unbelievers. All the literary men of

France followed the example of Voltaire, and a scoff at religion was

always accepted as an evidence of wit. France loves extremes; and, as

the poplar literature of Paris is now plunged in impurity, fifty years

ago it was characterized by outrageous blasphemy. The only religion

which France knew, was certainly not calculated to repress the evil. Its

fantastic exhibitions and grim formalities, were equally obnoxious to

the human understanding. Its persecuting spirit insulted the growing

passion of the people for liberty; while its fierce dogmas, contrasting

with its ridiculous traditions, supplied the largest materials at once

for horror and ridicule.

At length the storm broke forth. The infidelity which had danced and

smiled, and made _calembourgs_ and scoffed, in the full-dress circles of

the nobles; made its appearance in the streets and highways, in rags and

riot, with the axe for the pen, and blood for the ink, and trampled the

whole polished race of scoffers in the mire of Revolution.

The _Encyclopedie_ was the great text-book of the literary faction, and

Diderot and D'Alembert were the editors of its first seven

volumes--D'Alembert writing the preliminary discourse upon the progress

of the sciences. But the latter mixed caution with his courage; for on

the issue of the government prohibition of the work, he abandoned the

editorship and left it to Diderot.

At length, in 1752, the King of Prussia, who, with all his fame, had the

weakness of being emulous of French flattery, offered him an appointment

at Berlin, with an allowance of five hundred pounds a-year, and the

reversionary office of president of the academy. But this royal offer he

refused, on the ground of his reluctance to quit Paris, and the fear

that the employment would be inconsistent with his freedom. At this

period his fixed income seemed to be about seventy pounds a-year; yet,

when we suffer ourselves to be astonished at the apparent magnanimity of

the refusal, we are to remember that this sum, a hundred years ago, and

in Paris, would be about equivalent to two hundred pounds a-year in

England at the present day; that, like all Frenchmen, he hated Germany;

that Frederic's dealings with Voltaire gave by no means a favourable

specimen of his friendships; and that, to a Frenchman of that day,

Paris was all the world. But, ten years after, the Empress Catharine

made him the much more tempting offer of the tutorship of her son,

afterwards the unfortunate Emperor Paul. The salary was to be

magnificent, no less than four thousand pounds a-year; still he refused

the offer, and preferred remaining in Paris.

Whether we are to applaud his magnanimity, or blame his habits, on this

occasion, may fairly be a question. The possession of the four thousand

pounds a-year, even if it were limited to the period of tuition, would

have made him opulent; and his opulence would undoubtedly have given him

the means of extensive benevolence, of relieving private distress, of

assisting his less fortunate literary brethren, of promoting public

objects, and ultimately, perhaps, of founding some valuable institution

which might last for ages. But D'Alembert, and men like him, seem to

live only for themselves. It would have cost him an absence from Paris

for a certain period to have obtained this power of public good; and he

preferred living without it, and haunting, night after night, the

coteries of the old blue-stockings who kept open house for the evening

gossipry of the capital.

Nothing can form a stronger contrast to the general passion of the

French character for change, than its devotion to the same coterie for

half a century together. In the middle of the eighteenth century two

houses in Paris were especially the rendezvous of the talkers, idlers,

and philosophers of Paris. That some of those visitants were men of

remarkable ability, there can be no doubt. But this perpetual haunting

of the same coffee-cups, this regularity of trifling, this wretched

inability to remain at home for a single evening, is so wholly

irreconcilable with our English sense of domestic duties, of the

attachment of parents to their families, and of the exercise of the

natural affections, that we find it utterly impossible to attach any

degree of respect to the perpetual lounger at another's fire-side.

Madame Geoffrin had now succeeded to Madame de Tencin, as the receiver

of the coterie. Madame du Deffand held a kind of rival, but inferior,

coterie. The former had a house, the latter had only a lodging; the

former was good-humoured, amiable, and kind--the latter satirical and

cold; but both were clever, and, at all events, both received the

gossips, wise and foolish, of Paris. At the lodging of Madame du

Deffand, D'Alembert met Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, a species of

companion to Madame. She was the illegitimate daughter of a woman of

fashion, as D'Alembert was the son. The circumstance was too common in

Parisian high life, to involve any censure on the parents, or any

disgrace on the children; but it may have produced a degree of sympathy,

which suddenly rose to its height by their taking a lodging together!

Those things, too, were so frequent in France, that, except the laugh of

the moment, no one seems to have taken notice of the connexion; and they

continued to carry it on, as well received as ever, and holding their

evening coterie with undiminished applause.

"No one," observes the noble biographer, "whispered a syllable of

suspicion, respecting a connexion which all were fully convinced could

be only of the most innocent kind." This French credulity is too simple

for our credence. That a he and she philosophic pair should have lived

in the same apartments for a dozen years with perfect innocency, may

have been the case in Paris; but the story would not be believed in any

less immaculate region on the face of the earth. The plain truth seems

to be, that the general looseness of Parisian society saw nothing gross

in the grossest connexion. Even where they affected virtue, they

palpably preferred their having an evening lounge open to them, to any

consideration grounded on common propriety and a sense of shame.

But the philosopher was a dirty fellow after all, and it only does

credit to his noble biographer's sense of propriety to admit, that "his

conduct must seem strange to all men of right and honourable feelings."

In fact, the philosopher seems to have lent his aid very zealously to a

correspondence carried on by his sensitive fellow-lodger! with a view to

a marriage with a Spanish Marquis Mora. Among other proofs, he went

every morning to the post-office to receive the Spaniard's letters for

the lady. "I confess," says Lord Brougham, "I am driven, how reluctantly

soever, to the painful conclusion, that he lent himself to the plan of

her _inveigling_ the Spaniard into a marriage." And this was not the

only instance of his by-play. Mademoiselle professed also to have fallen

in love with a M. Guibert, known as a military writer. Guibert exhibited

his best tactics, in keeping clear of the lady. "All this time, she

continued," says his lordship, "to make D'Alembert believe, that she had

no real passion for any one but himself." No one can easily suppose that

they were not connected in a plan of obtaining for her a settlement in

life by marriage. But, if this marriage-intrigue was in every sense, and

on all sides, contemptible; what are we to think of the nature of the

connexion existing between this sensitive lady and D'Alembert, living

for years under the same roof? The whole matter would be too repulsive

for the decorums of biography, if it were not among the evidences of

that utter corruption of morals, and callousness of feeling, which were

finally avenged in the havoc of the Revolution.

D'Alembert's income had been increased by his appointment to the office

of secretary to the Academy, in 1772. Unfortunately for his literary

fame, it became a part of his duty to write the _eloges_ of the deceased

members, an office which he fulfilled with equal diligence and

unproductiveness; for, of those unfortunate performances he wrote no

less than eighty-three. But the French are fond of fooleries of this

kind; a few sounding sentences with them are biography; a few rambling

sketches fill up the outline to their taste; and the whole forms a

specimen of that eloquence which men are content to admire on the other

side of the Channel.

At length his career drew to a close. Towards his sixty-fourth year, his

health began to decline. It had never been robust, though his habits had

been temperate; but feebleness of stomach, and an organic disease,

predicted the approach of his dissolution. He died on the 29th of

October 1783, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Notwithstanding his

feebleness of body, his intellectual vigour remained--thus adding one to

the many proofs of the distinct natures of mind and body. In his

intervals of ease, he continued to occupy himself with mathematical

investigations. With a deplorable want of feeling, he talked with levity

of his approaching departure--an event awful to the best, and, to the

wisest, solemn in proportion to their wisdom. He died in the fulness of

that scientific reputation which he deserved, and of that literary

reputation which he did not deserve; but, by the combination of both,

ranking as the most distinguished intellectual name of Europe in his

day.

The life of a later philosopher, the unfortunate Lavoisier, gives Lord

Brougham an opportunity of rendering justice to an eminent foreigner,

and of vindicating the claims of his own still more memorable

countrymen, Black and Watt. Chemistry is especially the science of the

eighteenth century, as geometry was of the seventeenth. It is a

characteristic of that great, however slow, change, which is now

evidently in progress through Europe, that those sciences which most

promote the comforts, the powers, and the progress of the multitude,

obviously occupy the largest share of mental illustration. Of all the

sciences, chemistry is that one which contributes most largely to the

dominion of man over nature. It is the very handmaid of Wisdom,

instructing us in the properties of things, and continually developing

more and more the secrets of those vast and beneficent processes by

which the physical frame of creation is rendered productive to man. It

must thus be regarded as the most essential instrument of our physical

well-being. It takes a part in all that administers to our wants and

enjoyments. Our clothing, our medicine, our food; the cultivation of the

ground, the salubrity of the atmosphere; the very blood, bone, and

muscle of man, all depend on chemical evolutions. But it has its still

loftier secrets; and the experimental philosopher is constantly

stimulated and delighted by his approach to at least the borders of

discoveries which promise to give a nobler insight into the laws of

matter; to exhibit more fully the mechanism formed and moved by the

Divine hand; and to develop the glories of the universe on a scale

continually enlarging, and continually more luminous.

A matchless source of interest in this most effective and essential of

all the sciences, is, that it seems capable of an infinite progress. The

chemical philosopher cannot even conceive any limit to its variety,

multitude, or utility of purpose. The more he discovers, the more he

finds is still to be discovered. Every new property awakens him to the

existence of some other property, more capacious and more profound.

Every difficulty mastered, only leads him towards some deeper and more

tempting problem. And, in addition to the ardour derived from this

triumph of our intellectual ambition--as if all the incentives that can

act upon man were expressly accumulated upon this pursuit--there is no

science in which the actual triumphs are more directly connected with

personal opulence. The invention of a new acid or alkali might create

unbounded wealth. The discovery of a new principle of the most vulgar

use--for tanning leather, for extracting oils, for strengthening soap,

for purifying tallow, might place the discoverer in possession of wealth

beyond the dreams of avarice. But a loftier ambition may still find its

field in this science. A chemical discovery might change the face of the

world. Gunpowder had already changed the whole form of European society.

A chemical discovery might give us the power of managing at our will the

storm and the lightning, of averting the pestilence, or of ensuring the

fertility of the soil, and the regularity of the seasons. The Divine

intention in placing us here, was evidently the perpetual exercise of

the human understanding. For that purpose were given the wants, and the

remedies of the wants, of man; for that purpose all sciences are perhaps

inexhaustible; but of all, the most palpably inexhaustible, the most

teeming with immediate results, and the most remedial as to human

necessities, is Chemistry--fitted by its extent to supply the largest

proportion of human objects, by its power to excite the most eager

inquiry, and by its richness to reward the intelligent labour of man, to

the last ages of the world.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743, the son of one of

the "farmers-general." As the office was nearly hereditary, and was

proverbially connected with great opulence, the son of the rich

functionary was highly educated. But science soon attracted all his

study, and, devoting himself especially to chemistry, he made himself

conspicuous among the leading philosophers of his time.

At the age of twenty-two, he presented to the Academy of Sciences an

analysis of gypsum. At twenty-five he was admitted a member of the

Academy, an unusually early age. In his next year he succeeded his

father in his lucrative office. He then married the daughter of another

farmer-general, and having made this provision for a life of luxury or

public employment, with all that political ambition might offer in the

old _regime_ of France, he collected his books about him, shut himself

up in his study, and gave up his time, fortune, and energy to the

advancement of science.

After occupying himself for a brief period with geology, he commenced

his chemical career by refuting the theories alike of Margraff and Stahl

on the conversion of water into earth. The chemistry of the gases had

made rapid progress in England; and the names of Black, Priestley, and

Cavendish, had already attracted the attention of scientific Europe.

Lavoisier followed in their track by a series of experiments in the

calcination of metals, pursued with remarkable intelligence and

industry. The biographer observes that he was now on the verge of two

dazzling discoveries--the composition of the atmosphere, and the

identity of the diamond with carbon. But he stopped short, and left the

glory to more fortunate investigators.

We hasten from the controversies to which the claim of priority in those

distinguished discoveries gave rise, and come to the more authentic

services of Lavoisier. He was appointed by the minister to superintend

the royal manufacture of gunpowder, which his chemical knowledge enabled

him greatly to improve. He next, by appointment of the National

Assembly, drew up his laborious and valuable memoir on the _Territorial

Wealth of France_. He was now appointed one of the commissioners of the

treasury, and introduced an unexampled regularity into the public

accounts. He aided the formation of the metrical system, the security of

the assignats against forgery, and seems to have borne an active part in

every public matter in which practical science was concerned. In the

mean time he employed himself in scientific agriculture, and set apart a

tract of land on his estate for experimental farming. His style of

living in Paris was at once rational and splendid. His house was open

twice a-week for the reception of distinguished persons, both foreigners

and natives, and especially if they brought with them the recommendation

of scientific ability. With the finest philosophical apparatus in the

possession of any individual in France, he was constantly carrying on

experiments on his own account, or performing them for others whose

means could not meet their expense. This conduct, united to remarkable

amiability of manners, made him popular, and placed him at the head of

French science in his day. But the evil time had come when opulence was

to be a crime, and virtue was to be no longer a safe-guard. The

democratic triumvirate of 1794 issued an order for the seizure of

twenty-seven individuals who had been farmers-general before the

Revolution. The true charge was the crime of being opulent. The popular

and ridiculous charge was, their having mixed deleterious ingredients

with the tobacco. Lavoisier having received information that the order

was about to be executed, fled, and remained for some days in

concealment. On understanding that his flight might injure the other

prisoners, and as his father-in-law was among them, he, with a rash

reliance on the public justice, yet with manly generosity, returned to

Paris, and gave himself up to his oppressors. The course of the

Revolution had been so palpably that of general plunder, that he had

long expected the loss of fortune, and proposed, in case of ruin, to

begin the world again, and live by the profession of medicine.

But, by a furious act of violence, he was condemned to die. He asked

only a few days to complete some experiments which were going on during

his imprisonment. The scoffing answer of this merciless tribunal was,

that the Republic had no need of philosophers; and on the day after this

sentence, the 8th of May 1794, he was hurried to the guillotine with no

less than one hundred and twenty-three other victims, who all died

within a few hours.

On this melancholy and desperate atrocity of republicanism, Lord

Brougham makes the following remark, which, though natural in the lips

of any human being, has double force as coming from one who has seen the

operation of the revolutionary spirit on so large a scale, and during so

extended a portion of his public career.

"The lustre," he observes, "which the labours of Lavoisier had shed over

the scientific renown of France, the valuable services which he had

rendered her in so many important departments of her affairs, the

virtues which adorned his character and made his philosophy beloved as

well as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with which the

tyranny of _vulgar faction_ is sure to recompense the good and the wise,

as often as the _base unlettered multitude_ are permitted to bear sway,

and to place in the seat of dominion their idols, who _dupe_ to

_betray_, and finally punish them."

Lord Brougham justly reprobates the suspicious silence of the celebrated

Carnot on this occasion, and the still more scandalous apathy of

Fourcroix, who had been the pupil and panegyrist of the great chemist

during many years. He acquits him of the deadly imputation, that he had

even been instrumental in sending his master to the guillotine. But he

praises, in contradistinction, M. Halle, who had the honest courage to

proclaim Lavoisier's public services before the dreadful tribunal,

while he consigns the pupil to perpetual scorn. He was murdered in his

fifty-first year.

Lord Brougham's French predilections do credit to his sense of

cosmopolitism; but he appears to us somewhat more disposed to conciliate

the jealousy of his very irritable French _confreres_, than to deal

rigorous justice. No man deserves the reputation of science but a

discoverer. To know all that has been hitherto known on a subject,

deserves the character of diligence; to promote the progress of a

science by largeness of expenditure, or steadiness of exertion, deserves

the praise of liberality and labour; but the man who adds to the science

by original invention, who enlarges its boundaries, and detects new

principles, is the man alone to whom the name of genius can be applied.

Lavoisier was, unquestionably, an important minister of science; he

possessed singular assiduity, unwearied zeal, and remarkable sagacity.

What these could do, he did; what knowledge could accomplish, he

performed; but the inventors were of another country, and of a higher

order, and he must be content with the honours due to imitation. Yet he

had considerable happiness in the difficult art of communicating his

knowledge. His _Treatise on Chemistry_, though now superseded by

subsequent arrangements, is singularly clear; and no great teacher of

chemistry has hitherto given the world a more striking example of

exactness in detail, and clearness in conception.

His cruel death, too, may be almost said to have continued his services

to society. It proved, with irresistible force, the true character of

Infidel Revolution. It showed a noble-minded and benevolent man the

victim of revolutionary rage; an intelligent, studious, and retired man,

obnoxious to the rabble love of ruin; a mild, generous, and patriotic

man, the instant prey of revolutionary government, which boasted of its

superiority to the vices of kings, of its homage to intellect, and of

its supreme value for the virtues of private life. Yet it murdered

Lavoisier without a moment's hesitation, or a moment's remorse, and

flung the first philosopher of France into a felon's grave.

The biography of Adam Smith gives Lord Brougham an opportunity of

pouring out, at the distance of nearly half a century, that knowledge of

Political Economy which first brought him into notice. His _Colonial

Policy_, a remarkable performance for a student of eighteen, exhibited

in miniature the principles and propensities which his long career has

been expended in maturing and moulding. Adam Smith was the idol of all

Scottish worship in the last century; and his originality of conception,

the weight of his subject, and the clearness of his judgment, made him

worthy of the elevation.

Adam Smith's birth was of a higher order than is often to be found in

the instance of men destined to literary eminence. He was the son of a

comptroller of the customs, who had been private secretary to Lord

Loudoun, secretary of state, and keeper of the great seal.

An accident in infancy had nearly deprived the age of its first

philosopher, even if it had not trained him to be hanged. At three years

of age he was stolen by travelling tinkers, a race resembling the

gipsies, and which in that day formed a numerous population in Scotland.

But a pursuit being speedily set on foot, he was fortunately recovered.

He was well educated, and, after the routine of school, was sent to

Glasgow for three years, where he obtained an Exhibition to Baliol

College. At Oxford he remained for seven years, chiefly addicted to

mathematics--a study, however, which he subsequently wholly abandoned.

He had been intended for the Church of England; but whether from dislike

of its discipline, or from disappointment in his views, he retired to

Scotland, to take his chance of employment in its colleges. In 1748 he

settled in Edinburgh, and, for three years, read a course of lectures on

rhetoric. His contemporaries, then obscure, became, in some instances,

conspicuous; for among them were Hume, Robertson, and Wedderburne. In

1751, Smith was elected to the professorship of Logic in the University

of Glasgow, which he soon after exchanged for that of Moral Philosophy.

Thus far we run on smoothly with Lord Brougham; but when he comes to

discuss religion, we must occasionally doubt his guidance. For example,

in speaking of Smith's lectures on Natural Theology, he denounces the

jealousy of those who regard it as other than "the very foundation

essential to support its fabric." From this opinion we totally dissent.

It is perfectly true that natural religion and revelation are consistent

with each other, as must be presumed from their being the work of the

same Divine wisdom. But their foundations are wholly distinct. Why did

the Jew believe the Mosaic revelation? Simply and solely, because it was

delivered to him with such evidences of supernatural origin, in the

thunders of Sinai, and substantiated at subsequent periods by miracle

and prophecy, that he must receive it as divine. Why did the early

converts receive Christianity? Simply on the same direct evidence

supplied to their senses. No apostle sent them to examine their notions

of the Godhead, or left them to inculcate the doctrines of the gospel by

their reason. But he declared his doctrine as a new truth, and gave

proof of its truth being divine, by working wonders palpably beyond the

power of man. Of course, unless man knew what was meant by the power of

the Deity, he could not have comprehended the simplest communication of

the apostle. But we are speaking of the foundation of a belief--not the

intelligibility of a language. We are entitled to go further still, and

say, that the first idea of the being of a God was itself a

revelation--a much plainer solution of the extraordinary circumstance,

that so lofty and recondite a conception should have existed in the

earliest and rudest ages of society; than to suppose that the

antediluvian shepherd, or the postdiluvian hunter, should have ever

thought of tracing effects and causes up to that extreme elevation,

where a pure and supreme Spirit creates and governs the whole. We are

entitled even to doubt whether the idea of Spirit was ever _naturally_

conceived in the mind of any human being, difficult as is the conception

to a creature surrounded with materiality, with every thought derived

from his senses, and with the total incapacity of defining to this hour,

or even imagining, the nature of Spirit. It will be fully admitted, that

when the idea was once communicated, its reality was substantiated by

the frame of nature, by the regularity, the extent, and the beneficence

of the great physical system. But the origin was revelation. Lord

Brougham quotes Tillotson; but the archbishop had earned his mitre by

other means than the vigour of his understanding, and often trifles like

other men.

In 1759, Smith published his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_--a work of

skill and invention, but which has long since fallen into disuse with

the intelligent world. It, however, had the rare good fortune of

attracting the notice of an individual, possessed at once of the taste

to honour, and the will to befriend, a man of original ability. This

volume fell into the hands of the celebrated Charles Townsend, who

proposed that the author should take charge of the young Duke of

Buccleuch, whose mother, the dowager-duchess, he had married. Nothing in

the life of Townsend was more honourable to him than this choice, not

only for its judgment but for its rarity. The generality of men in

possession of affluence think only of themselves, and would value the

most common-place gratification more highly than the encouragement of

the obscure genius, which wanted only that encouragement to shed a new

lustre on its generation. The man of power in general feels its

possession the primary object of his patronage, and sees no purpose in

the immense opportunity given to him by his rank, but to obtain

adherents, and make his power impregnable. Though there may be

exceptions, such is the rule; and with this recollection of the

established course of things, we give all honour to the memory of the

man, without whose patronage the world would probably have lost the

ablest work of its century, the immortal _Wealth of Nations_.

In 1763, Smith was appointed tutor to the young nobleman, resigned his

professorship, and went with his pupil to France. After a residence of a

year and a half at Toulouse, he travelled in Switzerland, and then,

returning to Paris, spent ten months there. His French residence was

peculiarly fortunate. It rubbed off the rust of his seclusion; it

introduced him to the best society of courtly life; and it brought him

into direct intercourse with that whole circle of active intellect and

novel philosophy, which made the Parisian coteries at once the most

bustling and brilliant of Europe. However the horrid profligacy of the

court, and the contemptuous infidelity of high life, might have either

disgusted the morals, or startled even the scepticism of the stranger,

there can be no doubt of the interest which he felt in the society of

such men as Turgot, Necker, D'Alembert, and Quesnay. Smith, some fifteen

or twenty years before, had drawn up a sketch of the principles which he

afterwards developed in his _Wealth of Nations_. Political economy was

then beginning to take a form in French science. Whether it ever

deserved the name of science, or will ever deserve it, may be a grave

question. It depends upon such a multitude of facts, and the facts

themselves vary so perpetually, the "principles" derived from those

facts are so feeble and fluctuating, and common experience so

provokingly contradicts, from day to day, the most laboured conclusions,

that every new professor has a new theory, and every new theory turns

the former into ridicule, itself to be burlesqued by the next that

follows. This at least is known, that Fox declared his suspicion of the

whole, saying, that it was at once too daring to be intelligible, and

too indefinite to be reducible to practice. Even in our day, no two

authors on the subject agree; all the successful measures of revenue and

finance have been adopted in utter defiance of its dogmas; while all the

modern attempts to act upon what are called its principles, have only

convulsed commerce, shaken public credit, and substituted fantastic

visions of prosperity for the old substantial wealth of England. No

occupation could have been fitter for the half-frivolous, half-factious

spirit of France. A revolution in revenue was openly regarded as the

first step to revolution in power; the political economists indulged

themselves in a philosophic conspiracy, and vented their sneers against

the government, under pretext of recognising the rights of trade. It

took but a little more than twenty years to mature this dexterous

contrivance, and the meek friends of free trade had the happiness of

seeing France in a blaze.

Smith, on his return, shut himself up in his study in Kirkcaldy for ten

years. His friends in vain attempted to draw him from his solitude to

Edinburgh: he steadily, we may almost say magnanimously, refused; and at

the end of the tenth year, in 1776, he explained the mystery, by the

publication of the two quarto volumes of his _Enquiry into the Nature

and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_. The work was received with general

congratulation; it was regarded as a new science, although it is

well-known, as stated in the introduction to the biography, that many

others had previously discussed the same subjects. Smith's views,

however, were so much more comprehensive, his division so much more

distinct, and his remarks so much more practical, that he deserved all

the credit of the architect who combines in beauty and utility the beams

and pillars which he finds scattered on the ground. And here we advert

to the obvious benefit of that patronage which had been extended to this

very able man by Townsend. The annuity which had been settled on him as

tutor, had enabled Smith to give up the whole of his time, and the whole

powers of his mind, during those ten years, to this great work. During

nearly twenty years of lecturing, on the other hand, in which his pen

was necessarily employed without ceasing, he seems to have published but

one work, _The Theory of Moral Sentiment_. That he constantly formed

ingenious conceptions, may be easily admitted; but that he wanted either

time or inclination to complete them, is evident from the fact, that he

never suffered them to appear in print, and that one of his dying

directions was, that they should be destroyed by his executors.

He was now a man of fame, and to enjoy it came up to London, where he

resided for two years in the midst of the best society, political and

literary, to be found in England. He was now to be a man of fortune as

well as of fame; he was appointed a commissioner of the customs in

Scotland. He returned to Edinburgh, and commenced the agreeable life of

a man at once distinguished, and opulent to the full extent of his

simple desires, in a society whose names are still regarded as the

lights of Scotland. He lived hospitably, and entertained good society,

but he wrote no more; he was growing old, and Lord Brougham evidently

thinks that the duties of his office exhausted his spirits and occupied

his time. But those duties always partook largely of the nature of a

sinecure; and there is every reason to doubt whether they could have

worn down a man of regular habits, and who had been trained to the

routine of daily business by an apprenticeship of a quarter of a

century. The greater probability is, that Smith felt that he had done

enough for fame; that, knowing the world, he was unwilling to expose

himself to the caprices of critical applause; and that he even felt how

inadequate the early theories which found admirers in the lecture-room,

might be to sustain a character already brought into full publicity by

his own volumes. The fact is certain, that he produced nothing more. In

July 1790, he died, at the age of sixty-seven. It was his custom to give

a supper on the Sunday evening to a numerous circle of friends. How far

this entertainment, which was more consistent with the latitude of his

Paris recollections, was reconcilable with the decorums of Scotland, we

cannot say. But on one evening, after having destroyed his manuscripts,

finding himself not so well as usual, he retired to bed before supper,

and as he went, said to his friends, "I believe we must adjourn this

meeting to some other place." He died in a very few days afterwards.

Lord Brougham has obviously expended his chief labour on the life of

this favourite philosopher, of whom, fifty years ago, every Scottish

economist was a devoted pupil. Times are changed, yet this intelligent

biographer has given a very ample and accurate, so far as we can judge,

analysis of the _Enquiry_. But he would have greatly increased the

obligations of the reader, by giving some portion of his treatise to the

questions which modern artifice has devised, and modern infatuation has

adopted.

An interesting "memoir" of Johnson commences the volume; but the topic

would lead us too far. The biographer gives that literary Samson full

applause for the strength of his understanding, the boldness of his

morality, and the pungency of his wit. Rather to our surprise, he pours

out an eloquent panegyric on Boswell. That we are indebted to this

versatile personage for one of the most amusing and instructive

collections of reminiscences in the history of authorship, will be

readily conceded. But this is the first time of our hearing a demand

that we should pay him any more peculiar homage. But Lord Brougham is

himself the head of a school: his _ipse dixit_ demands acquiescence, and

none can doubt that, if he is singular in his dogmas, he deserves

attention for the vigour of his advocacy.