Skip to main content

Full text of "Lives of men of letters & science, who flourished in the time of George III"

See other formats 


UC-N 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

X 

G-IFT  OF 

M 

HENRY  DOUGLASS  BACON. 

1877. 


Accessions  No.  -_S_g&&_6__  Shelf  No. 


> 


'"» 


sa(o:33iltei 

'  BUS  S** 


MEN   OF   LETTERS    AND    SCIENCE 


TIME    OF   GEORGE    III. 


W3L3L5LIAM  I1  SON, 


/•/// 


'/ 


LIVES 


MEN    OF    LETTERS    AND    SCIENCE, 


WHO  FLOURISHED  IN 


THE  TIME  OF  GEORGE  III. 


BY 


HENRY,   LORD   BROUGHAM,   F.R.S., 

MEMBER  OF  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  FRANCE,  AND  OF  THE 
ROYAL  ACADEMY  OF  NAPLES. 


WITH  PORTRAITS,  ENGRAVED  ON  STEEL. 


LONDON: 
CHARLES  KNIGHT  AND  CO.,  22,  LUDGATE  STREET. 

1815. 


London;  Printed  by  WILLIAM  CLOWKS  and  SONS, Stamford  Street. 


TO 

SIR   JOHN    WILLIAMS, 

&c.     fyc.     $rc. 
ONE  OF  THE  JUDGES  OF  THE  COURT  OF  KING'S  BENCH, 

THIS  WORK  IS  INSCRIBED, 
AS  A  SMALL  MEMORIAL  OF  ANCIENT  FRIENDSHIP. 


(     vii     ) 


PREFACE. 


THE  reign  of  George  III.  may  in  some  important  re- 
spects be  justly  regarded  as  the  Augustan  age  of 
modern  history.  The  greatest  statesmen,  the  most 
consummate  captains,  the  most  finished  orators,  the 
first  historians,  all  flourished  during  this  period.  For 
excellence  in  these  departments  it  was  unsurpassed  in 
former  times,  nor  had  it  even  any  rivals,  if  we  except 
the  warriors  of  Louis  XIV.'s  day,  one  or  two  states- 
men, and  Bolingbroke  and  Massillon  as  orators.  But 
its  glories  were  not  confined  to  those  great  departments 
of  human  genius.  Though  it  could  show  no  poet  like 
Dante,  Milton,  Tasso,  or  Dryden ;  no  dramatist  like 
Shakspeare  or  Corneille ;  no  philosopher  to  equal 
Bacon,  Newton,  or  Locke, — it  nevertheless  in  some 
branches,  and  these  not  the  least  important  of  natural 
science,  very  far  surpassed  the  achievements  of  former 
days,  while  of  political  science,  the  most  important 
of  all,  it  first  laid  the  foundations,  and  then  reared 
the  superstructure.  The  science  of  chemistry  almost 
entirely,  of  political  economy  entirely,  were  the  growth 


viii  PREFACE. 

of  this  remarkable  era ;  while  even  in  the  pure  mathe- 
matics a  progress  was  made  which  almost  changed 
its  aspect  since  the  days  of  Leibnitz  and  Newton.  The 
names  of  Black,  Watt,  Cavendish,  Priestley,  Lavoisier, 
Davy,  may  justly  be  placed  far  above  the  Boyles,  the 
Stahls,  the  Hales,  the  Hookes  of  former  times ;  while 
Euler,  Clairault,  Lagrange,  La  Place,  must  be  ranked 
as  analysts  close  after  Newton  himself,  and  above  Des- 
cartes, Leibnitz,  or  the  Bernouillis ;  and  in  economical 
science,  Hume,  Smith,  and  Quesnai  really  had  no  pa- 
rallel, hardly  any  forerunner.  It  would  also  be  vain  to 
deny  great  poetical  and  dramatic  genius  to  Goldsmith, 
Voltaire,  Alfieri,  Monti,  and  the  German  school,  how 
inferior  soever  to  the  older  masters  of  song. 

But,  above  all,  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  that  in  our 
times  the  mighty  revolution  which  has  been  effected  in 
public  affairs,  and  has  placed  the  rights  of  the  people 
throughout  the  civilized  world  upon  a  new  and  a 
firm  foundation,  was  brought  about,  immediately  in- 
deed by  the  efforts  of  statesmen,  but  prepared,  and 
remotely  caused,  by  the  labours  of  philosophers  and 
men  of  letters.  The  diffusion  of  knowledge  among  the 
community  at  large  is  the  work  of  our  own  age,  and 
it  has  made  all  the  conquests  of  science  both  in  recent 
and  in  older  times  of  incalculably  greater  value,  of  in- 
comparably higher  importance  to  the  interests  of  man- 
kind, than  they  were  while  scientific  study  was  con- 
fined within  the  narrow  circles  of  the  wealthy  and 
the  learned. 


PREFACE.  ix 

Having,  therefore,  on  retiring  from  office,  more 
time  left  for  literary  pursuits  than  professional  and 
judicial  duties  had  before  allowed  me,  I  was  not  minded 
to  waste,  indolent  and  inactive,  or  enslaved  by  lower 
occupations,  that  excellent  leisure  : — "  Non  fuit  consi- 
lium  socordia  atque  desidia  bonum  otium  conterere; 
neque  vero  agrum  colendo,  aut  venando,  servilibus  offi- 
ciis  intentum,  setatem  agere.  Statutum  res  gestas  po- 
puli  nostri  carptim,  ut  queeque  memoria  digna  videban- 
tur,  perscribere ;  eo  magis  quod  mihi  a  spe,  metu,  par- 
tibus  reipublicse,  animus  liber  erat."*  For  I  conceived 
that  as  portrait-painting  is  true  historical  painting  in 
one  sense,  so  the  lives  of  eminent  men,  freely  written, 
are  truly  the  history  of  their  times ;  and  that  no  more 
authentic  account  of  any  age,  its  transactions,  the 
springs  which  impelled  men's  conduct,  and  the  merits 
which  different  actors  in  its  scenes  possessed,  can  be 
obtained  than  by  studying  the  biography  of  the  per- 
sonages who  mainly  guided  affairs,  and  examining 
their  characters,  which  by  their  influence  they  im- 
pressed upon  the  times  they  flourished  in.  Such  a 
work  had  moreover  this  advantage,  that  beside  pre- 
serving the  memory  of  past  events,  and  the  likeness  of 
men  who  had  passed  from  the  stage,  it  afforded  fre- 
quent opportunities  of  inculcating  the  sound  principles 
of  an  enlightened  and  virtuous  policy,  of  illustrating 
their  tendency  to  promote  human  happiness,  of  exhi- 

*  Sail.,  Cat.,  cap.  iv. 


x  PREFACE. 

biting  their  power  to  raise  the  genuine  glory  as  well 
of  individuals  as  of  nations. 

Though  I  could  entertain  no  douht  that  this  plan 
was  expedient,  no  one  could  more  doubt  than  I  did 
the  capacity  brought  to  its  execution,  or  feel  more  dis- 
trustful of  the  pen  held  by  a  hand  which  had  so  long 
been  lifted  up  only  in  the  contentions  of  the  Senate 
and  the  Forum.  My  only  confidence  was  in  the  spirit 
of  fairness  and  of  truth  with  which  I  entered  on  the 
performance  of  the  task  ;  and  I  now  acknowledge  with 
respectful  gratitude  the  favour  which  the  work  has 
hitherto,  so  far  above  its  deserts,  experienced  from  the 
public,  both  at  home,  in  spite  of  party  opposition,  and 
abroad,  where  no  such  unworthy  influence  could  have 
place.  It  is  fit  that  I  also  express  my  equal  satisfac- 
tion at  the  testimony  which  has  been  borne  to  its 
strict  impartiality  by  those  whose  opinions,  and  the 
opinions  of  whose  political  associates,  differed  the  most 
widely  from  my  own.  That  in  composing  the  work 
I  never  made  any  sacrifice  of  those  principles  which 
have  ever  guided  my  public  conduct,  is  certain  ;  that  I 
never  concealed  them  in  the  course  of  the  book  is 
equally  true  ;  nay,  this  has  been  made  a  charge  against 
it,  as  if  I  was  at  liberty  to  write  the  history  of  my 
own  times,  nay,  of  transactions  in  many  of  which  I 
had  borne  a  forward  part,  and  not  show  what  my 
own  sentiments  had  been  on  those  very  affairs.  But 
if  my  opinions  were  not  sacrificed  to  the  fear  that  I 
might  offend  the  living  by  speaking  plainly  of  the 


PREFACE.  xi 

dead,  so  neither  were  truth  and  justice  ever  sacrificed 
to  those  opinions. 

The  Statesmen  of  George  the  Third's  age  having 
thus  formed  the  subject  of  the  volumes  already  pub-* 
lished,  I  now  offer  to  the  attention  of  the  reader  a 
more    full  and  elaborate  view  of  the   Learned  Men 
who  flourished  in  the  same  period.     In  my  opinion, 
these,  the  great  teachers  of  the   age,  covered  it  with 
still  greater   glory  than   it   drew  from  the  Statesmen 
and  the  Warriors  who  ruled  its  affairs.     It  was  neces- 
sary to  enter  much  more  into  detail  here  than  in  the 
former  branch  of  this  work,  because  a  mere  general 
description  of  scientific  or  of  literary  merit  is  of  ex- 
ceedingly little  value,  conveying  no  distinct  or  precise 
idea  of  the  subject  sought   to  be  explained.     It  ap- 
peared   the   more   necessary  to  discuss  these  matters 
minutely,  because  upon  some  of  them  much  prejudice 
prevailed,  and  no  attempt  had  hitherto  been  made  to 
examine  them   completely,   or  even  impartially.      Of 
this  a  remarkable  example  is  afforded  by  the  want 
of  any  thing   that    deserves  the  name  of  a  Life  of 
Voltaire,  and  by    the  great  prejudices,  both  favour- 
able and  unfavourable  to  him,  which,  among  differ- 
ent classes,  exist  on  the  subject.     But  it  must  also 
be  observed  that  Dr.  Black's  discoveries  have  been  far 
from  attaining  the  reputation  which  they  so  well  de- 
serve as   the   foundation   of  modern   chemistry  ;  and 
justice  to  this  illustrious  philosopher  required  that  the 
consequences  arising  from  his  modesty  and  his  great 


xiv  PREFACE. 

powers  so  infinitely  below  theirs,  he  may  hope  to  have 
obtained  some  little  success,  and  done  some  small 
service  to  the  good  cause,  he  can  only  ascribe  this 
fortune  to  the  intrinsic  merits  of  that  cause  which  he 
has  ever  supported.*  He  ventures  thus  to  hope  that 
no  one  will  suspect  him  of  being  the  less  a  friend  to 
religion,  merely  because  he  has  not  permitted  his 
sincere  belief  to  make  him  blind  regarding  the  literary 
merit  of  men  whose  opinions  are  opposed  to  his 
own.  His  censures  of  all  indecorous,  all  unfair,  all 
ribald  or  declamatory  attacks,  however  set  off  by  wit  or 
graced  by  eloquence,  he  has  never,  on  any  occasion, 
been  slow  to  pronounce. 

Chateau  Eleanor- Louise  (Provence),  Jan.  8,  1845. 


*  It  has  given  me  a  most  heartfelt  satisfaction  to  receive  many 
communications  from  persons  both  at  home  and  abroad,  which  inti- 
mated their  having  been  converted  from  irreligious  opinions  by  the 
*  Commentaries  and  Illustrations  of  Paley,'  published  in  1 835  and 
1838. — It  must  be  noted  that  the  passage  of  the  present  work  in 
which  Dr.  Lardner  is  mentioned  as  an  orthodox  writer,  refers  to  the 
great  question  between  Christians  and  Infidels.  He  was  an  Uni- 
tarian, undoubtedly  ;  but  his  defence  of  Revelation  forms  really  the 
groundwork  of  Dr,  Daley's  '  Evidences/ 


CONTENTS. 


VOLTAIRE 

Page 

ROUSSEAU  . 

HUME 

195 

ROBERTSON 

.     256 

BLACK 

.     324 

WATT        .        . 

352 

PRIESTLEY 

.     402 

CAVENDISH 

429 

SIMSON 

.     448 
467 

-•///  /////•//////»//(     V/ •/////-,  /y  ^  s/ /,/ 
'  //f<  Y/f  v/  //  //v   f     Vx. ;  //: ///// ' 


.'.iiJjatt  Street 


MEN  OF  LETTERS 


OF   THE 


TIME    OF   GEORGE    III. 


VOLTAIRE. 

THIS  name  is  so  intimately  connected  in  the  minds  of 
all  men  with  infidelity,  in  the  minds  of  most  men  with 
irreligion,  and,  in  the  minds  of  all  who  are  not  well- 
informed,  with  these  qualities  alone,  that  whoever 
undertakes  to  write  his  life  and  examine  his  claims  to 
the  vast  reputation  which  all  the  hostile  feelings 
excited  by  him  against  himself  have  never  been  able 
to  destroy,  or  even  materially  to  impair,  has  to  labour 
under  a  great  load  of  prejudice,  and  can  hardly  expect, 
by  any  detail  of  particulars,  to  obtain  for  his  subject 
even  common  justice  at  the  hands  of  the  general 
reader.  It  becomes,  therefore,  necessary,  in  the  outset, 
to  remove  a  good  deal  of  misunderstanding  which, 
from  the  popular  abuse  of  language,  creates  great  con- 
fusion, in  considering  the  history  and  weighing  the 
merits  of  this  extraordinary  person. 

The  mention  of  Voltaire  at  once  presents  to  every 
one  the  idea,  not  so  much  of  a  philosopher  whose  early 
inquiries  have  led  him  to  doubt  upon  the  foundations 
of  religion,  or  even  to  disbelieve  its  truths,  as  of  a 
bitter  enemy  to  all  belief  in  the  evidence  of  things 

B 


2  VOLTAIRE. 

unseen — an  enemy  whose  assaults  were  directed  by 
malignant  passions,  aided  by  unscrupulous  contrivances, 
and,  above  all,  pressed  by  the  unlawful  weapon  of 
ridicule,  not  the  fair  armoury  of  argument ;  in  a 
word,  he  is  regarded  as  a  scoffer,  not  a  reasoner.  Akin 
to  this  is  the  other  charge  which  makes  us  shudder 
by  the  imputation  of  blasphemy.  Now,  upon  this 
manner  of  viewing  Voltaire  some  things  are  to  be 
explained,  and  some  to  be  recalled,  that  they  may  be 
borne  in  mind  during  the  discussion  of  his  character. 
Let  us  begin  with  the  last  charge,  because,  until  it 
is  removed,  no  attention  is  likely  to  be  gained  by  any- 
thing that  can  be  urged  in  defence  or  in  extenuation. 
It  is  evident  that,  strictly  speaking,  blasphemy  can 
only  be  committed  by  a  person  who  believes  in  the 
existence  and  in  the  attributes  of  the  Deity  whom  he 
impugns,  either  by  ridicule  or  by  reasoning.  An  atheist 
is  wholly  incapable  of  the  crime.  When  he  heaps 
epithets  of  abuse  on  the  Creator,  or  turns  His  attributes 
into  ridicule^  he  is  assailing  or  scoffing  at  an  empty 
name — at  a  being  whom  he  believes  to  have  no 
existence.  In  like  manner  if  a  deist,  one  who  dis- 
believes in  our  Saviour  being  either  the  Son  of  God 
or  sent  by  God  as  his  prophet  upon  earth,  shall  argue 
against  his  miracles,  or  ridicule  his  mission  or  his 
person,  he  commits  no  blasphemy;  for  he  firmly 
believes  that  Christ  was  a  man  like  himself,  and  that 
he  derived  no  authority  from  the  Deity.  Both  the 
atheist  and  the  deist  are  free  from  all  guilt  of  blas- 
phemy, that  is,  of  all  guilt  towards  the  Deity  or 
towards  Christ.  It  is  wholly  another  question 
whether  or  not  they  are  guilty  towards  men.  They 


VOLTAIRE.  3 

plainly  are  so  if  they  use  topics  calculated  to  wound 
the  feelings  of  their  neighbour  who    believes  what 
they  disbelieve ;  because  religion,  unlike  other  subjects 
of  controversy,  is  one  that  mixes  itself  with  the  strongest 
feelings  of  the  heart,  and  these  must  not  be  rudely 
outraged ;  because  no  man  can  be  so  perfectly  certain 
that  he  is  himself  right  and  others  are  wrong,  as  to 
justify  him  in  thus  making  their  opinions  the  subject 
of  insolent  laughter  or  scurrilous  abuse  ;  because  it  is 
our    duty,   even  when  fully  convinced   that    we   are 
dealing  with  error,  and  with  dangerous  error,  to  adopt 
such  a  course  as  will  rather  conciliate  those  we  would 
gain  over  to  the  truth  than  make  them  shut  their  eyes 
to  it  by  revolting  their  strongest  feelings.     Hence  all 
law-givers  have  regarded  such  scoffing  and  insolent 
attacks  on  the  religion  professed  by  the  great  majority 
of  their    subjects    as    an    offence  justly    punishable ; 
although  it  may  fairly  be  doubted  whether  the  inter- 
position of  the  law  has  ever  had  a  tendency  to  protect 
religious  belief  itself,  and  may  even  be  suspected  of 
having  favoured  the  designs  of  those  who  impugn  it, 
both  by  the  reaction  which  such  proceedings  always 
occasion,    and   by    the    more  cautious  and  successful 
methods  of  attack  to  which  they  usually  drive  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  national  faith.     But  the  offence,  whether 
punished   by   the   laws    or    not,    is  very    incorrectly, 
though  very  generally,  termed  blasphemy,  which  is 
the  offence  of  scoffing  at  the  Deity,  and  assumes  that 
the  scoffer  believes  in  him.     Now  it  is  barely  possible 
that  this   offence   may  be    committed ;    but  it  is  the 
act  of  a  mad  rather  than  a  bad  man.     If,  indeed,  any 
one  really  believing  pretends  to  unbelief  in  order  to 

B2 


4  VOLTAIRE. 

indulge  in  scoffing,  no  language  is  too  strong  to  express 
the  reprobation  he  deserves,  if  he  be  in  his  senses  ;  for 
he  adds  falsehood  to  a  crime  so  horrible  as  almost  to 
pass  the  bounds  of  belief — the  frightful  act  of  wilfully 
rebelling  against  the  Almighty  Creator  of  heaven  and 
earth. — This  is  the  first  and  worst  form  of  the  offence. 

Secondly :  The  like  guilt  will,  to  a  certain  extent, 
be  incurred  by  him  who  vents  his  ribaldry,  upon  the 
mere  ground  of  his  scepticism.  On  such  a  subject 
doubting  is  not  enough.  Unless  there  is  an  entire 
conviction  in  the  mind  that  the  popular  belief  is  utterly 
groundless  in  the  one  case  (that  of  attacking  the 
Deity)  that  there  is  a  God,  in  the  other  (attacking1 
Christianity)  that  there  is  a  foundation  for  revelation, 
the  guilt  of  blasphemy  is  incurred.  He  must  be  con- 
vinced, not  merely  doubt,  or  see  reason  for  doubting ; 
because  no  one  has  a  right  to  speculate  and  take  the 
chances  of  being  innocent ;  guiltless  if  his  doubts  are 
well  founded,  guilty  if  they  are  not.  The  virtuous 
course  here  is  the  safe  one.  This  is  the  moral  of  the 
fable  in  which  the  hermit  answers  the  question  of  the 
rake,  "  Where  are  you,  father,  if  there  be  not  another 
world  ?"  with  the  other  question,  "  And  you,  my  son,  if 
there  be?'*  We  need  not  go  so  far  as  some  have  done, 
who  on  this  ground  contend  that  it  is  safer  always 
to  believe  than  to  doubt,  because  belief  must  ever,  to  be 
of  any  value,  depend  on  conviction.  But  we  may 
assuredly  hold  that  the  better  conduct  is  that  which 
abstains  from  attack  and  offence  where  the  reasons 
hang  in  suspense — abstains  because  of  the  great  guilt 
incurred  if  the  doubts  should  prove  groundless. 

It  is  a  third  and  lesser  degree  of  this  offence  if  a 


VOLTAIRE.  5 

person  carelessly  gives  way  to  a  prevailing  unbelief, 
and  does  not  apply  his  faculties  to  the  inquiry  with 
that  sober  attention,  that  conscientious  diligence, 
which  its  immense  importance  demands  of  all  rational 
creatures.  No  man  is  accountable  for  the  opinion  he 
may  form,  the  conclusion  at  which  he  may  arrive, 
provided  that  he  has  taken  due  pains  to  inform  his 
mind  and  fix  his  judgment.  But  for  the  conduct  of 
his  understanding  he  certainly  is  responsible.  He 
does  more  than  err  if  he  negligently  proceeds  in  the 
inquiry;  he  does  more  than  err  if  he  allows  any 
motive  to  sway  his  mind  save  the  constant  and  single 
desire  of  finding  the  truth ;  he  does  more  than  err  if 
he  suffers  the  least  influence  of  temper  or  of  weak 
feeling  to  warp  his  judgment ;  he  does  more  than  err 
if  he  listens  rather  to  ridicule  than  reason,  unless  it  be 
that  ridicule  which  springs  from  the  contemplation  of 
gross  and  manifest  absurdity,  and  which  is  in  truth 
argument  and  not  ribaldry. 

Now  by  these  plain  rules  we  must  try  Voltaire  ;  and 
it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  he  possessed  such  sufficient 
information,  and  applied  his  mind  with  such  sufficient 
anxiety  to  the  discovery  of  truth,  as  gave  him  a  right 
to  say  that  he  had  formed  his  opinions,  how 
erroneous  soever  they  might  be,  after  inquiring,  and 
not  lightly.  The  story  which  is  related  of  the  Master 
in  the  Jesuits'  Seminary  of  Louis  le  Grand,  where  he 
was  educated,  having  foretold  that  he  would  be  the 
Corypheus  of  deists,  if  true,  only  proves  that  he  had 
very  early  begun  to  think  for  himself;  and  whoever 
doubted  the  real  presence,  or  questioned  the  power  of 
absolution,  was  at  once  set  down  for  an  infidel  ip 


6  VOLTAIRE. 

those  countries  and  in  those  times.  It  would  be  the 
fate  of  any  young  scholar  in  the  Roman  colleges  at 
this  day,  especially  were  he  to  maintain  his  doubts 
with  a  show  of  cleverness ;  and  were  he  to  mingle 
the  least  wit  with  his  argument,  he  would  straight- 
way be  charged  with  blasphemy.  But  it  must  be 
added  that  an  impression  unfavourable  to  the  truths  of 
religion,  and  its  uses,  was  made  upon  Voltaire's  mind 
by  the  sight  of  its  abuses,  and  by  a  consideration  of  the 
manifest  errors  inculcated  in  the  Romish  system.  It  is 
not  enough  to  bring  him  within  the  blame  above  stated 
under  the  third  head,  that  he  was  prejudiced  in  conduct- 
ing his  inquiries,  if  that  prejudice  proceeded  from  the 
errors  of  others  which  he  had  unjustly  been  summoned 
to  believe.  He  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  having  begun 
to  doubt  of  the  truths  of  Christianity  in  consequence 
of  his  attention  having  originally  been  directed  to  the 
foundations  of  the  system  by  a  view  of  the  falsehoods 
which  had  been  built  upon  those  truths.  Even  if  the 
bigotry  of  priests,  the  persecutions  of  sovereigns,  the 
absurdities  of  a  false  faith,  the  grovelling  superstitions 
of  its  votaries,  their  sufferings,  bodily  as  well  as  mental, 
under  false  guides  and  sordid  pastors,  roused  his 
indignation  and  his  pity,  and  these  alternating  emotions 
first  excited  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  afterwards  too  much 
guided  its  course,  we  are  not  on  that  account  to  con- 
demn him  as  severely  as  we  should  one  who,  from 
some  personal  spleen  or  individual  interest,  had 
suffered  his  judgment  to  be  warped,  and  thus,  as  it 
were,  lashed  himself  into  disbelief  of  a  system  alto- 
gether pure,  administered  by  a  simple,  a  disinterested, 
a  venerable  hierarchy. 


VOLTAIKE.  7 

Let  us  for  a  moment,  independent  of  what  may  be 
termed  the  political  view  of  the  question — independent 
of  all  that  regards  the  priesthood — consider  the  posi- 
tion of  a  person  endowed  with  strong  natural  faculties, 
and  not  under  the  absolute  dominion  of  his  spiritual 
guides,  nor  prevented  by  their  authority  from  exercising 
his  reason ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  living  at  a  moment 
when  a  spirit  of  free  inquiry  was  beginning  generally 
to  prevail.  He  is  told  that  the  mystery  of  transubstan- 
tiation  must  be  believed  by  him  as  a  fact;  he  is  told 
that  there  has  been  transmitted  through  a  succession  of 
ages  from  the  apostles  one  of  the  Divine  attributes, 
the  power  of  pardoning  sin,  arid  that  the  laying  a 
priest's  hands  on  a  layman  gives  him  this  miraculous 
power,  to  be  exercised  by  him  how  guilty  soever  may 
be  his  own  life,  how  absolutely  null  his  own  belief  in 
the  Divine  being — nay,  that  this  power  has  come 
through  certain  persons  notorious  atheists  themselves, 
and  whose  lives  were  more  scandalously  profligate  than 
anything  that  a  modest  tongue  can  describe.  Presented 
to  a  vigorous  mind,  and  not  enforced  by  an  authority 
which  suffers  no  reasoning,  or  if  enforced  yet  vainly 
so  enforced,  these  dogmas  and  these  claims  became  the 
subject  of  discussion,  and  were  rejected  almost  as  soon 
as  they  were  understood.  .But  in  company  with  them 
were  found  many  other  doctrines  and  pretensions  of  a 
very  different  complexion,  yet  all  of  them  were  pro- 
nounced to  have  the  same  Divine  original ;  and  no 
greater  sanctity,  no  higher  authority,  no  deeper  vene- 
ration was  claimed  for  them  than  for  the  real  presence 
of  the  Creator  at  the  summons  of  the  priest,  or  the 


8  VOLTAIRE. 

participation  of  that  priest  in  the  attributes  of  the  God- 
head. Let  us  be  just  towards  the  youth  who  was 
placed  in  these  circumstances,  and  let  us  not  condemn 
him  for  hastily  rejecting  the  wheat  with  the  chaff, 
before  we  endeavour  to  place  ourselves  in  the  same 
situation,  asking  what  effect  would  be  produced  on  our 
minds  by  severe  denunciations  against  us  should  we 
doubt  the  priest's  power,  or  refuse  an  explicit  assent  to 
his  dogmas,  which  our  reason,  nay  our  senses  rejected, 
while  he  refused  all  access  to  the  inspired  volumes 
which  contained,  or  were  said  to  contain,  their  only 
warrant.  Rejecting  the  false  doctrines,  the  chances 
are  many  that  our  faith  would  be  shaken  in  the  true. 
How  many  Protestants  were  made  in  the  sixteenth 
century  by  the  sale  of  indulgences !  But  how  many 
unbelievers  in  Christianity  have  been  made  in  all 
ages  of  the  Church  by  the  grosser  errors  of  Rome, 
the  exorbitant  usurpations  of  her  bishops,  and  the 
preposterous  claims  of  her  clergy  ! 

It  is  also  to  be  observed  that  Voltaire  was,  through 
his  whole  life,  a  sincere  believer  in  the  existence  and 
attributes  of  the  Deity.  He  was  a  firm  and  decided, 
and  an  openly  declared  unbeliever  in  Christianity,  but 
he  was,  without  any  hesitation  or  any  intermission,  a 
theist.  Then  in  examining,  the  justice  of  the  charge 
of  blasphemy  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  not  one 
irreverent  expression  is  to  be  found  in  all  his  number- 
less writings  towards  the  Deity  in  whom  he  believed. 
He  has  more  ably  than  most  writers  stated  and  illus- 
trated the  arguments  in  favour  of  that  belief.  He  has 
consecrated  some  of  his  noblest  poetry  to  celebrate  the 


VOLTAIRE.  9 

powers  of  the  Godhead.*  Whatever  exceptionto  this 
assertion  may  seem  to  be  found  in  those  writings  will, 
on  consideration,  prove  to  be  only  apparent.  It  will 
be  found  that  he  is  speaking  only  of  the  Deity  as 
represented  in  systems  of  religion  which  he  dis- 
believed \  consequently  he  is  there  ridiculing  only  the 
idols,  the  work  of  men's  hands,  and  the  objects  of 
superstitious  worsftip,  not  the  great  Being  in  whom  he 
believed  and  whom  he  adored.  Even  his  '  Candide,' 
one  of  his  greatest,  perhaps  his  most  perfect  work,  is 
only  intended  to  expose  the  extravagance  of  the  optimist 
doctrine ;  and  however  we  may  lament  its  tone  in  some 
sort,  it  is  certainly  not  chargeable  with  ridiculing  any- 
thing which  a  philosophic  theist  must  necessarily 
believe. 

But  no  one  can  exempt  Voltaire  from  blame  for  the 
manner  in  which  he  attacked  religious  opinions,  and 
outraged  the  feelings  of  believers.  There  he  is  without 
defence.  Had  all  men  been  prepared  to  make  the  step 


*  His  dramatic  compositions  abound  in  such  religious  sentiments, 
clothed  in  the  noblest  language  of  poetical  abstraction ;  but  his 
celebrated  verses,  said  to  have  been  written  extempore  in  a  com- 
pany that  were  admiring  the  firmament  one  summer's  evening,  may 
be  placed  by  the  side  of  the  finest  compositions  in  that  kind — 

"  Tous  ces  vastes  pays  d'azur  et  de  lumiere, 
Tires  du  sein  du  vide,  formes  sans  matiere, 
Guides  sans  compas,  tournans  sans  pivot, 
N'ont  a  peine  coute  la  depense  d'un  mot." 

When  I  once  cited  these  to  my  illustrious  friend  Monti,  who  never 
would  allow  any  poetical  merit  to  the  French,  he  objected  to  the 
last  phrase,  which  he  called  the  pivot,  as  low  and  prosaic,  and  as 
affording  a  proof  of  his  constant  position  that  the  French  have  no 
poetical  language. 


10  VOLTAIRE. 

which  he  had  himself  taken,  the  wound  would  have 
been  inconsiderable.  But  he  must  have  written  with 
the  absolute  certainty  that  their  religious  belief  would 
long  survive  his  assaults,  and  that  consequently,  to  the 
vast  majority  of  readers,  tbey  could  only  give  pain. 
Indeed  he  must,  in  the  moments  of  calm  reflection, 
have  been  aware  that  reasoning,  and  not  ridicule,  is  the 
proper  remedy  for  religious  error,  and  that  no  one  can 
heartily  embrace  the  infidel  side  of  the  great  question 
merely  because  he  has  been  made  to  join  in  a  laugh  at 
the  expense  of  absurdities  mixed  up  with  the  doctrines 
of  believers  ;  nay,  even  if  he  has  been  drawn  into  a 
laugh  at  the  expense  of  some  portion  of  those  doctrines 
themselves  It  is  no  vindication  for  Voltaire  against 
this  heavy  charge,  but  it  may  afford  some  palliation  of 
his  offence,  if  we  reflect  on  the  very  great  difference 
between  the  ecclesiastical  regimen  under  which  he 
lived,  and  that  with  which  we  are  acquainted  in  our 
Protestant  community.  Let  no  man  severely  condemn 
the  untiring  zeal  of  Voltaire,  and  the  various  forms  of 
attack  which  he  employed  without  measure,  against 
the  religious  institutions  of  his  country,  who  is  not 
prepared  to  say  that  he  could  have  kept  entire  possession 
of  his  own  temper,  and  never  cast  an  eye  of  suspicion 
upon  the  substance  of  a  religion  thus  abused,  nor  ever 
have  employed  against  its  perversions  the  weapons  of 
declamation  and  of  mockery ;  had  he  lived  under  the 
system  which  regarded  Alexander  Borgia  as  one  of  its 
spiritual  guides,  which  bred  up  and  maintained  in  all 
the  riot  of  criminal  excess  an  aristocracy  having  for 
one  branch  of  its  resources  the  spoils  of  the  altar,  which 
practised  persecution  as  a  favourite  means  of  conviction, 


VOLTAIRE.  11 

and  cast  into  the  flames  a  lad  of  eighteen,  charged  with 
laughing  as  its  priests  passed  by.  Such  dreadful  abuses 
were  present  to  Voltaire's  mind  when  he  attacked  the 
Romish  superstitions,  and  exposed  the  profligacy,  as  well 
as  the  intolerance,  of  clerical  usurpation.  He  unhappily 
suffered  them  to  poison  his  mind  upon  the  whole  of 
that  religion  of  which  these  were  the  abuse  ;  and,  when 
his  zeal  waxed  hot  against  the  whole  system,  it  blinded 
him  to  the  unfairness  of  the  weapons  with  which  he 
attacked  both  its  evidences  and  its  teachers. 

The  doctrine  upon  toleration,  upon  prosecutions  for 
infidelity,  even  for  blasphemy,  which  I  have  now  ven- 
tured to  propound,. is  supported  by  the  very  highest 
authority  among  persons  of  the  most  acknowledged 
piety,  and  of  the  warmest  zeal  for  the  interests  of  re- 
ligion. It  was  the  constant  maxim  of  my  revered  friend, 
Mr.  Wilberforce,  that  no  man  should  be  prosecuted  for 
his  attacks  upon  religion.  He  gave  this  opinion  in 
Parliament ;  and  he  was  wont  to  say,  that  the  ground 
of  it  was  his  belief  in  the  truths  of  religion.  "If 
religion  be,  as  I  believe  it,  true,  it  has  nothing  to  fear 
from  any  such  assaults.  It  may  be  injured  by  the 
secular  arm  interfering."  Just  so  the  well-known 
Duke  of  Queensberry,  when  conversing  upon  the 
writings  of  Paine,  and  other  assailants  of  the  consti- 
tution, made  answer  to  a  sycophant,  who  said  of  those 
attacks,  "And  so  false  too," — "  No,"  said  his  Grace,  "not 
at  all :  they  are  true,  and  that  is  their  danger,  and  the 
reason  I  desire  to  see  them  put  down  by  the  law  ; 
were  they  false,  I  should  not  mind  them  at  all." 

In  the  like  spirit  we  have  the  unsuspected  testimony 
of  men  like  Dr.  Lardner  and  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor, 


12  VOLTAIRE. 

Christians  whose  piety  and  virtue,  and  whose  orthodoxy, 
are  beyond  all  suspicion  : — "The  proper  punishment," 
says  Lardner,  "of  a  low,  mean,  indecent,  scurrilous 
way  of  writing,  seems  to  be  neglect,  contempt,  scorn,  and 
final  indignation"  (Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Chester  on  the 
Prosecution  of  Woohton,  1729). — "Blasphemy"  (says 
Taylor)  "  is  in  aliena  republica,  a  matter  of  another 
world.  You  may  as  well  cure  the  colic  by  brushing  a 
man's  clothes,  or  fill  a  man's  belly  with  a  syllogism,  as 
prosecute  for  blasphemy.  Some  men  have  believed  it 
the  more  as  being  provoked  into  a  confidence  and  vexed 
into  a  resolution.  Force  in  matters  of  opinion  can  do 
no  good,  but  is  very  apt  to  do  hurt ;  for  no  man  can 
change  his  opinion  when  he  will.  But  if  a  man 
cannot  change  his  opinion  when  he  list,  nor  ever  does 
heartily  or  resolutely  but  when  he  cannot  do  other- 
wise, then  to  use  force  may  make  him  a  hypocrite, 
but  never  to  be  a  right  believer ;  and  so,  instead  of 
erecting  a  trophy  to  God  and  true  religion,  we  build 
a  monument  for  the  devil"  (Liberty  of  Prophesying, 
s.  xiii.  19.) — Bishop  Warburton  says  plainly,  "he  should 
have  been  ashamed  of  even  projecting  to  write  in 
defence  of  Moses  had  he  not  thought  that  all  infidels 
had  equal  liberty  to  attack  him."  (Dedication  to  the 
Divine  Legation.) 

These  things  being  premised,  we  may  now  proceed 
with  more  ease  and  less  interruption  from  controversial 
topics,  to  examine  the  extraordinary  history  of  this 
eminent  person. 

He  was  the  son  of  the  Sieur  Arouet,  a  person  of 
respectable  family,  filling  the  place  of  treasurer  in  the 
Chamber  of  Accounts,  an  exchequer  office  of  con- 


VOLTAIRE.  13 

siderable  emolument.  His  mother  was  of  a  noble 
family,  that  of  d'Aumart.  A  small  estate  possessed  by 
the  father  was  called  Voltaire ;  and  the  custom  in 
those  days  being  for  the  younger  children  of  wealthy 
commoners  to  take  the  name  of  their  estate,  leaving 
the  family  name  to  the  eldest,  Francois  Marie,  as  the 
younger  of  two  sons^  took  the  name  of  Voltaire,  which 
on  his  brother's  death  many  years  after  he  did  not 
change.  He  was  born  the  20th  of  February,  1 694  ;  and 
being  so  feeble  that  his  life  was  not  expected,  he  was 
baptised  immediately,  the  christening  being  deferred 
till  the  22d  of  November  following.  This  has  given 
rise  to  doubts  at  which  of  the  two  periods  his  birth  took 
place.  It  has  frequently  been  remarked  as  a  singular 
circumstance,  that  two  eminent  authors  who  have 
lived  to  extreme  old  age,  Fontenelle  and  Voltaire, 
were  both  thus  unlikely  at  their  birth  to  live  at  all, 
both  being  born  almost  in  a  dying  condition  ;  yet  not 
only  did  they  enjoy  unusually  long  life,  but  they 
retained  their  great  faculties  entire  to  the  last,  although 
the  one  died  in  his  eighty-fifth  year,  and  the  other 
lived  to  within  a  few  weeks  of  a  hundred. 

When  only  twelve  years  of  age,  he  distinguished 
himself  by  the  excellence  of  some  begging  verses  to 
the  Dauphin  from  an  invalid  who  had  served  under 
the  prince,  and  who  applied  for  this  help  to  the 
Master  of  the  College  of  Louis  le  Grand,  where  Vol- 
taire then  was.  The  master  being  busy,  handed 
him  over  to  his  promising  scholar,  as  being  quite  able 
to  do  what  was  desired.  The  lines  are  very  good,  and 
the  idea  sufficiently  happy.  The  old  soldier  is  made 
to  say  that  the  different  heathen  gods  having  given 


14  VOLTAIRE. 

Monseigneur  various  gilts  at  his  birth,  a  more  benefi- 
cent Deity  had  provided  the  petitioner's  Christmas- 
box  by  bestowing  on  their  favourite  the  boon  of  ge- 
nerosity. It  is  known  that  this  incident  procured  for 
him  the  favour  of  the  famous  Ninon  de  1'Enclos,  then 
in  her  ninetieth  year,  and  to  whom  he  was  presented 
by  his  godfather,  the  Abbe  de  Chateauneuf.  She  died 
soon  after,  and  left  him  a  legacy  of  2,000  francs,  to 
buy  books  with.*  When  his  father  found  that  he  was 
introduced  by  the  Abbe  into  this  and  other  fashion- 
able society,  and  that  he  was  cultivating  his  taste  for 
poetry,  he  became  alarmed  for  his  success  in  life, 
having  destined  him  for  the  profession  of  the  law. 
He  placed  him,  therefore,  in  a  school  of  jurisprudence, 
intending  to  purchase  for  him  a  President's  place,  ac- 
cording to  the  practice  of  the  French  bar  in  those  days. 
Voltaire,  however,  had  already  begun  to  taste  the  sweets 

*  He  has,  in  a  letter  which  remains  (Melanges  Lit.,  ii.  294),  recorded 
many  particulars  of  her  extraordinary  life  and  great  qualities.  Her 
portrait  by  St.  Evremond  is  well  known ;  it  is  happily  drawn  : — 

"  L'indulgente  et  sage  Nature 
A  forme  1'ame  de  Ninon 
De  la  volupte  d'Epicure, 
Et  de  la  vertu  de  Caton." 

In  consequence  of  a  quarrel  between  two  of  her  lovers  there  was  a 
proposition  of  sending  her  to  a  convent  of  "  Filles  repenties :"  she 
said  that  would  not  suit  her,  as  she  was  "  ni  fille,  ni  repentie" 
The  provident  parents  in  good  society  used  to  place  their  sons 
under  her  patronage  to  form  them  for  polite  company.  Of  one 
Renaud,  a  coxcomb  whom  she  was  said  to  have  formed,  she  observed, 
"  Qu'elle  faisait  comme  Dieu,  qui  s'e*tait  repenti  d'avoir  fait  Thornine." 
When  her  old  and  intimate  friend,  Madame  de  Maintenon,  be- 
came devote,  and  offered  to  provide  handsomely  for  her  would 
she  but  follow  her  example,  her  answer  was,  "  Je  n'ai  nul  besoin 
ni  de  fortune,  ni  de  masque." 


VOLTAIRE.  15 

of*  classical  study,  and  he  had  lived  in  a  society  fre- 
quented by  the  Abbe  his  godfather,  who  appears  to 
have  been  a  person  of  loose  morals  and  of  sceptical 
opinions.  The  extreme  bigotry  which  Madame  de 
Maintenon  had  introduced  into  the  Court  of  Versailles 
when  the  declining  faculties  and  health  of  Louis 
XIV.  had  rendered  him  the  victim  of  superstitious 
terrors,  and,  through  these,  the  tool  of  priestly  intole- 
rance, gave  rise  to  a  reaction  in  the  gay  circles  of 
Paris  ;  and  in  resisting  the  inroads  of  that  gloom  by 
which  the  asceticism  of  the  ancient  mistress  had  signa- 
lised her  late  repentance,  the  Contis,  the  Chaulieus, 
the  Sullys,  the  La  Feres,  carried  their  opposition 
further  than  they  perhaps  at  first  intended,  or  even 
afterwards  were  aware  of :  they  patronised  universal 
discussion,  even  of  the  most  sacred  subjects,  and  best 
received  opinions,  until  a  fashion  of  free  thinking  was 
set ;  and  from  being  at  first  revolted  at  the  intolerance 
which  destroyed  Catinat  at  Court,  notwithstanding 
his  genius  and  his  probity,  on  account  of  his  supposed 
infidelity,  and  ascribed  the  defeats  of  Vendome  to  his 
occasional  absence  from  mass,  without  reflecting  that 
Marlborough  was  a  heretic  and  Eugene  a  deist ;  the 
frequenters  of  the  most  polished  society  in  the  world 
became  accustomed  to  believe  more  sparingly  than 
Catinat,  and  see  less  of  the  Host  than  Vendome. 

It  was  in  this  association  that  Voltaire,  then  a  boy, 
became  inured  to  the  oblivion  both  of  his  law  books 
and  of  his  religious  principles,  when  his  parent  made 
a  last  effort  to  save  him,  and  restore  him  to  the 
learned  profession,  and  to  the  bosom  of  the  church, 
by  sending  him  as  page  or  attache  to  the  French  am- 


16  VOLTAIRE. 

bassador  at  the  Hague,  a  near  kinsman  ^of  the  Abbe 
Chateauneuf.  He  there  fell  in  love  with  the 
daughter  of  a  profligate  woman,  Madame  Dunoyer, 
who  considering  the  match  a  bad  one,  had  him  sent 
home  by  the  ambassador,  and  published  his  love  let- 
ters, which  are  admitted  to  have  no  merit.  His  father 
would  only  receive  him  on  condition  of  his  consenting 
to  serve  in  a  notary's  office.  A  friend  of  the  family,  M. 
de  Caumartin,  had  compassion  on  the  sufferings 
which  this  arrangement  occasioned,  and  obtained  per- 
mission to  have  him  pass  some  months  in  his  country 
residence  at  St.  Ange.  The  Bishop  Caumartin,  then 
an  elderly  man,  and  who  had  lived  with  all  the 
more  learned  persons  of  the  past  age,  excited  him,  by 
his  conversation  upon  the  Sullys  and  the  Henrys,  to 
meditate  two  of  the  greatest  of  his  works,  his  epic 
poem  and  his  history. 

The  death  of  Louis,  which  happened  on  Voltaire's 
return  to  Paris,  gave  rise  to  a  very  indecent  expression 
of  public  joy,  and  to  many  libels  upon  his  memory. 
One  of  these  being  without  any  foundation  ascribed  to 
him,  his  confinement  in  the  Bastille  was  the  conse- 
quence. Here,  however,  his  spirit  continued  unbroken. 
He  sketched  the  poem  of  the  'League,'  afterwards  called 
the  'Henriade  ;'  and  he  corrected  a  tragedy,  '  CEdipe,' 
which  he  had  written  several  years  before,  when  only 
eighteen  years  old.  The  imprisonment  being  in  the 
course  of  a  few  weeks  found  to  be  entirely  illegal  and 
vexatious,  the  Regent  ordered  his  immediate  liberation, 
with  a  sum  of  money  by  way  of  compensation.  The 
tragedy  was  not  acted  till  two  years  after,  in  1718  ; 
and  it  is  a  singular  fact,  that  when,  in  1713,  it  had 


VOLTAIRE.  1 7 

been  in  its  original  imperfect  state  submitted  to  Dacier, 
with  the  pedantry  of  his  nature  he  strongly  recom- 
mended the  introduction  of  choruses,  to  be  sung  after 
the  manner  of  the  Greek  tragedy.  A  letter  of  his  is 
still  extant,  giving  this  sage  and  practical  counsel  ; 
but  the  Greek  critic  was  not  the  only  pedant.  When 
in  1769,  Voltaire  had  gained  the  famous  cause  of 
Sirven,  through  the  exertions  of  M.  Merville,  a  leading 
advocate  of  Toulouse,  he  refused  all  pecuniary  remu- 
neration, but  desired  as  his  reward,  that  his  client 
would  now  consent  to  add  choruses  to  the  '  GEdipe.' 

How  powerful  was  the  sentiment  of  ambition  in 
his  nature  appears  not  merely  from  his  bold  attempt  at 
a  tragedy — audaxque  juventa — in  his  eighteenth  year, 
but  from  his  adventurous  competition  for  the  prize  of 
poetry  proposed  by  the  Academic  Franchise  a  year  or 
two  before  ;  the  king  having,  in  the  superstition  of  his 
declining  age,  at  length  resolved  to  fulfil  the  promise 
of  his  predecessor  by  decorating  the  altar  of  Notre 
Dame.  This  formed  the  subject  of  the  ode,  which 
was  rejected  in  favour  of  a  ridiculous  piece  by  the 
Abbe  Dujarri ;  so  that  it  is  a  singular  fact  in  Voltaire's 
history  that  his  first  published  work  was  a  devotional 
poem. 

The  tragedy  of  '  GEdipe'  was  successful ;  and  Lamotte, 
then  of  established  reputation,  but  which  with  ordi- 
nary poets  is  by  no  means  a  security  against  jealousy, 
had  the  noble  candour  to  declare  that  this  tragedy 
gave  sure  promise  of  a  successor  to  Corneille  and  Ra- 
cine. But  the  prejudices  of  the  stage  forced  Voltaire 
to  introduce  a  love  scene  against  his  better  judgment, 
which  had  decided  against  the  incongruous  mixture  of 

c 


18  V.OLTAIBE. 

tenderness  with  the  horrors    of  the    subject.     It   is 

cJ 

related  of  him,  and  he  has  himself  countenanced  the 
anecdote,  that  in  the  giddiness  of  youth,  and  plunged 
in  dissipation,  he  was  insensible  to  the  dangers  of 
failure,  and  felt  so  little  of  the  nervous  agitation 
belonging  to  a  dramatic  author's  first  night,  as  to 
be  seen  carrying  in  mockery  the  train  of  the  High 
Priest.  Madame  la  Marechale  de  Villars,  then  at  the 
head  of  Parisian  society,  asked  who  that  young  man 
was,  who  appeared  as  if  trying  to  have  the  play 
damned  ;  and  upon  being  told  that  it  was  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  author  himself,  she  was  so 
struck  with  the  originality,  that  she  desired  to  have 
him  presented  to  her.  Becoming  one  of  her  circle,  he 
conceived  for  her  the  first  and  probably  the  only 
passion  which  he  ever  seriously  felt.  His  love  was 
unsuccessful ;  but  it  interrupted  his  studies,  nor  did 
he  ever  after  allude  to  it  but  with  a  feeling  of 
regret  bordering  upon  remorse. 

The  merits  of  'CEdipe'  no  longer  form  a  debateable 
question.  If  the  continued  representation  for  forty- 
five  nights  had  left  any  doubt  upon  this  subject,  the 
concurrent  voices  of  so  many  different  audiences  during 
the  sixty  years  and  upwards  that  it  has  kept  possession 
of  the  stage  pronounce  a  sentence  from  which  there 
is  no  appeal.*  For  an  author  of  any  age  it  is  a  fine 


*  The  judgments  pronounced  by  the  audience  on  a  first  represent- 
ation are  a  very  different  test,  being  necessarily  much  more  subject 
to  accident,  to  caprice,  and  to  party  manoevures.  The  striking 
example  of  the  '  Britannicus,'  nay,  even  of  the  '  Phedre'  and  the 
'  Athalie  '  themselves  (these  two  now  admitted  on  all  hands  to  be 
Racine's  masterpieces),  may  well  guard  us  against  yielding  to  the 


VOLTAIRE.  19 

performance;  for  a  young  man  of  eighteen  or  nine- 
teen, a  truly  wonderful  one  ;  promising,  perhaps, 
considerably  greater  dramatic  success  than  even  the 
author  of  '  Zaire'  ever  attained.  But  he  unfortunately 
preferred  writing  mult  a  than  multum  ;  and  this  remark 
is  more  peculiarly  applicable  to  his  dramatic  compo- 
sitions than  to  any  of  his  other  important  efforts. 

The  distinguishing  beauty  of  the  '  CEdipe*  is  its 
fervid,  correct,  and  powerful  declamation  ;  and  though 
the  most  magnificent  passage  be  taken  from  Sophocles, 
there  are  numberless  others  of  undoubted  originality. 
Into  some  of  the  inconsistencies,  and  even  absurdities, 
of  the  Greek  plot  he  has  fallen,  and  the  most  of 
whatever  is  good  in  that  plot  certainly  is  not  his  own. 
But  no  one  who  has  either  seen  the  representation  or 
read  the  poem,  can  easily  forget  the  powerful  im- 
pression which  its  diction  leaves  on  the  mind.  Some 
of  the  passages  are  marked  by  their  supposed  allusion 
to  the  priesthood  of  his  own  times  ;  and  one  especially 
is  generally  given  as  his  first  declaration  of  war  against 
the  sacred  order : — 

"  Nos  pretres  ne  sont  point  ce  qu'un  vain  peuple  pense — 
Notre  credulite  fait  toute  leur  science." — (Act  iv.  sc.  4.) 

But  surely,  when  we  observe  that  this   is  only  the 


first  expressions  of  the  vox  populi.  Perhaps  even  the  great  union  of 
opinion  in  France,  placing  Corneille  so  far  above  Racine,  is  another 
instance  of  erroneous  judgment  produced  by  accidental  circum- 
stances. Had  Racine  preceded  Corneille,  would  the  decision  have 
been  the  same  ?  There  may,  however,  be  some  ground  for  giving 
the  same  precedence  to  the  latter  that  we  yield  to  Massillon  and 
Bourdaloue  over  Bossuet. 

c  2 


20  VOLTAIRE. 

summing  up  of  an  invective  satirical,  but  perfectly 
just,  against  the  Pagan  superstitions  which  are  spe- 
cified, we  may  well  suppose,  that  had  not  his  future 
writings  supplied  the  commentary,  no  one  could  have 
deemed  the  allusion  in  these  fine  lines  irreverent  to 
the  hierarchy  of  Rome.  Now,  it  is  true,  they  are 
sufficiently  marked  ;  and  in  consequence  of  that  com- 
mentary they  never  fail  to  be  applied.  I  recollect 
the  thunder  of  applause  which  they  called  forth  in 
1814,  when  I  saw  this  play  during  the  first  restor- 
ation. The  court  of  Louis  XVIII.  was  supposed  to 
favour  the  Church  in  an  especial  manner,  and  this 
pointed  the  public  attention  more  peculiarly  to  such 
allusions.  Two  other  lines  were  productive  of  nearly 
equal  applause : — 

"  Tin  pr£tre,"quel  qu'il  soit,  quelque  Dieu  qui  1'inspire, 
Doit  prier  pour  ses  rois,  et  non  pas  les  maudire." 

(Act  iii.  sc.  3.) 

The  reason  of  this  excitement  was,  that  the  lines 
contain  a  reproof  of  the  High  Priest's  insolence,  and 
that  was  sufficient.  On  another  occasion,  the  same 
season,  I  heard  much  louder  applause  in  that  theatre. 
It  was  of  the  lines, 

"  Le  premier  qui  fut  roi,  fut  un  soldat  heureux  : 
Qui  sert  bien  son  pays  n'a  pas  besoin  d'a'ieux." 

The  reference  was  instantly  made  to  Napoleon,  and 
the  piece  could  hardly  proceed  for  the  boisterous 
plaudits. 

It  is  certain  that  the  tragedies  of  Voltaire  are  the 
works  of  an  extraordinary  genius,  and  that  only  a 
great  poet  could  have  produced  them  ;  but  it  is 
equally  certain  that  they  are  deficient  for  the  most 


VOLTAIRE.  21 

part  in  that  which  makes  the  drama  powerful  over 
the  feelings, — real  pathos,  real  passion,  whether  of 
tenderness,  of  terror,  or  of  horror.  The  plots  of 
some  are  admirably  contrived  ;  the  diction  of  all  is 
pure  and  animated ;  in  most  passages  it  is  pointed, 
and  in  many  it  is  striking,  grand,  impressive ;  the  cha- 
racters are  frequently  well  imagined  and  portrayed, 
though  without  sufficient  discrimination;  and  thus 
often  running  one  into  another,  from  the  uniformity 
of  the  language,  terse,  epigrammatic,  powerful,  which 
all  alike  speak.  Nor  are  there  wanting  situations  of 
great  effect,  and  single  passages  of  thrilling  force  ; 
but,  after  all,  the  heart  is  not  there  ;  the  deep  feeling, 
which  is  the  parent  of  all  true  eloquence  as  well  as 
all  true  poetry,  didactic  and  satirical  excepted,  is 
rarely  perceived  ;  it  is  rather  rhetoric  than  eloquence, 
or,  at  least,  rather  eloquence  than  poetry.  It  is  de- 
clamation of  a  high  order  in  rhyme  ;  no  blank 
verse,  indeed,  can  be  borne  on  the  French  stage,  or 
even  in  the  French  tongue ;  it  is  not  fine  dramatic 
composition  :  the  periods  roll  from  the  mouth,  they 
do  not  spring  from  the  breast ;  there  is  more  light 
than  heat ;  the  head  rather  than  the  heart  is  at  work. 
It  seems  that  if  there  be  any  exception  to  this 
remark,  we  must  look  for  it  in  the  '  Zaire,'  his  most 
perfect  piece,  although,  marvellous  to  tell,  it  was 
written  in  two  and  twenty  days.  In  my  humble 
opinion,  it  is  certainly  obnoxious  to  the  same  general 
objection,  though  less  than  any  of  his  other  pieces; 
yet  it  is  truly  a  noble  performance,  and  it  unites  many 
of  the  great  requisites  of  dramatic  excellence.  The 
plot,  which  he  tells  us  was  the  work  of  a  single  day, 


22  VOLTAIRE. 

is  one  of  the  most  admirable  ever  contrived  for  the 
stage,  and  it  is  a  pure  creation  of  fancy.  Nothing 
can  be  conceived  more  full  of  interest  and  life  and 
spirit — nothing  more  striking  than  the  combinations 
and  the  positions  to  which  it  gives  rise,  while  at  the 
same  time  it  is  quite  natural,  quite  easy  to  conceive, 
in  no  particular  violating  probability.  Nor  can  any- 
thing be  more  happy  or  more  judicious  than  the 
manner  in  which  we  are,  at  the  very  first,  brought 
into  the  middle  of  the  story,  and  yet  soon  find  it 
unravelled  and  presented  before  our  eyes  without 
long  and  loaded  narrative  retrospects.  Then  the 
characters  are  truly  drawn  with  a  master's  hand,  and 
sustained  perfectly  and  throughout  both  in  word  and 
in  deed.  Orosman,  uniting  the  humanized  feelings 
of  an  amiable  European  with  the  unavoidable  remains 
of  the  Oriental  nature,  ambitious,  and  breathing  war, 
more  than  becomes  our  character,  yet  generous  and 
simple-minded ;  to  men  imperious,  but  as  it  were  by 
starts,  when  the  Tartar  predominates ;  to  women  deli- 
cate and  tender,  as  if  the  Goth  or  the  Celt  prevailed 
in  the  harem  ;  unable  to  eradicate  the  jealousy  of  the 
East,  yet,  like  a  European,  too  proud  not  to  be 
ashamed  of  it  as  a  degradation,  and  thus  subduing  it 
in  all  instances  but  one,  when  he  is  hurried  away  by 
the  Asiatic  temperament  and  strikes  the  fatal  blow, 
which  cannot  lessen  our  admiration,  nor  even  wholly 
destroy  our  esteem.  The  generous  nature  of  Nour- 
estan  and  Lusignan  excites  our  regard,  and,  perhaps, 
alone  of  all  the  perfect  characters  in  epic  or  in  dramatic 
poetry,  they  are  no  way  tiresome  or  flat.  But  Zaire 
herself,  unlike  other  heroines,  is,  if  not  the  first,  at 


VOLTAIRE.  23 

least  equal  to  the  first,  of  the  personages  in  touching 
the  reader  and  engaging  his  affections.  Nothing  can 
be  conceived  more  tender;  and  the  conflict  between 
her  passion  for  the  Sultan  and  her  affection  for  her 
family,  between  her  acquired  duty  to  the  crescent  and 
her  hereditary  inclination  to  the  cross,  is  most  beau- 
tifully managed.  Of  detailed  passages  it  would  be 
endless  to  make  an  enumeration,  but  some  may  be 
shortly  marked.  Few  things  in  poetry  are  finer  than 
Lusignan's  simple  answer  to  Chatillon,  who  tells 
him  that  he  was  impotent  to  save  his  children : 

"  C.  Mon  bras  charge  de  fers  ne  les  put  pas  secourir. 
L.  Helas!  et  j'etais  pere,  et  je  ne  pus  mourir." 

Nourestan's  indignation,  the  boiling  over  of  a  fana- 
tical crusader's  enthusiasm  against  his  sister  for  falling 
in  love  with  an  infidel  prince  (Act  iii.  sc.  4),  is  a  truly 
noble  piece  of  declamation.  Orosman's  proud  feeling 
towards  the  sex,  for  the  first  time  following  the  Asiatic 
course  (Act  iii.  sc.  7),  is  not  less  finely  expressed: 

"  Mais  il  est  trop  honteux  de  craindre  une  maitresse — • 
Aux  moeurs  de  1'Occident  laissons  cette  bassesse  ! 
Ce  sexe  dangereux,  qui  veut  tout  asservir, 
S'il  regne  dans  1'Europe,  ici  doit  obe'ir." 

The  famous  passage  "  Zaire,  vous  pleurez  ?"  which 
electrified  the  audience  in  France,  and  never  fails 
still  to  produce  this  effect,  needs  not  be  specified,  ex- 
cept for  the  purpose  of  noting,  that  the  exclamation 
"  Zaire,  vous  m'aimez !"  is  hardly  less  touching,  or  less 
powerful  to  paint  the  Sultan's  character. 

Next  to  '  Zaire '  the  '  Merope '  certainly  is  Voltaire's 
finest  drama ;  and  its  success  at  first  was  even  greater 
than  that  of  '  Zaire.'  At  one  part  the  audience  were  so 
intoxicated  with  admiration,  that  they  called  out  for 


24  VOLTAIRE. 

Voltaire,  and  forced  him  to  show  himself — the  first 
time  that  the  honour  was  ever  bestowed,  which  has 
now  become  worthless,  because  lavished  on  the  author 
of  every  successful  piece.  But  the  multitude  went  a 
step  further  in  his  case,  and  insisted  upon  the  beautiful 
daughter-in-law  of  the  Marechale  de  Villars  publicly 
saluting  him ;  a  requisition  savouring  much  more  of 
indecorum  than  enthusiasm. 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  either  the  great  merits  of 
the  '  Merope/  or  to  doubt  its  marked  inferiority  to 
'  Zaire.'  The  composition,  and,  in  general,  the  execu- 
tion, must  be  confessed  to  be  in  the  best  manner  of  that 
eloquence,  or  rather  rhetoric,  which  I  have  ventured 
to  describe  as  the  character  of  Voltaire's  tragedies  ;  but 
it  is  not,  like  '  Zaire,'  at  least  many  portions  of  '  Zaire,'  a 
successful  incursion  into  the  adjoining,  though  far 
loftier  domain  of  feeling :  in  a  word,  the  high  region 
of  fine  verse  is  here  under  the  author's  power ;  the 
higher  region  of  poetry  does  not  submit  to  his  con- 
trol. The  fable  is  excellently  pursued  ;  while  there  is 
little  original  or  very  happy  in  the  characters,  of  which 
the  principal  one  is  so  possessed  by  a  feeling  of  love 
and  anxiety  for  a  son  whom  she  had  barely  seen,  that 
it  is  difficult  to  sympathise  with  the  leading  sentiment 
of  the  piece.  Fine  passages  no  doubt  abound,  and 
bursts  (mouvemens)  of  an  impressive,  and  of  a  sur- 
prising and  even  elevating  kind,  are  occasionally  intro- 
duced, though  by  far  the  finest  is  imitated  professedly 
from  the  '  Merope '  of  Maffei — it  is  when  Egisthe  men- 
tions his  mother ;  and  Merope  then  believing  that  he 
had  murdered  her  son,  that  is  himself,  exclaims — 

"  Barbare  !  il  te  reste  une  mere  ! 
Je  serois  m£re  encore  sans  toi,"  &c. — (Act  iii.  sc.  4.) 


VOLTAIRE.  25 

The  verses  on  a  military  usurper  have  been  already 
cited.  Lines  such  as  the  concluding  couplet  of  the 
second  act  are  not  rarely  scattered  through  the  piece, 
and  never  fail  to  produce  a  great  effect  in  the  delivery. 
They  have,  like  the  former,  been  not  rarely  applied  to 
Napoleon. 

"  Quand  on  a  tout  perdu,  quand  on  n'a  plus  d'espoir, 
La  vie  est  un  opprobre,  et  la  mort  un  devoir." 

These,  the  '  Zaire'  and  '  Merope,'  seem,  beyond  all  com- 
parison, and  without  any  doubt,  to  be  the  finest  of 
Voltaire's  dramatic  works.  His  own  favourite,  how- 
ever, appears  to  have  been  the  '  Catiline,'  or  '  Rome 
Sauvee.'  He  dwells  with  great  complacency  on  its 
having  been  more  applauded  than  *  Zaire '  on  its  first 
representation,  and  accounts  for  its  not  having,  like 
'  Zaire,'  kept  possession  of  the  stage,  by  observing  that 
nobody  now-a-days  conspires,  but  every  one  has  loved. 
The  superiority  of  this  to  its  rival,  the  '  Catiline '  of 
Crebillon,  is  also  admitted  ;  nor  can  we  deny  it  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  that  which  constituted  Voltaire's 
dramatic  merit,  his  eloquence  far  more  remarkable 
than  his  poetry.  It  may  also  be  admitted  that  if  this 
criticism  can  ever  lose  its  force,  it  must  be  in  a  com- 
position of  which  the  hero  is  Cicero; — nor,  if  the 
eloquence  were  of  a  higher  order, — if  it  were  fervid 
and  impassioned, — if  it  were  warm  from  the  heart, 
and  addressed  and  moved  the  feelings, — would  the  de- 
cision of  which  the  author  appears  to  complain  ever 
have  gone  forth  against  it.  But  the  tragedy  has,  be- 
side many  other  faults,  that  of  frigid  declamation,  in 
pure  diction,  often  happy,  generally  pointed,  even  to 
epigram,  but  still  cold  and  artificial.  There  is  also  to 


26  VOLTAIRE. 

be  remarked  in  the  piece  a  singular  want  of  judgment. 
The  history  of  Catiline  is  not  professed  to  be  followed, 
yet  all  the  departures  from  it  are  in  diminution  of  the 
dramatic  interest ;  and  nothing  can  be  less  correct 
than  the  assertion  which  accompanies  the  confession 
that  the  facts  of  the  story  are  changed — it  is  not  true, 
or  anything  like  the  truth,  that  the  "  genius  and  the 
character  of  Cicero,  Catiline,  Cato,  and  Csesar,  are 
faithfully  painted."  Can  anything  be  less  excusable, 
whether  we  regard  dramatic  interest  or  the  truth  of 
history,  than  representing  Catiline  as  uxorious,  and 
all  but  won  over  to  abandon  his  enterprise  by  his 
wife's  remonstrances  and  tears  ?  The  absurdity  of 
making  Csesar  put  down  the  conspiracy,  and  supersede 
C.  Antonius  and  Petreius  in  the  command  at  the 
battle  in  which  Catiline  fell,  requires  no  comment. 
This,  and  Caesar's  rhodomontade  before  setting  out,  his 
embracing  Cicero,  and  vowing  that  he  goes  either  to 
die,  or  to  justify  the  Consul's  good  opinion  of  him,  and 
his  being  overpersuaded  by  a  speech  of  Cicero,  not 
merely  to  abandon  Catiline  but  to  destroy  him,  is  as 
utterly  unlike  that  great  man's  character  as  anything 
that  can  well  be  imagined.  For  Cato,  it  is  surely  as 
little  in  his  manner  as  can  be,  to  tell  Cicero  that 
Rome  calls  him  her  father  and  her  avenger  ;  and  that 
Envy  at  his  feet  trembles  and  adores  him  : 

"  Et  TEnvie  a  tes  pieds  1'admire  avec  terreur." 

But  the  grand  defect  of  this  piece  is  the  absurd  and 
hopeless  attempt  of  bringing  Cicero  upon  the  stage. 
Brutus  and  Antony  had  been  successfully  so  dealt 
with  by  Shakspeare ;  but  they  were  men  of  action ; 


VOLTAIRE.  27 

Cicero,  a  mere  orator,  never  could  be  endured  as  the 
hero  of  a  piece  ;  eloquence,  the  triumphs  of  the  tongue, 
are  wholly  unfitted  to  form  the  subject  of  a  drama. 
Voltaire  has  endeavoured  to  supply  the  defect  by  mak- 
ing Catiline  murder  not  his  step-son,  which  he  was 
supposed  to  have  done,  but  his  father-in-law,  a  certain 
Nonnius,  which  no  one  ever  dreamt  of  but  the  poet ; 
and  his  wife,  in  her  grief  and  rage,  puts  herself  to 
death  by  stabbing  herself  on  the  stage. 

But  if  we  desire  to  perceive  how  great  is  Voltaire's 
failure,  we  must  not  only  consider  what  he  has  done  to 
make  his  drama  cold  and  uninteresting,  but  what  ma- 
terials he  had  within  his  reach,  and  avoided  using. 
Few  narratives  present  so  lively,  nay,  so  dramatic  a 
picture  as  that  of  Sallust.  The  diction  is  fine ;  but 
had  Livy  written  it,  his  exquisite  and  dignified  style 
would  have  placed  the  Catiline  conspiracy  at  the 
head  of  historical  works.  The  character  of  Catiline, 
better  given  in  some  parts  of  Cicero,  particularly  the 
Pro  Sulla,  Pro  Coelio,  and  Pro  Mursena  ;  his  dark, 
designing,  and  unscrupulous  nature ;  his  utter  profli- 
gacy of  life  and  manners ;  his  fierce  temper ;  his  un- 
tameable  ambition ;  his  powers,  as  well  of  body  as  of 
mind;  his  invincible  courage — all  form  a  personage 
made  for  stage  effect,  and  only  prevented  from  pro- 
ducing it  in  the  highest  degree  by  such  preposterous 
conceits  as  making  him  tender-hearted  to  his  wife, 
a  thing  to  have  been  carefully  avoided  by  the  dra- 
matist, even  if  his  letter,  given  by  Sallust,  shows  some 
care  for  that  very  profligate  woman  and  his  child. 
But  then  what  can  be  finer  than  the  meeting  holden 
in  a  remote  recess  of  his  house,  and  his  address  under 


28  VOLTAIRE. 

cloud  of  night  to  his  associates — to  say  nothing  of  the 
dark  suspicion  thrown  out  by  the  historian,  that  he 
made  them  drink  human  blood  mixed  with  their  wine 
when  he  swore  them  to  the  enterprise  !*  But  the 
speech  is  very  fine — bold,  abrupt,  simple,  concise,  emi- 
nently calculated  for  the  occasion  : — "  Quin  igitur, 
expergiscemini  ?  En  ilia,  ilia  quam  ssepe  optastis 
libertas  !  Fortuna  omnia  victoribus  prsemia  posuit:  res, 
tempus,  pericula,  egestas,  belli  spolia  magnifica,  magis 
quam  oratio  mea  vos  hortentur.  Vel  imperatore,  vel 
milite  me  utimine.  Neque  animus,  neque  corpus  a 
vobis  aberit."  The  other  speech  which  he  makes  on 
the  eve  of  the  fight  is  also  very  noble  and  charac- 
teristic :  — "  Quod  si  virtuti  vestree  fortuna  inviderit, 
cavete  inulte  animam  amittatis ;  neu  capti  potius  sicuti 
pecoratrucidemini,  quam  virorum  more  pugnantes,cruen- 
tam  atque  luctuosam  victoriam  hostibus  relinquatis."f 
With  such  noble  materials,  Voltaire  makes  as  poor  a 
speech  as  it  was  possible  to  manufacture — as  wordy 
and  unimpressive.  He  calls  his  conspirators  "an 
assemblage  of  the  greatest  of  human  kind  ;"  and  that 
being  not  enough,  they  are  "  conquerors  of  kings — 
avengers  of  their  countrymen — his  true  friends,  his 
equals,  his  supports."  He  tells  them  that  "  they  had 
subdued  Tigranes  and  Mithridates,  and  made  the 
Euphrates  red  with  their  blood,  only  to  make  worth- 
less senators  proud,  who,  as  a  recompence,  allowed  the 
conspirators  to  adore  their  persons  at  a  distance." 
How  much  finer  is  the  simple  description  in  Sallust ! — 
"  The  Patricians  squander  away  their  wealth  in 

*  Fuere  ea  tempestate  qui  dicerent. — (Cap.  xxii.) 
f  Cap.  Iviii. 


VOLTAIRE.  29 

building  out  the  sea,  and  levelling  mountains,  while 
we  are  without  the  necessaries  of  life !"  But  the 
whole  comparison  is  to  the  same  effect. 

Then,  can  anything  be  finer  than  the  scene  in  the 
Senate  where  Cicero  made  his  first  famous  speech?  First 
the  historian  paints  Catiline  as  full  of  dissimulation, 
and  acting  the  part  of  a  suppliant,  with  downcast  look 
and  submissive  voice,  appealing  to  the  senators  whe- 
ther it  wras  likely  a  man  of  his  rank  and  former  services 
should  be  guilty  of  the  things  laid  to  his  charge,  while 
the  state  was  defended  by  "  M.  Tullius  Cicero,  inqui- 
linus  civis  urbis  Romee  "  (one  living  in  a  hired  lodging). 
Thereupon  a  loud  cry  was  raised  against  him,  and  he 
was  saluted  with  the  name  of  rebel  and  parricide. 
"Turn  ille  furibundus — '  Quoniam  quidem  circum- 
ventus,  inquit,  ab  inimicis,  prseceps  agor,  incendium 
meum  ruina  extinguam.'  "* 

Thus  the  Catiline  of  Sallust;  but  he  of  Voltaire, 
after  saying  his  part  is  taken,  and  calling  his  followers 
to  come  away,  departs  quietly  enough — not  the  furi- 
bundus proripuit  of  Sallust,  or  even  the  triumphans 
gaudio  erupit  of  Tully — but 

"  Vous,  senat,  incertain,  qui  venez  de  m'entendre, 
Choisissez  a  loisir  le  parti  qu'il  faut  prendre." 

And  so  it  is  throughout ;  the  same  contrast  between 
the  tame,  feeble,  vague  verses  of  the  modern  poet,  and 

*  Cap.  xxxi.  Cicero  (pro  Mursena,  c.  xxv.)  gives  a  different 
account,  but  less  picturesque  :  "  erupit  senatu  triumphans  gaudio  ;" 
and  adds,  that  he  had  some  days  before  used  the  famous  words  in 
answer  to  a  threat  of  prosecution  from  Cato ;  but  Voltaire  was  at 
perfect  liberty  to  choose  either  version  of  the  fact,  and  he  preferred 
his  own  mean  and  most  tame  design. 


30  VOLTAIRE. 

the  spirited,  the  picturesque  of  the  ancient  historian, 
really  a  finer  poet  than  he  who  would  needs  drama- 
tise the  story  into  prose.  The  battle  so  exquisitely 
painted  by  Sallust  could  not  indeed  be  rendered  on 
the  stage,  but  something  of  the  noble  speech  that 
preceded  might  have  been  given.  Then  how  tamely 
does  Csesar,  in  recounting  the  fight,  render  the  "  Memor 
generis  atque  pristinse  dignitatis,  in  confertissirnos 
hostes  incurrit,"  and  the  sad  and  striking  scene  dis- 
played after  the  battle,  when  "  quisque  quern  pugnando 
locum  ceperat  eum  amissa  anima  corpore  tegebat;" 
but  Catiline,  on  the  contrary,  was  found  "  longe  a  suis 
inter  hostium  cadavera,  paululum  etiam  spirans,  fero- 
ciamque  animi  quam  habuerat  vivus  in  voltu  reti- 
nens."*  This  is  far  from  the  greatest  failure  of 
Voltaire,  but  it  is  a  failure,  and  a  failure  by  de- 
parting from  the  admirable  simplicity  of  the  original. 

"  Catiline  terrible  au  milieu  du  carnage, 
Entoure  d'ennemis  immoles  a  sa  rage, 
Sanglant,  couvert  de  traits,  et  combattant  toujours, 
Dans  nos  rangs  eclaires  a  termine  ses  jours. 
Sur  des  morts  entasses  I'effroi  de  Rome  expire : 
Romain,  je  le  condamne ;  et  soldat,  je  1'admire." 

It  may  here  be  observed  that  the  admirable  trait  of 
each  soldier  falling  where  he  fought,  but  the  terrible 
chief  far  apart  from  all  his  men,  because  in  advance  of 
them  all,  being  first  left  out,  the  extraordinary  effect  of 
paululum  etiam  spirans  where  he  had  fallen,  and  the 
ferociam  animi  voltu  retinens,  are  equally  abandoned. 


*  One  never  can  read  this  great  masterpiece  of  narrative  without 
recollecting  Quinctilian's  phrase, "  Salustii  immortalem  velocitatem." 


VOLTAIRE.  31 

One  is  really  tempted  to  question  (as  some  have  ques- 
tioned) Voltaire's  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
force  of  the  Latin  tongue.  Assuredly  he  very 
differently  judges  the  eloquence  of  Massillon,  in  a 
language  of  which,  like  him,  he  was  so  accomplished 
a  master. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  close  the  '  Rome  Sauvee'  with- 
out awarding  just  praise  to  many  of  its  detached  parts, 
and  especially  of  the  lines,  worthy  of  Cicero  himself, 
which  he  is  made  to  pronounce — 

"  Remains,  j'aime  la  gloire,  et  ne  veux  point  m'en  taire ! 
Des  travaux  des  humains,  c'est  le  digne  salaire : 
Senat !   en  vous  servant,  il  la  faut  acheter ; 
Qui  n'ose  la  vouloir,  n'ose  la  meriter !" 

All  accounts  agree  that  when  Voltaire,  at  the  first 
representation  of  the  piece  in  a  private  theatre,  acted 
this  part,  his  enthusiastic  delivery  of  these  words  con- 
veying a  sentiment  so  intimately  mixed  with  his  whole 
soul  produced  such  an  effect  that  the  audience  could 
hardly  tell  if  it  was  the  poet  or  the  great  orator  they 
heard. 

The  conspiracy  of  Catiline  has  afforded  not  only  to 
Crebillon  but  to  our  Ben  Jonson  the  subject  of  a 
tragedy.  He  copies,  by  translating,  Sallust  and  Cicero  ; 
but  he  does  not  preserve  the  fire  of  the  one,  or  the 
picturesque  effect  of  the  other.  The  speech  to  the 
conspirators  is  but  poorly  rendered.  Thus  the  Quin 
expergiscemini  ?  by  being  made  an  exhortation  instead 
of  a  reproach,  sinks  into 

"  Wake,  wake,  brave  friends, 
And  meet  the  liberty  you  oft  have  wished  for." 

How  much  finer  the  literal  version,  "  Why  wake  ye 


32  VOLTAIRE. 

not  ?  See !  see  !  that  liberty  you  so  often  have  wished 
for."  Nothing  can  be  more  poor  than  the  version  in 
blank  verse  of  the  first  Catilinarian,  unless  perhaps  it 
be  Catiline's  exclamation  on  rushing  forth  from  the 
Senate — 

"  I  will  not  burn  without  my  funeral  pile  : 
It  shall  be  in  the  common  fire  rather  than  mine  own, 
For  fall  I  will  with  all,  ere  fall  alone." 

Nor  is  the  speech  before  the  battle  better  rendered ; 
thus — 

"  And  if  our  destiny  envy  our  virtue 
The  honour  of  the  day,  yet  let  us  vow 
To  sell  ourselves  at  such  a  price  as  may 
Undo  the  world  to  buy  us,  and  make  Fate, 
While  she  tempts  ours,  fear  her  own  estate." 

A  piece  of  rant  and  fustian  which  the  poet  probably 
thought  Sallust  had  not  the  genius  to  think  of.  The 
description  of  Catiline's  body  after  the  battle  is  not 
perhaps  quite  so  bad,  nor  the  idea  lent  to  the  historian 
so  feeble — 

"  Yet  did  his  look  retain 

Some  of  its  fierceness,  and  his  hands  still  moved, 
As  if  he  laboured  yet  to  grasp  the  state 
With  these  rebellious  parts." 

Altogether  the  piece  is  incomparably  inferior  to 
Voltaire's  in  every  part  on  which  a  comparison  can 
be  made.  In  learning,  it  is  true,  the  Frenchman  is 
far  surpassed,  who  might  have  written  his  '  Catiline ' 
without  ever  having  read  a  line  either  of  the  orator  or 
of  the  historian  ;  but  the  Englishman's  far  greater 
failure  is  not  excused  by  his  attempt  being  the  more 
learned. 


VOLTAIRE.  33 

Of  the  inferior  dramas,  '  Alzire '  and  '  Mahomet '  or 
'  Le  Fanatisme '  are  certainly  the  best ;  but  they  are  far 
from  being  equal  to  the  '  Zaire  '  and  '  Merope,'  though 
far  superior  to  the  '  Catiline.'  The  object  of  both  is 
to  present  fanaticism  in  its  most  dangerous  shape — in 
the  union  which  it  not  unfrequently  forms  with  great 
and  even  with  good  qualities.  This  object  is  well 
attained,  and  there  is  also  a  mixture  of  softness  in  the 
characters  of  Alzire  and  Palmire  which  forms  a  pleas- 
ing relief  to  the  harsher  features  of  Mahomet,  Gusman, 
and  Zamore.  Both  tragedies  contain  fine  passages  of 
declamation ;  and  the  picture  of  the  revolting  and 
hateful  character  of  the  Spaniards  (in  the  New  World, 
at  least) — that  execrable  and  yet  despicable  mixture  of 
cruelty  and  fanaticism,  fraud  and  avarice — with  which 
'  Alzire '  opens,  is  not  surpassed  in  moral  descriptive 
poetry.  *  Alzire '  was  perfectly  successful  from  the 
first ;  but  the  favour  which  it  then  enjoyed  has  worn 
out.  '  Mahomet '  was  at  first  only  performed  at  Lile, 
and  during  its  first  representation  the  news  of  Frede- 
rick's victory  at  Molwitz  having  been  received  by  Vol- 
taire, he  interrupted  the  performance  to  make  it  known, 
saying  to  those  around  him,  "  You'll  see,  that  piece  of 
Molwitz  will  make  mine  pass."  At  Paris  it  was  for- 
bidden by  the  timidity  of  Cardinal  Fleury,  alarmed  by 
some  passages.  Voltaire  presented  it  to  the  Pope 
Benedict  XIV.  (Lambertini),  accompanying  it  with 
two  very  indifferent  Latin  verses  as  an  inscription  for 
his  Holiness's  portrait.  He  received  an  answer  full  of 
kindness  and  liberality  from  that  eminent  priest,  who 
also  mentioned  that  an  ignorant  Frenchman  had 
objected  to  the  quantity  of  Hie  in  the  Latin  lines, 

D 


34  VOLTAIRE. 

and  that  he  had  put  him  down  with  two  lines  of 
Virgil,  showing  it  to  be  either  long  or  short,  though 
he  had  not  read  Virgil  for  fifty  years.  Voltaire 
replied  that  a  third  verse  should  have  been  given,  and 
inscribed  on  the  Pope's  picture  by  all  his  subjects — 

"  Hie  vir,  hie  est  tibi  quern  promitti  saepius  audis ;" 

adding  very  inaccurately,  if  not  ignorantly,  that  the 
word  is  both  long  and  short  in  this  line,  whereas  it  is 
only  long  by  position. 

The  late  Lord  Grantley  told  me  that  when  he  was 
a  young  man  fresh  from  Eton,  he  passed  a  few  days  at 
Ferney,  and  found  Voltaire  much  puzzled  to  restore, 
consistently  with  the  metre,  a  Latin  couplet  which  a 
stranger  had  made  upon  him,  of  which  a  word  or  two 
had  been  displaced.  The  Etonian  pleased  him  exceed- 
ingly by  at  once  performing  the  easy  operation — 

"  Ecce  domus  qualem  Augusti  non  protulit  setas 
Hie  sunt  Maecenas,  Virgiliusque  simul." 

The  author  of  '  Catiline  '  had  confounded  himself  by 
beginning  with  domus.  It  must  be  added,  however, 
that  he  wrote  an  excellent  motto  for  a  dissertation 
upon  heat,  which  he  preferred  in  the  competition  for 
an  academy  prize — 

"  Ignis  ubique  lafcet,  naturam  amplectitur  omnem 
Cuncta  parit,  renovat,  dividit,  unit,  alit." 

Crebillon,  then  director  of  the  Parisian  stage,  was 
far  less  tolerant  towards  the  f  Mahomet '  than  the 
Roman  pontiff  had  been,  and  prohibited  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  play  for  ten  years,  when  D'Alembert 
(in  1751),  named  by  D'Argenson  to  examine  it, 


VOLTAIRE.  35 

reported  in  its  favour  with  a  courage  wholly  to  be 
expected  from  him.  The  success  of  the  piece  was 
great,  but,  like  '  Alzire,'  it  has  not  retained  its  place 
on  the  stage. 

Many  of  his  other  pieces  were  damned  from  the 
first.  This  was  the  fate  of  'Artemire,'  the  second 
which  he  produced  ;  but  he  changed  it  in  some  particu- 
lars, and  it  had  a  great  success  under  the  name  of '  Mari- 
amne,'  as  indeed  ( Zaire'  itself  had  been  the  substitute 
for  '  Eryphyle,'  which  failed.  'Adelaide,'  in  like  manner, 
failed,  and  c  Gaston  de  Foix,'  its  substitute,  had  some 
success.  The  failure  was  owing  to  a  jest  passed  on 
one  of  the  passages  much  admired  by  critics.  When 
Vendome  exclaims,  "  Es  tu  content,  Couci  ?"  a  wag  in 
the  pit  cried — u  Couci-couci,"  the  French  for  so-so,  or 
indifferent.  A  similar  practical  joke  had  for  a  while  en- 
dangered the  performance  of  '  Mariamne' — some  one, 
on  the  Queen  drinking,  cried  out  "  La  Heine  boit" 
The  panegyrists  of  Voltaire  dwell  on  these  and  similar 
anecdotes,  to  account  for  the  loss  of  many  of  his  pieces, 
but  no  play  of  real  merit  was  ever  thus  destroyed. 
Many,  also,  praise  the  construction  of  some  of  them, 
and  dwell  especially  upon  the  excellence  of  the  plots. 
But  the  theatrical  hell  is  paved  with  good  designs  ill 
executed,  as  well  as  the  other. 

As  for  the  comedies  of  Voltaire,  they  are  wholly  to 
be  rejected  :  the  utmost  praise  to  which  they  can 
aspire  is  as  pieces  de  societe.  They  were  indeed  very 
little  played  at  any  time,  except  in  private  parties. 
The  best  is  the  '  Ecossaise,'  which  never  was  played 
at  all.  It  is  a  bitter  satire  on  Freron,  under  the  name 
of  Frelon  (hornet),  a  profligate,  mercenary,  libeller, 

D  2 


36  VOLTAIRE. 

who,  like  some  of  his  vile  tribe  in  our  own  day,  earned 
a  miserable  subsistence  by  selling  the  venom  of  his  pen 
to  the  cowardly  malice  of  some,  and  his  forbearance  to 
the  less  malignant  but  as  despicable  timidity  of  others. 
The  '  Enfant  Prodigue'  had  considerable  success,  being 
played,  it  is  said,  nearly  thirty  times ;  but  it  was  never 
known  to  be  Voltaire's  till  he  claimed  it  some  years 
after.  It  is  his  most  elaborate  attempt  in  comedy, 
being  a  piece  in  five  acts.  Its  verse,  in  five  feet  (or  ten 
syllables),  was  an  innovation,  and  apparently  was  not 
relished. 

Thus,  if  the  distance  were  less  which  separates  Vol- 
taire's tragedies  from  the  rude  and  awful  grandeur  of 
the  ( Cid,'  and  the  exquisite  pathos  and  perfect  harmony 
of  the  '  Phedre'  and '  Athalie,'  he  would  still  be,  on  the 
comparison,  left  far  behind  Corneille,  whose  '  Menteur,' 
and  Racine,  whose  *  Plaideurs,'  continue  to  keep  their 
place  in  the  line  with  the  comedies  of  Moliere  him- 
self, though  the  former  is  partially  imitated  from  the 
Spanish,  and  the  latter  from  the  Attic  stage.* 

The  'GEdipe,'  which  was  first  performed  in  1718,  was 
followed  in  1722  and  1724  by  the  '  Artemire'  and  '  Ma- 
riamne,'  of  which  mention  has  been  made,  and  the  poem 
of  the  '  Ligue '  was  finished  and  published  in  the  latter 
year,  and  afterwards  given  under  the  name  of  the  '  Henri- 
ade.'  To  this  work  may  be  applied  the  same  observation 
which  the  dramatic  poetry  of  the  author  gives  rise  to, 
—it  is  beautifully  written — it  abounds  in  fine  descrip- 
tion, in  brilliant  passages  of  a  noble  diction,  in  senti- 


*  The  *  Wasps'  of  Aristophanes,  a  satire  on  the  Athenian  special 
jurymen. 


VOLTAIRE.  37 

ments  admirable  for  their  truth,  their  liberality,  their 
humanity, — its  tendency  is  to  make  fanaticism  hateful, 
oppression  despicable,  injustice  unbearable ;  but  it  is 
the  grand  work  of  a  philosopher  and  a  rhetorician, 
more  than  the  inspiration  of  a  poet.  No  one  ever 
ventured  upon  a  comparison  of  this  epic  with  the 
'  Iliad '  or  the  '  Odyssey  ;'  the  '^Eneid'  has  been  reckoned 
to  present  more  facilities  of  approach,  but  at  how  great 
a  distance  does  it  leave  the  (  Henriade  ! '  Even  Lucan, 
if  less  tender,  is  far  more  majestic  ;  Tasso  has,  in  every 
one  essential  quality,  immeasurably  surpassed  Vol- 
taire ;  with  Milton  he  will  not  bear  to  be  named, 
far  less  compared ;  and  Dante,  little  epic  as  he  is,  has 
more  touches  of  the  poetic  fire,  more  inimitable  pic- 
tures drawn  with  a  single  stroke,  more  appeals  to  our 
feelings  of  horror,  wonder,  and  even  pity,  in  a  single 
canto,  than  can  be  found  in  the  whole  ten  of  the  '  Hen- 
riade.' There  abounds  in  the  poem  fine  writing, 
smooth  versification,  noble  ideas,  admirable  sentiments 
— but  poetry  is  wanting.  The  objection  made  by 
all,  or  nearly  all  critics,  that  the  plot  is  so  clumsily 
framed  as  to  make  the  hero  a  subordinate  person  for 
nearly  the  first  half,  and  to  place  over  his  head  as  his 
sovereign  and  master  one  of  the  most  despicable  and 
even  disgusting  voluptuaries  that  ever  reigned  in  mo- 
dern times,  is  perhaps  not  altogether  well  grounded, 
though  it  has  some  foundation.  Although  the 
first  in  rank,  Valois  (Henry  III.)  is  a  cipher,  while 
his  successor  is  the  person  actively  employed  in  the 
conduct  of  affairs  ;  and  were  the  last  a  sort  of  mayor  of 
the  palace,  the  objection  would  lose  its  whole  force : 
but  Valois  is  not  at  all  a  roi  faineant;  we  are  called 


38  VOLTAIRE. 

upon  to  recognise  his  existence  and  his  acts ;  we  are 
even  required  to  feel  for  him  when  he  falls  by  the 
hands  of  an  assassin ;  to  accomplish  his  destruction 
the  spirits  Discord  and  Fanaticism  are  evoked  from 
hell ;  the  form  of  Guise,  whom  Valois  had  murdered, 
is  assumed,  and  the  King  expires  uttering  a  speech 
calculated  to  excite  great  interest  in  his  fate. 

This,  however,  must  be  reckoned  as  the  least  of  the 
objections  to  which  the  poem  is  exposed ;  nor  is  the 
want  of  scenes  surrounded  with  peril  to  try  the  hero's 
courage,  nor  even  the  feeble  and  unskilful  manner  in 
which  the  great  event  of  the  piece,  Henry's  conversion 
to  obtain  the  crown,  the  most  fatal  defect.  The  piece 
is  without  dramatic  interest ;  the  characters  are  not 
sustained  in  action,  still  less  in  speech — indeed  there  is 
hardly  any  speaking  in  the  poem.  It  is  truly  singu- 
lar to  find  a  writer,  whose  forte  as  a  poet  lay  in 
dramatic  composition,  almost  entirely  abandon  his 
stronghold  when  he  comes  to  compose  his  epic.  The 
action  proceeds,  but  it  proceeds  by  way  of  narrative. 
The  characters  are  unfolded,  but  it  is  by  the  descrip- 
tions of  the  author,  not  by  their  own  words.  Indeed 
there  are  very  few  characters  brought  forward,  and 
scarcely  any  but  the  hero  himself  bear  their  parts  in 
the  action.  Want  of  fine  metaphors,  and  penury  of 
figurative  expression,  have  been  always  imputed  to  it ; 
and  though  there  is  no  lack  of  similes,  these  are  not 
very  happy.  But  the  cardinal  defect  is  that  the  author 
appears  perpetually  before  us  ;  it  is  a  history  rather  than 
a  poem — a  history  in  numerous  verse,  and  beautifully 
composed,  but  not  more  dramatic,  and  certainly  less 
beautifully  composed,  than  many  passages  of  Livy,  and 


VOLTAIRE.  39 

some  of  Sallust.  The  objection  made  to  the  intro- 
duction of  philosophy,  as  having  no  warrant  from  the 
ancients,  is  hypercritical,  beside  being  incorrect ;  Vir- 
gil's cosmogony  in  the  sixth  ^Eneid  afforded  a  prece- 
dent, if,  in  a  modern  poem,  any  were  wanting.  The 
same  answer  may  be  given  to  the  cavil  against  his 
giving  characters  of  persons  introduced.  Even  Virgil 
has  a  few  touches  of  this  kind,  and  Lucan  largely 
uses  his  moral  pencil.  But  however  admirable  these 
passages  of  the  '  Henriade,'  and  how  easily  soever  we 
may  be  disposed  to  admit  them  as  legitimate,  they  are 
exceptionable,  as  the  only  means  on  which  the  poet 
relies  for  bodying  forth  his  conceptions.  Again  and 
again  the  remark  occurs  ;  we  take  the  whole  of  the 
portraits  and  of  the  action  from  the  artist,  and  not 
from  the  actors. 

If  the  failures  are  signal  in  great  passages,  such  as 
called  for  the  full  exertion  of  the  poet's  power — for 
example,  the  St.  Bartholomew,  and  the  famine ;  the 
death  of  Coligny  in  the  former  being  altogether  tame, 
with  the  exception  of  the  lines  which  represent  him 
as  a  king  adored  by  his  people,  while  his  assassins, 
awe-struck  by  his  presence,  kneel  before  him  ;*  the 
latter  being  described  by  words  conveying  general  ideas 
of  suffering  or  of  disgust,  not  by  things  ;  and  the  pic- 
ture of  the  infernal  Catherine  de'  Medicis  receiving 
Coligny's  head,f — if  the  failure  be  still  more  signal  in 

*   "  Et  de  ces  assassins  ce  grand  homme  entoure', 

Semblant  un  roi  puissant  par  ses  peuple  adore." — (ii.  219.) 

•f  "  Medicis  le  regut  avec  indifference, 

Sans  paraitre  jouir  du  fruit  de  sa  vengeance, 

Sans 


40  VOLTAIRE. 

the  denouement,  Henry's  conversion  operated  by  an 
address  of  St.  Louis  to  the  Almighty,  in  which,  for- 
getting Massillon's  celebrated  exordium  to  Louis 
XIV.'s  funeral  sermon,  the  Saint  is  actually  made  to 
call  the  hero  "Le  Grand  Henri? — nay,  if  the  details 
of  that  conversion  are  so  described  as  to  make  it  almost 
appear  that  Voltaire  is  laughing  in  his  sleeve,*  we 
must  allow  the  very  great  beauty  of  other  passages. 
The  description  of  the  Temple  of  Love,  with  which 
the  ninth  canto  opens,  is  rich  and  splendid ;  the  pic- 
ture of  St.  Louis  descending  to  stay  the  conqueror's 
hand  in  the  sixth ;  the  characters  drawn  so  finely  and 
forcibly  in  the  seventh,  especially  those  of  Richelieu 
and  Mazarin;  the  more  concise  traits  by  which  he 
paints  Guise  in  the  third — 

"  Connaissant  ses  perils,  et  ne  redoutant  rien, 
Heureux  guerrier,  grand  prince,  et  mauvais  citoyen  ;" 

and  Morney  in  the  sixth — 

"  II  marche  en  philosophe,  ou  1'honneur  le  conduit, 
Condamne  les  combats,  plaint  son  maitre,  et  le  suit ;" — 

these  are  all  of  the  very  highest  excellence  in  their 
kind,  though  that  kind  is  not  epic,  hardly  poetical.  So 
are  such  passages  of  profound  sense  as  the  strains  of  the 
immortal  choir  in  the  seventh  canto, — strains  "  which 
each  star  repeated  in  its  course," — 


Sans  remords,  sans  plaisir,  maitresse  de  ses  sens, 

Et  comme  accoutumee  a  de  pareil  encens." — (ii.  242.) 

*  See  particularly  x.  480,  et  seq. — This  passage  contains  the  line 
on  transubstantiation  which  Marmontel  admires  so  much  as  to  pro- 
nounce that  curse  of  Fenelon  against  those  who  are  not  moved  by 


VOLTAIRE.  41 

"  A  ta  faible  raison  garde-toi  de  te  rendre, 
Dieu  t'a  fait  pour  1'aimer,  et  non  pour  le  comprendre ; 
Invisible  a  tes  yeux,  qu'il  regne  dans  ton  coeur, 
II  confonde  1'injustice,  il  pardonne  a  1'erreur ; 
Mais  il  punit  aussi  toute  erreur  volontaire, 
Mortel  ouvre  les  yeux  quand  son  soleil  t'eclaire !" 

But  the  finest  of  all  these  extraordinary  passages  are 
such  as  in  the  same  Canto,  by  far  the  finest  of  the 
poem,  paint  not  merely  by  abstract  ideas  and  by 
verbose  descriptions,  but  by  strokes  of  genuine  poetry, 
the  fiend  of  Envy  : — 

"  La  git  la  sombre  Envie,  a  Frail  timide  et  louche, 
Versant  sur  des  lauriers  les  poisons  de  sa  bouche ; 
Le  jour  blesse  ses  yeux,  dans  1'ombre  etincelans, 
Triste  amante  des  morts,  elle  hait  les  vivans." 

"  Pale  Envy  see,  with  faltering  step  advance, 
With  look  suspicious,  indirect,  askance, 
With  eyes  that  quiver  and  abhor  the  light, 
But  flash  with  fire  and  sparkle  in  the  night : 
She  pours  her  venom  o'er  each  laureled  head, 
Hates  all  that  live,  sad  lover  of  the  dead." 

Of  Pride  :— 

"  Aupres  d'elle  est  1'Orgueil,  qui  se  plait  et  s'admire." 
Of  Weakness : — 

"  La  Faiblesse  au  teint  pale,  aux  regards  abattus  : 
Tyran  qui  cede  au  crime  et  de*truit  les  vertus." 

"  Weakness,  with  paly  hue  and  downcast  eyes, 

Under  whose  iron  rule  vice  thrives  and  virtue  dies." 


the  famous  couplet  in  the  first  Eclogue,  "  Fortunate  senex,"  &c., 
"  Malheur  a  qui  n'est  pas  emu  en  le  lisant."  I  fear  many  a  reader 
lies  under  this  anathema.  The  verse  is — 

"  Et  lui  decouvre  un  Dieu  dans  un  pain  qui  n'est  plus." 
"  And  in  a  loaf  that  is  no  more  reveals  a  God." 


42  VOLTAIRE. 

Of  Ambition : — 

"  Sanglante,  inquiete,  egaree, 

De  trones,  de  tombeaux,  d'esclaves  entouree." 

"  Restless,  bloodstain'd,  all  perils  wildly  braves, 
Stalks  among  thrones,  and  sepulchres,  and  slaves." 

Of  Hypocrisy  : — 

"La  tendre  Hypocrisie  aux  yeux  pleins  de  douceur  : 
Le  ciel  est  dans  ses  yeux,  1'enfer  est  dans  son  cceur." 

"  The  tender  creature's  eyes  with  sweetness  swell : 
Heaven  's  in  those  eyes,  and  in  her  heart  is  hell." 

Nor  is  the  song  of  these  furies,  on  seeing  Henry 
approach  their  impious  troop,  without  the  highest 
merit : — 

"  Quel  mortel,  disent-ils,  par  ce  juste  conduite, 
Vient  nous  persecuter  dans  1'eternelle  nuit  ?" 

These  are  passages  of  true  poetry ;  they  even  approach 
the  seventh  Canto  to  the  sixth  book  of  the  '  ^Eneid/ 
It  may  be  questioned  if  the  ideas  of  making  Envy 
"  triste  amante  des  morts" — Feebleness  "tyran  qui 
cede  aux  crimes  et  detruit  les  vertus" — and  Hypocrisy 
"  tendre,"  are  equalled  by  any  of  Virgil's  moral  pictures. 
Certainly  to  all  in  the  eleventh  book  of  the  '  Odyssey '  it 
is  beyond  doubt  immeasurably  superior,  as  indeed  is 
the  sixth  ^Eneid.  Nor  can  we  hesitate  to  affirm  that, 
had  the  rest  of  the  e  Henriade'  been  composed  in  the 
same  poetic  spirit,  we  should  not  have  been  suffered 
with  impunity  to  consider  it  an  elegant  history. 

In  the  year  1730  Voltaire  wrote  part  of  another 
poern,  which  he  finished  at  intervals  during  the  seven 
or  eight  years  following — his  too  famous  mock-heroic, 
the  *  Pucelle  d'Orleans.'  It  is  painful  and  humiliating 
to  human  genius  to  confess,  what  yet  is  without  any 


VOLTAIRE.  43 

doubt  true,  that  this  is,  of  all  his  poetical  works,  the 
most  perfect,  showing  most  wit,  most  spirit,  most  of 
the  resources  of  a  great  poet,  though  of  course  the 
nature  of  the  subject  forbids  all  attempts  at  either  the 
pathetic  or  the  sublime  ;  but  in  brilliant  imagery— in 
picturesque  description — in  point  and  epigram — in 
boundless  fertility  of  fancy — in  variety  of  striking  and 
vigorous  satire  — all  clothed  in  verse  as  natural  as 
Swift's,  and  far  more  varied  as  well  as  harmonious — 
no  prejudice,  however  naturally  raised  by  the  moral 
faults  of  the  work,  can  prevent  us  from  regarding  it  as 
the  great  masterpiece  of  his  poetical  genius.  Here  of 
course  the  panegyric  must  close,  and  it  must  give  way 
to  indignation  at  such  a  perversion  of  such  divine 
talents.  The  indecency,  often  amounting  to  absolute 
obscenity,  which  pervades  nearly  the  whole  compo- 
sition, cannot  be  excused  on  the  plea  that  it  is  only  a 
witty  licentiousness,  instead  of  one  which  excites  the 
passions  ;  still  less  can  it  be  palliated  by  citing  bad  pre- 
cedents, least  of  all  by  referring  to  such  writers  as 
Ariosto,  who  more  rarely  violates  the  laws  of  decorum  ;* 

*  In  some  of  the  author's  correspondence  he  is  fond  of  referring 
to  indelicate  passages  of  other  writers  in  his  justification  ;  nay,  even 
to  the  plain  language  used  in  some  parts  of  the  Old  Testament.  This 
flimsy  reason  is  at  once  put  to  flight  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  illustra- 
tion of  the  nakedness  of  the  Indian  and  the  prostitute.  But  it  is  worth 
while  to  observe  how  carefully  the  first  and  greatest  of  poets  avoids 
all  cause  of  blame  in  the  passages  where  he  is  brought  towards  the 
verge  of  indecency.  The  Song  of  the  Bard,  in  the  8th  Odyssey, 
where  Vulcan's  discovery  of  Mars  and  Venus  is  related,  is  the  most 
remarkable  of  these  ;  and  the  jocose  talk  of  Apollo  and  Mars  on  the 
subject  savours  somewhat  of  ribaldry.  But  see  the  short  and  simple 
expressions  used,  and  mark  that  nothing  is  liquorishly  dwelt  on  : — 

*£lg  TO.  Trpwra  yuiyrjffav  f.v  'H^aioroio  fiopoiffir. —  (viii.  269.) 

And— 


44  VOLTAIRE. 

whereas  Voltaire  is  ready  to  commit  this  offence  at  every 
moment,  and  seems  ever  to  take  the  view  of  each  sub- 
ject that  most  easily  lends  itself  to  licentious  allusions. 
But  this  is  not  all.  The  '  Pucelle'  is  one  continued 
sneer  at  all  that  men  do  hold,  and  all  that  they  ought 
to  hold,  sacred,  from  the  highest  to  the  least  important 
subjects,  in  a  moral  view  —  from  the  greatest  to  the  most 
indifferent,  even  in  a  critical  view.  Religion  and  its 
ministers  and  its  professors  —  virtue,  especially  the 
virtues  of  a  prudential  cast  —  the  feelings  of  humanity 
—  the  sense  of  beauty  —  the  rules  of  poetical  compo- 
sition —  the  very  walks  of  literature  in  which  Voltaire 
had  most  striven  to  excel  —  are  all  made  the  constant 
subjects  of  sneering  contempt,  or  of  ribald  laughter  ; 
sometimes  by  wit,  sometimes  by  humour,  not  rarely 
by  the  broad  grins  of  mere  gross  buffoonery.  It  is 
a  sad  thing  to  reflect  that  the  three  masterpieces  of 
three  such  men  as  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Byron,  should 
all  be  the  most  immoral  of  their  compositions.  It 
seems  as  if  their  prurient  nature  had  been  affected  by  a 
bad  but  criminal  excitement  to  make  them  exceed 
themselves.  —  Assuredly  if  such  was  not  Voltaire's  case, 
he  well  merits  the  blame  ;  for  he  scrupled  not  to  read 
his  '  Pucelle'  to  his  niece,  then  a  young  woman.* 

And— 

Avrop  £ywv  evdoipi  irapa  xpvffirl  Aippodiny.  —  (viii.  342.) 


So  when  describing  in  the  llth  Odyssey  Neptune's  rape  of  Pyro,  the 
old  bard  only  says  — 

Av<7£  $e  xapfctWfV  £<ovr)v,  Kara  &VTTVOV  e^evev.  —  (xi.  244.) 
*  Correspon  dance  Generale,  iii.  454. 


VOLTAIRE.  45 

But  here  it  would  be  unjust  to  forget  that  the 
same  genius  which  underwent  this  unworthy  pro- 
stitution, was  also  enlisted  by  its  versatile  possessor  in 
the  service  of  virtue  and  of  moral  truth.  There  may 
be  some  doubt  if  his  moral  essays,  the  '  Di  scours  sur 
I'Homme,'  may  not  be  placed  at  the  head  of  his  serious 
poetry — none  whatever  that  it  is  a  performance  of  the 
highest  merit.  As  the  subject  is  didactic,  his  talents, 
turned  towards  grave  reasoning  and  moral  painting, 
adapted  rather  to  satisfy  the  understanding  than  to 
touch  the  heart,  arid  addressing  themselves  more  to 
the  learned  and  polite  than  to  the  bulk  of  mankind, 
occupied  here  their  appointed  province,  and  had  their 
full  scope.  Pope's  moral  essays  gave  the  first  hint  of 
these  beautiful  compositions ;  but  there  is  nothing 
borrowed  in  them  from  that  great  moral  poet,  and 
there  is  no  inferiority  in  the  execution  of  the  plan.  A 
strict  regard  to  modesty,  with  the  exception  of  a  line 
or  two,  reigns  throughout,  and  the  object  is  to  incul- 
cate the  purest  principles  of  humanity,  of  tolerance, 
and  of  virtue.  None  but  a  Romanist  bigot  could  ever 
have  discovered  the  lurking  attack  upon  religion  in  the 
noble  verses  against  substituting  vain  ceremonies  for  good 
works,  and  attempting  to  honour  the  Deity  by  ascetic 
abstinence  from  the  enjoyments  which  he  has  kindly 
provided  for  our  happiness.  Nay,  the  finest  panegyric 
on  the  ministry  of  Christ  is  to  be  found  mingled  with 
the  same  just  reprehensions  of  those  who  pervert  and 
degrade  his  doctrines  (Disc,  vii.),  and  even  the  optimism 
of  which  in  his  other  works  he  has  ridiculed  the 
extravagant  doctrines,  is  here  preached  with  a  pious 
approval  of  its  moderate  and  rational  faith,  (Disc.  iii.  v.) 


46  VOLTAIRE. 

His  ridicule  of  saints  is  confined  to  the  fanatical 
devotees  or  hypocritical  pretenders  who  degrade  and 
desecrate  the  name.  If  he  mentions  any  miracles  with 
disrespect,  it  is  their  false  ones,  as  in  that  fine  passage, 
which  yet  gave  offence,  in  the  seventh  Discourse — 

"  Les  miracles  sont  bons ;  mais  soulager  son  frere, 
Mais  tirer  son  ami  du  sein  de  la  misere, 
Mais  a  ses  ennemis  pardoimer  leur  vertus, 
C'est  un  plus  grand  miracle,  et  qui  ne  se  fait  plus." 

To  judge  of  the  admirable  tendency  of  this  noble 
poem,  we  need  only  cite  such  lines  as  give  the  subject 
of  the  first  discourse — omitted  strangely  with  some  of 
the  very  finest  of  the  whole,  as  those  on  Timante, 
Cyrus,  and  De  Thou,  in  the  seventh : 

"  Mortel,  en  quelque  etat  que  le  ciel  t'ait  fait  naitre, 
Sois  soumis,  sois  content,  et  rend  grace  a  ton  maitre  :" 

and  those  on  tolerance  in  the  second — 

"  Ferme  en  tes  sentimens  et  simple  dans  ton  coeur, 
Aime  la  verite,  mais  pardonnez  a  1'erreur  ; 
Fuis  les  importuner  d'un  zele  atrabilaire. 
Ce  mortel  qui  s'egare  est  un  homme,  et  ton  frere  ; 
Sois  sage  pour  toi  seule,  compatissant  pour  lui, 
Fais  ton  bonheur  enfin  par  le  bonheur  d'autrui." 

The  panegyric  on  friendship  in  the  fourth  is  perhaps 
unequalled  on  that  trite  subject.  That  point  and 
satire  should  be  found  in  this  poem  was  to  be  expected, 
but  they  are  by  no  means  overdone ;  nay,  they  are  kept 
in  subjection  to  the  great  and  good  design  of  the 
work;  and  if  we  have  a  dark  picture  strongly  but 
admirably  drawn,  it  is  that  of  the  despicable  Des 
Fontaines  : — 


VOLTAIRE.  47 

"  Ce  vil  fripier  d'ecrits  que  1'interet  devore, 
Qui  vend  au  plus  ofFrant  son  encre  et  ses  fureurs, 
Meprisable  en  son  gout,  detestable  en  ses  moeurs. 
Medisant,  qui  se  plaint  des  brocards  qu'il  essuye, 
Satirique,  ennuyeux,  disant  que  tout  1'ennuye, 
Criant  que  le  bon  gout  s'est  perdu  dans  Paris, 
Et  le  prouvant  tres  bien,  du  moms,  par  ses  ecrits." 

(Disc,  iii.) 

"  Huckster  of  printed  wares,  who  barters  still 
The  oil  or  venom  of  his  hireling  quill ; 
Whose  taste  and  morals  are  alike  impure, 
And  none  his  writings,  none  his  life  endure  ; 
A  general  slanderer,  touch  him  and  he  roars, 
Dully,  the  dulness  of  the  age  deplores, 
Cries  that  at  Paris  taste  in  books  there  's  none, 
And  proves  it  if  he  can  but  sell  his  own." 

We  have  also  such  wholesome  morality  as  the  couplet 
against  asceticism  in  the  tenth : 

"  Malgre  la  saintete  de  son  auguste  emploi, 
C'est  n'etre  bon  a  rien  de  n'etre  bon  qu'a  toi." 

And  the  noble  one  in  the  third  against  envy — 

"  La  gloire  d'un  rival  s'obstine  a  t'outrager, 
C'est  en  le  surpassant  que  tu  dois  t'en  venger !" 

But  some  passages  have  high  merit  of  a  more 
purely  poetical  cast.  There  is  nothing  finer,  if  any- 
thing so  fine,  in  Pope,  as  the  close  of  the  fifth,  where 
he  compares  his  own  prosecution  of  his  literary  labours, 
while  arrested  at  Francfort,  to  Pan's  continuing  to 
play  while  Cacus  seized  his  flocks ;  and  then  breaks 
out  in  a  strain  not  surpassed  by  Virgil — 

"  Heureux  qui  jusqu'au  temps  du  terme  de  sa  vie, 
Des  beaux  arts  amoureux,  peut  cultiver  les  fruits ! 
II  brave  1'injustice,  il  calme  les  ennuis, 
II  pardonne  aux  humains,  il  rit  de  leur  delire, 
Et  de  sa  main  mourant  il  touche  encore  la  lyre." 


48  VOLTAIRE. 

"  Ah,  happy  he  who  to  life's  latest  hour 
Of  the  arts  enamour'd,  plucks  their  fruit  and  flower; 
He  braves  injustice,  snail-pac'd  time  beguiles, 
Forgives  his  foes,  at  human  folly  smiles. 
Life's  glimmering  lamp  feeds  with  poetic  fire, 
And  with  his  dying  fingers  sweeps  the  lyre." 

There  is,  perhaps,  one  yet  greater  passage,  the  con- 
clusion of  the  third  canto : 

"  Qu'il  est  grand,  qu'il  est  doux,  de  se  dire  a  soi-meme, 
Je  n'ai  point  d'ennemis,  j'ai  des  rivaux  que  j'aime, 
Je  prends  part  a  leur  gloire,  a  leur  maux,  a  leur  biens, 
Les  arts  nous  ont  unis,  leurs  beaux  jours  sont  les  miens : 
C'est  ainsi  que  la  terre  avec  plaisir  rassemble, 
Ces  chenes,  ces  sapins,  qui  s'elevent  ensemble, 
Un  sue  tou'ours  egal  est  prepare  pour  eux  ; 
Leur  pieds  touchent  aux  enfers,  leur  cime  est  dans  les  cieux  ; 
Leur  tronc  inebranlable,  et  leur  pompeuse  tete, 
Resiste,  en  se  touchant,  aux  coups  de  la  tempete ; 
Us  vivent  1'un  par  1'autre,  ils  triomphent  du  temps, 
Tandis  que  sous  leur  ombre  on  voit  de  vil  serpens, 
Se  livrer,  en  sifflant,  des  guerres  intestines, 
Et  de  leur  sang  impure  arroser  leur  racines." 

The  following  translation  is  most  imperfect,  and  has 
only  the  merit  of  being  very  literal : — 

"  How  grand,  how  sweet,  the  heavenly  strains  ascend, 
Foes  I  have  none,  my  rival  is  my  friend ; 
The  arts  unite  us,  common  are  our  cares, 
And  each  the  other's  griefs  and  glories  shares  : 
So  Earth,  our  common  parent,  loves  to  rear 
Yon  oak,  yon  pine,  and  make  them  flourish  near ; 
On  one  green  spot  the  sylvan  giants  stand, 
Cast  one  broad  shadow  o'er  the  grateful  land ; 
Feel  the  same  juice  through  all  their  veins  arise ; 
Deep  pierce  their  roots  entwined,  their  tops  approach  the  skies. 
Their  trunks  unshaken,  of  majestic  form, 
Embracing  each  the  other,  mock  the  storm  ; 
O'er  time  they  triumph,  strong  in  mutual  aid, 
While  envious  snakes,  obscure,  frequent  their  shade, 


VOLTAIRE.  49 

And  hiss,  and  sting,  and  with  each  other's  blood 
Impure,  profane  the  monarchs  of  the  wood." 

The  'Loi  Naturelle,'  though  not  without  consider- 
able beauties,  and  altogether  free  from  exceptionable 
passages,  is  every  way  inferior  to  this  fine  poem.  The 
'Desastre  de  Lisbonne'  is  of  the  same  merit;  and 
though  the  object  is  to  cry  down  those  who  deny  the 
existence  of  evil,  it  conducts  the  argument  with  perfect 
decency — nay,  the  turn  given  to  it  at  the  close  is  of  a 
purely  religious  character. 

"  Le  passe  n'est  pour  nous  qu'un  triste  souvenir, 
Le  present  est  affreux  s'il  n'est  point  d'avenir ; 
Si  la  nuit  du  tombeau  detruit  1'etre  qui  pense, 
Un  jour  tout  sera  bien — '  voila  notre  esperance !' 
Tout  est  bien  aujourd'hui — voila  1'illusion  !" 

"  Sad  the  remembrance  of  the  moments  past, 
And  sad  the  present,  if  they  be  the  last ! 
O'er  all  our  landscape  evil  sheds  a  gloom, 
If  all  our  prospect 's  bounded  by  the  tomb  ; 
When  we  say,  '  all  is  well,'  from  truth  we  stray, 
Our  comfort  is,  '  all  will  be  well  one  day.'  " 

It  is  melancholy  to  reflect  on  the  use  which  was 
sometimes  made  of  such  a  rich  genius,  and  to  think  of 
the  benefits  which  might  have  been  showered  down 
upon  mankind  by  the  wise  and  temperate  employment 
of  those  treasures.  Great  as  were  the  services  unde- 
niably rendered  in  spite  of  the  evil  mixture,  they  sink 
into  nothing  compared  with  what  might  have  been 
hoped  from  their  pure  and  diligent  devotion  to  the 
best  interests  of  mankind. 

There  needs  no  comment  upon  the  numerous  class 
of  the  lighter  and  shorter  productions,  the  vers  de 
societe,  the  epigrams,  the  jeuoc  <£ esprit,  in  which  he 

E 


50  VOLTAIRE. 

was  by  common  consent  admitted  to  have  excelled  all 
his  contemporaries— probably  all  the  wits  that  ever 
lived  and  wrote.  Their  great  inequality  is  no  doubt 
as  certain,  and  it  was  an  inevitable  consequence  of  such 
a  facility  as  he  possessed,  and  such  an  active  spirit  as 
moved  him.  Their  peculiar  adaptation  to  the  circum- 
stances that  gave  them  birth  is  also  a  necessary  con- 
comitant of  this  kind  of  composition.  But  it  is  singu- 
lar that  the  most  elaborate  of  the  whole  class  of  his 
writings,  and  the  one  which  he  probably  most  valued, 
the  '  Guerres  civiles  de  Geneve,'  is  without  exception 
the  worst  of  all  his  productions,  and  can  hardly  be 
matched  for  dulness  and  flatness  by  any  undoubted 
production  in  verse  of  any  other  eminent  poet. 


It  seemed  convenient  to  discuss  the  question,  or 
rather  the  kind  and  the  degree  of  what  is  unquestion- 
able— Voltaire's  poetical  excellence — on  the  occasion 
of  his  first  success,  the  '  QSdipe,'  in  order  to  take  the 
whole  subject  at  once,  and  not  to  break  the  continuity 
of  our  narrative  each  time  that  a  new  drama  or  a  new 
poem  was  produced  by  his  fertile  genius.  We  must 
now  return  to  the  history  of  his  life. 

The  success  of  'CEdipe'  placed  him,  though  young, 
on  the  lists  of  fame,  and  of  dramatic  fame,  the  most 
quick  of  all  others,  especially  at  Paris,  in  its  returns 
both  of  profit  and  social  enjoyment.  He  became  the 
friend,  even  the  confidant,  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
and  shared  in  his  disgrace  under  the  Regent,  being 
obliged  for  a  while  to  quit  Paris.  But  on  the  re- 
presentation of  the  '  Mariamne,'  he  was  permitted  to 


VOLTAIRE.  51 

return,  and  he  soon  after  accompanied  Madame  de 
Rupelmonde  to  the  Low  Countries.  To  her  he  ad- 
dressed in  that  year,  1 722,  the  '  Epitre  a  Uranie,' a 
sceptical  rather  than  a  plainly  deistical  ode,  which 
possessed  some  poetical  merit,  but  was  forgotten 
among  his  subsequent  successes.  At  Brussels  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  J.  B.  Rousseau,  and  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  unrelenting  animosity  with  which 
that  middling  writer  and  irritable  personage  pursued 
him  ever  after.  This  he  owed  to  a  jest ;  having  told 
him,  on  reading  his  '  Ode  to  Posterity,'  "  that  it  would 
never  reach  its  destination."  Rousseau,  himself  the 
author  of  many  licentious  epigrams  against  the  clergy, 
hypocritically  affected  to  take  offence  at  the  6  Epitre  a 
Uranie/  and  at  Voltaire's  irreverent  demeanour  during 
mass.  Had  he  but  spared  the  truth  which  he  spoke 
in  jest  on  the  bad  ode,  he  might  have  scoffed  with 
Lmcian  and  blasphemed  with  Borgia. 

He  now  endeavoured  in  vain  to  regain  the  enjoy- 
ment he  most  loved — the  society  of  Paris.  An 
unfortunate  quarrel  with  the  Chevalier  de  Rohan 
exposed  him  to  the  resentment  of  the  Court,  and  the 
risk  of  again  inhabiting  the  Bastille.  Some  epigram 
or  jest  at  the  Chevalier's  expense  had  been  reported 
to  him,  and  he  basely  set  his  servants  on  the  wit, 
whom  they  severely  beat.  A  challenge  was  the  con- 
sequence ;  but  as  the  poet's  rank  did  not  authorize  this 
liberty,  he  was  on  the  point  of  being  handed  over  to 
the  police,  or  secured  by  a  lettre  de  cachet,  and  he 
resolved  to  fly.  His  plan  was  to  visit  England,  at- 
tracted by  her  liberty,  and  above  all,  by  that  which  ho 
seems  ever  to  have  valued  most — the  spirit  of  toler- 

E  2 


52  VOLTAIRE. 

ance  and  the  security  against  ecclesiastical  oppression. 
He  lived  above  two  years  in  London  and  its  neigh- 
bourhood, chiefly  at  Wandsworth,  in  the  house  of 
a  friend,  Mr.  Falconer,  then  a  respectable  Turkey 
merchant,  afterwards  Ambassador  to  the  Porte  and 
Secretary  to  the  Duke  of  Cumberland.  During  this 
residence  he  corrected  the  '  Hen  Hade :'  it  was  now 
published  under  that  name,  by  a  subscription,  which 
Queen  Caroline,  then  Princess  of  Wales,  warmly 
patronized,  and  which  produced  a  large  sum  of  money. 
He  likewise  devoted  himself  with  his  wonted  zeal  and 
success  to  the  study  of  the  Newtonian  philosophy. 
He  lived  in  the  society  of  our  literary  men ;  though 
the  great  age  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  prevented  him 
from  forming  any  acquaintance  with  him  whose 
system  he  was  destined  first  to  make  known  in  Europe. 
With  Pope  and  with  Congreve  he  had  many  inter- 
views :  for  the  former  he  acquired  a  respect  and 
esteem  which  the  similarity  of  their  poetical  genius 
naturally  cemented,  and  which  no  envy  or  jealousy 
ever  interrupted  ;  of  the  latter,  he  is  said  to  have 
formed  a  less  favourable  judgment.  The  silly  affect- 
ation of  *  telling  him,  when  he  came  to  admire  the 
Moliere  of  England,  that  he  valued  himself,  not  on 
his  authorship,  but  would  be  regarded  as  a  man  of  the 
world,  received  a  just  rebuke :  "I  should  never  have 
come  so  far  to  see  a  gentleman,"  said  Voltaire. 

This  journey  to  England  had  two  important  conse- 
quences. The  money  which  he  obtained,  and  which 
he  afterwards  increased  by  a  lucky  chance  in  the 
lottery,  and  by  engaging  in  one  or  two  successful 
mercantile  speculations,  yielded  him  an  ample  income 


VOLTAIRE.  53 

for  the  rest  of  his  life ;  so  that  he  cared  little  for  the 
profits  of  his  works,  and  indeed  gave  many  of  them  to 
the  booksellers  and  the  actors  for  nothing.  Not  only 
was  he  thus  secured  in  the  state  of  independence 
which  is  an  author's  best  protection  against  crude  and 
hasty  composition,  but  he  was  able  to  follow  the  bent 
of  his  taste  in  choosing  his  subjects,  and  of  his  dispo- 
sition both  to  encourage  young  authors  of  merit,  and 
to  relieve  the  distresses  of  deserving  persons.  Proofs 
also  remain  which  place  beyond  all  doubt  his  kindness 
to  several  worthless  men,  who  repaid  it  with  the  black 
ingratitude  so  commonly  used  as  their  current  coin  by 
the  base  and  spiteful,  who  salve  their  own  wounded 
pride  by  pouring  venom  on  the  hand  that  saved  or 
served  them. 

But  his  residence  in  England  had  a  still  more 
important  result — the  importation  he  made  from 
thence  of  the  Newtonian  system,  or  rather,  of  all  Sir 
Isaac  Newton's  wonderful  discoveries.  So  deeply 
rooted  were  the  prejudices  of  our  Continental  neigh- 
bours in  favour  of  the  Cartesian  philosophy,  that 
when  Fontenelle  pronounced  his  eloge  of  Newton,  at 
the  Academic  des  Sciences,  he  gave  the  preference  to 
Des  Cartes ;  and  even  ten  years  later,  the  Chancellor 
D'Aguesseau  refused  the  licence  to  print  Voltaire's 
work  because  it  denied  and  disproved  the  Vortices — 
an  act  of  narrow-minded  bigotry  in  science  scarcely 
to  be  matched  in  all  its  annals.  Voltaire,  soon  after 
his  return  from  England,  published  his  f  Lettres  sur  les 
Anglais' — a  candid  and  intelligent  work ;  and  in  three 
of  these  he  gives  a  very  correct  though  extremely 
general  and  popular  sketch  of  Newton's  discoveries. 


54  VOLTAIRE. 

But  in  1738  appeared  his  more  full  and  satisfactory 
account  of  them,  and  it  certainly  does  the  greatest 
honour  to  its  author.  This  work  owes  its  origin, 
however,  not  more  to  the  English  residence  of  the 
author,  than  to  the  intimacy  which  he  formed  soon 
after  his  return  to  France,  about  the  year  1730,  with 
the  family  of  Du  Chatelet ;  and  before  considering 
the  merits  of  the  book,  it  may  be  convenient  to  dwell 
for  a  little  while  upon  the  history  of  that  celebrated 
attachment. 

The  Marquess  had  married  several  years  before  a 
lady  of  high  rank,  Gabrielle  Emilie  de  Breteuil,  much 
younger  than  himself ;  and,  according  to  the  manners  of 
those  times  and  that  country,  she  herself  had  not  been 
consulted  upon  the  match  when  her  parents  gave  her 
away.  When  Voltaire  became  acquainted  with  her, 
she  was  in  her  twenty-fourth  year,  and  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  persons,  both  for  beauty,  talents,  and 
accomplishments,  that  adorned  the  French  Court,  or 
the  refined  society  of  Paris.  At  first  her  acquaintance 
with  the  poet  was  of  an  ordinary  kind,  probably  formed 
by  the  reputation  of  the  wit  and  the  rank  of  the  lady. 
But  the  literary  taste  of  the  Marchioness  found  so 
much  improvement  and  such  constant  gratification  in 
the  great  resources  of  his  various  knowledge,  his  ver- 
satile talents,  and  his  inexhaustible  wit,  that  it  can  be 
no  wonder  if  his  society  soon  became  necessary  to  a 
woman  of  her  decided  inclination  for  literary  and  sci- 
entific pursuits.  The  fame  which  he  had  acquired  as 
a  dramatist,  and  in  the  brilliant  circles  of  Paris  society, 
would  have  riveted  the  attention  of  an  ordinary 
woman,  to  whom  he  showed  a  desire  of  devoting  him- 


VOLTAIRE.  55 

self.  But  though  she  was  herself  fond  of  all  the 
common  amusements  of  her  rank  and  sex,  lived  in  the 
circles  of  the  court  as  might  be  expected  of  a  Breteuil, 
and  cultivated  all  the  graces  even  as  displayed  in  the 
lighter  accomplishments,  it  seems  doubtful  if  she 
would  have  formed  so  decided  a  predilection  for  the 
company  of  any  one  who  had  not  begun  to  cultivate 
those  severer  sciences  to  which  she  gave  a  marked  pre- 
ference. Nor  can  we  much  question  the  probability 
of  Voltaire  having,  after  his  return  from  England, 
turned  his  attention  far  more  to  these  studies  than  he 
otherwise  would  have  done,  in  order  to  make*  a  pro- 
gress not  only  in  philosophy,  but  also  in  the  good  graces 
of  a  person  so  distinguished  in  every  way,  young, 
handsome,  noble,  attractive,  as  well  as  learned  be- 
yond the  ordinary  measure  even  of  man's  information, 
endowed  with  talents  both  solid  and  ornamental,  and 
inspired  by  a  taste  for  the  graver  as  well  as  the  lighter 
pursuits  of  genius.  The  difficulties  in  which  he  was 
involved  by  a  lettre  de  cachet  threatened,  if  not  issued, 
on  account  of  the  '  Letters '  after  his  return  from  Eng- 
land, had  obliged  him  to  leave  Paris.  There  seems  every 
reason  to  believe  that  the  arrangement  by  which  he  be- 
came an  inmate  in  the  Marquess's  house  was  formed 
about  the  same  time,  and  that  he  found  a  refuge  at  the 
chateau  of  Cirey  in  Champagne,  whither  the  literary 
tastes  of  the  Marchioness  had  made  her  resolve  to  with- 
draw from  the  frivolity  of  the  court  and  the  dissipation 
of  the  capital,  and  had  enabled  her  to  prevail  with  the 
Marquess,  who  yielded  to  this  new  plan  of  life.  They 
had  at  this  time  a  son  and  a  daughter ;  and  an  Abbe 
named  Linant  was  engaged  as  the  tutor  of  the  former, 


56  VOLTAIRE. 

while  the  Marchioness  herself  superintended  the  lat- 
ter's  education. 

The  chateau  of  Cirey,  on  the  confines  of  Cham- 
pagne and  Lorraine,  had,  like  most  French  country 
houses,  fallen  into  some  disrepair.  Steps  were  imme- 
diately taken  to  put  it  in  order,  and  a  considerable 
addition  of  a  gallery  and  a  laboratory,  or  cabinet  of 
natural  philosophy,  was  made  to  it  under  Voltaire's 
superintendence.  The  elegance  and  even  luxury  of  the 
apartments  is  described  as  very  great.  He  likewise 
furnished  the  funds  required  for  the  improvements,  by 
lending  the  Marquess  40,000  francs,  and  by  providing  a 
portion  of  the  furniture,  of  the  apparatus,  and  of  the 
library,  which  became  a  sufficiently  large  one  for  all  or- 
dinary purposes.  It  appears,  that  soon  after  the  building 
was  finished,  he  reduced  his  claim  to  30,000  francs,  and 
agreed  to  take  in  lieu  of  that  sum  an  annuity  of  2000 
francs.  Fifteen  years,  however,  elapsed  without  any 
payment  of  the  annuity ;  and  though  the  arrears  now 
amounted  to  30,000  francs,  he  agreed  to  receive  15,000 
both  for  these  arrears  and  for  the  remainder  of  his  life- 
interest  in  the  annuity  :  of  this  1 5,000  francs  it  does 
not  appear  that  he  ever  received  more  than  10,000 — 
so  that  he  gave  up  altogether  a  sum  of  about  2000/. 
sterling,  principal  and  interest.*  But  he  appears 
constantly  to  have  assisted  the  household  with  money, 
which  the  careless  habits  of  the  Marquess,  and  the 
yet  less  worldly  nature  of  the  Marchioness,  occasion- 
ally rendered  necessary.  The  income  of  the  Marquess 


*  A  sura  equal  at  the  present  time,  and  in  England,  to  at  least 
6000/. 


VOLTAIRE.  57 

was  about  40,000  francs,  equal  to  about  6000/.  in  this 
country  at  the  present  time. 

The  family  appears  to  have  lived  together  in  great 
harmony,  though  occasionally  somewhat  broken  by 
the  rather  impetuous  temper  of  the  fair  analyst. 
They  led  a  retired,  contemplative,  and  studious,  but 
by  no  means  a  dull  or  unvaried  life.  Visits  were 
occasionally  made  to  Paris ;  in  Brussels  and  the 
Hague  it  became  necessary  to  pass  some  time,  partly 
on  account  of  Voltaire's  work  then  printing  there, 
the  '  Elements,'  partly  on  account  of  a  law-suit  by 
which  the  family  had  been  exhausted  for  sixty  years, 
and  of  which  Voltaire's  active  interposition  obtained 
the  amicable  settlement,  by  payment  to  the  Marquess 
of  220,000  francs. 

Some  of  the  greatest  mathematicians  of  the  age  fre- 
quented the  chateau,  and  assisted  the  Marchioness  in 
her  studies.  Kcenig  and  his  brother,  disciples  of  the 
Bernouillis,  passed  two  years  there  ;  but  also  D.  Ber- 
nouilli  himself  was  occasionally  a  visitor ;  and  so  was 
the  illustrious  Clairault.  Maupertuis,  a  man  of  very  in- 
ferior mark,  but  esteemed  at  that  time,  when  his  journey 
to  measure  a  degree  in  Lapland  caused  him  to  be  over- 
rated, was  more  than  once  the  Marquess's  guest  and 
his  wife's  instructor  or  fellow-student.  The  Mar- 
chioness seldom  dined  with  the  family,  whose  dinner- 
hour  was  twelve ;  but  they  more  frequently  assembled 
all  together  to  supper  at  eight  in  the  evening.  Though 
the  Marchioness  was  chiefly  engaged  in  her  '  Com- 
mentaries on  Newton,'  and  her  able  and  learned  trans- 
lation of  the  '  Principia,'  she  could  distract  her  mind 
from  such  studies  by  the  pleasures  of  music  and  of  the 
stage ;  and  wre  find  Voltaire  telling  friends  whom  he 


58  VOLTAIRE. 

is  inviting  to  visit  them,  that  "  plays  are  made  daily, 
and  Jupiter's  satellites  observed  nightly  (Cor.  Gene- 
rale,  iii.  184)  ;  that  they  will  be  free  to  pass  the 
mornings  in  their  own  apartments,  and  will  hear  read 
in  the  evening  the  compositions  of  the  day ;  and  that 
the  Marchioness  '  joue  ou  1'opera,  ou  la  comedie,  ou 
la  comete  '  "  (ib.  312).  Indeed  Voltaire  himself  exhi- 
bited perhaps  the  most  remarkable  instance  of  varied 
and  versatile  talents  on  record,  by  producing,  within 
the  same  three  or  four  years,  the  Newtonian  *  Ele- 
ments,' his  prize  essay  on  '  Fire/  '  Zaire,'  '  Alzire,' 
'  Mahomet,'  '  the  Discours  sur  I'Hornme,'  more  than 
half  of  the  '  Pueelle,'  the  «  History  of  Charles  XII.,' 
besides  an  endless  variety  of  minor  pieces,  and  some 
volumes  of  correspondence  in  prose  and  verse.  The 
'  Pueelle '  was  begun  to  amuse  him  while  obliged  to 
fly  from  Paris  in  1734  by  the  persecutions  he  suffered 
on  account  of  the  '  Letters  on  England.' 

It  was  at  Cirey,  then,  with  a  few  weeks  passed  in 
'Sgravesande's  society  at  Leyden,  that  Voltaire  com- 
posed, and  finally  prepared  for  publication,  his  'Elements 
of  the  Newtonian  Philosophy,'  as  well  as  his  '  Essay  on 
Fire ;'  and  of  both  these  works  we  may  now  treat. 

In  order  to  estimate  the  merits  of  the  work  on  Sir 
Isaac  Newton's  discoveries,  we  must  first  consider  the 
state  in  which  it  found  the  Newtonian  system  on  the 
Continent ;  next,  the  helps  which  he  had  in  writing  it. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Clairault,  destined 
afterwards  to  confirm  the  theory  of  the  moon's  motions, 
though  at  first,  with  others,  to  undergo  a  temporary 
error  upon  the  subject, — destined  also  to  join  with 
D'Alembert  and  Euler  in  explaining  the  disturbing 
forces  by  working  out  the  problem  of  the  three 


VOLTAIRE.  59 

bodies, — destined,  finally,  to  bring  the  disturbances  in 
the  trajectories  of  comets  within  the  theory  of  planetary 
attraction,  very  early,  probably  before  Voltaire,  adopted 
the  Newtonian  philosophy  ;  for,  though  only  fifteen 
years  old  when  Voltaire's  l  Letters*  were  written,  he 
had,  when  only  thirteen,  begun  his  admirable  work  on 
Curves  of  Double  Curvature,  and  it  was  published 
very  soon  after  the  '  Letters'  appeared.  But  it  is  certain 
he  had  given  nothing  to  the  world  on  the  theory  of 
gravitation.  Maupertuis  had  probably,  in  scientific 
circles,  professed  his  conversion,  and  intimated  that  he 
renounced  the  Cartesian  philosophy ;  but  until  after  his 
return  from  Lapland,  in  1738,  he  never  made  any  pub- 
lic profession  of  his  faith,  his  '  Commentary/  in  1732, 
being  confined  to  the  dynamical  subject  of  the  12th  Sec- 
tion of  the  '  Principia'  (Book  L).  Voltaire's  '  Letters/ 
therefore,  published  in  1732,  first  defended  generally, 
and  his  '  Elements/  in  1738,  defined  in  detail  the  new 
system,  and  gave  an  explanation  of  it  so  clear  and 
popular,  as  in  all  likelihood  neither  Maupertuis  nor 
Clairault  could  have  furnished.  He  therefore  justly 
claims  the  glory  of  first  making  the  Newtonian  sys- 
tem accessible  to  the  bulk  of  European  readers,  of 
fully  refuting  the  Cartesian  errors,  and  of  boldly  op- 
posing a  doctrine  which,  of  all  philosophical  tenets 
since  Aristotle's  philosophy,  had  taken  the  strongest 
hold  of  men's  minds.  Indeed,  the  prejudices  in  favour 
of  the  Vortices,  like  those  in  favour  of  the  Aristotelian 
philosophy,  appear  to  have  partaken  of  the  zeal,  and 
even  of  the  intolerant  spirit,  which  theological  dogmas 
are  too  often  found  to  excite.  Fontenelle,  in  his 
'  Eloge'  of  Newton,  had  shown  his  adhesion  to  Des 


60  VOLTAIRE, 

Cartes.  The  Chancellor  D'Aguesseau,  as  I  have  already 
remarked,  could  never  be  prevailed  upon  to  grant  a 
licence  for  printing  Voltaire's  work;  he  kept  the 
manuscript  in  his  possession  for  eight  months,  and 
ended  by  refusing  his  permission — a  piece  of  folly  and 
bigotry  worthy  of  that  eminent  and  virtuous,  but 
feeble  character,  which  had  made  him  also  refuse  the 
licence  to  print  a  novel,  unless  the  hero  was  made  to 
change  his  religion  and  become  a  Catholic.  Even 
the  '  Letters  on  England'  had  suffered  persecution, 
partly  from  their  opposing  Des  Cartes,  but  chiefly  be- 
cause, with  .Locke,  they  denied  innate  ideas,  which 
the  bigoted  clergy  deemed  an  approach  to  material- 
ism, or  at  any  rate,  a  doctrine  tending  to  level  the 
human  mind  with  that  of  the  lower  animals — a  doc- 
trine, however,  it  must  be  observed,  for  that  very  reason 
somewhat  favourable  to  themselves.  The  result  of  their 
efforts  was  a  lettre  de  cachet,  and  Voltaire's  sudden  flight 
from  Paris.  Another  consequence  very  discreditable 
to  him  was  his  positive  and  public  denial  of  the  author- 
ship, and  affirming  that  the  letters  had  been  written 
by  his  early  patron,  the  Abbe  Chaulieu,  now  no  more. 
These  letters  were  first  published  in  London  by  his 
friend  M.  Their iot,  who  caused  them  to  be  translated 
into  English,  in  which  language  they  first  appeared. 
He  was  allowed  to  reap  the  whole  profits  of  the  work. 
Afterwards  Voltaire  gave  a  bookseller  at  Rouen  leave 
to  publish  the  original  French ;  but  withdrew  his 
consent  as  soon  as  he  perceived  the  trouble  into  which 
the  work  would  bring  him.  His  countermand,  how- 
ever, arrived  too  late,  and  he  suffered  great  annoyance 
in  consequence.  It  is  usually  represented  that  this 


VOLTAIRE.  61 

book,  containing  his  more  general  sketch  of  the 
Newtonian  system,  was  written  as  early  as  1727  or  1728 ; 
but  this  is  certainly  incorrect.  The  letters  were  in 
great  part  written  while  he  was  living  at  the  house  of 
Mr.  Falconer  at  Wandsworth  ;  but  those  on  Sir  Isaac 
Newton's  discoveries  were  so  far  from  being  then 
finished,  that  they  were  probably  not  commenced ;  for 
we  find  in  the  '  Correspondance '  letters  as  late  as  the 
autumn  of  1732,  in  which  he  consulted  Maupertuis  upon 
the  doctrine  of  attraction,  and  was  wavering  between 
that  and  the  vortices.  There  are  no  less  than  five 
letters  written  by  him  on  this  subject ;  and  after  his 
objections  to  the  Newtonian  doctrine  had  been  removed 
by  Maupertuis,  he  falls  back  and  sends  him  a  long 
paper  on  the  moon's  motion,  dated  5th  November, 
1732.*  The  '  Letters '  at  length  appeared,  however,  and 
his  own  account  of  that  portion  of  them  is  at  once 
accurate  and  witty.  "  I  carefully  avoid  entering  into 
calculations,"  he  says  :  "  I  am  like  a  person  who  settles 
with  his  steward,  but  does  not  go  to  work  arithme- 
tically." The  '  Elements'  were  written  between  1732 
and  1736,  were  finished  about  that  time,  and  were 
published  in  1738. 

The  other  matter  for  consideration  is  the  assistance 
which  Voltaire  had  privately  in  preparing  this  work. 
It  is  clear  that  he  must  have  begun  his  physical 
studies  with  a  very  indifferent  provision  of  mathe- 
matical knowledge.  It  is  equally  clear  that  he  studied 
natural  philosophy  with  Madame  du  Chatelet,  who 
had  a  particular  taste  for  the  mathematics.  She  had 

*  Cor.  Gen.,  i.  244  et  seq.,  and  259;  ii.  493,  514. 


62  VOLTAIRE. 

received  instruction  from  Maupertuis  ;  some  also  from 
Clairault  before  he  went  to  Lapland  ;  but  she  received 
still  more  from  him  after  he  returned  to  Cirey.  He 
had  fully  instructed  her  in  the  Newtonian  philosophy, 
and  in  the  method  of  conducting  the  demonstrations  of 
the  *  Principia'  analytically — a  most  invaluable  service  to 
any  student  at  that  time,  when  the  excellent  commen- 
tary of  the  Jesuits*  (Le  Sueur  and  Jacquier)  had  not 
appeared  :  she  reduced  his  lessons  to  writing,  and  they 
were  afterwards  published  among  her  posthumous 
works. |  Her '  Institutes  de  Physique'  were  published  in 
1740,  and  contain  a  very  accurate  account  of  the  New- 
tonian system;  and  as  it  is  clear,  from  Voltaire's 
Correspondence,  that  the  work  was  written  before  the 
beginning  of  that  year,  it  can  admit  of  no  doubt  that 
she  was  acquainted  with  the  Newtonian  philosophy  at 
the  time  he  was  writing  his  '  Elements  ;'  the  printing*  of 
which  began  early  in  1737,  and  continued  nearly  two 
years.  He  therefore  derived  all  the  benefit  that  his 
knowledge  of  the  subject  enabled  him  to  receive  from 
Clairault ;  and  Koenig  lived  at  Cirey  the  whole  of  the 
years  1738  and  1739,  so  as  to  make  the  revision  of  the 
book  by  him  very  possible  while  it  passed  through  the 
press.  He  admits  Madame  du  Chatelet's  share  in  the 
work,  in  express  terms,  to  Frederick  II.J  The  access 
to  these  helps,  however,  does  not  materially  lessen  his 

*  They  were  Minimes,  and  not  Jesuits  as  they  are  always  called. 

•f  Voltaire  (Memoires,  QEuv.,  i.  219)  erroneously  ascribes  this  to 
Madame  du  Chatelet  herself,  and  says  it  was  revised  by  Clairault. 
The  '  Memoires'  abound  in  error.  Thus  they  make  the  journey  to 
Luneville  in  1749,  instead  of  1748. 

|  Cor.  avec  les  Souverains,  i.  60. 


VOLTAIRE.  63 

merits.  Indeed  he  had  the  benefit  of  Pemberton's 
'  General  View,'  which  was  published  as  early  as  1728, 
and  is  more  than  once  referred  to  by  him.  Maclaurin's 
was  not  published  till  1748. 

That  Voltaire  had,  or  in  consequence  of  sympathy 
with  Madame  du  Chatelet  acquired,  some  taste  for  the 
mathematics  is  certain.  He  even  prosecuted  the  study 
with  considerable  assiduity.  After  making  some 
progress  he  consulted  Clairault,  and  asked  him  if  he 
could  conscientiously  advise  him  to  persevere  in  the 
pursuit — to  go  on  with  the  cultivation  of  a  science 
which  is  commonly  supposed  to  require  an  undivided 
homage  from  its  votaries,  though  D'Alembert's  example 
negatives  the  assumption.  We  are  not  informed  of 
the  grounds  upon  which  Clairault  candidly  gave  his 
opinion  that  the  science  of  number  and  quantity  was 
not  Voltaire's  vocation  ;  whether  he  found  him  ill 
grounded  in  a  branch  of  knowledge  which  he  had 
studied  late,  or  saw  in  any  attempts  at  origiifal  inves- 
tigation that  his  genius  lay  not  that  way.  It  is,  how- 
ever, to  be  lamented  that  his  advice  was  either  given  so 
generally,  or  so  generally  construed  and  followed,  as 
to  make  no  exception  in  favour  of  experimental 
philosophy,  in  which  I  am  strongly  inclined  to  think, 
and  shall  presently  explain  why,  his  acuteness,  his 
industry,  his  sagacity,  above  all  his  brave  contempt  of 
received  opinions,  and  his  deep-rooted  habit  of  judging 
every  proposition  by  its  own  merits,  would  in  all  pro- 
bability have  ranked  him  among  the  discoverers  of 
the  age. 

The  '  Elemens '  is  a  work  of  a  much  higher  order 
than  the  *  Letters,'  and  does  great  credit  both  to  his  in- 


64  VOLTAIRE. 

dustry  and  his  accuracy.  It  is  indeed  so  free  from 
errors,  although  it  is  by  no  means  a  superficial  account 
of  the  Newtonian  philosophy,  that,  with  the  limited 
knowledge  of  mathematics  which  Voltaire  possessed, 
we  can  hardly  conceive  his  having  avoided  mistakes, 
and  must  therefore  suppose  that  either  'Sgravesande, 
with  whom  he  passed  some  time  at  Ley  den,  while  the 
work  was  in  the  press,  or  Koenig,  who  was  then  living 
at  Cirey,  must  have  gone  over  and  revised  it.  There 
is  no  greater  mistake  than  theirs  who  call  the  e  Ele- 
ments' a  flimsy  or  superficial  work.  The  design  of  it 
is  not  to  enter  minutely  into  the  profound  investiga- 
tions of  the  c  Principia,'  or  to  follow  all  the  exqui- 
site inductive  processes  of  the  '  Optics,'  but  to  give 
the  great  truths  unfolded  in  both  these  immortal 
works,  with  a  certain  portion  of  the  evidence  on  which 
they  rest,  so  that  the  reader  unacquainted  with  the 
mathematics  beyond  the  mere  definitions,  and  perhaps 
one  or  two  of  the  elementary  propositions  in  geo- 
metry, may  be  able  to  form  an  accurate  notion  of  the 
reasoning  that  supports  the  mighty  system.  The 
design  is  this  ;  that  design  is  executed  ;  and  the  power 
of  explaining  an  abstract  subject  in  easy  and  accurate 
language,  language  not  in  any  way  beneath  the  dig- 
nity of  science,  though  quite  suited  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  uninformed  persons,  is  unquestionably  shown 
in  a  manner  which  only  makes  it  a  matter  of  regret 
that  the  singularly  gifted  author  did  not  carry  his 
torch  into  all  the  recesses  of  natural  philosophy.  It 
must  be  added,  that,  beside  explaining  the  discoveries 
of  Newton,  he  has  given  an  equally  clear  view  of  the 
science  as  it  stood  before  those  great  changes  were 


VOLTAIRE.  65 

effected.  The  Cartesian  system  is  fully  explained,  and 
the  outline  of  optical  science,  independent  of  New- 
ton's researches,  is  more  extended  and  more  elaborate 
than  the  account  of  those  researches.  The  second  part 
relates  to  the  nature  and  action  of  light ;  the  third  to 
the  system  of  the  world ;  and  the  first  part  enters  at 
some  length  into  the  general  doctrines  of  mind,  mat- 
ter, force,  and  motion,  even  dealing  with  the  doctrines 
of  natural  religion. 

Whoever  reads  the  work  attentively,  allowing  it 
the  full  praise  so  justly  its  due,  will  find  it  wholly  in- 
capable of  furnishing  any  proof  that  the  author  had 
ever  read  either  the  '  Principia '  or  the  '  Optics/  There 
is  no  reference  to  those  writings  which  at  all  shows 
that  he  had  ever  seen  a  line  of  them.  In  the  contro- 
versy with  the  Cartesians,  which  he  carried  on  after 
the  *  Elements '  were  published,  he  cites  the  96th 
proposition  (meaning  of  the  first  book  of  the  '  Prin- 
cipia,' although  he  does  not  mention  the  book)  ;  but  it 
is  only  to  speak  of  optical  matters.  He  also  refers  to 
the  Scholium  Generate  ;  but  that  has  been  constantly 
cited,  and  for  the  most  part  at  second  hand,  by  those 
who  never  read  any  other  part  of  the  work.  It  is 
further  to  be  observed,  that  no  account  whatever  is 
given,  nor  even  any  mention  made,  of  the  Second  Book, 
concerning  motion  in  resisting  media ; — indeed  there 
are  indications  more  positive  of  his  not  having  drunk 
at  the  pure  source  itself.  If  he  had  been  acquainted 
with  the  '  Optics,'  in  describing  the  induction  by  which 
the  composition  of  white  light  is  proved,  he  never 
surely  would  have  omitted  the  experimentum  crucis. 
He  gives  (Part  ii.  chap.  10)  the  composition  of  the 

F 


66  VOLTAIRE. 

spectral  rays  by  means  of  a  lens,  and  their  forming 
white  in  the  focus  ;  but  he  leaves  entirely  out  the 
decisive  experiment  of  stopping  different  portions  of 
the  spectrum,  and  then  finding  that  the  focus  is  no 
longer  white,  but  of  the  colour,  or  mixture  of  colours, 
suffered  to  pass  onward.  It  is  perhaps  a  proof  of  the 
same  kind,  that  he  states  what  he  certainly  never  could 
have  learnt  in  the  '  Optics,'  the  blue  colour  of  the  sky 
as  caused  by  the  great  attenuation  of  the  vapours  aris- 
ing in  the  atmosphere  (Part  ii.  chap.  12).  Nor  could 
any  one  who  had  studied  the  same  admirable  work 
have  confined  himself  almost  entirely  to  one  portion 
of  it,  and  give  scarcely  any  account,  except  the  most 
general,  and  indeed  meagre,  of  the  colours  of  thin 
plates,  and  none  at  all  of  the  colours  of  thick  plates. 

With  respect  to  the  '  Principia/  he  gives  with  con- 
siderable fulness  the  doctrine  of  equal  areas  in  equal 
times  ;  and  indeed,  from  his  account,  the  demonstration 
as  well  as  the  fundamental  proposition  itself  may  be 
gathered.  But  then  comes  this  very  summary  state- 
ment of  the  planetary  law  : — "  Enfin  Newton  a  prouve 
que  si  la  courbe  decrite  autour  du  centre  est  une  ellipse, 
la  force  attractive  est  en  raison  inverse  du  carre  des 
distances"  (Part  iii.  chap.  4).  He  indeed  leaves  us  here 
to  infer,  quite  contrary  to  the  truth,  that  the  same 
proportion  is  peculiar  to  motion  in  an  ellipse ;  and  he 
makes  no  mention  whatever  of  the  inverse  problem, 
the  deducing  the  curve  from  the  force — the  more  im- 
portant of  the  two. 

There  is  a  profound  view  given  of  the  irregularity  in 
the  moon's  motion  caused  by  disturbance  (Part  iii. 
chap.  6) ,  and  one  or  two  other  parts  of  the  treatise 


VOLTAIRE.  67 

deserve  the  same  praise.  A  possibility  exists  of  these 
having  been  written  by  another  hand.  It  seems  diffi- 
cult to  suppose  the  same  very  accurate  writer  could  be 
the  author  of  such  passages  as  we  meet  with  in  the  de- 
fences of  the  work  against  the  Cartesians.  Thus,  in  the 
1  Courte  Reponse  aux  longs  Discours  d'un  Docteur  Alle- 
mand,'  we  find  him  saying  he  had  expected  repose,  but 
now  discovered  that  "  la  racine  carre  du  cube  des  revo- 
lutions des  planetes  et  les  carres  de  leurs  distances 
fesaient  encore  des  ennemis ;"  in  which  allusion  there 
are  three  capital  blunders  ;  the  square  root  of  the  cube 
is  taken  for  the  cube,  the  revolutions  for  the  distances, 
and  the  squares  for  the  cubes. 

In  1 737  both  Voltaire  and  Madame  du  Chatelet  were 
competitors  for  the  prize  of  the  Academy  of  Science. 
The  subject  was,  "  The  nature  of  fire  and  its  propaga- 
tion." Neither  paper  was  successful,  but  both  were 
honourably  mentioned  by  the  committee  of  examina- 
tion, and  both  were  printed  as  a  mark  of  approval. 
When  it  is  added  that  the  illustrious  Euler  gained  the 
prize,  surely  we  may  well  be  permitted  to  say  that  no 
discredit  could  result  from  being  surpassed  by  such  a 
rival.  But  Voltaire's  paper  is  of  great  merit.  He 
takes  bold  and  original  views,  and  describes  experi- 
ments which,  had  he  pursued  them  with  more  pa- 
tience, would  probably  have  enrolled  his  name  among 
the  greatest  discoverers  of  his  age.  It  is  impossible 
to  have  made  a  more  happy  conjecture  than  he 
does  upon  the  weight  acquired  by  metals  when  cal- 
cined. After  describing  an  experiment  made  by  him 
with  melted  iron,  "  II  est  tres  possible,"  says  he,  "  que 
cette  augmentation  de  poid  soit  venue  de  la  matiere 

F2 


68  VOLTAIRE, 

repandue  dans  1'atmosphere  :  done  dans  toutes  les  autres 
operations  par  lesquelles  les  matieres  calcinees  acqui- 
rent  du  poids,  cette  augmentation  de  substance  pourrait 
aussi  leur  etre  venue  de  la  meme  cause,  et  non  de 
la  matiere  ignee."  About  half  a  century  later  this 
conjecture  was  verified,  when  the  composition  of  the 
atmosphere  was  discovered.  Had  Voltaire  followed  up 
his  felicitous  conjecture  by  one  or  two  experiments,  he 
would  very  probably  have  discovered  both  the  nature 
of  oxygen  and  the  process  of  oxydation,  which  last,  in- 
deed, he  had  in  general  terms  described. 

Again,  how  near  does  he  approach  to  the  true 
theory  of  fluidity,  and  even  to  the  discovery  of  latent 
heat,  when,  speaking  of  the  effects  on  the  thermometer 
of  mixing  ammonia  and  vinegar,  he  says,  "  II  y  a  cer- 
tainement  du  feu  dans  ces  deux  liqueurs,  sans  quoi  elles 
ne  seraient  point  fluides ;"  and  afterwards  speaking  of 
the  connection  between  heat  and  permanent  or  gaseous 
elasticity,  he  says,  "  N'est-ce  pas  que  1'air  n'a  plus  alors 
la  quantite  de  feu  necessaire  pour  faire  jouir  toutes  ses 
parties,  et  pour  le  degager  de  1'atmosphere  engourdie 
qui  le  renferme?"  The  experiments  which  he  made 
on  the  heat  of  fluids  mixed  together,  of  different  tem- 
peratures before  their  mixture,  led  him  to  remark  the 
difference  of  the  temperature  when  mixed  from  what 
might  have  been  expected  by  combining  the  separate 
temperatures  before  mixture.  Need  I  add  that  this  is 
precisely  the  course  of  experiment  and  observation 
which  led  Black  to  his  celebrated  discovery  of  latent 
heat  a  quarter  of  a  century  later  ? 

It  was    in   these  studies  that  the    time    passed   at 


VOLTAIRE.  69 

Cirey,  in  these  various  pursuits  of  philosophy,  of  his- 
tory, of  poetry.  But  some  important  incidents  in 
Voltaire's  life,  beside  his  literary  successes,  happened 
during  his  intimacy  with  the  Du  Chatelets,  His  only 
sister,  of  whom  he  appears  to  have  been  fond,  had 
died  while  he  was  in  England,  leaving  a  son  and  two 
daughters.  Of  these,  now  grown  up,  he  took  a  parental 
care,  and  exerted  himself  to  marry  them  suitably. 
One,  in  1737,  married  M.  Denis,  a  captain  in  the 
Regiment  de  Champagne,  who  died  some  years  after 
(1744),  and  his  widow  ultimately  came  to  live  with 
her  uncle,  and  passed  nearly  thirty  years  under  his 
roof.  Her  sister  married,  some  years  later,  a  M.  de 
Fontaine.  During  the  same  period  of  his  residence 
at  Cirey,  the  Prince  Royal  of  Prussia,  afterwards 
Frederick  II.,  courted  his  acquaintance  by  letter,  and 
began  a  correspondence  of  mutual  compliment  and 
even  veneration,  which  lasted  till  he  became  king  at 
his  father's  death,  in  1 740.  At  that  time  he  made  a 
fruitless  attempt  to  make  Voltaire  fix  his  residence  at 
Berlin,  and  would  have  almost  let  him  dictate  his 
own  terms ;  but  as  long  as  Madame  du  Chatelet 
lived,  these  offers  were  frankly  and  peremptorily  re- 
fused. Voltaire  being  near  Brussels,  the  King,  who 
happened  to  be  in  that  neighbourhood  soon  after  his 
accession,  proposed  coming  to  wait  upon  the  poet ;  but, 
being  prevented  by  a  severe  ague,  Voltaire  went  to 
him,  and  had  his  first  interview  while  the  fit  was  upon 
the  royal  patient  in  bed.  He  undertook  to  publish  for 
him  his  first  work,  the  '  Anti-Machiavel.'  But  unfor- 
tunately, while  it  was  passing  through  the  press,  the 
death  of  Charles  VI.  left  his  daughter  Maria  Theresa 


70  VOLTAIRE. 

in  a  condition  of  such  weakness  as  exposed  the  royal 
combatant  of  Machiavel's  principles  to  an  irresistible 
temptation,  and  he  made  upon  her  province  of  Silesia 
one  of  the  most  unprovoked  and  unjustifiable  attacks 
of  which  history  has  left  any  record.  It  is  singular 
enough  that,  in  the  history  which  he  afterwards  wrote 
of  the  war,  he  in  plain  terms  had  stated  as  the  cause 
of  it,  his  possessing  a  fine  army,  and  great  treasure, 
which  his  father's  recent  death  had  left  him,  and  his 
inability  to  resist  the  temptation  of  her  weakness. 
Voltaire,  on  revising  the  work,  struck  this  singular 
passage  out  of  it ;  but,  having  kept  a  copy,  he  has  given 
it  in  his  'Memoirs/* 

The  favour  which  he  was  known  to  enjoy  with 
Frederick  induced  the  French  ministry,  three  years 
after,  to  employ  him  in  a  secret  mission,  which  he  ap- 
pears to  have  fulfilled  with  much  success.  He  went 
to  Berlin  under  cover  of  visiting  his  royal  and  literary 
correspondent,  and  obtained  from  him  the  assurance, 
that  a  declaration  of  war  by  France  against  England, 
then  taking  the  Empress- Queen's  part,  would  be  fol- 

*  The  passage  thus  erased  and  thus  preserved  is  extremely  curious, 
and  for  honesty  or  impudence  has  no  parallel  in  the  history  of 
warriors : — 

"  Que  Ton  joigne  a  ces  considerations,  des  troupes  toujours  pretes 
d'agir,  mon  epargne  bien  remplie,  et  la  vivacite  de  mon  caractere, 
c'etait  les  raisons  que  j'avais  de  faire  la  guerre  a  Marie  Therese, 
Reine  de  Bohemie  et  de  Hongrie, — 1'ambition,  Tinteret,  le  desir  de 
faire  parler  de  moi,  1'importerent ;  et  la  guerre  fut  resolue."  (Mem. 
238.)  If  every  man  who  enters  upon  a  voluntary  war  would  speak 
out,  we  should  have  the  same  commentary  on  the  lives  of  all  the 
butchers  who  disgrace  and  afflict  our  species.  Nothing,  certainly, 
can  more  eloquently  describe  their  cold-blooded  wickedness  than 
these  words  of  Frederick. 


VOLTA1KE.  71 

lowed  by  an  immediate  co-operation  with  France  on 
his  part.  The  favour  which  Voltaire  thus  ob- 
tained not  only  with  the  ministry,  but  with  Madame 
de  Pompadour,  then  all-powerful,  produced  an  im- 
pression which  all  his  fine  writings  had  failed  to  make. 
He  was  allowed  to  enter  the  Academy,  from  which 
court  influence  had  before  excluded  him ;  he  was 
named  gentleman  of  the  King's  chamber ;  and  he  re- 
ceived a  pension  of  2000  francs  a  year. 

The  tranquil  pleasures  of  letters  and  of  friendship, 
which  form  so  much  the  burthen  of  his  song  during 
his  residence  at  Cirey,  were  in  the  mean  time  suffer- 
ing constant  interruption,  as  he  would  represent,  from 
the  libels  of  persons  every  way  below  his  notice,  but, 
in  reality,  from  his  own  irritable  temper.  The  ve- 
hemence of  the  language  in  which  he  describes  those 
attacks,  makes  the  reader  believe  that  the  charges 
against  him  were  of  a  heinous  kind,  and  that  the  ac- 
cusers were  persons  of  importance ;  when  both  are 
examined,  they  generally  turn  out  to  be  equally  insig- 
nificant. One  attack  only,  which  absurdly  accuses 
him  of  having  failed  to  account  for  subscriptions  to 
the  '  Henriade,'  he  did  right  in  requiring  a  friend  to 
refute,  who  was  personally  acquainted  with  the  whole 
matter,  having  devoted  to  his  own  use  part  of  the 
money  so  received.  He  seems  to  have  had  some  ground 
for  complaining  that  this  gentleman,  a  M.  Theiriot, 
was  slow  in  vindicating  him  ;  but  his  principal  griev- 
ance is  that  Theiriot  refused  to  attack  the  slander 
in  his  own  person,  and  to  repeat  in  public  what  he 
had  so  often  written  privately,  that  the  accuser  was 
the  author  of  other  libels  against  them  both,  and  was 


72  VOLTAIRE. 

the  Abbe  des  Fontaines,  a  man  of  some  reputation  for 
ability,  but  leading  a  life  of  scandalous  libelling,  and 
whose  ingratitude  to  Voltaire  was  sufficient  to  stamp 
him  with  infamy,  as  to  his  kind  exertions  had  been  ow- 
ing the  Abbe's  escape  from  a  charge  of  the  most  detest- 
able nature.  It  is,  however,  a  stain  scarcely  less  deep 
on  Voltaire's  own  memory,  that  although  he  firmly  be- 
lieved in  the  man's  innocence,  as  indeed  every  one  else 
did,  he  was  no  sooner  enraged  by  the  ungrateful  re- 
turn his  services  received,  than  he  recurred  to  the 
false  charges  in  all  his  letters — nay,  even  by  a  plain 
allusion  in  more  than  one  passage  of  his  poems,  of 
which  we  have  already  seen  an  instance  in  the  '  Dis- 
cours  sur  1'Homme.'  He  took  a  more  legitimate  course 
of  punishing  him  by  prosecuting  the  libel  (a  satire 
entitled  £  Voltairemanie'),  and  compelled  the  vile  and 
abandoned  slanderer  to  sign  a  public  denial  of  it,  and 
a  complete  disbelief  of  its  contents. 

Under  the  vexation  which  such  attacks  gave  him, 
he  was  comforted  not  only  by  the  friendship  which  he 
found  always  in  his  home  at  Cirey,  but  by  the  un- 
varying kindness  of  M.  le  Cidville,  a  respectable 
magistrate  of  Rouen,  fond  of  literature  ;  by  the  steady 
friendship  of  M.  le  Comte  d'Argental,  a  man  of  large 
fortune,  and  owner  of  the  Isles  de  Rhe  and  Aix,  off 
the  west  coast,  and  his  wife ;  by  the  unbroken  attach- 
ment of  M.  d'Argenson,  Secretary  of  State,  his 
brother,  the  War  Minister,  and  the  Due  de  Richelieu. 
It  should  seem  as  if  Voltaire  was,  in  his  familiar 
intercourse,  the  better  for  being  kept  under  some  re- 
straint by  the  superior  rank,  or  other  preponderating 
qualities,  of  his  friends.  Some  such  calming  influ- 


VOLTAIRE.  73 

ence  was  necessary  for  his  irritable  nature.  Jealousy 
formed  no  part  of  his  character;  he  had  a  rooted 
horror  of  envy,  as  mean  and  degrading  ;  he  was 
always  well  disposed  to  encourage  rising  merit  and 
enjoy  the  success  of  his  friends,  perhaps  all  the  more 
readily  when  he  aided  them  by  his  patronage  and 
counsels ;  but  he  was  easily  offended,  ready  to  believe 
that  any  one  had  attacked  him,  prone  to  take  alarm 
at  intended  insult  or  apprehended  combination  against 
him ;  and  as  his  nature  was  fundamentally  satirical, 
he  was  unable  to  resist  the  indulgence  of  the  very 
humour  of  which  he  could  so  ill  bear  being  himself 

o 

made  the  subject.  Those  who  were  at  all  dependent 
on  him,  his  Theiriots  and  his  publishers,  found  much 
less  magnanimity  than  kindness  in  his  temper.  With 
his  equals  he  rarely  continued  very  long  on  cordial 
terms.  Maupertuis,  indeed,  had  no  excuse  for  his 
proceedings  ;  but  the  extravagances  of  J.  J.  Rousseau's 
crazy  nature  might  well  have  been  overlooked,  and 
never  should  have  been  made  the  subjects  of  such  deadly 
warfare  as  Voltaire  waged  against  him.  The  other 
Rousseau's  enmity  he  owed  entirely  to  himself,  as  we 
have  seen ;  it  is  extremely  probable  that  Des  Fon- 
taines was  set  against  him  by  hearing  of  his  sarcasms 
on  a  subject  to  which  all  reference  was  proscribed ; 
and  his  persevering  attacks  on  Le  Franc  de  Pom- 
pignan  arose  from  no  cause  beyond  some  general 
reflections  on  philosophers  in  his  inaugural  discourse 
at  the  Academy  ;  nor  was  he  ever  just  enough  to  allow 
the  singular  merit  of  some,  at  leastj  of  the  Abbe's 
poetry.*  It  is  certainly  one,  and  a  principal,  cause  of 


*  It  might  be  absurd  enough  in  Mirabeau  (the  elder)  to  exalt  him 


74  VOLTAIRE. 

the  constant  disputes,  the  hot  water  he  lived  in,  that 
he  was  always  writing,  generally  writing  something 
offensive  of  somebody ;  and  almost  as  generally  wri- 
ting something  which  was  likely  to  call  down  the 
indignation  of  the  constituted  authorities  in  Church 
and  State.  But  had  he  kept  his  writings  to  him- 
self, or  only  published  them  anonymously  without 
any  confidants,  his  pen  would  have  less  frequently 
disturbed  his  repose.  Instead  of  this,  he  generally 
began  by  showing  his  compositions,  often  by  suffering 
copies  to  be  taken ;  sometimes  these  were  published 
without  his  leave ;  but  often  he  allowed  them  to  be 
printed,  and  straightway  complained  when  the  author- 
ship was  discovered.  His  denials  then  knew  no 
bounds,  either  for  repetition  or  for  solemnity  ;  and  we 
have  seen  in  the  instance  of  the  '  Letters  on  England' 
how  little  scrupulous  he  was  in  what  manner  he 
confirmed  his  asseverations,  by  laying  the  blame  upon 
others.  To  this  double  source  of  the  difficulties  into 
which  his  writings  brought  him  with  the  govern- 
ment, and  of  the  individual  resentment  which  they 
occasioned,  may  very  many  of  his  quarrels  and  anxieties 
be  traced. 

But  another  circumstance  must  be  mentioned,  as 
throwing  light  upon  his  personal  altercations  with 
the  friends  he  at  various  times  esteemed.  His  nature 
was  open  and  ardent ;  he  had  the  irritability  which 
oftentimes  accompanies  genius,  but  he  had  the  warm 
temperament,  the  generous  self-abandonment,  the 
uncalculating  effusion  of  sentiment,  which  is  also  its 

into  the  first  of  modern  poets,  as  our  Locke  did  Bfeckmore  ;  yet  few 
passages  in  Voltaire's  own  writings  can  compare  with  the  famous 
simile  of  the  Egyptians,  and  their  sacrilegious  abuse  of  the  Sun. 


VOLTAIRE.  75 

attendant,  and  which  sixty  years'  living  in  the  world 
never  cured — hardly  mitigated — in  Voltaire.  His  ex- 
pressions were,  no  doubt,  stronger  than  his  feelings ; 
but  we  know  that  this  strength  of  expression  has  a 
certain  re-action,  and  excites  the  feelings  in  its  turn; 
certainly  is  ever  taken  into  the  account  when  its  object 
makes  a  bad  or  a  cold  requital,  and  irritates  the  minds 
from  which  it  had  proceeded,  if  in  no  other  way,  at 
least  by  wounding  their  pride.  Nothing  can  be  more 
extravagant  than  the  technology  of  Voltaire's  affec- 
tions :  "  My  dearest  friend"  is  too  cold  to  be  almost 
ever  used ;  it  is  "  My  dear  and  adorable  friend  ;"  "  My 
guardian  angel ;"  "  My  adorable  friend ;"  and  often  to 
the  Argentals  especially  the  union  of  both,  "My 
adorable  angels."  All  philosophers  are  Newtons ;  all 
poets  Virgils ;  all  historians  Sallusts ;  all  marshals 
Csesars.  The  work  of  the  President  Henault  is  not 
certainly  "  son"  but  "  votre  charmante,  votre  immortel 
ouvrage  :"  being  the  most  dry  and  least  charming 
history  that  ever  was  penned,  and  which  never  would 
be  read  but  as  a  convenient  chronicle.  The  ex- 
pressions of  affection,  of  eternal,  warm,  even  passion- 
ate affection,  are  lavished  constantly  and  indifferently. 
Nay,  to  one  friend,  a  Marshal  and  Duke  (Richelieu), 
he  says,  addressing  him  as  Monseigneur,  "  II  y  a  dans 
Paris  force  vieilles  et  illustres  catins,  a  qui  vous  avez 
fait  passer  de  joyeux  moments,  mais  il  n'y  en  a  point 
qui  vous  aime  plus  de  moi."*  With  all  this  vehemence 
of  feeling  and  facility  of  effusion,  as  well  as  of  exag- 
geration, there  was  joined  an  irritability  that  brought 

*  Corr.  Gen.  iv.  193. 


76  VOLTAIKE. 

on  cold  fits  occasionally,  and  then  the  snow,  or  rather 
the  hail,  fell  as  easily  and  abundantly  as  the  tepid 
showers  had  before  descended.  Nothing  can  exceed 
his  affection  for  his  nieces,  especially  for  Madame 
Denis  ;  but  he  must  have  outraged  her  feelings  se- 
verely, to  draw  from  her  such  a  letter  as  she  wrote  in 
1754  :  "  Ne  me  forcez  pas  a  vous  hair" — "  Vous  etes  le 
dernier  des  homines  par  le  coeur  " — "  Je  cacherai  autant 
que  je  pourrais  les  vices  de  votre  coeur" — are  ex- 
pressions used  principally  on  account,  not  of  his  heart, 
which  was  sound,  but  his  temper,  which  was  uncon- 
trolled, and  they  were  used  to  him  while  lying  on  a 
sick  bed  at  Colmar,  which  he  had  not  quitted  for  six 
months.  I  shall  have  occasion  afterwards  to  speak 
more  particularly  of  his  quarrels  with  Maupertuis, 
Frederick  II.,  and  Rousseau ;  in  the  first  of  which, 
the  chief  fault  lay  with  the  mathematician  ;  in  the 
second,  the  great  king  claims  the  whole  blame ;  and  in 
the  third,  Voltaire  was  most  censurable.  At  present, 
I  have  only  entered  upon  the  topics  which  arise  dur- 
ing his  residence  at  Cirey. 

The  same  exaggeration  that  pervades  his  expressions 
towards  others,  is  observable  in  all  that  he  writes  re- 
specting himself,  whether  upon  the  sufferings  of  his 
mind  or  those,  somewhat  more  real,  of  his  body.  He 
had,  unhappily,  a  feeble  constitution,  and  having 
taken  little  care  of  it  in  early  life,  he  was  a  confirmed 
invalid  for  the  rest  of  his  days  ;  but  especially  between 
forty  and  sixty.  He  suffered  from  both  bladder  com- 
plaints and  those  of  the  alimentary  canal ;  and  his  sur- 
gical maladies,  beside  the  pain  and  irritation  which 
they  directly  occasioned,  gave  him  all  the  sufferings 


VOLTAIRE.  77 

and  inconveniences  of  a  bad  digestion.  There  was 
therefore  a  sufficient  foundation  for  frequent  recourse 
to  the  state  of  his  health.  But  he  writes  as  if  he  was 
not  merely  in  constant  danger  :  he  is  generally  at  the 
point  of  death ;  and  it  is  observable  that  the  more 
deeply  he  is  engaged  in  any  vexatious  dispute,  and  the 
more  he  has,  or  thinks  he  has,  occasion  to  complain  of 
maltreatment,  the  more  regularly  and  the  more  vehe- 
mently does  he  describe  his  alarming,  nay,  his  dying 
condition.  In  such  circumstances  it  is  a  figure  never 
wanting  to  round  a  period,  or  to  fill  up  the  measure 
of  his  own  wrongs,  and  his  adversary's  oppressions. 
It  is  singular  that  a  man  of  his  genius,  one  especially 
who  had  so  well  studied  the  human  heart,  and  painted 
so  strikingly  the  dignity  of  our  nature,  should  inva- 
riably, and  even  with  the  least  worthy  antagonist, 
prefer  being  plaintiff  to  being  powerful,  and  rather 
delight  in  being  the  object  of  compassion  than  of 
terror. 

After  above  fourteen  years  had  passed  in  the  manner 
which  has  been  described,  accidental  circumstances 
led  to  the  formation  of  an  intimacy  between  the 
family  of  M.  du  Chatelet  and  Stanislaus  Leczinski, 
formerly  King  of  Poland,  and  father  of  the  reigning 
Queen  of  France.  He  resided  at  Luneville,  where 
he  kept  an  hospitable  mansion  as  a  great  noble,  rather 
than  held  his  court  as  a  Prince.  He  was  fond  of  letters, 
and,  though  exceedingly  devout,  never  departed  from 
the  principles  of  toleration,  or  the  feelings  of  charity. 
In  February,  1748,  the  Du  Chatelets,  accompanied  by 
Voltaire,  went  to  visit  the  King,  and  were  so  pleased 
with  the  reception  which  they  received  for  some  weeks, 


78  VOLTAIRE. 

that  after  a  few  days  passed  at  Cirey,  they  returned  to 
Luneville  ;  and  this  Court,  small,  cheerful,  divested 
of  all  troublesome  ceremony  and  cumbrous  pomp,  and 
presenting  the  best  instance  ever  known  of  letters 
united  with  grandeur,  and  literary  men  patronised 
without  being  degraded,  became  their  residence  until 
the  fatal  event  which,  in  the  beginning  of  September 
in  the  following  year,  severed  for  ever  the  connexion  of 
the  parties.  The  Marchioness  continued  her  studies, 
and  laboured  with  unwearried  zeal  in  superintending 
the  publication  of  her  translation  of  Newton.  The 
manuscript  had  been  so  far  finished  in  the  latter  part 
of  1747,  that  the  printing  had  begun  early  in  1748 ; 
but  there  were  many  additions  and  corrections  to 
make,  and  she  worked  on  it  with  a  degree  of  industry 
which  is  supposed  to  have  seriously  injured  her  during 
her  pregnancy,  extending  from  the  month  of  Decem- 
ber in  the  latter  year.  On  the  4th  of  September, 
1749,  while  engaged  in  an  investigation  connected 
with  the  '  Principia,'  she  was  so  suddenly  taken  in 
labour  that  a  girl  was  born  before  she  could  be  put  to 
bed.  In  the  course  of  a  few  days  she  was  no  more ; 
and  the  Marquis  and  Voltaire  having  retired  to  Cirey, 
very  soon  quitted  a  place  now  gloomy  with  the  most 
painful  associations,  and  went  to  Paris,  where  Madame 
Denis,  his  niece,  came  to  live  with  the  poet.  He  con- 
tinued to  occupy  the  house  in  which  the  Marquis  and 
he  had  before  lived  together  as  their  town  residence, 
when  they  occasionally  quitted  Cirey  for  the  capital ; 
and  it  was  now,  he  said,  endeared  to  him  by  its  melan- 
choly recollections.  His  niece  endeavoured  to  distract 
his  attention  from  the  dreadful  loss  which  he  had  sus- 


VOLTAIRE.  79 

tained.  It  is  needless  to  add  how  difficult  a  task  this 
proved.  For  some  weeks  he  appears  to  have  lost  the 
power  of  fixing  his  attention  upon  the  occupations  in 
which  he  attempted  to  engage.  The  first  thing  which 
tended  to  divert  his  mind  from  his  affliction,  was  the 
interest  he  took  in  a  comedy  written  by  Madame 
Denis,  '  La  Coquette  punie.'  He  admitted  the  talents 
which  it  showed,  but  was  apprehensive  about  its  success ; 
and  after  much  consideration  he  was  found  to  be  right 
in  his  reluctance  to  have  it  produced  in  public.  In 
the  course  of  two  or  three  months  his  active  mind 
recovered  its  elasticity,  and  he  was  occupied  with  the 
representation  of  the  '  Orestes/  which,  partly,  as  is  sup- 
posed, through  the  cabals  of  Crebillon,  met  with  a 
reception  at  first  most  stormy,  but  afterwards  was  suf- 
fered to  obtain  some  share  of  success. 

Many  conjectures  have,  of  course,  been  raised,  as  at 
the  time  much  scandal  was  circulated,  respecting  the 
nature  of  the  attachment  between  Voltaire  and  the 
accomplished  friend  whom  he  thus  lost.  There  seems 
upon  the  whole  no  sufficient  reason  to  question  its 
having  been  Platonic.  The  conduct  of  the  husband,  a 
respectable  and  honourable  man,  the  character  of 
the  lady  herself,  but  above  all  the  open  manner  in 
which  their  intimacy  was  avowed,  and  the  constant 
recognition  of  it  by  persons  so  respectable  as  the  Ar- 
gentals  and  Argensons,  so  punctilious  as  the  Deffands 
and  the  Henaults,  seem  to  justify  this  conclusion.  It  is 
well  known  that,  both  in  former  times  and  in  our  own, 
the  laws  of  French  society  are  exceedingly  rigorous, 
not  indeed  to  the  exclusion  of  the  realities,  but  to  the 
saving  of  the  appearances — "  Les  convenances  avant 
tout"  is  the  rule.  It  is  never  permitted,  where  a  grave 


80  VOLTAIRE. 

suspicion  exists  of  a  criminal  intercourse,  that  the 
slightest  appearance  of  intimacy  should  be  seen  in  public 
between  the  parties.  Voltaire's  letters  to  all  his  corre- 
spondents, in  which  he  speaks  of  Emily  to  some,  of 
Madame  la  Marquise  to  others,  of  Chatelet-Newton 
to  others,  giving  her  remembrances  to  them,  and  him- 
self inviting  them  to  the  chateau,  all  seems  wholly  in- 
consistent with  the  rules  of  social  intercourse  observed 
by  our  neighbours,  on  the  supposition  of  her  having  been 
his  mistress.  Perhaps  we  may  add  to  this  the  proof  af- 
forded by  Frederick  II.  always  acknowledging  her,  and 
constantly  sending  his  regards  to  her.  It  may  be  re- 
collected that  when  the  French  king's  mistress,  Pom- 
padour, ventured,  with  many  apologies,  to  send  him  a 
respectful,  even  humble  message,  his  good  brother  of 
Prussia  shortly  and  drily  said,  "  Je  ne  la  connais  pas."* 
As  soon  as  the  King  of  Prussia  learnt  Madame  du 
Chatelet's  death,  he  lost  no  time  in  desiring  Voltaire 
to  come  and  live  in  Berlin,  now  that  the  only  obstacle 
to  this  plan  was  removed  ;  but  at  first  he  could  not  as 
yet  listen  to  any  such  proposition.  In  the  course, 
however,  of  the  next  six  months  he  began  to  feel  the 
former  thraldom  of  the  French  government  and  clergy ; 
he  was  once  more  plagued  with  the  slanders  of  the 
press,  which  did  not  even  spare  Madame  du  Chatelet's 
memory ;  he  formed  to  himself  the  picture  of  happi- 

*  An  expression  which  occurs  in  Voltaire's  letter  to  Madame  du 
Deffand,  announcing  the  Marchioness's  death,  seems  strange.  Though 
it  clearly  proves  nothing,  yet  it  was  an  extraordinary  thing  to  say 
at  such  a  moment.  He  asks  to  be  allowed  to  weep  with  her  for  one 
"  qui  avec  ses  faiblesses  avait  un  ame  respectable." — (Cor.  Gen.,  iii. 
365.)  In  all  probability  this  referred  to  her  violent  temper,  of 
which  Madame  du  D.  might  have  heard  him  complain,  as  he  cer- 
tainly suffered  much  under  it. 


VOLTAIRE.  81 

ness  under  a  sovereign  who  protected  letters,  cultivated 
them  himself,  refused  all  countenance  to  persecutions 
of  any  sort,  and  had  long  expressed  for  him  the 
warmest  friendship.  He  believed  he  should  at  length 
be  able  to  lead  a  tranquil  life  of  literary  occupation ; 
he  hoped  to  enjoy  the  otium  and  forgot  the  dignitas ; 
and  he  set  out  for  Berlin,  where  he  arrived  about 
the  end  of  July,  1750. 

The  arrangements  which  Frederick  II.,  enchanted 
with  this  splendid  acquisition,  immediately  made,  were 
of  a  sufficiently  liberal  kind.  A  pension  of  20,000 
francs  a  year,  with  4000  for  his  niece  should  she  join 
him  and  then  survive  him ;  the  rank  of  chamberlain  ; 
the  higher  order  of  knighthood,  and  apartments  at  the 
palace  of  Potsdam,  where  the  monarch  lived  ten 
months  in  the  year — seemed  an  ample  establishment, 
especially  when  added  to  an  income  already  larger  by  a 
great  deal  than  any  other  literary  man  ever  enjoyed,  for 
he  possessed  from  his  own  funds  80,000  francs,  or  above 
3000/.,  a  year.  The  work  to  be  done  for  this  remune- 
ration was  to  read  and  correct  the  king's  writings,  to  be 
his  companion  at  his  leisure  hours,  and,  above  all,  to 
attend  his  suppers,  the  meal  at  which  he  chiefly  loved 
to  take  his  relaxation  after  the  fatigues  of  the  day. 
That  the  society  of  this  singularly  gifted  prince  was 
captivating  we  cannot  have  any  doubt.  He  had  a 
great  variety  of  information,  abounded  in  playful  and 
original  wit,  somewhat  of  Voltaire's  own  kind,  was 
of  the  most  easy  and  unceremonious  manners,  and 
had  such  equal  spirits  as  cast  an  air  of  gaiety  over  his 
whole  society.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  wonder  that  the 
man  whom  he  chiefly  delighted  to  honour  should  have 

G 


82  VOLTAIRE. 

been  enchanted  with  this  intercourse,  seasoned  as  it 
was  with  boundless  admiration  of  his  own  genius  never 
very  coldly  expressed,  though  always  cleverly  and 
variously,  more  especially  when  we  bear  in  mind  the 
fundamental  fact  that  this  host  and  master,  who  chose 
to  make  himself  the  poet's  playfellow,  was  a  powerful 
monarch,  and  covered  with  the  laurels  of  a  conqueror, 
as  well  as  sustained  by  the  troops  and  treasures  of  a 
prince. 

Twelve  months  glided  away  in  this  pleasing  dream ; 
for  dream  after  all  it  proved  to  be.  That  which  his 
philosophers  never  forgot,  it  appeared  that  he  himself, 
the  philosopher  king,  forgot  as  little,  his  kingly  station  ; 
and  the  freaks  of  the  royal  temperament,  suppressed  for 
a  while,  broke  out  on  the  first  convenient  opportunity, 
changing  at  once  the  whole  aspect  of  Voltaire's  position, 
and  reducing  his  relation  with  his  " royal  friend"  to 
the  ordinary  standard,  which  retains  the  "  royal"  and 
converts  "friend"  into  master. 

Immediately  after  his  arrival  an  incident  had 
occurred  which  might  have  opened  his  eyes  to  the 
claw  that  lurked  beneath  its  velvet  covering.  Madame 
de  Pompadour  had,  as  has  been  mentioned,  with  many 
roundabout  phrases,  and  with  many  humble  and 
trembling  apologies  for  such  a  liberty,  ventured  to 
offer  her  dutiful  respects  to  his  Majesty  through 
Voltaire.  The  very  unexpected  answer,  from  one, 
too,  whom  oily  words  cost  so  little,  was — "  /  dont 
/mow  her."  The  unfortunate  messenger  would  have 
done  better  to  revolve  this  in  his  mind  rather  than 
very  falsely  write  a  report  to  the  lady,  in  which 
Achilles  was  represented  as  receiving  courteously  the 


VOLTAIRE.  83 

compliments  of  Venus.  But  he  had  not  been  four 
months  at  Potsdam  when  he  had  a  fresh  illustration 
of  his  great  friend's  character,  and  one  all  the  more 
important  for  his  own  government  that  it  related  to 
Frederick's  treatment  of  his  dependents  whom  he  most 
favoured  with  his  professions  of  esteem.  M.  Darget's 
wife  died  ;  the  king  wrote  him  a  letter,  "  touching, 
pathetic,  even  highly  Christian,"  on  the  sad  occur- 
rence; and  on  the  same  day  amused  himself  with  writing 
an  epigram  abusing  the  deceased.  That  accounts  of  the 
dissolute  life  secretly  led  by  the  philosophic  sovereign 
had  reached  the  poet  cannot  be  doubted,  as  he  plainly 
avows  that  had  he  lived  in  the  court  of  Pasiphae  he 
would  not  have  troubled  himself  about  her  amours.* 
He  afterwards  entered  fully  into  this  most  nauseous 
subject  in  his  '  Memoirs.'  Be  the  account  there  given 
of  other  parties  of  Frederick's  day  exaggerated  or  exact, 
this  is  plain,  for  here  Voltaire  speaks  as  an  eye- 
witness, and  speaks  against  himself:  the  suppers  of 
Sans  Souci  (the  nodes  ccenceque  Deuni),  so  much  the 
subject  of  jealousy  among  the  scientific  and  literary 
men  of  the  court,  were  disgraced  by  the  exhibition  of 
such  brutal  indecencies  in  the  ornaments  of  the  royal 
table,  that  it  requires  no  small  courage  in  any  one  to 
confess  having  been  present  a  second  time  after  once 
witnessing  those  enormities. 

But  after  about  thirteen  months  had  elapsed  of 
what  appears  to  have  been  uninterrupted  enjoyment 
in  spite  of  these  wrongs  and  these  drawbacks,  an 
enjoyment  not  broken  by  the  indications  he  perceived 

*  Cor.  Gen.,  iii.  443  (17  Nov.,  1750). 

G2 


84  VOLTAIRE. 

of  the  great  jealousy  which  his  fame  excited  among 
his  learned  brethren,  it  came  to  Voltaire's  ears  that 
his  informant,  La  Metherie,  a  clever,  agreeable,  half- 
crazy  physician  about  court,  having  mentioned  to 
Frederick  how  great  this  jealousy  was,  the  philosophic 
king  replied,  "  1  shall  want  him  for  a  year  longer  at 
most ;  and  then  one  throws  away  the  rind  after  suck- 
ing the  orange  "  From  that  moment  Voltaire  began 
to  feel,  as  well  he  might,  his  footing  insecure ;  and  he 
soon  found  proofs  of  the  extravagant  phrases,  which 
he  had  believed  were  exclusively  applied  to  himself, 
being  freely  and  habitually  used  by  the  king  towards 
persons  of  whom  he  was  known  to  have  a  very  mean 
opinion.  Nevertheless  the  enchantment  continued, 
and  would,  in  all  probability,  have  lasted  until  he  was 
actually  dismissed,  had  not  a  quarrel,  in  which  the 
intriguing,  jealous  spirit  of  JVIaupertuis  involved  him, 
led  to  a  resolution  that  he  would  leave  Berlin  as  soon 
as  he  could  withdraw  the  funds  which  he  had  placed 
in  the  country. 

Maupertuis  was  a  man  of  some  mathematical  ac- 
quirements, but  little  depth,  and  no  genius.  He  had 
originally  been  a  captain  of  horse,  and  had,  on  leaving  the 
army,  cultivated  science.  Having  acquired  some  repu- 
tation, he  was  sent,  as  has  already  been  mentioned,  at  the 
head  of  the  commission  to  measure  a  degree  of  the  meri- 
dian in  Lapland.  Clairault  was  one  of  the  party,  and, 
being  a  very  young  man,  was,  of  course,  placed  under 
Maupertuis,  then  much  past  the  middle  age.  The  suc- 
cessful performance  of  this  service,  a  matter  requiring 
care  and  patience,  but  nothing  more,  confirmed  the 
theory  of  the  earth  being  an  oblate  spheroid,  flattened 


VOLTAIRE.  85 

towards  the  poles ;  and  so  puffed  up  was  the  philosopher 
with  this  poor  triumph,  that,  after  publishing  a  book 
recording  the  history  of  the  expedition,  in  which  he 
carefully  suppressed  all  merit  but  his  own,  he  actually 
had  himself  represented  in  a  picture,  with  his  hands 
on  a  globe,  in  the  act  of  flattening  it  at  the  two  poles. 
Frederick,  who  was  wholly  ignorant  of  physical 
science,  was  deceived  by  the  noise  which  this  person's 
name,  or  his  tongue,  made  in  the  world,  and  urged 
him  to  live  at  Berlin,  where  he  was  named  President 
of  the  Academy  which  the  king  had  founded.  It  is  a 
striking  proof  how  perilous  royal  meddling  in  scientific 
matters  is,  that  the  illustrious  Euler  was  one  of  the 
strangers  whom  his  liberalities  had  attracted,  and 
that  over  his  head  was  placed  the  flattener  of  the  poles 
and  the  flatterer  of  the  king. 

Such  a  personage  was  sure  to  be  jealous  of  Vol- 
taire, whose  arrival  occurred  long  after  his  own  place 
had  been  taken.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  he  gave 
indications  of  this  immediately.  A  month  after  he 
came,  Voltaire  describes  him  as  having  become  unso- 
ciable,* referring  doubtless  to  his  very  different  be- 
haviour when  he  lived  for  months  his  fellow-guest 
at  Cirey  ;  and  before  four  months  had  elapsed,  we 
find  him  painted  drolly  enough  "  as  taking  the  poet's 
dimensions  harshly  with  his  quadrant,"  and  "  allow- 
ing some  portion  of  envy  to  enter  into  his  problems." 
In  the  course  of  the  next  year  this  envy  broke  out. 
Of  the  most  intriguing  disposition,  he  used  his  access 
to  the  king  for  the  base  purpose  of  bearing  tales 


*  Cor.  Gen.,  iii.  411,  438. 


86  VOLTAIRE. 

against  Voltaire.  A  profligate  adventurer,  called  La 
Beaumelle,  who  had  been  driven  from  Copenhagen, 
where  he  was  a  popular  preacher,  who  then  came  under 
false  colours  to  Berlin,  who  had  indeed  originally 
committed  a  theft  of  Madame  Maintenon's  letters,  and 
printed  them,  was  taken  up  by  Maupertuis,  and  both 
libelled  Voltaire,  pirated  his  works,  and  propagated 
stories  of  his  having  slandered  the  king.  Then  came 
a  statement  by  Koenig,  now  professor  in  Holland,  but 
a  member  of  the  Berlin  Academy,  refuting  Maupertuis' 
favourite  doctrine  of  the  principle  of  least  action,  and 
affirming,  on  the  authority  of  letters  from  Leibnitz, 
that  it  was  no  new  discovery.  In  truth,  Leibnitz  had 
refuted  it,  as  he  well  might,  for  it  rests  upon  an  im- 
perfect induction — chiefly  on  the  reflection  of  light,  and 
is  at  variance  with  many  other  phenomena,  and  even 
with  the  reflected  motion  of  all  bodies  except  light, 
inasmuch  as  no  other  body  being  perfectly  elastic,  the 
reflected  line  never  can  be  the  shortest  possible  be- 
tween the  point  of  impact  and  any  given  plane.  The 
Courtier-President  was  enraged;  he  summoned  his 
academicians ;  he  had  his  case  laid  before  them  ;  he 
remained  absent  from  the  sitting,  while  an  adherent- 
proposed  the  expulsion  of  Koenig,  on  the  ground  of 
his  having  forged  the  letters  of  Leibnitz,  because  the 
death  of  the  person  from  whom  he  had  obtained  the 
copies  prevented  him  from  producing  the  originals. 
Nothing  can  well  be  conceived  more  outrageous  than 
this  proceeding  on  the  part  of  a  scientific  body,  all  the 
members  of  which  were  paid  their  salaries  according 
to  the  discretion  of  the  President,  and  so  were  more 
or  less  dependent  upon  him.  But  there  was  yet  a  lower 
meanness  behind.  Maupertuis  having  caused  Koenig's 


VOLTAIRE.  87 

expulsion,  affected  to  solicit  of  the  Academy  his  par- 
don and  restitution.  But  this  the  honest  Switzer's 
just  indignation  prevented  ;  for  he  insisted  on  retiring, 
having  indeed  sent  his  resignation  from  Holland  be- 
fore he  could  hear  of  the  Academy's  first  vote.  It  was 
another,  and  an  infamous  act  of  this  President,  to  em- 
ploy his  influence  with  the  Princess  of  Orange  for  the 
purpose  of  depriving  Kcenig  of  his  place  of  librarian  to 
that  lady. 

It  was  always  an  honourable  distinction  of  Voltaire 
that  he  instinctively  planted  himself  as  a  champion  in 
the  front  of  all  who  were  the  victims  of  persecution  or 
injustice,  whatever  form  it  assumed.  His  feelings 
towards  Maupertuis,  whom  he  had  formerly  all  but 
idolized,  and  now  heartily  disliked,  certainly  contri- 
buted to  make  him  take  Kcenig's  part  with  extraordi- 
nary zeal,  and  display  great  bitterness  against  his 
oppressor.  But  we  have  no  right  to  doubt  that  he 
would  at  all  events  have  been  found  strongly  on  his  side, 
the  rather  from  having  lived  for  so  long  a  time  under 
the  same  roof  with  him  at  Cirey.  Maupertuis  had,  as 
if  deprived  of  reason,  recently  published  some  specula- 
tions full  of  the  most  revolting  absurdities,  such  as  a 
proposal  for  penetrating  to  the  earth's  centre,  and  for 
examining  the  nature  of  the  human  faculties  by  dis- 
secting the  brains  of  various  races  of  men.  The  field 
thus  aiforded  for  satire,  what  witty  enemy  could  for- 
bear to  enter?  Least  of  all,  certainly,  could  one  like 
Voltaire  refrain.  His  defence  of  Kcenig  consisted  in 
part  of  a  bitter  satire  on  the  President,  which  soon 
made  the  round  of  the  European  literary  circles,  was 
greedily  devoured  on  account  of  a  superscription  the 


88  VOLTAIRE. 

fittest  of  the  age  to  give  it  currency,  and  was  relished 
far  more  from  the  gratification  its  scurrility  afforded 
to  malice,  than  from  any  intrinsic  merit  which  it  pos- 
sessed. It  is  among  the  poorest  and  the  most  tedious 
of  its  author's  pieces ;  and  when  it  is  said  to  have  de- 
stroyed Maupertuis'  reputation,  whoever  reads  it  must 
feel  satisfied  of  its  utter  impotence  to  injure  any  one 
but  its  author,  had  that  reputation  rested  upon  a  solid 
foundation.  Unfortunately  for  Maupertuis,  he  had 
been  placed  high,  without  any  pretensions  at  all ;  he 
had  exposed  himself  to  just  censure  by  his  treatment 
of  a  modest,  an  able,  and  a  learned  man ;  he  had 
covered  himself  with  ridicule  by  writings  which  seemed 
to  argue  a  deprivation  of  reason ;  and  it  required  not 
the  '  Diatribe  of  Dr.  Akakia'  to  hurl  him  from  the  place 
which  he  usurped.* 

Frederick  committed  on  this  occasion  his  second 
error  respecting  this  unfortunate  person  ;  but  it  was  a 
far  more  fatal  one  than  the  former.  He  chose  to  enter 
himself  into  the  strife  as  a  combatant,  and  he  was 
wholly  unprovided  with  resources.  He  published  a 
pamphlet  against  Kcenig  and  Voltaire,  in  which  he 
betrayed,  as  might  be  expected,  entire  ignorance  of  the 
subject.  All  scientific  Europe  took  Kcenig's  part, 
though  it  is  painful  to  reflect  that  the  man  at  the  head 
of  it  sided  with  the  King  and  his  President ;  but 
though  that  man  was  Euler,  he  was  one  of  the  Aca- 
demy who  had  been  drawn  into  the  shameful  sentence 


*  It  is  generally  said  that  he  had  at  one  time  the  misfortune  to  be 
confined  in  a  lunatic  asylum  ;  his  latter  conduct  certainly  seems  to 
countenance  the  report. 


VOLTAIRE.  89 

of  condemnation.  His  authority,  how  venerable  soever, 
proved  of  no  avail ;  the  universal  voice  of  the  scientific 
world  was  against  the  whole  proceedings  of  the  con- 
federates ;  and  the  king  was  reduced  to  the  humili- 
ation of  appealing  from  the  reason  of  his  readers  to 
the  authority  of  his  prerogative.  He  had  the  incredi- 
ble folly  of  causing  Voltaire's  pamphlet  to  be  burnt  by 
the  hands  of  the  hangman. 

It  was  now  clear  that  the  tempest  had  both  set  in 
and  was  unappeasable.  The  royal  disputant  had  re- 
ceived additional  offence  from  a  law-suit  in  which 
Voltaire  had  been  obliged  to  arrest  the  Court  broker, 
a  Jew,  for  debt.  All  explanations  were  unavailing ; 
he  sent  back  his  chamberlain's  key  and  his  order  of 
knighthood,  and  resigned  his  pension.  He  wrote  a  kind 
of  love  verses  with  them :  they  were  returned  to  him.  He 
humbled  himself  in  the  very  dust  with  protestations  of 
his  innocence,  when  charged  with  having  libelled  the 
King ;  and,  among  other  jests  at  his  cost,  had  likened  his 
office  of  correcting  the  royal  French  to  the  functions 
of  the  laundress  with  the  royal  linen.  His  protes- 
tations, and  his  extravagant  demonstrations  of  sorrow, 
were  quite  enough  to  disgrace  the  one  party,  but  they 
failed  to  appease  the  other.  A  haughty  and  imperious 
answer  alone  was  given,  that  "  he  was  astonished 
at  Voltaire's  having  the  effrontery  to  deny  facts  as 
clear  as  the  sun,  instead  of  confessing  his  guilt; 
and  that,  if  his  works  merited  statues,  his  con- 
duct deserved  a  gaol."  No  spark  of  pride,  or  even 
of  ordinary  dignity,  was  raised  by  this  intolerable 
treatment,  but  only  endless  wailings  as  of  one 
literally  dying  of  a  broken  heart,  mingled  with  protes- 


90  VOLTAIRE. 

tations  of  duty,  gratitude,  attachment,  and  pitiful 
appeals  to  the  compassion  of  his  tender  and  benevolent 
nature. 

Miserable  as  this  picture  of  Voltaire's  weakness  is, 
we  may  be  permitted  to  doubt  if  it  is  not  surpassed  in 
baseness  by  the  flattery  with  which  he  so  long  fed  his 
royal  friend.  He,  no  doubt,  corrected  his  bad  French, 
and  often  objected  to  his  poetical  errors,  or  the  sins  of 
his  compositions  against  good  taste.  These  acts  of 
friendship,  these  real  services,  it  is  probable  Frederick 
had  enough  of  the  royal  author  to  dislike  ;  and  possibly 
some  such  feeling  may  have  led  to  the  exclamation 
respecting  oranges.  But  assuredly  he  had  far  less 
right  to  complain,  than  Voltaire  had  to  blush,  at  the 
shameful  excess  of  adulation  which  could  make  him 
desire  his  own  '  History  of  Louis  XIV.'  to  be  "  placed 
under  Frederick's  Memoirs  of  the  House  of  Branden- 
burgh,  as  the  servant  below  the  master"  (Cor.  avec  les 
Souverains,  i.  756)  ;  and  after  sitting  up  all  night  to 
read  it,  exclaiming,  "  Mon  Dieu  !  que  tout  cela  est 
net,  elegante,  precis,  et  surtout  philosophique ;  on 
voit  une  genie  toujours  au-dessus  son  sujet  (thus  sub- 
jecting the  owner  himself  of  that  genius)  :  1'histoire  des 
moeurs,  du  gouvernement,  de  la  religion,  est  un  chef- 
d'oeuvre"  (ib.  740).  And  all  this  about  the  worst  history 
that  ever  was  written — tawdry,  rambling,  conceited, 
inflated — in  a  style  about  as  near  Livy's  or  Voltaire's 
own  as  that  of  Ossian's  poems. 

After  a  delay  of  two  months  the  King's  resentment 
appears  to  have  cooled,  or  to  have  yielded  to  his  pru- 
dence. The  leave  to  depart  was  granted,  and  he 
desired  to  see  Voltaire  before  he  went.  A  long 


VOLTAIEE.  91 

interview  took  place,  and  a  reconciliation  ;  in  the  course 
of  which  it  is  positively  asserted  that  the  king  sealed 
the  treaty  by  joining,  or  rather  originating,  several 
sallies  against  Maupertuis.  During  the  week  that 
followed  before  his  departure  Voltaire  supped  every 
night  at  the  royal  table,  and  on  the  26th  of  March, 
1753,  he  set  out.  After  passing  a  month  at  the  Court 
of  Saxe  Gotha  he  arrived  at  Francfort  on  the  Maine, 
where  his  niece,  Madame  Denis,  met  him.  Here  they 
were  both  unexpectedly  and  rudely  arrested  at  the 
instance  of  a  Prussian  agent,  who  demanded,  by  the 
King's  authority,  the  delivery  of  the  key,  the  ribbon, 
and  a  volume  of  his  Majesty's  poetry.  This  volume 
was  a  privately  printed  collection  ;  only  a  few  copies  had 
been  struck  off;  and  it  contained  a  poem — 'Le  Palla- 
dium,' in  the  style  of  the  'Pucelle,'  but  attacking 
living  characters.  As  Voltaire's  baggage  had  gone  by 
another  route  to  Paris,  both  the  uncle  and  niece 
were  detained  for  some  time  till  the  book  was  re- 
covered ;  and  they  were  then,  and  apparently  without 
any  pretence  of  authority,  seized,  upon  leaving  Francfort, 
at  the  instance  of  another  of  the  Prussian  authorities. 
They  were  now  imprisoned,  under  a  guard,  for  twelve 
days,  with  every  circumstance  of  insult,  to  the  extent 
of  Madame  Denis  being  forced  to  sleep  the  whole  time 
of  their  imprisonment  in  a  room  with  four  soldiers 
standing  sentinel  round  her  bed,  and  without  any 
female  attendant.  It  must  be  observed  that  the  King 
had  written  a  letter  desiring  these  effects  to  be  returned 
to  him  two  months  before  Voltaire  left  Berlin ; 
but  the  reconcilement  which  had  afterwards  taken 
place  naturally  enough  led  to  the  belief  that  this 


92  VOLTAIRE. 

requisition  was  countermanded.  The  exactions  to 
which  he  was  exposed  during  this  detention,  and  the 
sums  taken  from  his  trunks,  are  stated  by  him  as 
amounting  to  the  whole  money  which  he  had  received 
during  all  his  service  at  Berlin.  This  treatment  made, 
and  naturally  made,  an  impression  upon  his  mind 
which  no  time  seems  ever  to  have  removed.*  Had  he 
remained  near  the  King,  the  same  resentment  would 
not  have  kept  possession  of  him ;  but  he  was  now 
beyond  the  reach  both  of  the  royal  seductions  and  the 
royal  power ;  and  he  vented  his  indignation  in  that 
scandalous  chronicle  of  Frederick's  life  and  manners, 
which  was  plainly  his  main  object  in  the  autobio- 
graphy, composed  as  soon  as  he  quitted  Francfort,  and 
not  destroyed  after  the  second  reconcilement,  which 
took  place  in  1757. 

The  style  of  the  correspondence  afterwards,  when 
Frederick  had  him  not  in  his  power,  and  when  distance 
enabled  him  to  see  with  more  impartial  eyes  the 
character  of  his  royal  friend,  affords  a  contrast  to  all 
that  preceded,  quite  refreshing  to  the  admirers  of 
genius.  We  at  last  have  Voltaire  writing  like  a  man, 
and  no  longer  either  fawning  like  a  courtier  parasite, 
or  whining  like  a  child  in  his  addresses  to  the  king. 
Frederick,  on  his  part,  never  forgets  his  alleged 
grievances  ;  he  constantly  refers  to  them,  but  he  does 
full  justice  to  the  merits  of  his  illustrious  corre- 
spondent, in  whom  he  at  length  finds  the  more  dignified 
qualities  of  an  independent  mind.  As  to  Maupertuis, 
stung  to  madness  by  the  merited  contempt  into  which 

*  See  Cor.  Gen.,  v.  67  (1757),  but  it  breaks  out  often  afterwards. 


VOLTAIRE.  93 

he  had  fallen  through  his  own  folly  and  misconduct, 
and  discovering  how  little  the  alliance  of  a  monarch 
can  avail  the  party  to  philosophical  controversy,  he 
vented  his  spleen  in  a  challenge,  which  he  sent  after 
Voltaire,  who  received  it  at  Leipzig,  and  returned  it  such 
an  answer  as  it  deserved ;  though  no  sarcasm  could 
now  make  the  poor  man  more  ridiculous  than  he  had 
made  himself.  There  seems  no  ground  for  believing 
the  random  charge  thrown  out  by  Collini,  Voltaire's 
secretary,  in  his  '  Memoirs,'  that  Maupertuis  had  a  hand 
in  the  shameful  transaction  of  Francfort.  Indeed  the 
blame  of  that  appears  to  fall  much  rather  upon  the  low- 
agents  employed  than  even  upon  Frederick  himself, 
though  he  grossly  neglected  his  duty  in  not  bringing 
them  to  condign  punishment. 

Madame  Denis  left  her  uncle  and  returned  to  Paris 
as  soon  as  he  was  safe  in  Alsace,  where  he  had  a 
mortgage  or  rent  charge  on  the  Duke  of  Wirtemberg's 
estates ;  and  he  remained  at  Colmar  for  several  months, 
which  he  chiefly  passed  in  bed,  suffering  very  much 
under  a  complication  of  diseases.  He  had  no  difficulty 
in  going  to  Paris,  had  he  been  so  disposed  ;  for  there 
was  not  any  prohibition  ;  the  king  had  overlooked  his 
going  to  Berlin,  and  had  even  continued  his  pension 
and  his  situation  in  the  household,  though  he  had 
taken  away  the  place  of  historiographer.  But  it 
seemed  as  if  the  cabals  he  so  much  dreaded  were  still 
at  work ;  and  feeling  that  he  could  not  be  sure  of  a 
quiet  as  well  as  a  distinguished  reception  in  the  capital 
and  at  court,  where  he  had  put  forth  several  feelers, 
and  been  ready  enough  to  worship  Madame  Pompa- 
dour, he  remained  in  Alsace  for  nearly  two  years,  only 


94  VOLTAIRE. 

going  for  a  few  weeks  to  the  waters  of  Plombieres, 
where  his  niece  and  the  Argentals  came  to  meet  him. 
He  also  went  to  Lyons,  where  Cardinal  Tencin,  the 
archbishop,  saw  him,  and  considered  himself  under  the 
necessity  of  avoiding  his  society,  notwithstanding  his 
being  uncle  of  Voltaire's  dearest  friend,  M.  Argental's 
wife.  The  people,  however,  took  another  view  of  the 
matter,  and  held  festivals  in  honour  of  the  great  poet 
and  wit,  by  inviting  him  to  their  theatre  and  playing 
his  tragedies  before  him  with  the  most  enthusiastic 
acclamations.  He  was  now  ordered  to  try  the  waters 
of  Aix  in  Savoy,  and  for  this  purpose  he  must  pass 
through  Geneva.  There  he  consulted  the  famous 
Dr.  Tronchin,  who  at  once  forbade  that  mineral,  and 
he  purchased  sixty  acres  of  land  near  the  town,  where 
he  was  made  to  pay  twice  as  much  as  it  would  have 
cost  him  near  Paris.  He  afterwards  bought  the  villa  of 
Tournay,  since  called  Ferney,  in  the  French  territory, 
and  about  a  league  from  Geneva.  In  summer  he  went 
to  a  house  which  he  purchased  near  Lausanne,  called 
Monnier;  and  in  these  retreats,  agreeable  for  their 
scenery  in  summer,  but  subject  to  the  curse  of  a 
rigorous  climate  in  winter,  he  spent  the  remaining 
portion  of  his  life. 

Frederick  was  reconciled  to  him  in  1757.  He  wrote 
him  a  kind  letter  in  August  of  that  year,  when  he  had, 
in  consequence  of  his  disaster  at  Kolin  on  the  18th  of 
June,  been  reduced  to  great  straits.  This  renewed 
their  correspondence.  In  September  he  was  so  much 
more  desperate  that  he  wrote  to  Voltaire,  declaring  his 
resolution  to  kill  himself  should  he  lose  another 
battle  ;  and  he  said  the  same  thing  in  the  poem  which 


VOLTAIRE.  95 

he  addressed  to  M.  d'Argens,  then  in  his  employ.  He 
became  more  resigned  after  this,  and  resolved  to  brave 
all  dangers.  He  says,  in  one  of  his  poems  addressed  to 
Voltaire,  9th  October, 

"  Je  dois,  en  affrontant  1'orage, 
Penser,  ecrire,  et  mourir  en  Roi." 

Immediately  after  (5th  November)  he  gained  the  battle 
of  Rosbach,  in  which  the  French  army  under  vSoubise 
were  seized  with  a  panic  and  fled  disgracefully.  But 
aware  of  his  difficulties,  he  wished  to  renew  the  nego- 
tiations for  peace  which  he  had  two  months  before  in 
vain  attempted  to  open  with  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
then  commanding  in  Westphalia.  The  Cardinal 
Tencin,  still  a  minister,  though  superseded  in  active 
influence  by  the  Abbe,  afterwards  Cardinal  Bernis, 
had  always  been  averse  to  the  Austrian  alliance,  which 
Madame  Pompadour,  from  personal  resentment  towards 
Frederick,  mainly  aided  in  bringing  about ;  and  he 
employed  Voltaire's  intimacy  with  the  Margravine  of 
Baireuth,  Frederick's  sister,  to  open  a  negotiation.  The 
letters  passed  through  Voltaire  and  that  princess. 
Frederick  readily  acceded  to  the  suggestion.  The 
letter  from  the  margravine  on  her  brother's  part  was 
sent  in  this  manner  to  the  cardinal,  who  wrote,  en- 
closing it,  to  the  king  of  France.  He  received  a  dry 
answer,  that  the  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs  would 
communicate  his  intentions.  That  secretary,  the  Abbe 
Bernis,  did  so ;  he  dictated  to  the  cardinal  an  answer 
to  the  margravine,  refusing  to  negotiate,  and  the  car- 
dinal is  represented  by  Voltaire  (Mem.,  (Euv.,  i.  295) 
as  having  died  of  mortification  in  a  fortnight.  The 
sudden  change  of  tone  in  Frederick  towards  Voltaire, 


96  VOLTAIRE. 

happening  at  so  peculiar  a  moment,  the  very  fortnight 
before  he  endeavoured  to  draw  M.  de  Richelieu  into  a 
negotiation,  leaves  no  doubt  that  he  intended  to  avail 
himself  of  the  poet's  known  intimacy  with  the  General 
in  furtherance  of  this  scheme.  Voltaire  had,  some 
days  before  this  revival  of  friendly  relations,  been 
writing  of  him  as  he  usually  did.  On  the  6th  of 
August,  1757,  he  had,  in  one  of  his  letters,  said, 
"  L'ennemi  publique  est  pris  de  tous  cotes.  Vive 
Marie  Th6r&e !"  (Cor.  G6n.,  v.  21.)* 

During  the  two  years  of  his  residence  in  Alsace 
Voltaire  had  done  little  more  than  correct  his  works, 
and  publish  the  *  Annales  de  1'Empire/  a  history 
undertaken  at  the  request  of  the  Grand  Duchess  of 
Saxe  Gotha,  and  upon  the  plan  of  the  President 
Renault's  dull  work.  But  at  Berlin  he  finished  his 
'  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV.,'  the  materials  of  which  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  Paris.  He  also  began  at  that 
time  his  correspondence  with  Diderot  and  D'Alembert, 
then  engaged  in  editing  the  famous  '  Encyclopedic/ 
the  effects  of  which  he  very  early  foresaw,  and  to 
encourage  it  gave  his  best  efforts,  both  while  at  Berlin 
and  after  his  establishment  near  Geneva.  Whatever  we 
may  deem  respecting  the  tendency  of  the  work  (on  its 
merits  there  cannot  be  two  opinions),  it  is  impossible 
not  to  have  our  admiration  excited  as  well  as  to  take 
a  lively  interest  in  the  zeal  and  untiring  activity 
which  the  aged  philosopher  displayed  in  encouraging 

*  It  is  the  humour  of  Voltaire  and  his  Parisian  correspondents 
to  call  Frederick  always  "  Luc."  This  was  probably  the  name  of 
some  noted  knave  at  the  time.  The  term  is  plainly  used  dyslogis- 
ticalhj. 


VOLTAIRE.  97 

his  young  correspondents.  On  this  remarkable  occa- 
sion he  put  forth  all  those  qualities  which  form  a  party 
chief  and  gain  over  the  warm  support  of  his  followers 
— ardour,  good  humour,  patience,  courage,  tolerance, 
activity,  knowledge,  skill.  The  '  Encyclopedic,'  as 
is  well  known,  was,  after  a  few  years,  no  longer  suf- 
fered to  appear  openly  in  France.  In  1751,  and  the 
following  years,  the  first  seven  volumes  appeared  at  Paris 
under  Diderot  and  D'Alembert ;  in  1758  it  was  stopped, 
at  a  time  when  its  sale  had  reached  no  less  than  3000 
('  Cor.  Gen.,'  v.  127),  and  the  remaining  ten  volumes 
were  published  in  1765  at  Neufchatel  under  Diderot 
alone.  The  four  volumes  of  Supplement  were  published 
in  1776  and  1777  at  Amsterdam.  All  the  eleven 
volumes  of  plates  were  published  at  Paris  between  1762 
and  177*2,  and  the  supplemental  volume  of  plates  in 
1777.  The  whole  of  this  great  work  thus  consisted  of 
thirty-three  folio  volumes.  Some  of  Voltaire's  articles 
are  clever,  and  abound  with  good  reflections.  The 
greater  number  of  them  are  too  light,  having  the 
fault  which  he  certainly  imputes  to  many  of  the 
other  contributors  in  his  '  Letters,'  when  he  observes 
that  they  are  fitter  for  a  magazine  than  an  ency- 
clopaedia. 

The  quarrel  with  Frederick  appears  to  have  raised 
in  Voltaire's  mind  the  admiration  with  which,  while 
in  England,  he  had  been  smitten  for  Swift's  writings, 
especially  his  immortal  '  Gulliver/  He  had,  while  at 
Cirey,  written  the  *  Voyage  de  Scarmentado,'  and  the 
'  Zadig.'  '  Micromegas'  was  added  soon  after  his 
return  to  France.  A  careful  revision  of  all  these 
was  the  fruit  of  this  revived  taste  for  the  philosophi 

H 


98  VOLTAIRE. 

cal  and  satirical  romance.  Soon  after  his  establish- 
ment at  Geneva  he  finished  his  great  historical  work, 
of  all  his  writings  the  most  valuable,  and  perhaps  the 
most  original,  the  '  Essai  sur  les  Moeurs  des  Nations  ;' 
and  he  then  produced  the  composition  which  in  origi- 
nality comes  next  to  it,  and  in  genius  is  the  most  per- 
fect of  all  his  performances,  the  celebrated  *  Candide.' 
The  *  Essai '  had  been  in  great  part  written  at  Cirey, 
but  being  printed  much  later,  it  was  first  published  in 
1757,*  the  'Candide'  early  in  1759.  The  former,  of 
course,  was  avowed,  but  the  latter  was  studiously  de- 
nied even  to  the  Theiriots  and  Thibouvilles,  his  most 
familiar  friends,  though  Frederick  II.  appears  to  have 
been  intrusted  with  the  secret  at  the  very  date  of  these 
denials.f 

The  two  master-pieces  which  I  have  now  mentioned 
in  one  respect  differed  materially :  the  design  of  the 
History  was  quite  original ;  of  the  Romance  there 
had  been  examples  before.  But  in  the  execution 
both  possessed  a  very  high  merit,  and  a  merit  of  the 
very  same  kind — the  truth  with  which  great  principles 
were  seized,  and  the  admirable  lightness  of  the  touches 
by  which  both  the  opinions  and  the  comments  upon 
them  were  presented  to  the  mind. 

*  It  was  the  fate  of  many  writings  left  by  Voltaire  at  Cirey,  and 
among  others,  of  some  critical  dissertations  and  translations  for  the 
Essay,  to  be  burnt  by  the  base  fanaticism  or  low  jealousy  of  the 
Marquess's  brother,  after  Madame  du  Chatelet's  death.  The 
'  General  Dissertation  on  History'  was  written  in  1764,  and  pub- 
lished the  year  after.  Voltaire,  in  the  advertisement  prefixed  to  it 
in  an  edition  of  his  works,  erroneously  mentions  it  as  written  at 
Cirey. 

f  Cor.  avec  les  Souv.,  i.  796.— Cor.  Gen.,  v.  225,  329. 


VOLTAIRE.  99 

Before  Voltaire's,  there  was  no  history  which  did 
not  confine  itself  to  the  record,  more  or  less  chronolo- 
gical, more  or  less  detailed,  of  wars  and  treaties,  con- 
quests or  surrenders ;  the  succession,  by  death,  or  usurp- 
ation, or  marriage,  of  princes ;  and  the  great  public 
calamities,  as  plague,  or  inundation,  or  fire,  which 
afflicted  mankind  from  natural  causes.  The  proceed- 
ings of  councils,  or  synods,  or  parliaments,  were  re- 
ferred to,  but  chiefly  as  connected  with  the  wars  of  the 
countries  in  which  they  met,  or  the  succession  or  the 
deposition  of  the  sovereigns  that  ruled  over  them. 
No  measure  or  proportion  was  observed  between  the 
events  thus  chronicled,  in  respect  of  their  various  de- 
grees of  importance,  still  less  was  their  influence  upon 
the  condition  of  the  people  described,  or  even  noted. 
To  deliver  the  facts,  to  describe  the  scenes  and  the 
actors,  relating  the  events,  and  giving  an  estimate  of 
their  characters,  with  perhaps  a  few  moral  reflections 
or  inferences  occasionally  suggested  by  the  narrative — 
was  deemed  the  proper,  and  the  only  office  of  history. 
The  ancients,  our  masters  in  this  as  in  all  other  walks 
of  literature,  painted  both  scenes  and  men  with  a  vivid 
pencil ;  they  gave,  too,  chiefly  in  the  form  of  speeches, 
supposed  to  have  been  made  by  the  personages  whose 
actions  were  related,  their  own  reflections  upon  events, 
or  the  sentiments  of  those  personages  which  actuated 
their  conduct.  The  same  thing  was  done  by  modern 
historians  more  formally,  as  dissertations  interspersed 
with  the  story.  But  in  all  these  writings  there  was 
one  common  cardinal  defect,  one  omission  equally  to  be 
lamented.  First,  the  same  particularity  of  detail,  which 
was  desirable  when  important  transactions  or  interest- 

H  2 


100  VOLTAIRE. 

ing  occurrences  were  to  be  recorded,  became  tedious, 
and  only  loaded  the  memory  with  useless  facts,  when 
matters   of  usual  occurrence,  or  of  inferior  interest, 
were  to  be  related  ;  yet  the  historian's  duty  was  under- 
stood to  require  that  none  should  be  left  out.     Next, 
there  was  no  account  given  of  the  manners  and  habits 
of  the  people,  the  bearing  of  events  upon  their  con- 
dition, the  influence   of  men's   character  upon  their 
fortunes ;  it  was  even  very  rare  to  find  the  conduct  of 
nations  described,  unless  in  so  far  as  it  might  be  con- 
nected with  the  conduct  of  some  distinguished  indivi- 
duals ;  and  generally  speaking,  all  that  happened  to  a 
people  while  enjoying  the  blessings  of  peace — their 
arts,  their  commerce,  their   education,   their  wealth, 
their  prosperity  or  decline,  their  civilization — all  was 
either  wholly  neglected,  or  passed  with  scarcely  any 
notice,  while  the  most  careful  attention  was  given  to 
every  detail  of  battles,  and  sieges,  and  individual  ex- 
ploits in  arms,  of  which  the  importance  was   often 
wholly  insignificant,  and  the  interest  died  with  the  re- 
lation.    There   had  at   all  times,  indeed,  been  some 
pictures,  or  rather  descriptions,  expressly  devoted  to 
figuring  forth  the  manners  and  customs  of  a  particular 
people.     Caesar  had  thus  described,  in  a  portion  of  his 
'  Commentaries,'  both  the  Germans  and  the  Britons  : 
Tacitus  had  written  a  work  expressly  on  the  German 
manners  and  character.     But  these  were  either  works 
apart  from  history,  or  episodes  in  its  course  ;  the  his- 
tory of  a  nation  was  never  considered  to  be  anything 
but  the  story  of  its  wars  and  its  rulers ;  and,  what  is 
still  more  material,  these  works,  excellent  and  valuable 
as  they  are,  only  give  a  description,  and  not  a  narrative  ; 


VOLTAIRE.  101 

only  a  picture  without  any  motion  ;  only  the  representa- 
tion of  a  people's  manners  and  condition  at  a  given 
time,  and  not  the  history  of  the  changes  which  those 
manners  undergo,  and  the  varying  and  progressive 
alteration  in  that  condition. 

Voltaire,  whose  daring  genius  was  never  trammelled 
by  the  precedents  of  former  times,  or  the  works  of  pre- 
ceding writers,  at  once  saw  how  grievous  was  the  error 
thus  committed  in  both  its  branches ;  and  he  resolved 
to  remedy  it  by  writing  a  history  of  nations,  giving,  in 
his  narrative  of  events,  their  spirit  and  their  tendency 
rather  than  their  details.     For  we  shall  greatly  err  if 
we  suppose  that  he  only  supplied  the  second  defect  now 
pointed  out,   and  joined  with    ordinary   history   the 
account  of  the  manners  and  condition  of  nations  at  dif- 
ferent stated  periods  of  their  progress.    He  undertook  to 
banish  the  servile  presentation  of  all  events  in  all  their 
details,  according  to  their  succession  in  order  of  time ; 
to  separate  the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  and  the  ore  from 
the  dross  ;  to  seize  on  the  salient  points,  the  really  im- 
portant parts  of  each  period,  giving  as  it  were  the  cream 
only,  and  preserving  the  true  spirit  of  history ;  and  with 
all  this  to  give,  at  every  step  and  in  every  relation,  whe- 
ther of  particular  occurrences  or  of  general  subjects  in 
any  one  country,  a  comparative  view  of  similar  occur- 
rences and  similar  subjects  in  other  countries,  or  the 
contrasts  which  the  analogous  history  of  these  other 
countries  presents  to  the  view  of  the  philosophical  his- 
torian.    This  last  characteristic  of  the  work  is,  in  some 
respects,  the  most  distinguishing  and  the  most  remark- 
able of  the  whole ;  for  it  should  seem  as  if  the  author 
never  deals  with  any  subject  in  the  history  of  any  one 


102  VOLTAIRE. 

country  but  he  has  present  to  his  mind,  by  the  extraor- 
dinary reach  of  his  memory,  the  history  of  every  other 
which  stands  in  any  relation,  whether  of  resemblance  or 
of  diversity,  to  the  matter  immediately  under  review. 

This  work  has  thus  become  the  true  history  of  hu- 
man society,  indeed  of  the  human  race.  He  limits 
himself,  no  doubt,  in  time,  beginning  with  the  age  of 
Charlemagne  ;  but  he  fixes  no  bounds  of  space  to  his 
survey.  From  that  period,  the  middle  of  the  eighth 
century,  to  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth,  upwards  of 
nine  centuries,  he  traverses  the  whole  globe,  to  gather 
in  each  quarter,  at  each  time,  all  the  changes  that 
have  taken  place  in  society — all  the  events  that  have 
happened  among  men — the  story  of  all  the  eminent 
individuals  that  have  flourished — all  the  revolutions 
that  have  affected  the  fortunes  of  nations  or  of  princes ; 
and  neglecting  everywhere  the  trivial  matters,  how- 
ever authentically  vouched,  he  fixes  our  attention  only 
on  the  things  which  deserve  to  be  remembered  as  having 
exerted  a  sensible  influence  upon  the  destinies  of  the 
world.  In  proportion  to  the  real  intrinsic  importance 
of  each  event,  or  to  the  interest  which  it  is  calculated 
to  excite,  is  the  minuteness  with  which  its  circum- 
stances are  detailed.  But  no  event  is  given  in  detail 
merely  because  it  is  fitted  to  excite  a  vulgar  and  igno- 
rant wonder ;  while  those  things  are  recorded  which 
are  of  real  moment,  although  their  particulars  may 
seem  to  create  little  interest.  To  the  work  was  pre- 
fixed a  treatise  on  the  '  Philosophy  of  History,'  but  the 
whole  book  might  justly  be  designated  by  that  name. 

Such  was  the  design  ;  the  execution  of  it  has  already 
been  characterised  as  marked  by  the  peculiar  felicity  of 


VOLTAIRE.  103 

the  author  in  seizing  upon  the  more  remarkable  fea- 
tures of  each  subject,  and  conveying  both  the  accounts 
of  events  or  of  individuals,  and  the  reflections  to  which 
they  justly  lead,  at  once  with  great  brevity  and  with 
striking  effect.  But  it  is  also  to  be  remarked  that  in 
the  two  great  qualities  of  the  historian  he  eminently 
excels — his  diligence  and  his  impartiality.  To  take  an 
example  of  the  former,  we  may  observe  that  it  would 
not  be  easy  anywhere  to  find  a  more  accurate  account 
of  the  Council  of  Trent  than  in  the  172nd  chapter  ; 
and  there  are,  in  various  other  parts  of  the  work,  marks 
to  be  perceived  of  his  having  consulted  even  the  least 
commonly-known  writers  and  authorities  for  the  ma- 
terials of  his  narrative  or  subjects  of  his  reflections.  A 
testimony  of  the  greatest  value  was,  indeed,  borne  to  his 
learning  and  accuracy  by  no  less  an  authority  than 
Robertson,  himself  the  most  faithful  of  historians,  ac- 
cording to  Gibbon's  description.  Speaking  of  "that  ex- 
traordinary man  whose  genius  no  less  enterprising  than 
universal  has  attempted  almost  every  species  of  literary 
composition,  in  many  excelled,  and  in  all,  save  where 
he  touches  religion,  is  instructive  and  agreeable  ;"  the 
great  historian  adds  that  had  Voltaire  only  given  his 
authorities,  "  many  of  his  readers  who  only  consider 
him  as  an  entertaining  and  lively  writer,  would  have 
found  that  he  is  a  learned  and  well-informed  his- 
torian." 

Voltaire  in  no  part  of  his  work  disguises  his  peculiar 
opinions,  but  in  none  can  he  fairly  be  charged  with 
making  his  representation  of  the  facts  bend  to  them. 
It  would  not  be  easy  to  imagine  subjects  upon  which 
he  was  more  likely  to  be  warped  by  those  opinions  than 


104  VOLTAIRE. 

in  relating  the  conduct  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  in  de- 
scribing Leo  X.  and  the  other  Popes ;  yet  full  justice 
is  rendered  to  the  character  and  the  accomplishments  of 
Leo,  as  well  as  to  his  coarse  and  repulsive  antagonists  : 
and  with  all  the  natural  prejudice  against  a  tyrannical 
Pontiff,  a  fiery  zealot,  and  a  gloomy  religious  perse- 
cutor, we  find  him  praising  the  attractive  parts  of  the 
Pope's  character,  the  amiable  qualities  of  the  apostle's, 
and  the  rigid  disinterestedness  of  the  intolerant  re- 
former's, as  warmly  as  if  the  former  had  never  domi- 
neered in  the  Vatican,  and  the  latter  had  not  out- 
raged, the  one  all  taste  and  decorum  by  his  language, 
the  other  all  humanity  by  his  cruelty. 

But  it  is  a  merit  of  as  high  an  order,  and  one  which 
distinguishes  all  Voltaire's  historical  writings,  that  he 
exercises  an  unremitting  caution  in  receiving  impro- 
bable relations,  whether  supported  by  the  authority  of 
particular  historians  or  vouched  by  the  general  belief 
of  mankind.  Here  his  sagacity  never  fails  him — here 
his  scepticism  is  never  hurtful.  The  admirable  tract 
in  which  he  assembled  a  large  body  of  his  critical 
doubts  under  the  appropriate  title  of  4  Le  Pyrrhonisme 
de  1'Histoire,'  is  only  a  concentrated  sample  of  the 
bold  spirit  in  which  he  examined  all  the  startling  nar- 
ratives to  which  our  assent  is  so  frequently  asked,  and 
which  used,  before  the  age  of  Voltaire,  to  be  as  unthink- 
ingly yielded.  In  the  article  '  History'  of  the  '  Encyclo- 
pedic,' we  find  much  of  what  is  now  the  general  faith 
upon  the  early  history  of  Rome,  but  in  those  days  was 
never  dreamt  of.  The  same  unflinching  boldness  and 
the  same  unfailing  acuteness  pervade  all  the  work  of 
which  we  have  now  been  discoursing.  We  may  safely 


VOLTAIRE.  105 

affirm  that  no  historical  treatise  was  ever  given  to 
the  world  more  full  of  solid  and  useful  instruction. 
That  there  should  have  crept  into  the  execution  of 
so  vast  a  design,  perhaps  the  most  magnificent  that 
ever  was  conceived,  errors  of  detail,  is  of  no  conse- 
quence whatever  to  its  general  usefulness,  any  more 
than  the  petty  inequalities  on  the  surface  of  a  mirror 
are  sufficient  to  destroy  its  reflecting,  and,  if  concave, 
its  magnifying  power  ;  because  we  read  the  book  not 
for  its  minute  details,  but  for  its  general  views,  and  are 
not  injured  by  these  faults  any  more  than  the  astro- 
nomer is  by  the  irregularities  of  the  speculum  which 
might  impede  the  course  of  an  insect,  as  these  inac- 
curacies might  the  study  of  one  who  was  groping  for 
details  when  he  should  have  been  looking  for  great 
principles.  But  whoever  has  studied  history  as  it 
ought  to  be  studied,  will  confess  his  obligations  to  this 
work,  holding  himself  indebted  to  it  for  the  lamp  by 
which  the  annals  of  the  world  are  to  be  viewed. 

The  example  so  happily  set  by  the  '  Essai '  was  soon 
followed  by  the  other  great  writers  of  the  age.  It  had 
the  most  important  and  salutary  effect  upon  the  great 
sera  of  historical  composition  which  now  opened. 
Hume's  first  volume,  '  The  Stuarts  from  the  Accession 
of  James  I.  to  the  Death  of  Charles  I.,'  had  been  published 
in  1754,  and  had  contained  a  most  able  appendix, 
giving  a  general  account  of  the  government,  and  man- 
ners, and  condition  of  the  country  at  James's  death. 
Whether  he  had  seen  the  imperfect  and  partial  copies 
of  the  (  Essai'  which  had  been  surreptitiously  printed  as 
early  as  the  winter  of  1753,  some  months  before  his  own 
was  published,  or  the  still  more  imperfect  publications 
of  many  chapters  in  the  '  Mercure  de  France'  several 


106  VOLTAIRE. 

years  earlier,  we  have  no  means  of  ascertaining.  Voltaire 
himself,  in  a  panegyrical  notice  of  Hume's  plan  ('  Re- 
marques  sur  1'Essai  No.  3,'  in  vol.  v.  of  the  work,  p. 
355),  assumes  that  he  had  adopted  his  plan  of  writing 
history  ;  and,  in  fact,  the  '  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV.,'  of 
which  nearly  one-fourth  is  written  on  the  plan  of 
Hume's  appendix,  had  been  published  as  far  back  as 
1751,  and  was  in  such  universal  circulation  as  to  have 
been  repeatedly  pirated.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  Robertson's  celebrated  view  of  society  (forming 
the  first  volume  of  Charles  V.)  was  suggested  by  the 
*  Essai,'  for  he  intimates  that  the  occasion  for  his 
work  would  have  been  superseded  by  the  '  Essai '  had 
Voltaire's  authorities  for  the  facts  been  referred  to. 
That  Gibbon,  Henry,  Watson,  Rulhieres,  all  adopted 
the  new  system  is  clear. 

On  his  other  histories  we  need  not  dwell ;  they  are 
in  every  respect  performances  of  an  ordinary  merit. 
The  'Charles  XII.'  is  the  best;  the  'Peter  the 
Great '  the  worst.  The  former  has  the  great  merit  of 
a  clear,  equable,  and  interesting  narrative,  apparently 
collected  from  good  sources,  and  given  with  impar- 
tiality. The  latter,  beside  its  flimsy  texture,  was  written 
in  too  close  communication  with  the  Russian  court  to 
be  very  trustworthy  ;  and  it  is  not  only  glaringly  par- 
tial on  points  which,  while  independent  and  unbiassed, 
he  had  treated  with  honesty,  but  it  falls  into  the 
most  vulgar  errors  on  the  merits  of  Peter's  proceed- 
ings.* The  '  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV.'  holds  a  middle  rank 

*  A  contemptuous  denial  of  the  charge  of  poisoning  his  son,  and 
an  elaborate  vindication  of  the  Czar's  conduct  (part  ii.  chap.  10),  is 
at  complete  variance  with  the  '  Anecdotes '  previously  published. 
He  had  also  in  his  '  Charles  XII., }  written  in  1727,  thirty  years  before 


VOLTAIRE.  107 

between  the  two,  and  it  has  some  of  the  merits  of  the 
general  or  philosophical  history.  But  how  far  it  can 
he  relied  on  for  perfect  fairness  is  another  matter. 
He  himself  admits  that  it  was  necessary  to  write  at  a 
distance  from  France,  a  work  which  treated  of  men's 
conduct  whose  near  relations  still  lived  in  the  society 
which  he  frequented  at  Paris.  "  To  what,"  he  asks, 
"  should  I  have  been  exposed  at  home  ?  Thirty  diffe- 
rent correspondences  even  here  have  I  been  obliged  to 
carry  on  after  my  first  edition  was  published,  all  owing 
to  the  difficulty  of  satisfying  the  distant  cousins  of 
those  whose  history  I  had  been  relating."  But  if  any 
proof  were  wanting  that  his  distance  did  not  wholly 
protect  him  from  bias — and,  indeed,  every  one  must  see 
that  he  was  likely  to  feel  such  motives  if  he  did  not 
mean  his  banishment  from  Paris  to  be  perpetual — we 
have  the  evidence  in  such  letters  as  that  in  which  he 
complains  that  such  a  one  is  not  satisfied,  but  has  made 
remonstrances,  and  says  that  of  another  applicant's 
ancestor  he  has  not  been  able  to  speak  so  favourably  as 
was  desired,  but  yet  that  he  had  gone  a  good  deal  out 
of  his  way  to  embellish  them  (ewjoliver)  as  was 

his  correspondence  with  the  Empresses  Elizabeth  and  Catherine, 
described  the  Czar  as  "  cutting  off  heads  in  a  drunken  debauch  to 
show  his  dexterity "  (liv.  i.).  In  both  the  '  Charles  XII.'  and 
'  Peter  I.'  we  find  nearly  the  same  unaccountable  credulity  as  to 
the  wonders  related  of  his  studies — his  learning  watchmaking,  sur- 
gery (to  be  able  to  dress  wounds  in  the  field),  handicrafts,  mathe- 
matics— all  at  the  same  time ;  and  Voltaire,  who  would,  in  any  other 
case,  have  been  the  first  to  ridicule  these  articles  of  popular  belief, 
and  to  expose  the  folly  of  a  sovereign  learning  such  things  to  fit  him 
for  reigning,  falls  headlong  into  all  the  common  errors  on  this  sub- 
ject. Peter's  quarrels  with  his  clergy,  and  his  subduing  their  autho- 
rity, had  some  hand  in  producing  such  errors  by  captivating  Vol- 
taire's esteem  ;  but  he  adopts  them  far  more  implicitly  after  his  inter- 
course had  begun  with  the  Court  of  Petersburgh. 


108  VOLTAIRE. 

desired.*  His  admiration  of  Louis  XIV.  was  no  doubt 
very  sincere,  and  it  was  not  perhaps  necessary,  in  the 
pursuit  of  court  favour  under  his  successor,  to  soften 
the  harsher  features  of  his  character.  Yet  there  is  some 
partiality  to  him  shown  throughout  the  work.  Thus 
the  atrocious  butchery  and  havoc  in  the  Palatinate  could 
not  be  passed  over,  and,  if  mentioned,  must  be  blamed  ; 
but  the  historian  censures  it  as  slightly  as  possible 
when  he  says,  that  at  a  distance,  and  in  the  midst  of 
his  pleasures,  the  king  only  saw  "  an  exercise  of  his 
power  and  his  belligerent  rights,  while,  had  he  been 
on  the  spot,  he  would  only  have  seen  the  horrors  of 
the  spectacle,"  (Ch.  xvi.) 

The  best  of  the  Romances  are  '  Zadig/  one  beautiful 
chapter  of  which  our  Parnell  has  versified  and  im- 
proved in  his  '  Hermit ;'  the  e  Ingenu  ;'  and,  above  all, 
'  Candide.'  Some  are  disposed  to  place  this  last  at  the 
head  of  all  his  works  ;  and  even  Dr.  Johnson,  with  all 
his  extreme  prejudices  against  a  Frenchman,  an 
unbeliever,  and  a  leveller,  never  spoke  of  it  without 
unstinted  admiration,  professing  that  had  he  seen  it, 
he  should  not  have  written  '  Rasselas.'f  It  is  indeed  a 
most  extraordinary  performance  ;  and  while  it  has  such 

*  Cor.  Gen.,  iv.  113. — "  Je  ne  ferai  pas  certainement  de  Valen- 
court  un  grand  homme  ;  il  etait  excessivement  mediocre  ;  mais  j'enjoli- 
verai  son  article  pour  vous  plaire."  It  appears  (ib.  44)  that  his 
first  publication  was  a  most  imperfect  sketch,  and  written  when  he 
was  without  sufficient  materials.  These  afterwards  poured  in  from 
all  quarters,  and  he  extended  the  next  edition  a  third.  But  how 
much  matter  must  have  been  sent  to  him  of  a  more  than  suspicious 
quality ! 

•f  There  was  an  interval  of  several  months,  as  my  learned  friend 
Mr.  Croker  has  clearly  ascertained,  between  the  two  works ;  but 
Johnson  had  never  seen  '  Candide '  when  he  came  by  a  singular  coin- 
cidence on  the  very  same  ground. 


VOLTAIRE,  109 

a  charm  that  its  repeated  perusal  never  wearies,  we  are 
left  in  doubt  whether  most  to  admire  the  plain,  sound 
sense,  above  all  cant,  of  some  parts,  or  the  rich  fancy 
of  others ;  the  singular  felicity  of  the  design  for  the 
purposes  it  is  intended  to  serve,   or  the  natural  yet 
striking  graces  of  the  execution.     The  lightness  of  the 
touch  with  which  all  the  effects  are  produced — the 
constant  affluence  of  the  most  playful  wit — the  humour 
wherever  it  is  wanted,  abundant,  and  never  overdone — 
the  truth  and  accuracy  of  each  blow  that  falls,  always 
on  the  head  of  the  right  nail — the  quickness  and  yet 
the  ease  of  the  transitions —  the  lucid  clearness  of  the 
language,   pure,  simple,  entirely   natural — the  perfect 
conciseness  of  diction  as  well  as  brevity  of  composition, 
so  that  there  is  not  a  line,  or  even  a  word,  that  seems 
ever  to  be  superfluous,  and  a  point,  a  single  phrase, 
sometimes  a  single  word,   produces  the   whole  effect 
intended ;  these  are  qualities  that  we  shall  in  vain  look 
for  in  any  other  work   of  the  same  description,  per- 
haps in  any  other  work  of  fancy.     That  there  is  a  cari- 
cature throughout,  no  one  denies  ;  but  the  design  is  to 
caricature,  and  the  doctrines  ridiculed  are  themselves 
a  gross  and  intolerable  exaggeration.  That  there  occur 
here  and  there  irreverent  expressions  is  equally  true ;  but 
that  there  is  anything  irreligious  in  the  ridicule  of  a 
doctrine  which  is  in  itself  directly  at  variance  with  all 
religion,  at  least  with  all  the  hopes  of  a  future  state, 
the  most  valuable  portion  of  every  religious  system, 
may  most  confidently  be  denied.     We  have  already 
seen  Voltaire's  sober  and   enlightened   view   of  this 
subject  in  his  moral  poems,  and  those  views  agree  with 
the  opinions  of  the  most  pious  Christians,  as  well  as 
the  most  enlightened  philosophers,   who,   unable   to 


110  VOLTAIRE. 

doubt  the  existence  of  evil  in  this  world,  or  to  account 
for  its  inconsistency  with  the  Divine  goodness,  await 
with  patient  resignation  the  light  which  will  dawn 
upon  them  in  another  state  of  being,  and  by  which  all 
these  difficulties  will  be  explained.* 


The  residence  of  Voltaire,  first  at  the  Delices,  near 
Geneva,  and,  when  the  Calvinist  metropolis  obliged 
him  to  part  with  that  place  at  a  heavy  loss,  at  Fer- 
ney  within  the  French  frontier,  was  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life  far  more  tranquil  and  agreeable  than  during 
the  more  passionate  and  irritable  period  which  pre- 
ceded. His  literary  occupation  was  as  incessant  as 
ever ;  and,  beside  some  of  his  lesser  poems,  the  greater 
portion  of  his  philosophical  and  critical  works  were 
written  during  this  latter  time.f  His  relaxation  was 

*  He  appears  to  have  disavowed  this  admirable  work  even  more 
carefully  than  any  of  his  far  more  exceptionable  productions.  To 
his  most  familiar  friends  we  find  him  exceeding  all  the  fair  limits  of 
denial  within  which  authors  writing  anonymously  should  confine 
themselves.  To  M.  Vernes,  pastor  at  Geneva,  with  whom  he  was 
intimate,  he  writes,  "  J'ai  lu  enfin  '  Candide ;'  il  faut  avoir  perdu 
le  sens  pour  m'attribuer  cette  co'ionnerie :  j'ai,  Dieu  merci !  demeil- 
leurs  occupations"  (Cor.  Gen.,  v.  229).  To  Thibouville  he  says, 
"  J'ai  lu  enfin  ce  '  Candide,'  dont  vous  m'avez  parle  ;  et  plus  il  m'a 
fait  rire,  plus  je  suis  fache  qu'on  me  1'attribue"  (ib.  258).  Even 
to  his  confidant  and  tool  Theiriot  he  says — "  Dieu  me  garde  d'avoir 
eu  la  moindre  part  a  cet  ouvrage !"  (ib.  258). 

f  About  twenty-eight  of  his  works,  beside  some  of  the  romances 
and  some  of  the  minor  poems,  were  written  and  published  after 
the  year  1758;  of  the  'Dictionary,'  eight  volumes;  of  the  '  Philo- 
sophy' all  the  six,  except  half  a  volume ;  of  the  '  Melanges  Litte- 
raires,'  more  than  one ;  of  the  '  Melanges  Historiques,'  two ; 
'  Dialogues,'  two  ;  *  History  of  the  Parliaments  of  Paris,'  one ;  nearly 
all  the  volumes  of  ;  Faceties  ;'  all  but  half  a  volume  of  the  three  on 
4  Politics  and  Legislation,'  including  his  writings  on  the  cases  of 


VOLTAIRE,  111 

the  society  of  his  friends  and  the  amusements  of  the 
stage,  a  small  theatre  being  formed  in  the  chateau, 
and  his  niece,  and  occasionally  himself,  acting  in  the 
different  pieces  represented.  Madame  Denis  had  some 
talents  for  the  stage,  but  he  greatly  exaggerated  her 
merit,  and  even  amused  Marmontel,  who  relates  the 
anecdote  in  his  '  Memoirs,'  with  telling  him  on  one  oc- 
casion how  much  she  had  excelled  Clairon.  "  J'avoue," 
says  he,  "  j'ai  trouve  cela  un  peu  fort."  Voltaire  him- 
self had  very  humble  pretensions  as  an  actor,  and 
laughs  at  himself,  with  much  good  humour,  in  his 
letters  for  these  exhibitions.  The  Genevese  purists 
were  scandalised  at  the  near  neighbourhood  of  private 
theatricals,  but  they  occasionally  formed  part  of 'the 
audience  in  spite  of  Rousseau's  exhortations  against 
the  stage.  They  also  visited  Voltaire  without  scruple 
at  Ferney.  He  kept  a  hospitable  house,  befitting  his 
affluent  circumstances  and  generous  disposition ;  he 
received  strangers  who  were  properly  introduced,  and 
it  may  well  be  imagined  that  the  inexhaustible  resources 
of  his  learning  and  his  wit,  as  varied  as  it  was  original, 
gave  extraordinary  delight  to  his  guests.  He  was  fond 
of  assisting  persons  in  distress,  but  chiefly  young  persons 
of  ability  struggling  with  difficult  circumstances:  thus 
the  niece  of  Corneille,  left  in  a  destitute  condition,  was 
invited,  about  the  year  1760,  to  Ferney,  where  she 

Galas  and  Debarre  ;  nearly  the  whole  of  the  three  volumes  of 
*  Commentaries  on  Dramatic  Works.'  Beside  these  volumes  there 
are  eight  or  more  thick  volumes  of  his  Correspondence ;  and  beside 
finishing  and  correcting  some  of  his  other  historical  works,  he  wrote 
the  <  Peter  the  Great*  and  the  <  Age  of  Louis  XV.'  during  the 
same  last  twenty  years  of  his  life ;  so  that  he  wrote  forty  volumes 
during  that  period  of  iiis  old  age. 


112  VOLTAIRE. 

remained  for  several  years,  and  received  her  education. 
But,  above  all,  he  was  the  protector  of  the  oppressed, 
whether  by  political  or  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  His 
fame  rests  on  an  imperishable  foundation  as  a  great 
writer — certainly  the  greatest  of  a  highly  polite  and 
cultivated  age ;  but  these  claims  to  our  respect  are 
mingled  with  sad  regrets  at  the  pernicious  tendency 
of  no  small  portion  of  his  works.  As  the  champion 
of  injured  virtue,  the  avenger  of  enormous  public 
crimes,  he  claims  a  veneration  which  embalms  his 
memory  in  the  hearts  of  all  good  men  ;  and  this  part  of 
his  character  untarnished  by  any  stain,  enfeebled  by 
no  failing,  is  justly  to  be  set  up  against  the  charges  to 
which  other  passages  of  his  story  are  exposed,  redeeming 
those  passages  from  the  dislike  or  the  contempt  which 
they  are  calculated  to  inspire  towards  their  author. 

During  the  winter  of  1761-62,  a  scene  of  mingled 
judicial  bigotry,  ignorance,  and  cruelty  was  enacted  in 
Languedoc,  the  account  of  which  reached  Ferney, 
where  the  unhappy  family  of  its  victims  sought  refuge. 
A  young  man,  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  Marc 
Antoine  Galas,  the  son  of  a  respectable  old  Calvinist, 
was  found  dead,  having,  it  appears,  hanged  himself. 
There  arose  a  suspicion  nearly  amounting  to  insanity 
in  the  mind  of  a  fanatical  magistrate  of  the  name  of 
David,  that  the  young  man  had  been  hanged  by  the 
father  to  prevent  him  from  becoming  a  Catholic. 
There  was  another  son  already  converted,  and  whom 
the  father,  so  far  from  repudiating,  supplied  with  a  hand- 
some allowance.  There  was  a  visitor  of  the  family,  a 
youth  of  nineteen  years  old,  present  at  the  time  when  the 
murder  was  supposed  to  have  been  committed  ;  as  were 


VOLTAIKE.  1  ]  3 

the  mother  -and  brothers  of  the  deceased,  all  of  whom 
must  have  concurred  in  the  diabolical  act.  The  father 
had  for  some  time,  beside  his  age  of  sixty-nine,  been 
reduced  to  great  weakness  by  a  paralytic  complaint. 
The  deceased  was  one  of  the  most  powerful  men  in 
the  country,  and  nearly  six  feet  high.  He  was  also  of 
dissolute  habits,  involved  in  pecuniary  difficulties,  and 
possessing  and  fond  of  reading  books  that  defended 
suicide.  Finally,  it  was  certainly  known  that  the  notion 
of  his  wishing  to  become  a  Catholic  was  a  pure  fiction, 
and  that  he  had  never  given  the  least  intimation  of  such 
a  desire.  In  the  face  of  all  this,  amounting  to  proof  ol 
the  magistrate's  fancy  being  an  absolute  impossibility,  he 
ordered  the  whole  family  to  be  cast  into  prison  together 
with  the  father,  as  accomplices  in  the  supposed  murder. 
The  populace  immediately  took  up  the  subject  thus  sug- 
gested to  them  by  authority,  and  considered  the  deceased 
as  a  martyr.  The  brotherhood  of  the  White  Penitents 
(Voltaire  says  at  the  desire  of  the  magistrate)  cele- 
brated a  mass  for  his  soul,  exhibiting  his  figure  with 
a  palm-branch  in  one  hand  as  the  emblem  of  martyr- 
dom, and  a  pen  in  the  other,  the  instrument  where- 
with, as  was  represented,  he  intended  to  have  signed  his 
recantation  of  Calvinism.  A  report  was  industriously 
spread  abroad  that  the  Protestants  regard  the  murder 
of  children  by  their  parents  as  a  duty  when  they  are 
minded  to  abjure  the  reformed  faith  ;  but  that,  for  the 
sake  of  greater  certainty,  and  to  prevent  the  escape  of  the 
convert,  the  sect  assembles  in  a  secret  place,  and  elects 
at  stated  times  a  public  executioner  to  perform  this 
office.  The  court  before  whom  the  case  was  brought, 

I 


114  VOLTAIRE. 

at  first  was  disposed  to  put  the  whole  family  to  the 
torture,  never  doubting  that  the  murder  would  be 
confessed  by  one  or  other  of  them  ;  but  they  ended 
by  only  condemning  the  father  to  be  broke  alive  upon 
the  wheel.  The  Parliament  of  Toulouse,  by  a  narrow 
majority,  confirmed  this  atrocious  sentence;  and  the 
wretched  old  man  died  in  torments,  declaring  his  per- 
fect innocence  with  his  latest  breath.  The  rest  of  the 
family  were  acquitted — an  absurdity  the  most  glaring, 
inasmuch  as  they  were  all  his  accomplices  of  absolute 
necessity  if  he  was  guilty. 

Loaded  with  grief,  and  suffering  under  the  additional 
pangs  of  their  blasted  reputation,  the  wretched  family 
came  to  Geneva,  the  head-quarters  of  their  sect,  and 
immediately  applied  to  Voltaire.  He  at  once  devoted 
himself  to  their  defence,  and  to  obtaining  the  reversal 
of  perhaps  the  most  iniquitous  sentence  that  ever  a 
court  professing  or  profaning  the  name  of  justice 
pronounced.  He  was  nobly  seconded  by  the  Due  de 
Choiseul,  then  Minister.  The  case  was  remitted  to  a 
Special  Court  of  Judges  appointed  to  investigate  the 
whole  matter.  The  preparation  of  memorials,  the 
examination  of  evidence,  a  long  correspondence  with 
the  authorities,  were  not  the  philosopher's  only 
labours  in  this  good  cause  :  he  revised  all  the  pleadings 
of  the  advocates,  made  important  additions  to  them, 
and  infused  a  spirit  into  the  whole  proceedings  the 
fruit  of  his  genius,  and  worthy  of  his  pious  design. 
In  1765  the  decree  was  reversed ;  Galas  was  declared 
innocent,  and  his  memory  restored  (rehabilite)  ;  and 
the  Minister  afforded  to  the  family  an  ample  pecuniary 


VOLTAIRE.  115 

compensation,  as  far  as  any  sum  could  repair  such 
cruel  wrongs.*  This  took  place  in  the  spring  of 
1766.  The  Parliament  of  Languedoc  was,  unfor- 
tunately, not  compelled  to  recognise  the  justice  of  the 
act  which  reversed  its  decree,  and  it  had  the  wretched 
meanness  to  refuse  obstinately  the  only  reparation  it 
could  make — indeed,  the  only  step  by  which  its  own 
honour  could  be  saved. 

When  we  hear  considerable   persons,  as   we  used 
to   hear  Mr.  Windham,   argue  from  the  example  of 
the  French   tribunals  that  judicial  places  may  safely 
be    sold,    let   the  case   of    Galas    not    be    forgotten. 
No  men  who  had  risen  to  the  Bench  by  their  pro- 
fessional talents  ever  could  have  joined  the  ferocious 
David    in    committing    this  judicial    murder.       For 
him   a   signal   and   a  just   retribution  was    reserved. 
The  reversal  of  the  sentence  either  stung  him  with 
remorse,  or,   covering  him  with    shame,    affected  his 
reason,  and  he  died  soon  after  in  a  mad-house.     The 
efforts  of  Voltaire,  crowned  with  success,  gained  him 
universal  applause.     Since  the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantz,  the  Huguenots  had  never  felt  any  security 
against   persecution.     They  now  felt   that   they  had 
a   champion    equally  zealous,  honest,   and    powerful. 
Indeed,  the  zeal  which  he  displayed  knew  no  rest  ; 
his  whole  soul  was  in  the  cause.     He  was  wont  to  say, 
that  during  the  three  years  that  the  proceedings  lasted 
he  never   smiled  without   feeling  that  he   had  com- 

*  36,000  francs  was  bestowed  by  the  King,  on  the  represent- 
ation of  the  Court  which  reversed  the  abominable  sentence.  (CEuv. 
de  Pol.  et  Leg.,  i.  315.) 

i  2 


116  VOLTAIRE. 

mitted  a  crime.  The  country  never  forgot  it.  When, 
during  the  last  days  of  his  life,  in  the  spring  of  1778, 
he  was  one  day  on  the  Pont  Royal,  and  some  person 
asked  the  name  of  "  that  man  whom  the  crowd 
followed?"—"  Ne  savez  vous  pas"  (answered  a  common 
woman)  "  que  c'est  le  sauveur  des  Galas  ?"  It  is  said 
that  he  was  more  touched  with  this  simple  tribute  to 
his  fame  than  with  all  the  adoration  they  lavished 
upon  him.* 

About  the  same  time  with  this  memorable  event  of 
Galas,  there  was  an  attempt  made  by  the  same  fana- 
tical party  in  Languedoc  to  charge  a  respectable 
couple,  of  the  name  of  Sirven,  with  the  murder  of 
their  daughter,  a  young  woman  who  had  been  con- 
fined in  a  monastery,  under  a  lettre  de  cachet,  obtained 
by  the  priests,  and,  having  suffered  from  cruel  treatment, 
and  made  her  escape,  was  found  in  a  well  drowned. 
Sirven  and  his  wife  escaped  upon  hearing  of  the 
charge :  he  was  sentenced  to  death  par  contumace ; 
she  died  upon  the  journey,  and  he  took  refuge  in 
Geneva.  Voltaire  exerted  himself  as  before  ;  and 
though  it  was  necessary  that  the  party  should  expose 
himself  to  the  risk  of  an  unjust  condemnation  by 
appearing  to  answer  the  accusation  in  the  Court  of 


*  Some  unreflecting  person  has  lately  been  endeavouring  to 
reverse  the  public  judgment  in  favour  of  Galas  and  of  Voltaire,  by 
examining  the  records  of  the  Courts  in  Languedoc  ;  and  has  pub- 
lished an  assertion,  that  the  original  sentence  on  Calas  was  right. 
"Was  any  one  silly  enough  to  suppose  that  these  Courts  would  pre- 
serve any  evidence  of  their  own  delinquency  ? 


VOLTAIRE.  117 

Toulouse,  so  much  were  men's  minds  improved  since 
the  former  tragedy,  that  the  great  efforts  of  the  advo- 
cates, acting  under  Voltaire's  instructions  and  with 
his  help,  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  complete  acquittal. 

This  happened  in  the  year  1762.  The  year  after 
another  horrid  tragedy  was  acted  in  the  north, 
although  here  Voltaire's  great  exertions  failed  in 
obtaining  any  justice  against  the  overwhelming  weight 
of  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  which  basely  countenanced 
the  iniquity  of  the  court  below.  A  crucifix  was  found 
to  have  been  insulted  in  the  night,  on  the  bridge  of 
Abbeville.  Two  young  men,  D'Etallonde  and  the 
Chevalier  La  Barre,  were  accused  of  this  offence  on  mere 
vague  suspicion,  by  the  spite  of  a  tradesman  who  owed 
them  some  grudge.  The  former  made  his  escape  ;  the 
latter,  a  youth  of  seventeen,  and  highly  connected,  ven- 
tured to  stand  his  trial.  Other  charges  were  coupled 
with  the  main  accusation,  all  resolving  themselves  into 
alleged  irreverent  behaviour  at  taverns,  and  in  other 
private  societies.  The  court  pronounced  La  Barre 
guilty,  and  sentenced  him  to  suffer  the  rack,  to  have  his 
tongue  torn  out,  and  then  to  be  beheaded.  This  infernal 
sentence  was  executed  upon  the  miserable  youth.  The 
courage  shown  by  Voltaire  in  exerting  himself  for  La 
Barre  was  the  more  to  be  admired,  that  one  of  the 
charges  against  the  Chevalier  was  the  having  a  work 
of  his  own  in  his  possession,  and  treating  it  with 
peculiar  veneration.  This  proved,  however,  to  be  a 
groundless  suggestion.  It  was  infinitely  to  Frederick's 
honour,  that  when  Voltaire  asked  his  countenance 
and  protection  for  the  other  young  gentleman  who 
had  fled  and  been  condemned  par  cotitumace,  he  gave 


118  VOLTAIRE. 

him  a  company,  promoted  him  as  an  engineer,  settled 
a  pension  upon  him,  and  afterwards  made  his  fortune 
in  the  Prussian  army.* 

It  would  be  gratifying  could  we  assert  with  truth, 
that  the  same  love  of  liberty  and  justice  marked  every 
part  of  his  conduct  during  the  latter  years  of  his 
illustrious  life.  One  great  exception  is  to  be  found  in 
the  correspondence  with  Frederick  and  the  Empress 
Catherine  of  Russia,  at  the  period  of  their  execrable 
partition  of  Poland  in  1772.  He  treats  that  foul 
crime  not  only  with  no  reprobation,  but  even  with 
flattering  approval;  and,  in  one  of  his  letters,  he 
describes  the  Empress's  share  in  it  as  "  noble  and  use- 
ful, and  consistent  with  strict  justice/'-f 

We  have  examined  the  history  of  his  two  celebrated 
quarrels,  those  with  Frederick  and  Maupertuis ;  and 
have  now  contemplated  his  humane  and  charitable  exer- 
tion for  the  Galas,  the  Sirvens,  and  the  La  Barres  :  but 
his  other  quarrel  reflects  less  honour  on  him.  His 
behaviour  towards  Rousseau  cannot  be  said  to  do  much 
credit  either  to  his  temper  or  his  humanity.  Rousseau, 
younger  by  eighteen  years  than  Voltaire,  and  dazzled 

*  In  addition  to  the  other  atrocities  of  this  case,  was  the  incom- 
petency  of  the  Abbeville  tribunal.  Of  the  three  judges,  one  was 
connected  with  the  prosecutor  ;  another  had  quitted  the  profession 
and  become  a  dealer  in  cattle,  had  a  sentence  against  him,  and  was 
afterwards  declared  incapable  of  holding  any  office. 

t  See  his  verses  about  kings  dividing  their  cake  (Cor.  avec  les  Souv., 
ii.  92),  and  his  rejoicing  in  having  lived  to  see  "  the  great  event" 
(93).  To  Catherine  he  says,  she  has,  by  her  "  parti  noble  et  utile, 
rendu  a  chacun  ce  que  chacun  croit  lui  appartenir,  en  commencant 
par  elle-meme"  (ib.  ii.  618).  Again  he  says,  "  Le  dernier  acte  de 
votre  grande  trag&iie  parait  bien  beau."  (ib.  627.) 


VOLTAIRE.  119 

by  his  brilliant  reputation,  had  paid  him  a  court  by  no 
means  niggardly,  yet  not  subject  to  the  charge  of 
flattery.  Voltaire  had  returned  his  civilities,  as  was 
his  wont,  with  good  interest.  Rousseau,  on  the  Lisbon 
poem  appearing,  wrote  an  answer  in  a  long,  eloquent, 
and  ill-reasoned  letter  to  Voltaire,  which  he  never 
made  public,  but  it  came  into  print  by  some  accident 
yet  unaccounted  for.  Voltaire  had,  in  a  note,  half 
jocose  and  quite  kind,  declined  the  controversy,  as  he 
had  before  declined  to  discuss  the  benefits  of  civilization 
and  learning  with  the  same  antagonist.  Rousseau  had, 
previously  to  the  letter  appearing,  written  an  attack 
upon  the  Theatre,  and  was  supposed  by  Voltaire  to  have 
stirred  up  the  people  of  Geneva  against  him,  partly  on 
that  account,  and  partly  because  of  his  infidel  opinions. 
Rousseau  now,  in  1760,  addressed  a  letter  to  him  full 
of  bitter  complaints,  laying  to  his  door  the  moral 
destruction,  as  he  calls  it,  of  Geneva  (meaning  by  the 
Ferney  theatricals),  his  own  proscription  there,  and 
his  banishment  from  his  native  country,  rendered 
insupportable  by  the  neighbourhood  of  Ferney  (Con- 
fessions, Part  ii.,  book  x.).  To  this  letter  Voltaire  very 
properly  returned  no  answer ;  he  treats  it  as  the 
effusion  of  a  distempered  mind,  in  all  the  allusions  to 
it  which  we  find  among  his  letters.  But  he  always 
asserted,  that  the  charge  of  injuring  the  writer  of  it 
was  so  far  from  being  well  founded,  that  he  had 
uniformly  supported  him  among  his  bigoted  country- 
men. Be  this  as  it  may,  we  find  ever  after  the  most 
unmeasured  and  unmerciful  abuse  of  Rousseau  as  often 
as  he  is  mentioned ;  and  the  dull  but  malignant  poem 
'  Guerre  civile  de  Geneve,'  contains  a  more  fierce  and 


120  VOLTAIRE. 

cruel  attack  upon  this  poor  man  than  is  to  be  found 
upon  any  other  person  in  that  or  any  of  Voltaire's 
satires.  It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the  constant 
undervaluing  of  Rousseau's  genius  can  scarcely  be 
ascribed  to  anything  but  jealousy,  if  not  of  his  talents, 
yet  of  his  success.  He  can  see  no  merit  whatever  in 
any  of  these  writings,  except  the  '  Profession  de  Foi,' 
in  the  '  Emile ;'  and  of  that  he  only  speaks  as  an  excep- 
tion to  their  general  worthlessness  ;  whereas  we  know 
that  he  felt  the  greatest  jealousy  of  the  courage  which 
it  displayed  in  attacking  religion  openly,  while  he 
had  himself  never  ventured  upon  any  but  covert,  anony- 
mous assaults,  always  disavowed  as  soon  as  repelled  or 
reprobated.  Rousseau's  conduct  towards  Voltaire  was 
a  great  contrast  to  this.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he 
avowed  the  most  unrestrained  admiration  of  that  great 
genius  ;  he  subscribed  to  his  statue  erected  at  Lyons — 
an  act  which  Voltaire  was  silly  enough  to  resent, 
affecting  to  think  that  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  whose 
name  was  at  the  head  of  the  subscription,  might  not 
like  being  in  such  company.  Finally,  when  c  Irene/ 
his  last  composition,  was  represented  a  few  weeks 
before  his  death,  Rousseau  generously  declared,  on  some 
one  mentioning  the  decline  of  genius  which  it  indicated, 
that  it  would  be  equally  inhuman  and  ungrateful  in 
the  public  to  observe  such  a  thing,  even  if  it  were  un- 
questionably true. 

That  the  genius  of  the  poet  had  in  some  degree 
suffered  by  the  lapse  of  so  many  years,  who  can  doubt  ? 
Yet  the  '  Irene,'  finished  two  months  before  his  death, 
and  the  '  Agathocles,'  which  he  had  not  finished  when 
he  died,  contain  passages  of  great  splendour  and  beauty ; 


VOLTAIRE.  121 

nor  was  there  ever,  it  may  truly  be  asserted,  a  poet  at 
the  age  of  eighty- four  capable  of  so  signal  an  exertion. 
It  is,  indeed,  only  one  of  the  many  proofs  which  remain 
of  the  inextinguishable  activity  of  his  great  mind.  He 
added  a  passage  to  the  introductory  chapters  of  his 
'  Louis  XIV,,'  which  shows  that  it  was  written  a  few 
weeks  before  his  decease,  for  it  gives  an  account  of 
Hook's  publication  which  appeared  in  1778.* 

After  an  absence  of  above  seven  and  twenty  years 
he  revisited  Paris  with  his  niece,  who,  at  the  beginning 
of  1778,  wished  to  accompany  thither  a  young  lady, 
recently  married  to  M.  Vilette.  Voltaire  had  just 
finished  '  Irene,'  and  had  a  desire  to  see  its  represen- 
tation. The  reception  he  met  with  in  every  quarter 
was  enthusiastic.  He  had  outlived  all  his  enemies, 
all  his  detractors,  all  his  quarrels.  The  Academy, 
which  had,  under  the  influence  of  court  intrigues,  now 
long  forgotten,  delayed  his  admission  till  his  fifty- 
second  year,  seemed  now  anxious  to  repair  its  fault, 
and  received  him  with  honours  due  rather  to  the  great 
chief  than  to  a  fellow-citizen  in  the  commonwealth  of 
letters.  All  that  was  most  eminent  in  station  or  most 
distinguished  in  talents — all  that  most  shone  in 
society  or  most  ruled  at  court,  seemed  to  bend  before 
him.  The  homage  of  every  class  and  of  every  rank 
was  tendered  to  him,  and  it  seemed  as  if  one  universal 
feeling  prevailed,  the  desire  of  having  it  hereafter  to 
say — "  I  saw  Voltaire."  But,  in  a  peculiar  manner, 
his  triumphant  return  was  celebrated  at  the  theatre. 
Present  at  the  third  night  of  '  Irene,'  all  eyes  were 

*  Siecle  cle  Louis  XIV.,  i.  p.  25. 


122  VOLTAIRE. 

turned  from  the  stage  to  the  poet,  whose  looks,  not 
those  of  the  actors,  were  watched  from  the  rising  to 
the  falling  of  the  curtain.  Then  his  bust  was  seen 
on  the  stage  ;  it  was  crowned  with  chaplets,  amidst  the 
shouts  and  the  tears  of  the  audience.  He  left  the 
house,  and  hundreds  pressed  forward  to  aid  his  feeble 
steps  as  he  retired  to  his  carriage.  No  one  was  suffered 
to  sustain  him  above  an  instant — all  must  enjoy  the 
honour  of  having  once  supported  Voltaire's  arm. 
Countless  multitudes  attended  him  to  his  apartments, 
and  as  he  entered  they  knelt  to  kiss  his  garments. 
The  cries  of  "  Five  Voltaire  T  "  Vive  la  Henrlade  /" 
"  Vive  Zaire  /"  rent  the  air.  The  aged  poet's  heart 
was  moved  with  tenderness.  "  On  veut "  (he  feebly 
cried) — "  on  veut  me  faire  mourir  de  plaisir  !  On 
m'etouffe  de  roses !" 

Franklin  was  in  Paris  on  Voltaire's  arrival,  as  envoy 
from  the  revolted  colonies,  and  was  soon  presented  to 
him.  Voltaire  had  long  ceased  to  speak  our  language, 
but  he  for  some  time  made  the  attempt,  and  added, 
"  Je  n'ai  pu  resister  au  desir  de  parler  un  moment  la 
langue  de  M.  Franklin."  The  philosopher  presented 
his  grandson,  and  asked  a  blessing :  "  God  and  liberty," 
said  Voltaire,  "  is  the  only  one  fitting  for  Franklin's 
children."  These  two  great  men  met  again  at  a  public 
sitting  of  the  Academy,  and  when  they  took  their 
places  side  by  side,  and  shook  hands  together,  a 
burst  of  applause  involuntarily  rose  from  the  whole 
assembly. 

During  his  short  stay  at  Paris  Voltaire  showed  his 
unwearied  activity  of  mind,  increased,  if  possible,  by 
the  transports  with  which  his  fellow-citizens  every- 


VOLTAIRE.  123 

where  received  him.  He  planned  an  antidote  to  the 
errors  which  the  admitted  probity  as  well  as  the  rare 
opportunities  of  the  Due  de  St.  Simon  were  calculated 
to  propagate  in  his  '  Memoirs/  still  kept  secret,  but 
destined  soon  to  see  the  light.  He  worked  at  his 
'  Agathocles  ;'  he  corrected  many  parts  of  his  historical 
works;  and  he  prevailed  upon  the  Academic  Fran- 
£aise  to  prepare  its  '  Dictionary '  upon  the  novel 
plan  of  following  each  word  in  the  different  senses 
given  it  at  successive  periods,  and  illustrating  each 
by  choice  passages  from  contemporary  authors. 
He  proposed  that  each  academician  should  take  a 
letter,  and  he  began  himself  strenuously  to  work  upon 
letter  A.  These  labours,  and  the  excitement  of  the 
reception  at  the  theatre,  proved  too  much  for  his 
remaining  strength,  and  he  was  seized  with  a  spitting 
of  blood.  A  new  exertion,  made  in  the  hope  of  obvi- 
ating certain  objections  taken  at  the  Academy  to  his 
plan  of  the  '  Dictionary/  brought  on  sleeplessness, 
and  he  took  opium  in  too  considerable  doses.  Con- 
dorcet  says  that  a  servant  mistook  one  of  the  doses, 
and  that  the  mistake  was  the  immediate  cause  of  his 
death,  which  happened  on  the  30th  of  May,  1778. 
He  was  in  the  eighty-fifth  year  of  his  age. 

We  have  preserved,  and  in  his  own  hand,  the  few 
lines  he  wrote  to  Lally  Tolendal,  four  days  before 
his  death,  that  he  died  happy,  on  hearing  the  reversal 
of  the  iniquitous  sentence  against  his  father,  in  whose 
cause  he  had  exerted  himself  twelve  years  before  with  'i 
his  wonted  zeal  and  perseverance.  Some  very  good 
verses,  addressed  ten  days  before  to  the  Abbe  de  1'At- 


124  VOLTAIRE. 

teignant,  in  the  same  measure  in  which  he  had  written 
some  verses  to  Voltaire,  attest  the  extraordinary  vigour 
in  which  his  faculties  remained  to  the  last.* 

While  in  his  last  illness  the  clergy  had  come  round 
him ;  and  as  all  the  philosophers  of  that  period  appear 
to  have  felt  particularly  anxious  that  no  public  stigma 
should  be  cast  upon  them  by  a  refusal  of  Christian 
burial,  they  persuaded  him  to  undergo  confession  and 
absolution.  He  had  a  few  weeks  before  submitted  to 
this  ceremony,  and  professed  to  die  in  the  Catholic 
faith,  in  whi€h  he  was  born — a  ceremony  which  M. 
Condorcet  may  well  say  gave  less  edification  to  the 
devout  than  it  did  scandal  to  the  free-thinkers.  The 
cure  (rector)  of  St.  Sulpice  had,  on  this  being  related, 
made  inquiry,  and  found  the  formula  too  general ;  he 
required  the  Abbe  Gauthier,  who  had  performed  the 
office,  to  insist  upon  a  more  detailed  profession  of  faith, 
else  he  should  withhold  the  burial  certificate.  While 
this  dispute  was  going  on,  the  dying  man  recovered, 
and  put  an  end  to  it.  On  what  proved  his  real  death- 
bed, the  cure  came  and  insisted  on  a  ful]  confession. 
When  the  dying  man  had  gone  a  certain  length,  he 
was  required  to  subscribe  to  the  doctrine  of  our  Sa- 
viour's divinity.  This  roused  his  indignation,  and  he 
gave  vent  to  it  in  an  exclamation  which  at  once  put 
to  flight  all  the  doubts  of  the  pious,  and  reconciled  the 
infidels  to  their  patriarch.  The  certificate  was  refused, 
and  he  was  buried  in  a  somewhat  clandestine,  certainly 
a  hasty  manner,  at  the  monastery  of  Scellieres,  of 

*  Cor.  Geii.,  xi.  627,  628. 


VOLTAIRE.  125 

which,  his  nephew  was  abbot.  The  bishop  of  the 
diocese  (Troyes)  hearing  of  the  abbe's  intention,  dis- 
patched a  positive  prohibition  ;  but  it  arrived  the  day 
after  the  ceremony  had  taken  place. 

The  notion  which  some  have  taken  that  Voltaire 
was  ignorant  of,  or  at  least  imperfectly  acquainted  with 
the  English  language,  and  into  which  an  accomplished 
though  somewhat  prejudiced  critic  has  among  others 
been  betrayed,  is  purely  fanciful :  he  had  as  thorough 
a  knowledge  of  it  as  could  be  acquired  by  a  foreigner ; 
perhaps  a  greater  familiarity  and  easier  use  of  it  than 
any  other  ever  had.  He  wrote  it  with  ease,  and  with 
perfect  correctness,  in  the  earlier  part  of  his  life,  hardly 
making  any  mistakes — certainly  none  which  a  little  care 
would  not  have  prevented.  I  have  lately  seen  a  letter 
of  his,  thanking  an  author  for  the  present  of  his  book, 
probably  Sir  H.  Sloane ;  and  there  is  but  one  word, 
lectors  for  readers,  wrong ;  nor  is  there  the  very  least 
restraint  in  the  style,  which  is  also  quite  idiomatic,  as 
when  he  speaks  of  his  "  crazy  constitution."  Ills  for 
maux,  meaning  complaints,  has  the  authority  of  Shak- 
speare,  if  indeed  any  authority  were  required  to  justify 
this  use  of  %e  word.  The  Gallicism  or  mistake  Electors 
proves  that  he  himself  wrote  this  letter,  and  sent  it  with- 
out any  one  re  vising  it.  While  visiting  England,  in  1727, 
he  published  an  essay  on  the  '  Civil  Wars  of  France/ 
with  remarks  on  the  '  Epic  Poetry  of  all  Ages,' — a  small 
octavo,  or  large  duodecimo  volume,  intended  to  illus- 
trate the  '  Henriade,'  of  which,  as  has  been  observed, 
an  edition  was  published  at  that  time  by  subscription. 
The  English  is  perfectly  correct,  and  the  diction  quite 
easy  and  natural.  There  is  a  copy  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, with  these  words  on  the  title-page,  in  his  own 


126  VOLTAIRE. 

hand — "  To  Sir  Hanslone  (Hans  Sloane),  from  his 
obedient  servant,  Voltaire."  In  his  latter  years  he 
spoke  English  with  great  difficulty,  and  seldom  at- 
tempted it ;  but  that  he  retained  his  familiarity  with 
the  language,  and  could  easily  write  it,  we  have  the 
clearest  evidence  in  two  excellent  lines  which  he 
wrote  when  in  his  eightieth  year  to  Dr.  Cradock,  who 
had  sent  him  a  copy  of  his  drama,  '  Zobeide,'  chiefly 
borrowed  from  Voltaire's  *  Scythes  :' — 

"  Thanks  to  your  muse,  a  foreign  copper  shines, 
Turn'd  into  gold,  and  coin'd  in  sterling  lines." 

Nor  is  our  admiration  of  this  facility  of  English  dic- 
tion lessened  by  the  consideration  that  the  idea  is  in 
some  degree  imitated  from  Roscommon.  H.  Walpole 
has  indeed  said,  with  a  gross  exaggeration,  respecting  his 
letter  to  Lord  Lyttelton,  that  not  one  word  of  it  is 
tolerable  English ;  but  he  may  late  in  life  have  lost 
the  facility  of  writing  in  a  language  not  acquired  while 
a  child,  as  we  know  that  both  with  Lord  Loughborough 
and  Lord  Erskine  the  Scottish  accent  returned  in  old 
age,  though  they  had  got  entirely  rid  of  it  during  the 
middle  period  of  life. 

After  the  details  of  his  life,  and  the  full  considera- 
tion of  his  various  works,  it  would  be  a  very  super- 
fluous task  to  attempt  summing  up  the  character  of 
Voltaire,  either  as  regards  his  intellectual  or  his  moral 
qualities.  The  judgment  to  be  pronounced  on  these 
must  depend  upon  the  details  of  fact  and  the  particular 
opinions  already  given,  and  no  general  reflections 
could  alter  the  impression  which  these  must  already 
have  produced. 

One  part  only  of  his  composition  has  had  no  place, 
and  derived  no  illustration  from  the  preceding  pages — • 


VOLTAIRE.  127 

his  convivial  qualities,  or  colloquial  powers.      These 
are  on  all  hands  represented  as  having  been  admirable. 
He  was  of  a  humour  peculiarly  gay  and  lively ;    he 
had  no  impatience  of  temper  in  society  ;  his  irritability 
was  reserved  for  the  closet,  and  his  gall  flowed  only 
through  the  pen.     Then  his  vast  information  on  all 
subjects,  and  his  ready  wit,  never  failing,  but  never 
tiring,  added  to  his  having  none  of  the  fastidious  taste 
which  prevents  many  great  men  from  enjoying  the 
humours  of  society  themselves,  while  it  casts  a  damp 
and  a  shade  over  the  cheerful   hours  of  others — all 
must  have  conspired  to  render  his  company  a  treat  of 
the   highest  order.     His  odd    and  unexpected   turns 
gave  his  wit  a  zest  that  probably  never  belonged  to 
any  other  man's,     His  writings  give  us  some  taste  of 
this ;  and  there  are  anecdotes  on  record,  or  at  least 
preserved  by  tradition,  of  jokes  of  which  they  who  read 
his  works  at  once  recognise  him  as  the  author.  When 
the  Dijon  academicians  presented  him  with  the  place 
of  an  honorary  member,  observing  that  tlieir  academy 
was  a   daughter  of  the  Parisian  body—"  Eh  !  oui :" 
said  he,  "  eh !  et  une  bonne  fille,  je  vous  en  reponds, 
qui  ne  fera  jamais  parler  d'elle." — When  at  some  family 
party  the  guests  were  passing  the  evening  in  telling 
stories  of  robbers,  and  it  came  to  his  turn — "  Once 
upon  a  time  (he  began) — Jadis,  il  y  avoit,  un  fermier- 

general ma  foi,  Messieurs,  j'ai  oublie  le  reste." 

When  St.  Ange,  who  plumed  himself  on  the  refined 
delicacy  of  his  flattery,  said,  on  arriving  at  Ferney, 
"  To-day  I  have  seen  Homer ;  to-morrow  I  shall  see 
Sophocles  and  Euripides,  then  Tacitus,  then  Livy :" 
"  Ah  !  Monsieur,"  said  his  ancient  host,  alarmed  at  the 


128  VOLTAIEE. 

outline  of  a  long  visit,  which  he  seemed  fated  to  see 
filled  up,  "  Ah,  Monsieur  !  je  suis  horriblement  vieux. 
Ne  pourriez  vous  pas  tacher  les  voir  tous  le  meme  jour  ?" 
The  sketch  probably  was  left  unfinished  by  this  inter- 
ruption. So  when  an  English  traveller  who  had  been 
to  see  Haller,  heard  Voltaire  speak  loudly  in  his  praise, 
and  expressed  admiration  of  this  candour,  saying 
Haller  spoke  not  so  well  of  him :  "Helas !"  was  the  ad- 
mirable answer,  "  il  se  peut  bien  que  nous  avons  tort,  tous 
les  deux."  A  graver  rebuke  was  administered  by  him 
to  an  old  lady  who  expressed  her  horror  at  finding 
herself  under  the  same  roof  with  a  declared  enemy  of 
the  Supreme  Being,  as  she  was  pleased  to  term  Vol- 
taire : — "  Sachez,  madame,  que  j'ai  dit  plus  de  bien  de 
Dieu  dans  un  seul  de  mes  vers  que  vous  n'en  penserez  de 
votre  etre." 

A  striking  picture  of  his  powers  of  conversation  is 
given  by  Goldsmith,  who  passed  an  evening  in  his 
company  about  the  year  1754.  He  describes  it,  after 
saying  generally  that  no  man  whom  he  had  ever  seen 
exceeded  him  ;  and  Goldsmith  had  lived  with  the  most 
famous  wits  of  the  world,  especially  of  his  own  country — 
with  Burke,  Windham,  Johnson,  Beauclerk,  Fox. 
There  arose  a  dispute  in  the  party  upon  the  English 
taste  and  literature.  Diderot  was  the  first  to  join 
battle  with  Fontenelle,  who  defeated  him  easily,  the 
knowledge  of  the  former  being  very  limited  on  the 
subject  of  the  controversy.  "  Voltaire,"  says  Gold- 
smith, "  remained  silent  and  passive  for  a  long  while, 
as  if  he  wished  to  bear  no  part  in  the  argument  which 
was  going  on.  At  last,  about  midnight,  he  began,  and 
spoke  for  nearly  three  hours,  but  in  a  manner  not  to 


VOLTAIRE.  129 

be  forgotten — his  whole  frame  was  animated — what 
eloquence,  mixed  with  spirit — the  finest  strokes  of 
raillery  —  the  greatest  elegance  of  language  —  the 
utmost  sensibility  of  manner !  Never  was  I  so  much 
charmed,  nor  ever  was  so  absolute  a  victory  as  he 
gained."* 

To  enter  further  on  any  general  description,  when 
all  the  particulars  have  been  gone  over,  would  be  absurd. 
It  is,  however,  fit  to  remark  that  the  odium  which  has 
cast  a  shadow  on  a  name  that  must  otherwise  have 
shone  forth  with  pure  and  surpassing  lustre,  is  partly 
at  least  owing  to  the  little  care  taken  to  conceal  his 
unpopular  opinions,  which  is  no  sufficient  ground  of 
blame.     But  in  part,  it  is  owing  to  that  which  is  exceed- 
ingly blameable,  the  unsparing  bitterness  of  his  invective 
on  all  the  honest  prejudices  (as  even  he  must  have 
deemed  them)  of  believers,  and  the  unceasing  ribaldry 
of  his  attacks  on  those  opinions,  which,  whether  he 
thought  them  true  or  not,  had  at  any  rate  the  sanction 
of  ages,  the  support  of  established  institutions,  and  the 
cordial  assent  of  the  vast  majority  of  mankind.     The 
last  twenty  years  of  his  life  were  devoted  to  a  constant 
warfare  with  these  sentiments.    Had  he  confined  him- 
self to  discussion,  had  he  only  brought  the  resources 
of  his  universal  learning  and  acute  reasoning  to  bear 
upon  the  religious  belief  of  his  contemporaries,  no  one 
would  have  had  a  right  to  complain,  and  no  rational 
Christian  would  ever  have  complained,  if  the  twenty 
volumes  which  he  thus  wrote   had  been  multiplied 
twenty  fold,  or  even  so  as  "  that  all  the  earth  could  not 

*  Prior's  Edition  of  O.  Goldsmith's  Works,  iii.  223. 

K 


130  VOLTAIRE. 

have  held  the  books  which  should  have  been  written." 
But  there  is  a  perpetual  appeal  from  the  calm  reason  of 
the  reflecting  few  to  the  laugh  of  the  thoughtless  many ; 
a  substitution  often,  generally  an  addition,  of  sneer, 
and  gibe,  and  coarse  ridicule,  to  argumentation ;  a 
determination  to  cry  down  and  laugh  down  the  dogmas 
which,  with  his  learning  and  his  reason,  he  was  also 
assaulting  in  lawful  combat.  And  the  consequence 
has  been,  that  although  nothing  can  be  more  inaccurate 
than  the  notion  that  he  never  argues,  never  produces 
any  proofs  which  make  their  appeal  to  the  understand- 
ing, yet  he  passes  with  the  bulk  of  mankind  for  a  profane 
scoffer,  and  little  more.  The  belief  of  D'Alembert 
was  exactly  the  same  with  his  own ;  he  has  left 
abundance  of  letters  which  show  that  he  had  as  much 
zeal  against  religion  as  his  master,  and  entered  with 
as  much  delight  into  all  his  endless  ribaldry  at  the 
expense  of  the  faith  and  the  faithful  ;*  but  because  he 
never  publicly  joined  in  the  assault,  we  find  even  those 
who  most  thoroughly  knew  his  opinions,  nay,  bishops 
themselves,  concurring  in  the  chant  of  his  praises,  as  the 

*  See  especially  such  letters  as  that  in  which  he  speaks  of  the 
6  Dictionnaire  Philosophique,'  calling  it  the  Dictionnaire  de  Satan  : 
— "  Si  j'avais  des  connaissances  a  rimprimerie  de  Belzebuth,  je  m'em- 
presserai  de  m'en  procurer  un  exemplaire ;  car  cette  lecture  mja  fait 
un  plaisir  de  tous  les  diables."  He  says  he  has  swallowed  it, 
"  Gloutonnement,  en  mettant  les  morceaux  en  double  ;"  and  adds — 
"  Assurement  si  1'auteur  va  dans  les  etats  de  celui  qui  a  fait  impri- 
mer  cet  ouvrage  infernal,  il  sera  au  moms  son  premier  ministre :  per- 
sonne  ne  lui  a  rendu  des  services  plus  importans."  (Cor.  d'AL,  274.) 
The  flippancy  of  this  work,  which  threw  D'Alembert  into  such  rap- 
tures, is  nearly  equal  to  its  great  learning  and  ability.  Thus,  vol.  vi. 
p.  274  : — "  Bon  jour,  mon  ami  Job  !  tu  es  un  des  plus  grands  ori- 
ginaux,"  &c.  &c. 


VOLTAIRE.  131 

most  inoffensive,  and  even  moral  of  men  ;  while  Voltaire, 
who  never  said  worse  than  D'Alembert  freely  but  pri- 
vately wrote,  raises  in  their  minds  the  idea  of  an  ema- 
nation from  the  father  of  all  evil.  It  may  be  hard  to 
define  the  bounds  which  should  contain  the  free  dis- 
cussion of  sacred  subjects.  Those  who  are  the  most 
firmly  convinced  of  religious  truth  are,  generally  speak- 
ing, the  most  careless  to  what  extent  the  liberty  of  as- 
sailing it,  in  examining  its  grounds,  shall  be  carried  ; 
but  without  attempting  to  lay  down  any  such  rule, 
we  may  safely  admit  that  Voltaire  offended,  and 
offended  grievously,  by  the  manner  in  which  he  de- 
voted himself  to  crying  down  the  sacred  things  of  his 
country,  whether  we  regard  the  interests  of  society  at 
large,  or  the  interests  of  the  particular  system  which 
he  desired  to  establish. 

But  though  it  would  be  exceedingly  wrong  to  pass 
over  this  great  and  prevailing  fault  without  severe  re- 
probation, it  would  be  equally  unjust,  nay,  ungrateful, 
ever  to  forget  the  immense  obligations  under  which 
Voltaire  has  laid  mankind  by  his  writings,  the  pleasure 
derived  from  his  fancy  and  his  wit,  the  amusement 
which  his  singular  and  original  humour  bestows,  even 
the  copious  instruction  with  which  his  historical 
works  are  pregnant,  and  the  vast  improvement  in  the 
manner  of  writing  history  which  we  owe  to  him.  Yet 
great  as  these  services  are — among  the  greatest  that 
can  be  rendered  by  a  man  of  letters — they  are  really  of 
far  inferior  value  to  the  benefits  which  have  resulted 
from  his  long  and  arduous  struggle  against  oppression, 
especially  against  tyranny  in  the  worst  form  which  it 
can  assume,  the  persecution  of  opinion,  the  infraction  of 

K2 


132  VOLTAIRE. 

the  sacred  right  to  exercise  the  reason  upon  all  subjects, 
unfettered  by  prejudice,  uncontrolled  by  authority, 
whether  of  great  names  or  of  temporal  power.  I  That 
he  combated  many  important  truths  which  he  found 
enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  errors,  and  could  not  patiently 
sift,  so  as  to  separate  the  right  from  the  wrong,  is  un- 
deniably true ;  that  he  carried  on  his  conflict,  whether 
with  error  or  with  truth,  in  an  offensive  manner,  and 
by  the  use  of  unlawful  weapons,  has  been  freely  ad- 
mitted. But  we  owe  to  him  the  habit  of  scrutinizing, 
both  in  sacred  matters  and  in  profane,  the  merits  of 
whatever  is  presented  for  our  belief,  of  examining 
boldly  the  foundations  of  received  opinions,  of  making 
probability  a  part  of  the  consideration  in  all  that  is  re- 
lated, of  calling  in  plain  reason  and  common  sense  to 
assist  in  our  councils  when  grave  matters  are  under  dis- 
cussion ;  nor  can  any  one  since  the  days  of  Luther  be 
named,  to  whom  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry,  nay,  the 
emancipation  of  the  human  mind  from  spiritual  ty- 
ranny, owes  a  more  lasting  debt  of  gratitude.  No  one 
beyond  the  pale  of  the  Romish  church  ever  denies  his 
obligation  to  the  great  Reformer,  whom  he  thanks  and 
all  but  reveres  for  having  broken  the  chains  of  her 
spiritual  thraldom.  All  his  coarseness,  all  his  low 
ribaldry,  all  that  makes  the  reading  of  his  works  in 
many  places  disgusting,  in  not  a  few  offensive  to  com- 
mon decency,*  and  even  to  the  decorum  proper  to  the 


*  See  particularly  his  abominable  sermon  at  Wittenberg,  on  mar- 
riage, actually  preached,  and  of  so  immoral  a  tendency,  as  well  as 
couched  in  such  indelicate  language,  that  it  can  only  be  referred  to 
without  translation,  by  Bishop  Bossuet  and  others  ;  also  his  '  Table- 
talk/  in  those  parts  where  he  treats  of  women,  and  describes  with 


VOLTAIRE.  133 

handling  of  pious  topics,  all  his  assaults  upon  things 
which  should  have  been  sacred  from  rude  touch,  as 
well  as  his  adherence  with  unrestrained  zeal  to  some 
of  the  most  erroneous  tenets  of  the  Romish  faith — all 
are  forgiven,  nay,  forgotten,  in  contemplating  the  man 
of  whom  we  can  say  "He  broke  our  chains."  Un- 
happily the  bad  parts  of  Voltaire's  writings  are  not 
only  placed  as  it  were  in  a  setting  by  the  graces  of 
his  style,  so  that  we  unwillingly  cast  them  aside,  but 
embalmed  for  conservation  in  the  spirit  of  his  immor- 
tal wit.  But  if  ever  the  time  shall  arrive  when  men, 
intent  solely  on  graver  matters,  and  bending  their 
whole  minds  to  things  of  solid  importance,  shall  be 
careless  of  such  light  accomplishments,  and  the  writ- 
ings which  now  have  so  great  a  relish,  more  or  less 
openly  tasted,  shall  pass  into  oblivion,  then  the  im- 
pression which  this  great  genius  has  left  will  remain ; 
and  while  his  failings  are  forgotten,  and  the  influence 
of  his  faults  corrected,  the  world,  wiser  and  better 
because  he  lived,  will  continue  still  to  celebrate  his 
name.* 


ribaldry  the  most  filthy  his  conflicts  against  the  devil.  Nothing  in 
Eabelais  is  more  coarse.  Indeed  these  are  passages  unexampled  in  any 
printed  book  ;  but  the  original  sermon  must  be  consulted,  for  no 
translator  would  soil  his  page  with  them,  and  accordingly  Audin 
and  others  give  them  only  by  allusion  and  circumlocution.  '  Titzen- 
Rede/  p.  306  and  464,  must  itself  be  resorted  to  if  we  would  see 
how  the  great  Reformer  wrote  and  spoke.  His  allowing  the  Land- 
grave of  Hesse  to  marry  a  second  wife  while  the  first  was  living, 
and  the  grounds  of  the  permission,  are  well  known ;  and  the  attempt 
to  deny  this  passage  of  his  life  is  an  entire  failure. 

*  The  edition  of  Voltaire  referred  to  in  this  <  Life'  is  that  of 
Baudouin,  at  Paris,  1828,  in  75  volumes. 


134  VOLTAIRE. 


APPENDIX    I. 


IT  would  be  improper  to  dismiss  the  subject  of  Voltaire  with- 
out adverting  to  the  somewhat  ambitious  work  which  Condorcet 
has  written  under  the  somewhat  inaccurate  title  of  his  '  Life.' 
This  is  a  defence  and  panegyric  throughout;  no  admission  of 
blame,  or  even  error,  is  ever  made ;  and  there  is  a  scorn  of  all 
details,  facts,  dates,  which  takes  from  the  book  its  whole  value 
as  a  biographical,  while  its  unremitting  partiality  deprives  it 
of  all  merit  as  a  philosophical  composition.  Considering  the 
importance  of  the  subject,  and  the  resources  of  the  writer  for 
either  recording  facts  or  giving  a  commentary,  it  may  safely 
be  asserted  that  there  is  no  greater  failure  than  this  work, 
appealed  to  as  it  so  often  is,  out  of  mere  deference  to  the 
respectable  name  it  bears.  Condorcet  was  a  man  of  science, 
no  doubt,  a  good  mathematician ;  but  he  was  in  other  respects 
of  a  middling  understanding  and  violent  feelings.  In  the 
revolution  they  called  him  "  le  mouton  enrage,"  by  way  of 
describing  his  feeble  fury.  He  belonged  to  the  class  of  lite- 
rary men  in  France  whose  intolerance  was  fully  equal  to  that 
of  their  pious  adversaries — those  denouncing  as  superstition  all 
belief,  these  holding  all  doubt  to  be  impious.  E-ather  ena- 
moured of  Voltaire's  irreligion  than  dazzled  with  his  wit  or 
his  fine  sense,  he  makes  no  distinction  between  his  good  and 
his  bad  writings  in  point  of  moral  worth,  nor  indeed  ever 
seems  to  admit  that  in  point  of  merit  one  is  or  can  be  inferior 
to  another.  Witness  his  panegyric  of  the  f  Pucelle,'  which, 
after  some  passages  were  erased,  he  pronounces  to  be  "  a  work 
for  which  the  author  of  '  Mahomet'  and  '  Louis  XIV.'  had  no 
longer  any  reason  to  blush"  (Vie  de  Voltaire,  100).  His 
credulity  on  material  things  is  at  least  equal  to  his  unbelief  on 
spiritual.  He  gravely  relates  that  hopes  were  held  out  from 
the  court  of  Madame  de  Pompadour  of  a  cardinal's  hat  for 
Voltaire  when  he  was  instructed  to  translate  some  psalms,  a 
task  which  he  performed  with  such  admirable  address,  though 
in  perfect  good  faith,  that  they  excited  a  general  horror,  and 


VOLTAIRE.  135 

were  condemned  to  be  burnt.  It  is  none  of  the  least  absurd 
parts  of  Condorcet's  work,  that  he,  being  so  well  versed  in 
physical  and  mathematical  science,  passes  without  any  parti- 
cular observation  the  writings  of  Voltaire  on  physical  subjects, 
when  he  was  so  competent  to  pronounce  an  opinion  upon  their 
merits.  But  the  strangest  part  of  the  matter  is,  that  the  au- 
thor of  Voltaire's  'Life'  should  apparently  never  have  read 
his  voluminous  and  various  correspondence,  from  which 
alone  the  real  materials  for  such  a  work  are  to  be  obtained. 
He  might  as  well  have  undertaken  the  ( Life '  of  Rousseau 
without  reading  the  '  Confessions.' 

The  publication  in  1820  of  Madame  de  Grafigny's  '  Letters/ 
while  residing  for  six  months  at  Cirey,  entitled,  not  accurately, 
'Vie  privee  de  Voltaire  et  de  Madame  du  Chatelet/  adds 
some  curious  particulars  to  our  former  knowledge  of  Madame 
du  Chatelet  and  of  her  household,  always  supposing  that  we 
can  entirely  rely  on  the  testimony  of  a  woman  whose  own 
character  was  very  far  from  respectable,  and  who  professedly 
acted  the  very  unworthy  part  of  an  eaves- dropper  for  so  con- 
siderable a  time,  pleading  only  as  her  excuse  the  extreme 
penury  from  which  the  hospitality  that  she  violated  afforded 
her  a  shelter.  On  Voltaire's  character  it  casts  no  new  light 
whatever,  except  that  it  tends  to  raise  our  admiration  of  his 
talents,  if  that  be  possible,  and  also  of  his  kindly  disposition. 
Of  Madame  du  Chatelet  it  gives  a  far  less  amiable  picture. 


APPENDIX    II. 


I  HAVE  been  favoured,  by  the  great  kindness  of  Mr.  Stanford, 
F.R.S.,  with  part  of  a  series  of  letters  which  Voltaire  wrote 
to  the  Duchess  Louisa  of  Saxe  Gotha,  grandmother  of  the 
late  Duke,  and  of  which  his  Serene  Highness  was  graciously 
pleased  to  allow  him  to  make  a  copy.  By  Mr.  Stanford's  per- 


136  VOLTAIRE. 

mission  I  am  enabled  to  add  some  of  them;  and  I  have 
selected  the  six  following,  which  are  now  for  the  first  time 
made  public.  They  will  be  found  very  interesting. 


No.  I. 

MADAME  A  Swetzingen,  pres  de  Manheim,  1754. 

Je  m'approche  du  midy  a  pas  lents  en  regrettant  cette 
Turinge  que  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  embelissait  a  mes  yeux, 
et  on  elle  faisait  naitre  de  si  beau  jours,  qu'il  semble  que  vos 
bontez  aient  donne :  j'ai  trouve  a  la  cour  de  Manheim  une 
image  de  ces  bontez,  dont  j'ai  ete  comble  a  Gotha :  cela  ne  sert 
qu'a  redoubler  mes  regrets  ;  je  les  porterai  partout.  II faut  enfin 
aller  a  Plombieres  suivant  les  ordres  des  medecins  et  des  rois, 
deux  especes  tres  respectables,  avec  lesquelles  on  pretend 
que  la  vie  humaine  est  quelquefois  en  danger ;  mais  je  supplie 
votre  Altesse  Serenissime  de  considerer  combien  je  luy  suis 
fidele  :  il  n'y  a  point  d'ancien  chevalier  errant  qui  ait  si  con- 
stamment  tenu  sa  promesse.  J'ai  acheve  Charles  Quint  tantot 
a  Mayence,  tantot  a  Manheim;  j'ai  ete  jusqu'au  ChimisteRo- 
dolphe  Second ;  j'ai  songe  de  cour  en  cour,  de  cabaret  en  ca- 
baret, que  j'avais  des  ordres  de  Madame  la  Duchesse  de 
Gotha;  je  voiage  avec  des  livres  comme  les  heroines  de 
roman  voiageaient  avec  des  diamants  et  du  linge  sale ;  je 
trouverai  a  Strasbourg  des  secours  pour  achever  ce  que  mon 
obeissance  a  vos  ordres  a  commence ;  mais,  Madame,  qu'il  sera 
dur  de  vous  obeir  de  si  loin ! 

Je  ne  ferai  jamais  qu'une  seule  priere  a  Dieu :  je  luy  diray, 
Donnez  moy  la  sante  pour  que  je  retourne  a  Gotha.  Je  me 
flatte  que  la  Grande  Maitresse  des  Cceurs  me  conserve  tou- 
jours  ses  bontez;  qu'elle  me  protege  toujours  aupres  de 
votre  Altesse  Serenissime.  Je  me  mets  a  vos  pieds,  Madame, 
avec  quarante  Empereurs,  preferant  assurement  la  vie  heu- 
reuse  de  Gotha  a  toutes  leurs  aventures.  Je  serai  attache  le 
reste  de  ma  vie  a  votre  Altesse  Serenissime,  avec  le  plus 
profond  respect,  et  une  reconnaissance  inalterable.  Permettez 
moy,  Madame,  de  presenter  les  meme  sentimens  a  Mon- 
seigneur  le  Due  et  a  votre  auguste  famille. 


VOLTAIRE.  137 

No.  II. 
MADAME,  A  Colmar,  30  Juillet,  1754. 

.  .  .  .  Ce  que  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  me  dit  d'une  certaine 
personne*  qui  se  sert  du  mot  de  "  rappeler  "  ne  me  convient 
gueres  \  ce  n*est  qu'aupres  de  vous,  Madame,  que  je  peuve 
jamais  etre  appele  par  mon  coeur ;  il  est  vray  que  c'est  la  ce 
qui  m'avait  conduit  aupres  de  la  personne  en  question;  je  luy 
ay  sacrifie  mon  temps  et  ma  fortune ;  jeluy  ay  servi  de  maitre 
pendant  trois  ans ;  je  luy  ay  donne  des  lemons  de  bouche  et 
par  ecrit  tous  les  jours  dans  les  choses  de  mon  metier.  Un 
Tartare,  un  Arabe  du  desert,  ne  m'auroit  pas  donne  une  si 
cruelle  recompense.  Ma  pauvre  niece,  qui  est  encor  malade 
des  atrocitez  qu'elle  a  essuiees,  est  un  temoignage  bien  funeste 
contre  luy.  II  est  inoui  qu'on  ait  jamais  traitte  ainsi la  fille  d'un 
gentilhomme,  et  la  veuve  d'un  gentilhomme,  d'un  officier  des 
armees  du  Roy  de  France  ;  et  j'ose  le  dire  une  femmetres  re- 
spectable par  elle-meme,  et  qui  a  dans  FEurope  des  amis.  Si 
le  Roy  de  Prusse  connaissait  la  veritable  gloire,  il  aurait 
repare  1'action  infame  qu'on  a  faitte  en  son  nom.  Je  demande 
pardonne  a  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  de  luy  parler  de  cette 
triste  affaire ;  mais  la  bonte  qu'elle  a  de  s'interesser  au  sort  de 
ma  niece  me  rappelle  tout  ce  qu'elle  a  soufert.  Je  m'ima- 
gine  que  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  est  actuellement  dans  son 
palais  d'Altembourg  avec  Monseigneur  et  les  princes  ses  en- 
fans  :  je  me  mets  a  vos  pieds  et  aux  leurs. 

On  m'a  envoye  de  Berlin  une  relation  moitie  vers  et  moitie 
prose  du  voyage  de  Maupertuis  et  d'un  nomme  Cogolin  :  ce 
n'est  pas  un  chef-d'oeuvre. 

Recevez,  Madame,  mes  profonds  respects  et  ma  vive  recon- 
naissance. V. 


No.  III. 
MADAME,  Aux  Delices,  23  Aotit,  1758. 

L'optimisme  et  le  tout  est  bien  recoivent  en  Suede  de 
terribles  echecs :  on  se  bat  sur  mer,  on  se  menace"  sur  terre ; 

*  Frederick  IL 


138  VOLTAIRE. 

heureuse  encor  un  fois  la  terre  promise  de  Gotha,  ou  Ton  est 
tranquille  et  heureux  sous  les  auspices  de  votre  Altesse 
Serenissime.  Elle  a  done  lu  les  lettres  de  cette  femme  sin-" 
guliere,  veuve  d'un  poete  burlesque  et  d'un  grand  Roy, 
qui  naquit  Protestante,  et  qui  contribua  a  la  revocation  de 
TEdit  de  Nantes  :  qui  fut  devote,  et  qui  fit  1'amour.  Je  ne  sqais, 
Madame,  si  vous  aurez  trouve  beaucoup  de  lettres  interes- 
santes.  A  I'e'gard  des  memoires  de  La  Beaumelle,  c'est  Pouvrage 
d'un  imposteur  insense,  qui  a  quelque  fois  de  Tesprit,  mais  qui 
en  a  toujours  mal-a-propos  ;  ses  calomnies  viennent  de  le  faire 
enfermer  a  la  Bastille  pour  la  seconde  fois :  c'etait  un  chien 
enrage  qu'on  ne  pouvoit  plus  laisser  dans  les  rues :  c'est  une 
etrange  fatalite  que  ce  soit  un  pareil  homme  qui  ait  ete 
cause  de  ce  qu'on  appelle  mon  malheur  a  la  cour  de  Berlin. 
Pour  moy,  Madame,  je  ne  connais  d'autre  malheur  que  d'etre 
loin  de  votre  Altesse  Serenissime.  On  est  grand  nouveliste 
dans  le  pays  que  j'habite.  On  pretend  qu'il  y  a  dans  une  partie 
de  I'Allemagne  des  orages  prets  a  crever :  heureusement  ils 
sont  loin  de  vos  £tats.  Je  n'ose,  Madame,  vous  demander  si 
votre  Altesse  Serenissime  pense  qu'il  y  ait  guerre  cette  annee  : 
il  ne  m'appartient  pas  de  faire  des  questions,  mais  je  sgais 
que  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  voit  les  choses  d'un  coup  d'ceil 
bien  juste ;  son  opinion  deciderait  en  plus  d'une  conjoncture 
de  ce  qu'on  doit  penser ;  plus  d'un  particulier  est  interesse  aux 
affaires  generates.  Qu'elle  me  pardonne  de  lui  en  parler,  et 
qu'elle  daigne  recevoir  avec  sa  bonte  ordinaire  mon  profond 
respect.  V. 

[In  another  letter  it  is  stated  that  the  greater  part  of  La 
Beaumelle's  publication  of  Madame  Maintenon's  letters  re- 
ferred to  in  No.  III.  proved  to  be  a  fabrication.] 


No.  IV. 
MADAME,  Aux  D61ices. 

J'ai  egalement  £  me  plaindre  de  la  guerre  et  de  la 
nature :  Tune  et  1'autre  conspirent  a  me  priver  du  bonheur 
de  faire  ma  cour  a  votre  Altesse  Serenissime.  La  vieillesse, 
les  maladies,  et  les  houzards  sont  de  cruels  ennemis:  j'ay 


VOLTAIRE.  139 

bien  peur,  Madame,  que  ces  houzards  ne  demandent  un  peu 
de  fourrage  a  vos  etats,  et  qu'ils  payent  fort  mal  leur  diner 
et  celuy  de  leurs  chevaux.  Du  moms,  Madame,  votre  beau 
Duche,  reste  d'un  Duche  encore  plus  beau,  n'aura  rien  a 
reprocher  a  la  cavalerie  Franc,aise :  je  crois  que  depuis  Rosbach 
elle  a  perdue  Fidee  de  venir  prendre  respectueusement  du 
foin  dans  vos  quartiers.  II  me  parait  que  le  Roy  de  Prusse, 
qui,  attaquant  &  droit  et  a  gauche  autrefois,  comme  le  belier 
de  la  vision  de  Daniel,  est  totalement  sur  la  defensive  :  pour 
nous,  nous  sommes  sur  Tespectative ;  et  Paris  est  sur 
1'indifference  la  plus  gaie ;  jamais  on  ne  s'est  tant  rejoui — 
jamais  on  n'a  invente  tant  de  plaisanteries,  tant  de  nouveaux 
amusements.  Je  ne  scjais  rien  de  si  sage  que  ce  peuple 
de  Paris,  accuse  d'etre  frivole :  quand  il  a  vu  les  malheurs 
accumulez  sur  terre  et  sur  mer,  il  s'est  mis  a  se  rejouir,  et 
a  fort  bien  fait ;  voyla  la  vraie  philosophic.  Je  suis  un  vieillard 
tres  indulgent :  il  faut  en  plaignant  les  malheureux  applaudir 
a  ceux  qui  ignorent  leurs  malheurs. 

Je  renouvelle  mes  remerciments  tres  humbles  a  votre 
Altesse  Serenissime  :  sa  protection  au  sujet  des  paperasses 
touchant  le  Czar  fait  ma  consolation.  Je  me  mets  a  ses  pieds 
avec  le  plus  profond  respect :  je  suis,  &c. 


No.  V. 

MADAME,      Au  Chateau  de  Tourney,  par  Geneve,  21  Fevrier,  1760. 

La  nature  nous  fait  payer  bien  cher  la  faveur  qu'elle 
nous  fait  de  changer  Fhiver  en  printemps.  Votre  Altesse  Sere- 
nissime a  ete  malade,  et  la  Princesse  sa  fille  a  ete  attaquee  de 
la  petite  verole :  ce  qui  est  encore  tres  cruel,  c'est  qu'on  est  un 
mois  entier  dans  la  crainte,  avant  de  recevoir  une  nouvelle  con- 
solante.  Vous  daignez,  Madame,  me  mander  du  10  Fevrier  que 
j'ay  a  trembler  pour  votre  sante  et  pour  celle  de  la  Princesse ; 
mais  quand  daignerez  vous  rassurer  le  cceur  qui  est  le  plus  sen- 
sible a  vos  bontez,  et  le  plus  attache  a  votre  bien-etre  ?  Quand 
apprendrai-je  que  la  petite  verole  a  respecte  la  vie  et  labeaute 
d'une  Princesse  nee  pour  vous  ressembler,  et  que  votre  Altesse 


140  VOLTAIRE. 

Serenissime  a  recouvre  cette  belle  sante  que  je  luy  ai  connue,  cet 
air  de  fraicheur  et  de  felicite?  Madame, ily  faut  renoncer  jusqu'a 
la  paix.  J'apprends,  et  Dieu  veuille  qu'on  me  trompe,  qu'on 
foule  encore  vos  etats,  et  qu'on  exige  des  fournitures  pour  aller 
faire  ailleurs  des  malheureux.  II  faut  avouer  les  Princes 
chretiens  et  les  peuples  de  cette  partie  de  1'Europe  sont  bien  a 
plaindre  ;  on  met  en  campagne  quatre  fois  plus  de  trouppes 
pour  disputer  une  petite  province  que  le  Grand  Turc  n'en 
a  pour  conserver  ses  vastes  etats.  Les  causes  de  vos  guerres 
sont  to uj ours  tres  minces,  et  les  effets  abominables :  vous  etes 
le  contraire  de  la  nature,  chez  qui  1'efFet  est  toujours  propor- 
tione  a  la  cause.  On  ruine  cent  villes,  on  engage  cent  mille 
homines,  et  qu'en  resulte-t-il  ? — rien.  La  guerre  de  1 74 1  a  laisse 
les  choses  comme  elles  etaient :  il  en  sera  de  meme  de  celle-cy  : 
on  fait,  on  aime,  le  mal  pour  le  mal,  a  1'imitation  d'un  plus  grand 
Seigneur  que  les  R-ois,  qui  s'appelle  le  Diable.  On  dit  que  nos 
Suisses  sont  sages  :  leur  pays  est  en  paix.  Oui !  mais  ils  vont 
tuer  et  se  faire  tuer  pour  quatre  ecus  par  mois,  au  lieu  de  cul- 
tiver  leur  champs  et  leur  vignes.  Le  Roy  de  Frusse  vient 
de  m'envoier  deux  cent  vers  de  sa  fa^on,  tandis  qu'il  se  pre- 
pare a  deux  cent  mille  meurtres  ;  mais  que  dire  des  Jesuittes, 
Messieurs  E..  de  Matos  et  Jeronimo  Emmanuel,  qui  ont  fait 
assassiner  le  Roi  de  Portugal  au  nom  de  la  Vierge  Marie  et 
de  St.  Antoine. 

Profond  respect  et  inquietude  sur  la  sante  de  votre  Altesse 
Serenissime.  V. 

Je  crois  que  la  Grande  Maitresse  des  Cceurs  n'a  guere 
dormi. 


No.  VI. 

MADAME,  A  Ferney,  22  Juillet,  1762. 

C'en  est  trop ;  votre  generosite  est  trop  grande,  mais 
il  faut  avouer  que  votre  Altesse  Serenissime  ne  pouvoit  mieux 
placer  ses  bienfaits  que  sur  cette  famille  infortunee  :*  il  n'en  a 

*  The  family  of  Sirven,  for  whom  Voltaire  was  then  exerting 
himself  in  every  direction,  and  for  whom  he  appears  to  have  asked 
the  Grand  Duchess's  charity. 


VOLTAIRE.  141 

presque  rien  coute  pour  1'opprimer,  pour  luy  ravir  les  aliments, 
et  pour  faire  expirer  la  vertueuse  mere,  presque  dans  mes 
bras,  et  il  en  coute  de  tres  fortes  sommes  avant  qu'on  se  soit 
mis  seulement  en  etat  de  lui  faire  obtenir  une  ombre  de  jus- 
tice :  on  fait  meme  mille  chicanes  au  genereux  Le  Beaumont 
pour  1'empecher  de  publier  1'excellent  memoire  qu'il  a  com- 
pose en  faveur  de  1'innocence.  On  persecute  a  la  fois  par  le 
fer,  par  la  corde,  et  par  les  flammes,  la  religion  et  la  philoso- 
phic ;  cinq  jeunes  gens  ont  ete  condamnes  au  bucher  pour 
ii'avoir  pas  ote  leur  chapeau  en  voyant  passer  une  procession 
a  trente  pas !  Est-il  possible,  Madame,  qu'une  nation  qui 
passe  pour  si  gaye  et  si  polie  soit  en  effet  si  barbare  ? 

L'Allemagne  n'a  jamais  vu  de  pareille  horreurs :  elle  sait 
conserver  sa  liberte,  et  respecter  1'humanite.  Notre  religion 
est  prechee  en  France  par  des  bourreaux.  Que  ne  puis-je  venir 
achever  a  vos  pieds,  le  peu  de  jours  qui  me  restent  a  vivre,  loin 
d'une  si  indigne  patrie  ?  C'est  moy  qui  suis  le  tresorier  de  ces 
pauvres  Sirvens :  on  peut  tout  m'envoyer  pour  eux  que  votre 
ame  si  belle  leur  destine.  Madame,  qu'elle  me  console  de  toutes 
les  abominations  dontje  suis  temoin!  Mon  cceur  est  penetre 
de  la  bonte  du  votre.  Daignez  agreer  mon  admiration,  mon 
attachement,  mon  respect  pour  vos  Altesses  Serenissimes. 

Je  n'oublierai  jamais  la  Grande  Maitresse  des  Coeurs. 

V. 


APPENDIX     III. 


THE  following  singular  anecdote  has  never,  it  is  understood, 
been  made  public,  and  it  comes  from  a  respectable  quarter 
entitled  to  credit.  Nothing  can  more  strongly  illustrate  Vol- 
taire's peculiar  humour:  the  contrast  between  his  habitual 
reverence  for  the  Deity,  and  his  habit  of  scoffing  at  the  sacred 
things  of  Religion,  is  here  presented  in  a  remarkable  manner  : — 

"  Une  matinee  du  mois  de  Mai,  M.  de  Voltaire  fait  demander 
au  jeune  M.  le  Comte  de  Latour  s'il  veut  etre  de  sa  promenade 
(3  heures  du  matin  sonnaient).  E  tonne  de  cette  fantasie, 


142  VOLTAIRE. 

M.  de  L.  croyait  achever  un  reve,  quand  un  second  message 
vint  confirmer  la  verite  du  premier.  II  ne  hesite  pas  a  se  rendre 
dans  le  cabinet  du  Patriarche,  qui,  vetu  de  son  habit  de  cere- 
monie,  habit  et  veste  mordores,  et  culotte  d'un  petit  gris  tendre, 
se  disposait  a  partir.  'Mon  cher  Comte/  lui  dit-il, '  je  sors 
pour  voir  un  peu  le  lever  du  soleil ;  cette  Profession  de  Foi  d'un 
Vicaire  Savoyard  m'en  a  donne  en  vie  .  .  .  voyons  si  Rousseau 
a  dit  vrai.' 

"  Us  partent  par  le  temps  le  plus  noir ;  ils  s'acheminent ; 
un  guide  les  eclairait  avec  sa  lanterne,  meuble  assez  sin- 
gulier  pour  chercher  le  soleil !  Enfin,  apres  deux  heures 
d'excursion  fatigante,  le  jour  commence  a  peindre.  Voltaire 
frappe  ses  mains  avec  un  veritable  joie  d'enfant  Ils  etaient 
alors  dans  un  creux.  Ils  grimpent  assez  peniblement  vers  les 
hauteurs  :  les  8 1  ans  du  philosophe  pesant  sur  lui,  on  n'avan- 
^ait  guere,  et  la  clarte  arrivait  vite  ;  deja  quelques  teintes  vives 
et  rougeatres  se  projetait  a  1'horizon.  Yoltaire  s'accroche  au 
bras  du  guide,  se  soutient  sur  M.  de  Latour,  et  les  contempla- 
teurs  s'arretent  sur  la  sommet  d'une  petite  montagne.  De  la 
le  spectacle  etait  magnifique  !  les  roches  peres  du  Jura,  les 
sapins  verts,  se  decoupant  sur  le  bleu  du  ciel  dans  les  cimes, 
ou  sur  le  jaune  chaud  et  apre  des  terres ;  au  loin  des  prairies, 
des  ruisseaux ;  les  milles  accidents  de  ce  suave  passage  qui 
precede  la  Suisse,  et  1'annonce  si  bien,  et  enfin  la  vue  se  pro- 
longe  encore  dans  un  horizon  sans  bornes,  un  immense  cercle 
de  feu  empourprant  tout  le  ciel.  Devant  cette  sublimite  de 
la  nature,  Voltaire  est  saisi  de  respect :  il  se  decouvre,  se 
prosterne,  et  quand  il  peut  parler  ses  paroles  sont  un  hymne ! 
'  Je  crois,  je  crois  en  Toil'  s'ecriat-il  avec  enthousiasme ; 
puis  decrivant,  avec  son  genie  de  poete,,  et  la  force  de  son 
ame,  le  tableau  que  reveillait  en  lui  tant  d' emotions,  au  but  de 
chacun  des  veritables  strophes  qu'il  improvisait,  '  Dieu 
puissant !  je  crois !'  repetait-il  encore.  Mais  tout-a-coup  se 
relevant,  il  remit  son  chapeau,  secoua  la  poussiere  de  ses 
genoux,  reprit  sa  figure  plissee,  et  regardant  le  ciel  comme  il 
regardait  quelquefois  le  Marquis  de  Villette  lorsque  ce  dernier 
disait  une  naivete,  il  ajoute  vivement,  '  Quand  ii  Monsieur  le 
Fils,  et  a  Madame  sa  Mere,  c'est  une  autre  affaire.'  " 


:  A.UL 


(    143   ) 


ROUSSEAU. 


THE- life  of  Rousseau  neither  requires  so  full  a  con- 
sideration as  that  of  Voltaire,  nor  affords  the  materials 
for  it.  Mankind  are  not  divided  upon  his  character 
and  his  merits,  nor  ever  were.  That  he  was  a  person 
of  rare  genius  within  limited,  nay,  somewhat  confined, 
bounds,  of  a  lively  imagination,  wholly  deficient  in 
judgment,  capable  of  great  vices  as  well  as  virtues,  and 
of  a  mind  so  diseased  that  it  may  possibly  be  doubtful  if 
he  was  accountable  for  his  actions,  is  the  opinion  which 
his  contemporaries  formed  of  him  during  his  life, 
which  has  ever  since  prevailed,  and  which,  indeed,  was 
confirmed  by  his  own  testimony,  produced  after  his 
decease,  and  calculated  to  show  that  he  would  not 
have  either  dissented  from  the  sentence  or  have  hesi- 
tated to  join  in  pronouncing  it.  His  history  and  his 
writings  are  of  a  kind  that  unavoidably  interest  us  ; 
but  the  one  affords  too  few  events,  the  other  too  little 
variety,  to  detain  us  very  long  in  examining  either. 

Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  was  born  at  Geneva,  on  the 
28th  of  June,  1712.  His  father  was  a  watchmaker; 
his  mother  the  daughter  of  M.  Bertrand,  a  Protestant 
minister;  and  her  brother,  an  engineer,  married  the 

*  The  edition  of  Rousseau  referred  to  in  the  text  is  that  of 
Lefevre,  Paris,  1839,  in  eight  large  volumes. 


144  ROUSSEAU. 

sister  of  old  Rousseau,  who  appears  to  have  been  a 
man   of  exemplary   virtue,   of  considerable   abilities, 
some  information,  and  of  a  very  feeling  heart.     He 
had  gone  to  Constantinople  about  seven  years  after  the 
birth  of  his  eldest  and  then  his  only  son,  but  he  returned 
on  being  apprized  by  his  wife  that  she  was  beset  by 
the  attentions  of  the  French  Resident,  to  whom  she 
had  given   every  possible   repulse.     This  gentleman, 
M.  de  la  Closure,  showed,  at  a  distance  of  thirty  years, 
some  kindness  to  the  son,  and  was  moved  to  tears  in 
speaking  of  his  mother,  who  died  when  she  had  given 
him   birth,   ten  months  after   her   husband's  return 
from  the  East.     His  grief  was  excessive ;  and  he  used 
for  some  years  after  to  take  a  mournful  pleasure  in 
speaking  of  her,  and  weeping  over  her  memory  with 
his  child.     He  read  with  him  all  her  books,  which 
were  chiefly  novels  and  romances,  and  in  devouring 
these  they  would  frequently  sit  up  whole  nights.    The 
stock  being  exhausted,  they  betook  themselves  to  a 
more   wholesome   food  ;    the   library   of   her   father 
having,  on  his  death,  come   to  them,  and  containing 
historical  and  other  useful  books.     An  extraordinary 
enthusiasm  for  the  Greek  and  Roman  characters,  and 
especially  the  eager  perusal  of  '  Plutarch's  Lives/  and 
the  Roman  history,  was  the  consequence  of  this  new 
course  of  reading.    Young  Rousseau  could  not  abstain 
from  the  subject,  and  one  day  alarmed  the  family  at 
dinner,  while  he  was  relating  the  fable  of  Scsevola,  by 
running  to  the  chafing-dish  and  holding  his  hand  on 
it.     When  he  was  eight  or  nine  years  old,  his  father 
had  a  quarrel  with  a   French  officer,  and  to  avoid 
being  cast  into   prison,  left  Geneva  and   settled   at 


ROUSSEAU.  145 

Lausanne,  where  he  afterwards  married  a  second  wife 
advanced  in  years,  and  had  no  children  by  her.  His 
eldest  son,  seven  or  eight  years  older  than  Jean 
Jacques,  had  never  been  the  favourite,  though  bred  to 
his  father's  business ;  he  took  a  dissipated  course,  left 
the  place,  and  went  into  Germany.  Little  pains  were 
taken  to  stop  or  to  trace  him ;  he  never  wrote  to  any 
one  after  his  flight,  and  what  became  of  him  is  not 
known.  In  all  probability,  he  died  before  his  bro- 
ther's name  became  well  known,  else  he  probably 
would  have  discovered  himself. 

Beside  the  love  of  modern  romances  and  of  ancient 
history,  accident  gave  him  a  fondness  for  music,  which, 
with  the  other  passion,  accompanied  him  through  life. 
His  aunt,  who  took  care  of  him,  sang  a  great  number 
of  simple  airs,  chiefly  popular  ones,  with  a  sweet  small 
voice,  which,  aided  by  his  attachment  to  her,  made  a 
deep  impression  upon  him,  and  formed  his  taste  in 
song  as  well  as  imbued  him  with  a  sensibility  to  its. 
charms.  After  his  father's  departure  for  Lausanne, 
he  was  left  to  the  care  of  his  uncle  Bertrand,  who 
sent  him  for  two  years  to  Boissy,  near  Geneva,  where 
he  remained  under  the  tuition  of  M.  Lambercier,  a 
pastor,  and  appears  to  have  learnt  a  little  Latin ;  but 
when  the  Abbe  Gouvon,  in  whose  service  he  afterwards 
was,  at  Turin,  treated  him  rather  as  a  secretary  than 
a  footman,  and  read  Latin  with  him,  he  was  found 
to  be  very  ill  grounded,  and  wholly  unable  to  construe 
Virgil.  He  acknowledges,  indeed,  that  he  never  was 
tolerably  acquainted  with  the  language,  though  he 
repeatedly  attempted  to  gain  it.  His  statement  to  this 
effect,  twelve  years  after  he  had  translated  the  first 


146  ROUSSEAU. 

book  of  Tacitus's  '  History,'  and  translated  it  exceed- 
ingly well,  in  most  passages  correctly,  in  some  %  with 
great  felicity,  is  one  of  the  exaggerations  in  which  he 
indulges  both  of  his  merits  and  his  defects.  But  he 
learnt  whatever  he  knew  comparatively  late.  Nothing 
could  possibly  be  worse  than  the  education  of  a  man 
who  made  it  a  principle  through  life  to  cry  down 
learning,  not  because  he  never  possessed  it,  but  because 
he  found  it  was  hurtful  to  the  character  and  incon- 
sistent with  sound  wisdom  and  true  virtue. 

After  quitting  the  school  at  Boissy,  he  was  appren- 
ticed to  an  engraver,  who  seems  to  have  treated  him 
harshly.  But  his  conduct  was  already  bad.  He  had 
a  habit  of  lying  on  all  occasions,  whether  moved  by  fear 
to  conceal  some  misconduct,  or  incited  by  some  appetite 
he  wished  to  gratify,  or  actuated  by  some  other  equally 
sordid  motive.  A  strong  disposition  to  thieving  was 
likewise  among  his  propensities,  and  this  continued  to 
abide  by  him  long  after  he  grew  up,  and  even  when 
he  lived  in  society  he  never  could  entirely  shake  it  off. 
His  temperament,  too,  was  vehement,  and  his  timidity 
and  shyness  equally  strong.  The  indulgences  into 
which  he  was  thus  seduced,  he  has  himself  described  ; 
but  to  embellish  such  subjects,  or  even  to  veil  them  so 
as  to  hide  their  disgusting  aspect,  would  require  the 
magic  of  that  diction  in  which  he  has  clothed  his  own 
story,  and  of  which  he  never  seems  to  have  been  a 
master  in  any  of  his  other  writings.  After  serving 
through  half  his  apprenticeship,  he  was  surprised  one 
Sunday  evening  in  an  excursion  with  his  companions, 
out  of  the  town,  by  the  shutting  of  the  gates ;  and 
there  wanted  no  more  to  make  him  elope.  He  went 


ROUSSEAU.  147 

to  the  parsonage  of  a  Savoyard  cure  (rector)  at 
Carouges,  two  leagues  from  Geneva,  who  received  him 
hospitably  in  the  hopes  of  converting  him,  and  gave 
him  letters  of  introduction*  to  Madame  de  Warens,  a 
Swiss  lady,  who  having  left  her  husband,  had  become 
a  Catholic,  and  lived  on  a  pension  from  the  devout 
King  of  Sardinia.  She  received  him  kindly,  and  sent 
him  to  Turin,  where  he  was  entertained  at  the  semi- 
nary of  Catechists,  established  for  converting  heretics. 
In  this  religious  establishment  he  found  manners  of 
the  most  dissolute  and  even  abominable  kind  ;  he  was 
feebly  reasoned  with  by  the  brethren  on  the  errors  of 
his  belief;  he  does  not  seem  in  reality  to  have  been 
convinced ;  but  a  provision  in  the  Church  had  been 
placed  before  his  eyes  as  the  probable  reward  of  his 
apostacy,  and  he  embraced  publicly  the  Catholic  religion. 
It  was,  however,  soon  discovered  by  the  officers  of  the 
Inquisition  that  he  was  not  sufficiently  orthodox  in 
his  faith,  for  he  would  not  avow  his  belief  that  his 
mother  had  been  numbered  among  the  damned.  He 
was,  therefore,  turned  out  of  the  seminary,  with  a 
present  of  twenty  francs  from  the  sum  collected  at  the 
exhibition  of  his  abjuration. 

After  living  obscurely  in  Turin  in  a  lodging-house 
for  common  people  at  half  a  sous  a  night,  he  now  en- 
tered as  a  footman  the  service  of  the  Countess  de  Ver- 
cellis,  and  wore  livery  with  the  rest  of  the  servants.  In 
the  course  of  a  few  months  this  lady  died,  and  the 
servants  were  of  course  dismissed.  It  was  found  that 

*  The  common  accounts  say  that  the  Bishop  of  Annecy  gave 
him  this  introduction.  It  was  M.  de  Pontverre,  Komish  cure, 
in  Savoy. 

L   2 


148  ROUSSEAU. 

a  ribbon  had  been  stolen ;  all  were  interrogated,  and 
Rousseau,  in  whose  possession  it  was  found,  and  who 
was  in  fact  the  thief,  had  the  wickedness  to  charge  it 
upon  an  innocent  girl ;  he  persisted  in  averring  that  she 
had  stolen  it  to  give  him,  there  having  been  some  little 
love-making  between  them.  The  ruin  of  this  poor  girl 
was  the  consequence,  and  he  describes  the  bitter  agonies 
of  remorse  which  he  ever  after  endured  in  reflecting 
upon  the  crime  thus  committed.  He  endeavours  to 
explain  it  in  a  refined,  absurd,  and  false  manner,  by 
saying  that  his  love  for  Marian  caused  it  all,  because 
he  had  stolen  it  to  give  her,  and  this  put  it  into  his 
head  to  think  of  accusing  her  of  the  same  intention. 
But  the  truth  is,  that  his  cowardice,  the  parent  of  lies, 
caused  it  all.  He  never  would  have  dared  charge  a 
man  with  the  offence.  He  thought  he  could  escape 
exposure  and  perhaps  punishment  (though  he  affects  to 
say  he  dreaded  not  that)  by  laying  the  blame  on  an 
innocent  young  girl  who  had  shown  a  liking  for  him 
which  he  returned.  He  also  tries  to  represent  himself 
as  only  a  child  then,*  and,  writing  in  1766  or  1767, 
speaks  of  forty  years  having  elapsed.  But  this  is  not 
true.  He  came  to  Annecy  in  1728,  sixteen  years  old, 
having  left  Geneva  in  July  or  August,  and  after  several 
months'  residence  in  Turin  and  the  seminary,  and 
three  in  the  Countess's  house,  he  must  have  been  seven- 
teen when  she  died,  instead  of  fourteen  or  fifteen,  which 
his  calculation  of  forty  years  would  make  him.  He 
expressly  says  that  he  had  attained  the  age  of  sixteen 
before  he  ran  away  from  his  master,  and  he  was  born 

*  "  La  faute  d'un  enfant."— (Conf.,  part  i.  liv.  2.) 


ROUSSEAU.  149 

on  the  28th  of  June.  Indeed,  if  he  remained  in  his 
next  place  less  than  a  year,  as  he  was  uncertain  when 
he  left  it,  he  must  have  been  eighteen  when  he  com- 
mitted the  offence.  Nothing  therefore  like  an  excuse, 
or  extenuation  from  his  youth,  can  be  urged  on  this 
head. 

He  was  now  to  prove  himself  as  foolish  as  he  had 
been  found  wicked.  Received  as  footman  in  the  great 
family  of  Solar,  an  accident  showed  him  to  be  superior 
in  reading  to  the  other  servants,  and  one  of  the  house, 
the  Abbe  de  Gouvon,  a  man  of  great  accomplishments 
and  of  a  kindly  disposition,  made  him  a  sort  of  secre- 
tary, taking  much  pains  also  with  his  education ;  so 
that,  though  he  could  not  master  Latin,  he  became  a 
good  Italian  scholar.  Suddenly  the  fancy  seized  him  of 
quarrelling  with  the  good  people,  and  returning  on  foot 
to  Geneva  with  a  good-for-nothing  young  rake  from  that 
town,  named  Bacler,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  made, 
and  whose  low  buffoonery  he  could  not  refrain  from  re- 
lishing, and  even  envying,  as  he  uniformly  did  whatever 
qualities  he  observed  to  attract  the  admiration  of  the 
multitude.  He  showed  the  utmost  insolence  and  in- 
gratitude to  the  Solars,  and  was  all  but  kicked  out  of 
their  palace,  where  he  had  been  cherished  as  a  child  of 
the  family,  and  had  been  offered  the  sure  means  of  mak- 
ing his  fortune.  A  plaything,  which  in  his  extreme 
ignorance  he  calls  fontame  d'heron,  but  which  is  well 
known  as  the  fountain  of  Hiero  (fontaine  d'Hieron),  had 
been  given  him  by  his  patron.  His  childish  delight  in 
this  bauble  was  unbounded,  and  he  expected  by  show- 
ing it  off  on  the  road  to  make  his  way  for  nothing,  a 
journey  of  ninety  leagues.  With  this  ridiculous  pro- 


150  ROUSSEAU. 

ject  he  set  out,  and  with  his  warm  attachment  for  his 
new  acquaintance ;  but  as  he  came  near  Annecy,  and 
once  more  hoped  to  be  received  into  Madame  de 
Warens'  house,  he  felt  he  could  not  take  Bacler 
with  him,  and  so  he  began  to  affect  a  great  coldness, 
that  he  might  shake  him  off.  This  he  soon  contrived 
to  do,  and  he  was  kindly  taken  into  her  hospitable 
family,  where  he  became  domesticated. 

By  the  account  of  her,  which  exposes  all  her  failings 
with  great  minuteness,  as  a  reward  for  her  undeviating 
kindness  towards  him,  Madame  de  Warens  appears  to 
have  been  a  woman  of  some  accomplishments,  of  con- 
siderable personal  charms,  of  attractive  manners,  of  a 
most  kind  and  charitable  disposition,  and  of  very  loose 
principles.  This  latter  particular  he  endeavours  to 
gloss  over  by  insisting  on  her  peculiar  notions  of  what 
was  fit  and  allowable.  One  of  her  peculiarities  was  to 
make  herself  uniformly  the  mistress  of  all  her  men 
servants,  beside  having  occasionally  deviations  into  a 
superior  rank  of  life.  To  be  sure,  he  maintains  that 
she  only  adopted  this  course  as  the  means  of  attaching 
these  domestics  the  more  to  her  service  ;  arid  he  holds  it 
quite  clear  that  she  neither  sought  nor  found  any  gra- 
tification whatever  in  this  odd  kind  of  family  inter- 
course. Nevertheless  he  records  that  his  own  succes- 
sor was  a  tall,  ignorant,  ill-bred  young  man  of  the 
lowest  rank,  a  hairdresser's  apprentice,  who  domineered 
over  the  household,  maltreated  her  shamefully,  and 
brought  her  to  ruin  by  his  extravagance.  Her  con- 
stant and  most  delicate  kindness  to  Rousseau  himself 
was  repaid  by  much  ingratitude,  of  which  the  worst 
part  is  his  committing  to  paper  every  detail  of  his  con- 


ROUSSEAU.  151 

nexion  with  her.  He  desired,  indeed,  that  the  book 
should  not  be  published  before  1800,  and  it  was  given 
to  the  world  by  a  breach  of  trust  in  1788.  But  the 
lady's  family  were  still  alive,  had  it  been  withheld  the 
full  period  prescribed,  and  her  memory  was  something, 
or  should  have  been  something,  in  the  estimation  of  a 
pure  sentimentalist,  of  one  who  was  preparing  his  own 
history  for  the  very  purpose  of  gratifying  a  perverted, 
unnatural  love  of  posthumous  distinction  by  publishing 
his  weakness  and  his  shame  to  the  scorn  of  future  ages. 
He  could  hardly  conceive  that  any  other  person  than 
himself  had  a  similar  propensity  for  self-slander.  But 
even  he  himself  would  not  easily  have  borne  to  be 
slandered  by  any  pen  but  his  own. 

Madame  de  Warens  endeavoured  to  procure  for  him 
orders  in  the  church,  and  sent  him  with  a  pension 
given  by  the  Bishop  of  Annecy  to  the  seminary,  where 
after  some  months  it  was  found  impossible  to  make 
him  learn  Latin  enough  for  a  priest.  She  then  made 
a  M.  le  Maitre,  the  director  of  the  cathedral  music, 
take  him  as  a  pupil  and  helper.  He  passed  near  a  year 
with  him,  and  was  treated  with  the  utmost  kindness. 
A  profligate,  unprincipled  young  man  from  Provence, 
called  Venture  de  Villeneuve,  came  to  Annecy,  and 
from  his  cleverness,  his  skill  in  music,  and  his  excessive 
impudence,  made  some  sensation  in  the  society  of  that 
place.  He  soon  captivated  Rousseau  for  that  reason, 
and  to  save  him  from  so  ruinous  an  association,  as  well 
as  to  assist  Le  Maitre,  who  had  quarrelled  with  the 
chapter,  he  was  desired  to  accompany  him  to  Lyons. 
Thither  he  went,  and  was  still  most  kindly  treated  by 
Le  Maitre,  whose  only  fault  seems  to  have  been  his 


152  ROUSSEAU. 

misfortunes,  and  his  being  subject  to  epileptic  fits. 
Rousseau  took  the  opportunity  one  day,  when  he  fell 
down  in  the  street,  of  leaving  him  to  his  fate,  and 
escaping  in  the  crowd.  Such  was  his  return  for  the 
favours  received  from  a  kind  master.  He  stole  back  to 
Annecy,  and  found  Madame  de  Warens  had  left  the 
place  on  a  secret  expedition,  which  proved  to  be  a  resi- 
dence of  some  time  at  Paris. 

He  now  wandered  about  Switzerland,  and  at  one 
time  he  settled  in  Lausanne  as  a  music  master.  He 
must  needs  call  himself  Vaussure  de  Villeneuve,*  in 
imitation  of  the  creature  he  was  last  taken  with ;  and 
as  it  should  seem,  in  a  fit  of  insanity,  being  wholly  in- 
capable of  composing,  he  wrote  a  concerto  which  was 
given  before  a  large  company  at  a  law  professor's  house, 
he  himself  directing  the  orchestra.  The  hideous  discords 
and  absolutely  incoherent  nonsense  of  the  piece  created, 
of  course,  unbounded  and  universal  ridicule.  His  scho- 
lars soon  dropped  off ;  indeed  he  was  fain  now  to  con- 
fess himself  an  impostor,  and  to  own  that  he  had  under- 
taken to  teach  what  he  was  himself  profoundly  ignorant 
of.  He  began,  however,  to  learn  music,  and  had  made 
some  progress  when  another  impostor  like  himself  came 
to  Lausanne,  and  induced  him  to  go  as  his  secretary 
and  interpreter.  This  was  a  man  pretending  to  be  an 
Archimandrite  of  the  Greek  church,  come  to  beg  aid 
for  repairing  the  holy  sepulchre.  He  accompanied 
this  knave,  and  on  one  occasion  made  a  speech  for  him 
to  the  senate  of  Bern,  who  bestowed  a  considerable  sum 
on  the  unworthy  pair.  The  French  ambassador,  who 

*  Vaussure  was  a  kind  of  anagram  of  Roussear. 


ROUSSEAU.  153 

had  been  in  the  East,  discovered  the  trick,  and  Rousseau 
was  employed  by  him  on  a  mission  to  Paris ;  from 
whence  he  returned,  and  passing  through  Chambery, 
found  Madame  de  Warens,  or  Maman  as  he  always 
called  her,  established  there. 

Received  again  kindly,  again  he  committed  his  ordi- 
nary follies.  Madame  de  Warens  obtained  for  him  a 
comfortable  place  in  a  public  office  (the  Cadastre).  He 
kept  it  two  years,  and  then  resigned  in  order  to  be  a 
music-master.  His  skill  was  fortunately  become  consi- 
derable, and  he  had  a  number  of  scholars.  His  patroness 
now  promoted  him  to  the  rank  of  lover,  but  without 
discarding  the  servant  Claude  A  net,  who  also  took  care 
of  her  botanical  as  well  as  her  amorous  concerns ;  he  was 
a  man  of  considerable  merit  and  great  conduct,  and 
became  a  kind  of  governor  to  Rousseau,  who  more  than 
any  child  of  six  years  old  stood  in  need  of  a  master. 
He  was  succeeded  by  a  young  hairdresser's  apprentice, 
as  Rousseau  found  on  his  return  from  a  few  months 
passed  at  Montpelier  for  his  health ;  the  young  man 
supplanted  both  Claude  Anet  and  Jean  Jacques,  and 
continued  with  this  kind-hearted  but  imprudent 
woman  until,  ruined  by  his  extravagance  and  her  own 
projects,  she  died  in  a  state  of  wretchedness  over  which 
Rousseau  has  drawn  a  veil.  He  saw  her,  after  an  ab- 
sence of  fifteen  years,  in  1754,  at  Chailly ;  and  she 
came  to  see  him  for  the  last  time  near  Geneva  soon 
after.  He  had  helped  her  with  such  sums  as  he  could 
spare.  She  now,  in  receiving  a  small  pittance,  showed 
her  constitutional  tenderness  of  heart  and  that  gene- 
rosity of  disposition  which  no  penury  could  eradicate ; 
she  took  off  her  finger  a  ring,  her  only  remaining 


154  ROUSSEAU. 

trinket,  and  pressed  it  upon  the  woman  through  whom 
the  money  had  been  sent.  Rousseau  charges  himself 
with  black  ingratitude  for  not  having  gone  with  her 
and  saved  her  from  wretchedness  ;  he  could  not  quit 
a  new  attachment  which  he  had  formed,  and  he  declares 
that  the  reflection  on  his  conduct  had  haunted  him  with 
remorse  greater  than  any  other  passage  of  his  life  could 
inflict. 

But  we  have  anticipated  in  the  narrative.  From 
Chambery  he  removed  to  Lyons,  where  his  kind  pro- 
tectress obtained  for  him  an  employment  as  preceptor 
in  M.  Mabillon's  family.  Soon  he,  as  usual,  left  this 
place,  returned  to  Chambery,  found  he  could  no  longer 
be  comfortable  in  Madame  de  Warens'  house,  and  set 
out  to  seek  his  fortune  in  Paris  with  a  '  Discourse  on  a 
new  Theory  of  Music,'  or  rather  Musical  Notation, 
which  he  had  written.  It  had  some  success  at  the 
Academy,  where  it  was  read ;  he  became  introduced  to 
many  persons  of  note ;  he  accepted  the  place  of  secre- 
tary to  Count  de  Montaigue,  ambassador  at  Venice,  and 
was  on  his  arrival,  as  he  represents,  made  secretary  of 
the  embassy.  Here  his  conduct  was,  for  the  first  time  in 
his  life,  prudent,  and  he  reaped  the  fruits  of  it  in  the  re- 
spectability which  he  enjoyed.  He  remained  performing 
with  satisfaction  all  the  duties  of  his  station,  which  the 
utter  incapacity  of  the  ambassador  made  heavier  than 
they  otherwise  would  have  been ;  and  after  a  variety  of 
the  meanest  attempts  on  his  Excellency's  part  to  share 
his  perquisites,  and  repeated  acts  of  maltreatment,  at  last 
amounting  to  the  insolence  and  fury  of  a  madman,  this 
ambassador  compelled  him  to  resign.  The  madness 
had,  however,  some  method,  for  the  salary  was  with- 


ROUSSEAU.  155 

held,  and  in  lieu  of  it  the  most  absurd  charges  were 
brought  against  him.  The  senate,  the  council,  all  the 
French  inhabitants,  and  all  the  diplomatists  took  his 
part,  and  he  returned  to  Paris,  where  he  never  could  get 
even  an  answer  to  his  just  complaints,  being  told  that  a 
foreigner,  like  him,  could  not  be  regarded  when  charg- 
ing a  French  functionary  with  injustice ;  for  the 
government  very  consistently  forgot  that  if  foreigners 
are  to  be  employed  in  the  public  service,  their  not 
being  natives  affords  no  defence  whatever  to  those  who 
maltreat  them,  and  obstruct  them  in  the  performance  of 
their  official  duties. 

On  his  return  to  Paris  he  went  to  live  at  an  inferior 
hotel,  or  rather  lodging-house,  near  the  Luxembourg, 
and  there  dining  at  the  table  with  the  family,  he  be- 
came acquainted  with  a  female  servant,  a  girl  from 
Orleans,  where  her  father  had  held  a  place  in  the 
mint  and  her  mother  had  been  a  shopkeeper,  but  both 
were  reduced  to  distress.  Their  name  was  Le  Vasseur, 
and  the  girl's  Theresa.  She  was  about  twenty- three, 
of  modest  demeanour,  and  so  much  without  education 
that  even  after  living  with  him  for  many  years  she 
never  could  read  the  figures  on  the  dial-plate  of  a 
clock,  or  tell  in  what  order  the  months  succeeded  each 
other.*  He  became  attached  to  her ;  she  cohabited 
with  him,  and  bore  him  five  children,  all  of  which  he 
sent  one  after  the  other  to  the  Foundling  Hospital, 
regardless  of  the  poor  mother's  tears;  and  after 
twenty-five  years  of  this  intercourse  he  married  her. 
The  mother,  a  vulgar  and  affected  woman,  lived  with 
them  ;  and  the  father,  whom  she  could  not  endure,  but 

*  Conf.,  part  ii.  liv.  7. 


156  EOUSSEATJ. 

of  whom  Theresa  was  very  fond,  was,  on  pretext  of 
economy,  sent  at  the  age  of  80  to  the  workhouse,  where 
the  disgrace  of  this  treatment  immediately  broke  his 
heart. 

After  the  battle  of  Fontenoy,  in  1745,  the  Court 
gave  several  theatrical  entertainments,  and  Voltaire 
contributed  the  *  Princesse  de  Navarre/  of  which  the 
famous  Rameau  had  composed  the  music  ;  it  was  now 
changed  into  the  '  Fete  de  Ramire,'  and  Rousseau  be- 
ing employed  to  complete  the  adaptation,  which  re- 
quired considerable  alteration  both  of  words  and  airs, 
Voltaire  was  extremely  pleased  with  his  work  and  with 
his  flattering  letter  respecting  it.  Rousseau  composed 
his  own  opera  of  '  Les  Muses  Galantes'  the  same  year ; 
but  after  one  or  two  rehearsals,  apprehensive  of  its 
fate,  he  withdrew  it.  The  death  of  his  father  enabled 
him  to  obtain  a  small  sum  which  belonged  to  his 
mother,  and  which  the  father  had  enjoyed  for  his  life. 
A  small  portion,  which  he  sent  to  Chambery,  was  at 
once  devoured  by  the  knaves  who  surrounded  Madame 
de  Warens,  and  lived  by  pillaging  her. 

The  kindness  of  his  steady  friend  M.  Francueil,  Re- 
ceiver-General of  Finance,  placed  him  in  the  office  of 
his  cashier  (caissier),  one  of  great  trust,  which  he 
dreaded,  and  of  considerable  emolument,  which,  be- 
cause he  was  starving  and  complained  of  being  forced 
to  send  his  children  to  the  Hospital,  he  altogether  con- 
temned. He  resigned  it  in  a  few  weeks,  on  the  ground 
that  its  duties  were  irksome,  and  prevented  him  from 
fully  enjoying  himself  as  he  liked,  at  a  time  when  he 
believed  he  had  only  a  few  months  to  live.  Self-indul- 
gence appears  to  have  been  erected  by  him  into  a  kind 


ROUSSEAU.  157 

of  principle,  or  rule  of  conduct.  He  therefore  betook 
himself  to  copying  music,  which  he  did  very  carelessly, 
and  very  ill. 

In  1749  he  wrote  his  '  Essay  on  the  Mischiefs  of 
Science,'  the  subject  proposed  by  the  Academy  of  Dijon, 
as  if  on  purpose  to  frustrate  Voltaire's  remark  already 
mentioned  in  his  '  Life  ;'  for  assuredly  it  was  a  slip  in  a 
scientific  body  to  make  it  a  question  whether  science 
corrupted  or  improved  the  morals  of  mankind.  Next 
year  it  obtained  the  prize.  He  justly  thought  very 
meanly  of  its  arrangement  and  reasoning,  nor  did  he 
himself  think  highly  of  its  composition ;  yet  partly 
by  the  brilliancy  and  power  of  the  declamation,  and 
partly  by  the  boldness  of  the  paradoxes,  it  attracted  the 
greatest  notice,  both  made  converts  and  raised  adver- 
saries against  its  doctrines.  He  has  described  his 
manner  of  writing  it :  he  lay  in  bed  with  his  eyes 
closed,  revolving  and  finishing  his  periods,  which  he 
always  did  very  slowly  and  with  much  difficulty.  He 
slept  little,  and  on  rising  in  the  morning  the  act  of 
dressing  would  drive  the  greater  part  of  what  he  had 
composed  out  of  his  head.  He  therefore  used  to  make 
Theresa's  mother  come  and  write  under  his  dictation. 
The  success  of  his  '  Essay'  was  followed  by  one  more 
brilliant  still.  He  composed  the  little  opera  of  the 
'  Devin  du  Village '  in  about  six  weeks,  and  it  was  per- 
formed with  prodigious  success  before  the  King,  in 
his  private  theatre  at  Fontainebleau,  in  1751.  A  mes- 
sage was  sent  next  morning  to  desire  his  attendance, 
and  it  was  confidently  believed  about  Court  that  a  pen- 
sion was  to  have  been  granted  him  ;  but  he  was  far 
too  much  alarmed,  and  had  far  too  little  command  of 


158  ROUSSEAU. 

himself,  or  power  of  crossing  his  inclinations,  to  un- 
dergo this  scene,  and  he  very  indecorously  as  well  as 
very  foolishly  ran  away  to  Paris  early  in  the  morning. 
From  the  Court,  however,  and  the  musical  engravers, 
he  received  between  two  and  three  hundred  louis,  as 
much  as  the  c  Emile '  afterwards  brought  him,  for  the 
fruit  of  twenty  years'  labour.  The  piece  deserved  its 
success.  Nothing  can  be  more  light  and  gay  than  both 
the  simple  plan,  the  pretty  songs,  and  the  lively,  graceful 
airs.  It  seems  to  have  all  the  excellence  that  a  perform- 
ance of  this  inferior  class  can  well  attain.  Next  year 
his  *  Narcissus,'  a  drama,  was  given  at  the  *  Fran^ais  ;' 
and  though  borne  for  two  nights,  he  was  himself 
so  tired  of  it,  and  so  convinced  of  its  failure,  that 
he  could  not  remain  to  the  end  of  the  performance, 
but  came  out,  ran  to  a  coffee-house,  and  announced 
its  certain  fate,  avowing  himself  at  the  same  time 
to  be  the  author,  a  circumstance  which  had  been 
carefully  concealed.  In  1753-4  he  wrote  a  second 
c  Essay  on  the  Inequality  of  Human  Conditions/  also 
for  the  Dijon  Academy.  It  had  the  faults  of  the  first, 
with  more  of  paradox,  and  also  better  composition ; 
but  its  want  of  novelty,  and  its  inferior  eloquence,  pre- 
vented it  from  succeeding. 

In  the  summer  of  1754  he  was,  with  Theresa,  taken 
by  a  friend,  M.  Gauffecourt,  a  tour  to  Geneva,  where 
he  remained  some  months.  He  went  by  Chambery,  to 
see  Madame  de  Warens,  and  he  was  received  with 
great  distinction  by  all  the  families  whom  he  had 
known ;  but  as  he  approached  Geneva  he  felt  the  an- 
noyance to  which  he  was  subjected  by  having  lost  his 
civic  rights,  in  consequence  of  his  quitting  the  Protes- 


ROUSSEAU.  159 

tant  Church.  He  soon  resolved  to  remove  this  only 
obstacle  which  stood  in  the  way  of  his  regaining  them  ; 
and  abjuring  Romanism  with  as  much  reflection  and 
as  much  disinterestedness  as  he  had  formerly  Calvinism, 
he  was  once  more  a  Protestant,  and  became  a  citizen 
of  Geneva.  Among  the  reasons  which  chiefly  influ- 
enced him  in  not  retiring  thither  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
was  the  near  neighbourhood  of  Voltaire,  whom  he  re- 
garded as  destroying  the  place  by  corrupting  its  inha- 
bitants.* This  was  in  1754 ;  while  to  all  outward  ap- 
pearance he  was  bowing  to  the  idol  of  the  day,  and 
expressing  his  entire  admiration  of  his  genius. 

On  the  establishment  of  the  l  Encyclopedic/  D'Alem- 
bert  and  Diderot,  with  whom  he  was  acquainted,  en- 
gaged him  to  write  some  articles ;  and  this  increased 
his  intimacy  with  Diderot,  whose  habits  were  loose, 
as  well  as  introduced  him  to  Diderot's  friend  Grimm, 
a  man  of  letters,  in  the  service  of  the  Duke  of  Saxe 
Gotha,  and  employed  by  him  for  many  years  as  a 
kind  of  literary  and  philosophical  Resident  at  Paris. 
The  letters  which  he  wrote  in  that  capacity,  his  de- 
spatches, as  it  were,  have  been  since  published,  and  are 
well  known.  When  he  came  to  Paris,  being  a  man 
of  wit  as  well  as  letters,  he  was  successful  in  society, 
and  became  dissipated  and  even  profligate  in  his  man- 
ners ;  but  he  does  not  appear  either  to  have  indulged 
in  any  vulgar  excesses,  or  to  have  offended  against  the 
conventional  laws  of  honour  which  bind  the  polite 
world.  Rousseau  always  represents  himself  as  his  in- 
troducer into  the  Parisian  circles,  and  as  having  been 

*  Conf.,  part  ii.  liv.  8. 


160  ROUSSEAU. 

supplanted  there  by  his  superior  address  and  habits  of 
the  world.  Among  others  he  had  presented  him  to 
the  family  of  M.  d'Epinay,  Fermier-General,  who 
kept  a  very  hospitable  house,  where  the  Encyclopedists 
were  familiar,  as  they  were  still  more  at  the  Baron 
d'Holbach's.  Grimm  became  the  professed  lover  of 
Madame  d'Epinay,  whose  sister-in-law,  Madame 
d'Houdetot,  made  a  still  deeper  impression  on  the 
heart  of  Rousseau ;  but  her  avowed  lover  was  his 
friend  St.  Lambert.  The  Epinays  had  a  country  house, 
Chenettes,  in  the  fine  valley  of  Montmorency ;  and 
Rousseau,  when  visiting  there,  was  greatly  taken  with 
the  retirement  of  a  cottage  and  garden  called  the 
Hermitage,  in  its  neighbourhood,  and  likewise  belong- 
ing to  the  family.  Hither  he  transferred  his  resi- 
dence, in  the  spring  of  1756,  and  it  was  his  home  for 
the  next  six  years  of  his  life.*  Theresa's  mother  came 
with  him  as  well  as  herself,  and  nothing  can  be  more 
disgusting  than  the  details  of  her  mean,  sordid,  double- 
dealing  conduct,  to  obtain  money  and  other  things  from 
him,  through  the  agency  of  her  daughter.  But  she 
was  of  some  use  in  the  management  of  his  house,  for 
which  her  daughter  was  as  unfit  as  himself. 

At  the  Hermitage,  for  the  first  year  or  two  of  his  resi- 
dence, he  seems  to  have  suffered  for  want  of  the  society 
which  he  had  quitted,  though  this  is  the  last  thing  he 
will  confess.  He  admits  that  his  imagination  was  excited 


*  It  is  only  another  instance  of  his  inattention  to  dates  that  he 
totally  omits  the  several  years  passed  at  Neufchatel,  when  he  speaks 
of  Montmorency  as  his  constant  residence,  and  represents  it  as  such 
after  his  visit  to  England  in  1766. 


ROUSSEAU.  161 

by  the  recollection  of  past  scenes  of  enjoyment  in  a 
more  sensual  kind ;  and  the  void  left  by  these  gratifica- 
tions, now  past,  or  only  existing  in  his  memory,  he 
filled  up  with  creations  of  his  fancy,  embodying  beings 
of  a  lovely  and  excellent  nature,  and  placing  them  in 
situations  of  lively  interest,  which,  if  his  own  experi- 
ence and  recollections  failed  to  suggest,  it  cost  his 
imagination,  sometimes  sentimental,  sometimes  pruri- 
ent, nothing  to  invent.  This  was  the  origin  of  the 
'Nouvelle  Heloise/  of  all  his  works  the  most  re- 
nowned, and  of  all,  except  his  posthumous  '  Memoirs/ 
the  best,  though  certainly  very  greatly  overrated  both  by 
the  public  opinion  and  by  his  own.  He  describes  the 
delight  he  had  in  composing  it  as  approaching  to  an 
actual  enjoyment,  though  it  only  consisted  in  the  plea- 
sures of  an  indulged  fancy.  He  wandered  all  day  in  the 
forest  of  Montmorency ;  he  had  his  pencil  and  note- 
book with  him ;  Theresa  walked  calmly  by.  In  the 
afternoon  returning  home,  he  wrote  what  had  occurred 
on  the  finest  paper,  sanded  with  gold  and  blue  dust, 
bound  with  bright-coloured  ribbons ;  and  he  read  at 
night  the  produce  of  the  day  to  the  mother,  who 
entered  not  into  it  with  any  comprehension,  much  less 
tasted  it  with  any  relish,  but  said  "Monsieur,  cela  est  bien 
beau ;"  and  to  the  daughter,  who  entered  not  into  it  at 
all,  but  sighed  and  sobbed  when  she  saw  him  appear 
to  be  moved. 

To  deny  the  great  merit  of  this  work  would  be 
absurd ;  the  degree  in  which  it  has  been  overrated, 
owing  chiefly  to  its  immorality,  and  in  part  also  to  its 
vices  of  taste,  not  unnaturally  leads  to  its  depreciation 
when  the  critic  soberly  and  calmly  exercises  his  stern  and 


162  ROUSSEAU. 

ungrateful  office.  But  the  conception  of  the  piece  is, 
for  its  simplicity  and  nature,  happy,  with  the  excep- 
tion which  may  be  taken  especially  to  the  unnatural 
situations  of  the  lovers  on  meeting  after  Julie's  mar- 
riage, to  the  extravagant  as  well  as  dull  deathbed  scene, 
and  to  the  episode,  the  adventures  of  the  English  Lord. 
The  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  are  admirable — far 
superior  to  the  moral  painting  ;  for  Rousseau's  taste  in 
landscape  was  excellent,  while  with  his  moral  taste, 
his  perverted  sentiments,  so  wide  from  truth  and 
nature,  always  interfered.  The  interest  of  the  story 
is  quite  well  sustained,  and  the  turns  in  it  are  well 
represented  by  the  successive  letters.  The  passions  are 
vividly  painted,  and  as  by  one  who  had  felt  their  force, 
though  they  are  not  touched  with  a  delicate  pencil. 
The  feelings  are  ill  rendered,  partly  because  they  are 
mixed  with  the  perverted  sentiments  of  the  ill-regu- 
lated, and  even  diseased  mind,  in  which  they  are 
hatched  into  life,  partly  because  they  are  given  in  the 
diction  of  rhetoric,  and  not  of  nature.  The  love  which 
he  plumes  himself  on  exhibiting  beyond  all  his  prede- 
cessors, nay,  as  if  he  first  had  portrayed,  and  almost 
alone  had  felt  it,  is  a  mixture  of  the  sensual  and  the 
declamatory,  with  something  of  the  grossness  of  the 
one,  much  of  the  other's  exaggeration.  As  this  is  the 
main  object  of  the  book,  therefore,  the  book  must  be 
allowed  to  be  a  failure.  It  charmed  many ;  it  en- 
chanted both  the  Bishops  Warburton  and  Hurd,  as 
we  see  in  their  published  correspondence ;  it  still  holds 
a  high  place  among  the  works  which  prudent  mothers 
withhold  from  their  daughters,  and  which  many  daugh- 
ters contrive  to  enjoy  in  secret ;  it  makes  a  deep  im- 


ROUSSEAU.  163 

pression  on  hearts  as  yet  little  acquainted  with  real 
passion,  and  heads  inexperienced  in  the  social  relations  ; 
it  assuredly  has  no  great  charms  either  for  the  experi- 
enced or  the  wise,  and  is  alike  condemned  by  a  severe 
taste  in  composition  and  a  strict  judgment  in  morals. 

It  would  be  endless  to  support  these  remarks  by 
examples  ;  but  let  us  only  take,  as  the  fairest  test  by 
which  to  judge  the  '  Nouvelle  Heloise,'  its  author's 
own  favourite  piece,  the  '  Elysee'  and  the  '  Voyage  on 
the  Lake,'  at  the  end  of  Part  iv.  They  are  Letters 
xi.  and  xvii.  of  that  part  ;  and  he  denounces  a  woe 
upon  whosoever  can  read  them  without  feeling  his 
heart  melt  in  tenderness.* 

Now  the  greater  part  of  the  first  (Letter  xi.)  is  mere 
description  of  place  ;  it  is  landscape  painting,  not 
history  painting;  and,  with  the  exception  of  an  ex- 
tremely unnatural  reprimand,  given  by  M.  de  Wolmar 
to  St.  Preux,  for  speaking  of  the  shrubbery  where  he 
and  Julie  used  to  ramble,  and  into  which  since  her 
marriage  she  never  went,  there  is  really  not  one  touch 
of  sentiment  in  the  whole  :  unless,  indeed,  it  can  be 
reckoned  such,  that  on  revisiting  the  Elysee  next 
morning,  when  he  expected  to  be  melted  with  seeing 
the  walks  she  had  made  and  used,  the  flowers  she 
had  planted,  &c.,  he  recollects  the  terrible  reprimand 
of  the  evening  before,  and  no  longer  can  think  of  any 
thing  except  the  happiness  of  a  future  state.  All  this 
is  well  written,  but  it  is  mere  rhetoric  ;  the  sen- 


*  "  Quiconque,  en  lisant  ces  deux  lettres,  ne  sent  pas  amollir,  et  se 
fonder  son  cceur  dans  1'attendrissement  qui  me  les  dictat,  doit  fermer 
le  livre  ;  il  n'est  pas  fait  pour  juger  les  choses  de  sentiment."  — 
(Conf.,  part  ii.  liv.  9.) 


164  ROUSSEAU. 

timents  are  cold,  they  are  unnatural ;  the  reprimand 
of  yesterday  never  would  have  stifled  the  passion  of 
to-day.  The  last  effect  that  this  letter,  filled  with 
admirable  description  of  a  garden  and  an  aviary,  could 
ever  produce,  is  assuredly  that  of  melting  the  heart  in 
tenderness ;  and  as  far  as  this  first  letter  goes,  the  woe 
denounced  in  the  *  Confessions'  must  attach  on  all  who 
read  it. 

The  other  (Letter  xvii.)  is  of  a  much  more  ambitious 
character ;  but,  with  one  single  exception,  it  is  liable 
to  the  remark  to  which  every  part  of  the  '  Nouvelle 
Helo'ise'  justly  gives  rise — that  it  is  rhetoric,  not  elo- 
quence; it  is  declamation,  not  true  expression  of 
sentiment.  The  most  laboured  passage,  beyond  all 
doubt,  is  the  speech  which  St.  Preux  addresses  to 
Julie  on  taking  her  to  the  grove  and  the  rocks 
where  he  had  passed  his  time  when  separated  from 
her,  and  when  only  thinking  of  her  and  writing  to 
her ;  it  is  a  very  long  speech,  full  of  set  phrases,  and 
describing  the  icicles  on  rocks,  and  snow  festoons  on 
trees,  and  the  cold  only  made  bearable  by  the  fire  in 
his  heart ;  touching  also  on  ornithology,  as  well  as 
meteorology  :  "  le  vorace  epervier  ;  le  corbeau  funebre  ; 
1'aigle  terrible  des  Alpes"  (a  phrase,  by  the  way,  which 
no  one  living  among  the  Alps  would  ever  use)  ;  and 
then  ending  in  a  rant  of  "Fille  trop  constamment 
aimee !  Oh  toi  pour  qui  j'^tais  ne  !"  &c.  She  interrupts 
him  with  "  Allons  nous  en ;  1'air  de  ce  lieu  n'est  pas 
bon  pour  moi."  Now  this  is  certainly  better  than  the 
speech,  but  it  is  as  certainly  not  pathetic.  What 
follows  in  the  boat  is  much  finer ;  and  is  both  well 
conceived,  excepting  at  first,  and  well  executed.  He 


ROUSSEAU.  165 

feels  his  situation  so  bitterly,  that  he  is  tempted 
for  a  moment  to  plunge  into  the  water,  dragging  her 
after  him  ;  but  he  rushes  away  from  her  side,  and 
weeps  violently  in  the  prow.  All  this  is  nothing; 
and  indeed  the  violence  of  the  scene  is  revolting ;  but 
we  are  recompensed  by  what  follows  and  closes  it. 
He  comes  and  sits  down  again  by  her  ; — "  Elle  tenait 
son  mouchoir ;  je  le  sentis  fort  mouille.  Ah !  lui  dis-je 
tout  bas,  je  vois  que  nos  coeurs  n'ont  jamais  cesse  *de 
s'entendre  !"  She  admits  it  in  a  faltering  voice,  and 
desires  their  hearts  may  never  more  so  commune. 
They  then  speak  calmly,  and  he  afterwards  observes, 
on  landing  and  coming  to  the  light,  that  she  had 
been  weeping — her  eyes  were  red  and  inflamed.  This 
is  finely  done ;  but  with  two  great  faults,  the  worst 
which  such  painting  can  have — a  piece  of  wit  and  an 
overdone  and  a  needless  description.  An  epigram,  almost 
a  pleasantry,  is  introduced,  when  he  says — and  it  is  the 
working  up  of  the  whole — that  their  hearts  had  plainly 
never  ceased  to  hear  or  to  understand  each  other ;  she 
answers  with  a  repartee.  Instead  of  stopping  at  "  II  est 
vrai,"  or  saying  nothing,  being  unable  to  speak,  which 
would  have  been  better,  she  goes  on,  "  Ma  is  que  ce 
soit  la  derniere  fois."  Even  there  she  might  have 
ended,  giving  the  moral  rebuke ;  but  she  goes  on, 
"  Mais  que  ce  soit  la  derniere  fois  qu'ils  auront  parle 
sur  ce  ton."  Then  what  reason  was  there  for  his 
"  J'apergus  a  la  lumiere,  qu'elle  avait  les  yeux  rouges  et 
forte  gonfles,  et  elle  ne  dut  pas  trouver  les  miens  en  meil- 
leur  etat,"  after  the  wet  handkerchief  and  faltering 
voice  in  the  boat,  and  his  own  agony  in  the  prow  ?  Such 
scenes  as  these  require  the  very  greatest  care  and  the 


166  ROUSSEAU. 

most  rigid  abstinence  in  the  moral  artist.  Particulars, 
details,  circumstances,  must  be  given,  and  given  when 
the  moral  excitement  is  at  its  pitch ;  but  the  selection 
is  of  infinite  moment,  and  there  must  be  no  superfluity, 
no  ornament,  nothing  flowery,  nothing,  no,  absolutely 
nothing,  introduced  of  an  opposite,  an  inconsistent 
character.  The  superfluity  surfeits,  and  sickens,  and 
weakens  all  effect ;  the  foreign  substance  inserted  causes, 
as  it  were,  a  fermentation  to  cast  the  intruder  forth. 

The  less  delicate  and  more  vehement  portions  of  the 
work  are  certainly  very  inferior,  faulty  as  even  the  best 
parts  are.  Nothing  can  be  less  refined,  nothing, 
indeed,  more  vulgar,  than  a  lover  writing  to  his 
mistress  at  all  about  his  transports  on  obtaining 
possession  of  her.  But  St.  Preux  begins,  "from  the 
first  kiss  of  love,"  to  hold  up  her  weakness  in  her  own 
face,  and  that  happens  no  later  in  the  piece  than  the 
fourteenth  letter.  He  holds  her  conduct  up,  too,  in 
coarse  terms,  by  way  of  making  the  offence  less  out- 
rageous :  "  Je  suis  ivre — mes  sens  sont  troubles  par  ce 
baiser  mortel." — "  Un  doux  fremissement."  —  "  Ta 
bouche  de  roses — la  bouche  de  Julie — se  poser  sur  la 
mienne,  et  mon  corps  serre  dans  tes  bras."*  This  may 
not  possibly  be  the  only  instance  of  an  innocent  girl 
suffering  such  a  liberty  for  the  first  time  in  her  life 
without  resistance,  nay,  meeting  her  lover  more  than 
half-way  ;  but  assuredly  it  is  the  only  instance  of  his 
telling  her  in  plain  terms  what  a  forward,  abandoned 
wanton  she  proved.  After  this,  we  are  well  pre- 
pared for  a  letter,  in  which  she  says  that  all  difficulties 

*  Part  I.,  let.  xix. :  (Euv.  ii.  5. 


ROUSSEAU.  167 

only  give  her  more  spirit  and  boldness,  and  that  if  his 
courage   is  equal  to  her   own,  he   may  come  in  the 
night,  when    she   will   "  acquitter   ses   promesses,    et 
payer  d'une  seule  fois   toutes  les  dettes  de   1'amour." 
She  then  exclaims,  "  Non,  mon  doux  ami !  non  !  nous 
ne    quitterons    pas    cette    courte   vie   sans   avoir   un 
instant  goute  du  bonheur ;"  and  to  leave  no  doubt  of 
the  kind  of  happiness  she  had  in  her  eye,  she  adds, 
"  Viens  avouer,  meme  au  sein  des  plaisirs,  que  c'est  du 
sein  des  coeurs  qu'ils  prirent  leur  plus  grand  charme ;" 
of  which  very  bold  avowal  the  chasteness  of  the  diction 
is  on  a  par  with  the  purity  of  the  morals :  for  "  ame 
de  mon  coeur"  and  "  vie  de  ma  vie"  are,  especially  the 
former,  expressions  of  a  moderate  correctness.     Then 
follow  the  two  very  celebrated  letters  in  consequence 
of  the  lady's  invitation  being  accepted.    One  is  written 
in  the   ante-room  of  Julie's  bed-chamber,  and  is   of 
an  incomparable  absurdity  in  the  design,  for  which  no 
felicity  in  the  execution  could  ever  compensate.     But 
is  the  execution  less  bad  than  the  conception  in  such 
lines  as  these? — "O  desirs  !  O  crainte  !  O  palpitations 
cruelles ! — On  ouvre  !  on  entre ! — C'est  elle,  c'est  elle ! 
Mon  faible  coeur,  tu  succombes ! — Ah !    cherchez  des 
forces  pour  supporter  la  felicite  qui  t'accable."*     Of 
the  other  letter  the  following  day,  absolutely  insulting 
to  the  poor  girl,  little  needs  be  said.     The  scheme  of 
writing  it  is  revolting  enough;  but  less  so,  perhaps, 
than  the  language   its  execution  is  couched  in.     He 
actually  speaks  of  "ces  baisers  qu'une  voluptueuse  lan- 
gueur   nous  faisaient  lentement  savourer,  et  ces  ge- 

*  Part  I.,  Let.  liv. :  CEuv.  ii.  127. 


168  ROUSSEAU. 

missemens  si  tendres  durant  lesquels  tu  pressais  sur 
ton  coeur,  ce  coeur  fait  pour  s'unir  a  lui."*  He  calls 
her  "  divine  Julie."  It  certainly  was  another  epithet 
originally ;  I  remember  to  have  first  read  it  "  incon- 
cevable  Julie,"  and  to  have  thought  it  the  best  word 
in  the  whole  book. 

There  is  no  concealing  the  truth  that  a  volume  of 
love-letters  must  naturally  be  tiresome  to  the  very 
verge  of  not  being  readable.  Their  interest  to  the 
parties  is  only  exceeded  by  their  indifference  in  all 
other  eyes.  Hence  the  '  Nouvelle  Heloise,'  which  pro- 
fesses chiefly  to  consist  of  this  kind  of  material  in  its 
most  interesting  portions,  must  have  been  dull,  had 
there  been  no  digressions  to  relieve  it.  The  marriage 
of  Julie,  and  the  Parisian  sojourn  of  St.  Preux,  his 
return  to  La  Meillerie,  and  Julie's  death,  afford  those 
varieties,  and  enable  the  book  to  proceed  through  its 
very  considerable  length. 


At  1'Ermitage  he  very  soon  fell  in  love  with  Ma- 
dame d'Houdetot,  M.  d'Epinay's  sister,  and  he  de- 
clares that  this  was  the  only  love  he  ever  felt  in 
his  life.  How  often  the  same  thing  had  been  avowed 
to  others  by  the  man  of  pure  heart,  who  deemed 
sincerity  as  above  all  other  virtues,  who  could  excuse  all 
vices  save  the  want  of  perfect  simplicity  and  honesty, 
we  have  no  means  of  judging.  That  he  had  before 
been  on  such  terms  with  some  seven  or  eight  women 
as  must  have  led  to  similar  declarations  of  attachment, 
unless  he  avowed  that  he  treated  them  as  brutes,  as 

*  Part  L,  Let.  lv.:  GEuv.,  ii.  127. 


EOUSSEAU.  169 

mere  instruments  of  sensual  pleasure,  is  certain  from 
his  own  account.  But  lie  declares,  with  perfect  so- 
lemnity, that  this  passion  was  "  la  premiere  et  1'unique 
de  toute  sa  vie."*  The  lady  treated  him  with  kindness, 
apparently  as  a  child ;  his  friend  St.  Lambert  did  not 
much  relish  the  matter,  being  unable  to  adopt  his  sin- 
gular habit  of  several  lovers  at  one  and  the  same  time 
intimate  with  one  mistress ;  and  she  became  in  conse- 
quence reserved  and  distant.  An  open  quarrel  took 
place  with  Madame  d'Epinay,  her  sister-in-law,  like 
many  of  Rousseau's  quarrels,  without  any  intelligible 
ground,  except  his  taking  offence  at  something  which 
he  had  imagined,  and  then  writing  abusive  letters. 
He  wrote  to  say  he  should  leave  1'Ermitage ;  she 
answered  that  if  he  chose  to  do  so  he  was  welcome. 
He  replied  that  after  such  a  hint  he  could  not  remain 
a  week.  He  removed  to  another  house  near  Mont- 
morency,  and  there  he  remained,  taking  very  properly 
the  opportunity  of  this  removal  to  get  rid  of  Madame  le 
Vasseur,  whom  no  entreaties  of  her  daughter  could 
induce  him  to  keep  about  him  any  longer.  With 
Grimm  and  Diderot  he  quarrelled  irreconcileably ;  and 
his  book  is  filled  with  attacks  upon  them  both,  but 
especially  upon  Grimm.  He  charges  them,  as  usual, 
with  a  conspiracy,  the  overt  acts  of  which  were 
their  sometimes  seeing  and  conversing  with  Theresa's 
mother,  the  improper  purpose  of  which  he  never  could 
describe,  or  even  inform  us  what  he  suspected  it  to  be.  He 
had  some  vague,  half-crazy  notion  that  they  wanted  to 
direct  and  guide  him,  and  to  injure  his  fame  and  to 

*  Conf.,  part  ii.  let.  9 :  CEuv.,  i.  p.  423. 


170  ROUSSEAU. 

make  him  do  foolish  things, — as  if  they  could  have 
any  conceivable  interest  in  his  degradation,  or  could 
possibly  drive  him  to  do  more  foolish  things  than  he 
perpetually  did  of  his  own  accord.  Next  to  his  quarrel 
with  Hume,  nothing  so  betokened  a  diseased  mind  as 
his  suspicions  of  these  two  friends.  One  letter  which 
he  received  from  Grimm  he  says  contained  an  avowal 
of  hating  him,  or  at  least  a  throwing  off  of  his  friend- 
ship ;  but  he  says  he  never  read  more  than  the  beginning 
of  it,  and  that  he  sent  it  back  with  a  violent  answer.* 
But,  unfortunately,  Madame  d'Epinay  in  her '  Memoirs' 
published  the  letter,  and  it  contains  nothing  like 
what  Rousseau  complained  of  till  the  very  end. 
Nothing,  therefore,  can  be  more  inconsistent  than  his 
account  of  the  whole  transaction ;  and  indeed  his 
furious  passion  at  other  letters  of  the  most  indifferent 
kind,  which  he  cites  in  his  '  Confessions,'  shows  suf- 
ficiently that  his  mind  laboured  under  morbid  delu- 
sions in  all  this  epistolary  intercourse. 

In  his  new  residence  he  wrote  the  letter  to  D'Alem- 
bert  on  the  article  '  Geneve,'  of  the  '  Encyclopedic/ 
the  subject  of  which  is  an  attack  upon  theatrical  enter- 
tainments. He  says  he  composed  it  in  three  weeks  of 
a  severe  winter,  sitting  in  an  open  summer-house  at 
the  end  of  the  garden,  without  fire  or  shelter.  It  had 
very  great  success,  and  it  is  written  with  much  power. 
The  sale  of  this  work,  with  that  of  the  '  Nouvelle  He- 
loise,'  published  in  1759,  gave  him  3000  francs  to 
spare.  The  latter  work  had  been  printing  in  Holland 
above  two  years,  and  had  frequently  been  read  in 

*  Conf.,  part  ii.  liv.  9 :  (Euv.;  i.  p.  467. 


ROUSSEAU.  171 

manuscript  to  persons  of  distinction,  such  as  the 
Marechal  de  Luxembourg,  and  the  Marechale  who 
now  had  the  Chateau  de  Montmorency,  and  with  whom 
he  formed  a  great  intimacy,  insomuch  that  they 
gave  him  a  convenient  summer-house,  near  their 
orangery,  where  he  lived  occasionally.  The  avidity 
with  which  the  work  was  at  first  rea'd  may  be  judged  of 
from  this,  that  it  was  lent  out  by  the  booksellers  at 
twelve  sous  an  hour ;  and  instances  are  cited  of  prin- 
cesses ordering  their  carriages  at  night  to  attend  an 
opera  or  ball,  and  being  found  absorbed  in  the  book  at 
two  in  the  morning  so  as  to  send  their  carriages  away. 
The  '  Emile'  was  published  in  the  spring  of  176*2, 
and  the  '  Central  Social'  a  few  weeks  before  it.  The 
'  Contrat,'  which  he  appears,  with  the  wonted  soundness 
of  an  author's  judgment  on  himself,  to  have  valued  be- 
yond all  his  other  works,  and  to  have  elaborated  the 
most,  is  an  irrefragable  proof  of  his  unfitness  for  all  poli- 
tical discussion,  as  his '  Discourse  on  Political  Economy' 
for  the  '  Encyclopedic'  proves  his  equal  unfitness  for 
economical  studies.  It  is  not  that  he  bewilders  him- 
self in  all  the  errors  and  inconsistencies  of  an  original 
compact,  for  JLocke  and  Somers  had  done  so  before 
him,  though  he  flounders  in  the  mire  very  differently 
from  Locke ;  but  he,  who  pretends  to  write  in 
modern  times  upon  government,  denies  all  virtue 
to  the  great  improvement  of  modern  policy,  the  repre- 
sentative system,  declaring  that  the  people  are  slaves, 
and  the  state  is  near  its  ruin,  when  the  rights  and 
duties  of  rulers  are  performed  by  any  but  the  whole 
body  of  the  citizens  (lib.  iii.  ch.  15);  that  the  Eng- 
lish "are  slaves,  are  nothing,  except  a  few  days  in 


172  ROUSSEAU. 

six  or  seven  years."*  His  capacity  of  defining  with 
logical  precision  is  shown  by  his  reckoning  an  elective 
aristocracy  as  one  form  of  that  polity,  and  of  course 
preferring  it  to  either  a  natural  or  an  hereditary  aristo- 
cracy, nay,  apparently  to  any  other  kind  of  government, 
without  perceiving  that  it  is  nothing  like  an  aristocracy 
at  all,  but  is,  in  truth,  a  form  of  the  representative 
government  which  he  condemns  (Lib.  iii.  ch.  5) .  His 
power  of  dealing  with  particular  constitutions  is  seen 
in  his  comments  on  that  of  Poland,  the  subject  of  a 
separate  treatise  which  he  published  in  177*2.  He 
considers  the  radical  vice  of  the  Polish  government  to 
be  the  extent  of  the  country,  and  recommends  either  a 
federal  union  or  the  abandonment  to  neighbouring 
powers  of  some  part  of  its  dominions — a  plan  which 
those  powers  full  soon  caused  to  be  adopted.  The 
election  of  the  sovereign  he  holds  to  be  a  good  princi- 
ple, under  wise  restrictions ;  and  the  one  which  he 
proposes  is  the  selection  by  the  whole  people  of  one 
from  among  the  noblemen  of  the  first  class,  to  be 
chosen  by  lot, — an  absurdity  unexampled  in  political 
reveries.  ('  Considerations  surle  Gouvernementde  Po- 
logne,'  ch.  v.  xiv.) 

The  merits  of  the  '  Emile '  are  of  a  much  higher 
order  ;  for  together  with  wild  theories,  mere  fantastical 
dreams  of  education,  it  contains  a  great  deal  of  striking, 
though  certainly  not  pure,  composition,  sometimes  of  a 

*  "  Le  peuple  Anglais  pense  etre  libre :  il  se  trompe  fort ;  il  ne 
Test  que  durant  1'election  des  membres  du  Parlement ;  si  tot  ils  ont 
&u,  il  est  esclave,  il  n'est  rien.  Dans  les  courts  momens  de  sa 
liberte,  1'usage  qu'il  en  fait  merite  bien  qu'il  la  perde "  (liv.  iii. 
ch.  15). 


ROUSSEAU.  173 

sentimental,  sometimes  of  a  declamatory  kind ;  and 
it  abounds  in  remarks,  the  result  of  personal  expe- 
rience or  actual  observation,  and  so  entitled  to  much 
attention.  The  religious  portion,  the  '  Profession  de 
Foi  d'un  Vicaire  Savoyard,'  is  that  which  naturally 
excited  most  attention  at  the  time  of  its  publication, 
and  which  still  possesses  the  most  interest.  His  long 
letter  in  the  '  Nouvelle  Helo'ise'  (Liv.  v.,  Let.  3)  contains 
his  thoughts  on  the  subject  of  education,  powerfully 
though  more  concisely  given  ;  but  nothing  of  an  infidel 
cast  was  given  before  the  '  Emile.'  It  is  true  Wolmar, 
a  perfect  character,  is  made  first  an  atheist,  and  then  a 
sceptic,  owing  to  his  contempt  for  the  ceremonies  of  the 
Greek  and  Romish  churches  ;  and  that  Julie's  religion 
is  rather  pure,  exalted,  impassioned  theism,  than  Christ- 
ianity (Liv.  vi.,  Let.  5 ;  Liv.  xvi.,  Let.  7,  8),  yet  the 
Scriptures  are  spoken  of  with  Christian  reverence 
(CEuv.,  ii.,  p.  622)  ;  and  both  Julie  dies  a  Christian 
death,  and  Wolmar  is,  in  consequence,  about  to  be  con- 
verted when  the  curtain  falls.  But  the  '  Emile'  at  once 
declares  against  Revelation  ;  it  does  not  indeed  substi- 
tute, for  the  Christian  scheme  dogmatically  rejected,  a 
dogmatical  theism,  but  it  denies  the  credibility  of  the 
Gospel  dispensation  as  recorded  in  the  Scriptures,  and 
it  substitutes  a  moderate  but  humble  scepticism.  There 
is  no  sarcasm,  no  dogmatism,  no  ribaldry,  no  abuse ; 
the  feelings  of  the  Christian  reader  are  consulted,  and 
not  outraged  ;  the  weapons  of  attack  are  reasoning  and 
sentiment,  not  ridicule  ;  the  author's  errors  are  to  every 
candid  reader  his  misfortune,  not  his  fault ;  and  he  gives 
the  impression  to  a  charitable  mind  of  having  wished 
to  be  a  believer,  and  failed. 


174  ROUSSEAU. 

Nevertheless  a  storm  ensued  upon  the  publication  of 
the  book.  M.  de  Malesherbes,  first  President  of  the 
Cour  des  Aides,  and  at  the  head  of  the  Censorship 
(Librairie),  had  given  it  his  official  sanction,  and  it  had 
in  consequence  been  published  at  Paris  and  Amsterdam 
about  the  same  time.  But  the  Courts  of  Law  interfered, 
and  a  decree  of  arrest  was  issued.  Rousseau  had  notice 
through  the  kindness  of  his  excellent  friends  the  Lux- 
embourgs,  and  by  their  aid  he  escaped  to  Neufchatel, 
where  Lord  Marischal  (Keith),  the  Prussian  governor, 
protected  and  befriended  him.  Theresa  followed, 
and  appears  to  have  in  no  degree  increased  the  com- 
forts of  his  residence.  She  soon  grew  tired  of  the 
solitude  in  which  they  lived — the  manners  of  the 
inhabitants  would  not  tolerate  kept  women  ;  and  there 
is  every  reason  to  think,  that  after  feeding  his  suspicious 
mind  with  alarms,  and  making  him  believe  that  his 
life  was  in  danger  from  the  bigotry  of  the  people,  she 
strengthened  her  exhortations  by  pretending  that  his 
house  was  one  night  during  the  fair  attacked  by  the 
mob.  He  gives  a  minute  account  of  the  "  quarry  of 
stones"  found  in  the  house  next  morning,  alleging  that 
they  were  thrown  through  the  windows.  But  M. 
Servan  ('  Reflexions  sur  les  Confessions')  states  his 
having  been  particularly  informed,  by  a  respectable 
person  who  saw  the  house  the  same  day,  that  the  holes 
in  the  windows  were  smaller  than  the  stones  found  on 
the  floor ;  and  Comte  d'Eschery,  a  passionate  admirer 
of  Rousseau,  and  who  doubled  the  prize  offered  by  the 
Academic  Franchise,  in  1790,  for  his  '  Eloge,'  affirms, 
in  his  'Melanges  de  Litterature'  (vol.  iii.,  p.  35  and 
154),  not  only  that  Theresa,  who  had  made  herself 


ROUSSEAU.  175 

detested  by  her  violent  and  slanderous  tongue,  was  the 
principal  author  of  the  trick,  but  that  Rousseau  him- 
self must  have  been  her  accomplice,  in  the  hope  of 
giving  an  excuse,  and  a  colour  of  persecution,  to  his 
departure  from  Neufchatel.  The  whole  was  reduced  on 
examination  to  "  a  single  pane  of  glass  broken  by  a 
stone  thrown  from  the  outside  in  the  night."  The 
Count  gives  other  anecdotes  showing  how  completely 
Rousseau  was  the  dupe  of  his  own  fancies.  One  is, 
that  when  they  passed  a  night  together  in  the  moun- 
tains, lying  on  some  new-mown  hay,  and  asked  one 
another  how  they  had  slept,  Jean  Jacques  said  "  he 
never  slept;"  and  Col.  de  Pury,  one  of  the  party, 
stopped  him  by  saying  he  had  envied  him  the  whole 
night,  as  he  lay  awake,  owing  to  the  fermenting  of  the 
hay  beneath  him,  while  the  sleepless  philosopher 
snored  without  any  intermission.  Of  Theresa  the 
Count  speaks  with  constant  scorn  and  dislike,  as 
of  a  most  silly,  vulgar,  and  mischievous  person,  having 
only  the  one  accomplishment  of  being  a  very  good  cook. 
But  Rousseau  never  suffered  her  to  sit  at  table,  though 
he  was  continually  taking  the  most  ignorant  and  stupid 
things  she  said  for  proofs  of  her  natural  sense. 

It  seems  here  the  place  to  observe  that  Rousseau 
distinctly  admits  his  never  having  felt  for  a  moment  the 
least  love  for  this  poor  creature  (Confessions,  Part  ii.,  liv. 
ix. :  QEuv.,  i.,  378) — "  la  moindre  etincelle  d'amour." 
Whatever  she  may  have  felt  for  him,  he  tells  us 
had  become  nearly  extinguished  long  before  1768,  when 
he  married  her  ;  indeed  his  treatment  of  her,  as  well 
by  forming  other  attachments  as  by  tearing  her  five 
infants  from  her  on  their  birth,  and  while  she  was 


176  ROUSSEAU. 

in  the  first  weakness  of  childbearing,  was  quite  enough 
to  make  her  weary  of  him,  if  his  temper  had  been  far 
less  irritable  than  a  diseased  bladder,  bad  stomach,  and 
half  crazy  brain,  allowed  it  to  be.  That  he  had  a 
great  contempt  for  her  understanding,  and  no  confi- 
dence in  her  virtue  or  her  disposition,  is  quite  plain 
from  a  letter  which  he  wrote  her  in  1769,  and  which  is 
preserved.  Her  complaints  of  the  tiresome  life  they  led, 
and  her  constant  threats  of  leaving  him,  appear  to  have 
given  rise  to  this  letter,  together  with  a  complaint  of 
a  less  delicate  kind  to  which  he  adverts  in  plain  terms 
enough,  but  which  no  other  pen  can  well  touch  upon. 
Her  conduct  in  England  gave  the  greatest  offence  to 
Mr.  Davenport ;  and,  among  other  tricks  to  which  she 
resorted  for  the  purpose  of  making  Rousseau  suspect 
everybody,  and  thus  resolve  to  quit  Wootton,  of  which 
she  as  easily  tired  as  she  did  of  Switzerland,  she  broke 
open  his  letters,  and  made  him  fancy  that  his  enemies 
had  done  it. 

After  they  quitted  Neufchatel,  in  1765,  they  went  to 
live  for  a  few  months  in  the  Isle  St.  Pierre,  an  islet 
in  the  Lac  de  Bienne,  belonging  to  the  hospital  of 
Bern.  Here  he  indulged  in  his  botanical  pursuits, 
and  fancied  that  he  led  a  quiet  wild  life,  as  in  a  state 
of  nature.  The  invitation  sent  through  Madame  de 
Boufflers,  from  David  Hume,  to  visit  England,  brought 
him  from  his  solitude,  and  he  accompanied  the  phi- 
losopher thither.  Mr.  Davenport  soon  afterwards 
invited  him  to  inhabit  his  convenient  mansion  of 
Wootton  in  Derbyshire.  A  pension  of  £100  a-year 
was  obtained  for  him  through  Mr.  Hume's  influence 
with  the  Conway  family,  and  it  appears  to  have  been 


ROUSSEAU.  177 

the  only  overt  act  of  the  conspiracy  in  which  he  soon 
believed  Mr.  Hume  had  joined  to  ruin  his  character  for 
ever.  Another  suspicion  proved  quite  as  groundless. 
Horace  Walpole  having  written  a  jeu  d'esprit  which 
amused  the  Parisian  circles — a  letter  from  Frederick 
inviting  him  to  Berlin,  but  warning  him  that  he  never 
would  gratify  him  by  any  of  the  persecution  he  so 
greatly  delighted  in — Rousseau  fancied  Hume  had 
written  this,  in  which  he  had  no  hand  whatever. 

That  actual  insanity  had  now  undermined  his  rea- 
son, was  become  quite  apparent.  The  most  indifferent 
things  were  converted  into  proofs  of  a  conspiracy,  the 
object  of  which  was,  if  possible,  more  utterly  incompre- 
hensible than  that  of  Grimm  and  Diderot.  In  the 
'Confessions'  he  refers  to  this  English  plot,  and  says, 
that  ' '  he  sees  marching  towards  its  execution,  without 
any  resistance,  the  most  black,  the  most  frightful  con- 
spiracy that  ever  was  devised  against  a  man's  memory," 
(Conf.,  part  ii.,  lib.  xi.  ;  (Euv.,  i.  550.)  He  also  fancied 
that  the  government,  a  party  to  it  by  granting  the  pen- 
sion, was  preventing  him  from  leaving  the  country ; 
nay,  he  wrote  to  General  Con  way,  then  Secretary  of 
State,  that  he  was  aware  his  departure  never  could  be 
suffered.  That  letter,  indeed,  is  as  completely  the 
production  of  a  madman  as  any  that  ever  was  penned 
within  the  walls  of  Bedlam.  He  wrote  it  from  Dover, 
whither  he  had  gone  by  a  rapid  journey  from  Spald- 
ing,  in  Lincolnshire,  having  first  gone  to  Spalding 
from  Wootton,  to  escape  his  enemies  and  the  agents 
of  government.  After  living  ten  months  in  England, 
he  came  over  to  France,  changing  his  name  to  Renou, 
and  went  to  Amiens,  where,  though  he  was  received 

N 


178  ROUSSEAU. 

with  high  distinction  by  every  one,  and  even  by  the 
authorities  of  the  place,  he  still  felt  suspicious  and  un- 
easy. In  autumn,  1767,  he  went  to  Trye  le  Chateau, 
a  place  of  Prince  de  Conti's,  where  he  remained  a 
year  in  the  same  irritable  and  suspicious  state  of  mind. 
It  must  be  added  to  these  undoubted  symptoms  of 
mental  disease,  that,  some  years  after,  and  when  his 
mind  had  regained  composure,  he  really  admitted  his 
having  been  so  affected.  No  man  confesses  madness 
in  terms,  even  after  it  has  ceased.  We  find  George 
III.,  in  a  letter  to  Lord  Eldon,  in  which,  after  his 
recovery  (1804),  he  refused  to  have  his  mad  doctor 
still  about  him,  only  says,  that  "  patients  in  a  '  nervous 
fever,'  when  well,  cannot  bear  the  presence  of  those  who 
had  the  care  of  them  in  their  illness."  (Twiss's  Life, 
vol.  i.,  p.  382.)  So  Rousseau  softened  his  admission, 
when  conversing  with  Bernardin  de  St.  Pierre : — "  J'ai 
mis  trop  d'humeur  dans  mes  querelles  avec  M.  Hume ; 
mais  le  climat  d'Angleterre,  la  situation  de  ma  fortune, 
et  les  persecutions  que  je  venais  d'essuyer,  tout  me  je- 
tait  dans  la  melancolie."  (L'Arcadie,  Preambule.) 

When  he  quitted  Trye,  in  June,  1768,  he  went 
to  Grenoble,  and  soon  after  to  Bougoin,  in  the 
Lyonnais.  That  vanity  was  at  the  bottom  of  his 
malady,  no  one  could  doubt,  even  did  no  proof  exist 
under  his  hand.  But  he  scrawled,  when  passing  through 
Lyons,  a  number  of  sentences  on  the  door  of  his  bed- 
room, and  afterwards  sent  a  copy  of  them  to  a  lady 
there :  they  show  that  he  considered  the  whole  world 
as  occupied  with  him,  and  all  but  kings,  bishops,  and 
the  higher  nobility,  as  his  bitter  enemies.  (Cor.,  ii. 
380.)  From  Bougoin  he  went  to  Monguin,  a  village 


HOUSSEATJ.  179 

in  the  neighbourhood,  at  the  beginning  of  ]  769,  and 
there  chose  to  fall  acquainted  with  a  retired  officer,  M. 
St.  Germain,  on  whom  he  forced  his  most  confidential 
friendship,  and  who  told  him  plainly,  that,  seeing  the 
disordered  state  of  his  fancy,  he  preferred  his  own 
plain  sense  to  all  his  philosophy.  This  worthy  man, 
however,  though  very  religious,  and  as  different  from 
him  as  possible  in  his  character,  conceived  that  warm 
friendship  which  so  many  people  felt  for  him,  chiefly 
from  the  pity  which  his  weakness  and  misery  inspired, 
partly  from  the  infantine  openness  of  his  heart.  His 
letters  at  this  time  are  all  dated  in  a  cypher,  like  those 
of  the  Quakers  ;*  and  he  begins  each  letter  with  four  bad 
verses,  about  men  being  poor  creatures.  Nothing  can 
be  more  dull  than  his  correspondence  during  the  two 
years  which  he  spent  in  this  neighbourhood.  He 
could,  however,  no  longer  refrain  from  the  food  which 
Paris  offered  to  his  vanity ;  and  after  resolving  to 
visit  Chambery,  partly,  he  said,  to  weep  over  the  re- 
collection of  Madame  de  Warens,  who  had  died  while 
he  was  at  Neufehatel,  partly  to  discomfit  his  enemies, 
because  they  would  not  know  he  was  there,  he  all  at 
once  says,  "  Ne  parlous  plus  de  Chambery  :  1'honneur 
et  le  devoir  crient,  et  je  n'entends  plus  que  leur  voix." 
So  away  he  goes  to  Paris,  where  he  creates,  by  his  arri- 
val, some  sensation,  and  more  by  his  reading  the  '  Con- 
fessions' in  select  circles  ;  and  this  is  all  the  explanation 
ever  given  of  what  he  meant  by  the  calls  of  honour  and 
duty.  From  July,  1770,  when  he  returned,  to  March, 
1778,  when  he  removed  to  Ermenonville,  he  remained  at 

*  Thus  for  15th  January,  1769,  VT  1769. 

N2 


180  ROUSSEAU. 

Paris.     With  M.  St.  Germain  he  never  had  a  minute's 
difference  of  any  kind;    yet   he   entirely  gave   over 
writing  to  him  for  the  last  seven  years  of  his  life. 
With  all  his  former  friends  he  quarrelled;  and  half 
a  year  before  his   death  he  wrote  and  sent  a  circu- 
lar, representing  himself  and  his  wife  as  so  much  re- 
duced that  they  could  no  longer  live  out  of  a  work- 
house, and  begging  to  be  sent  to  some  hospital,  where 
their  little  income  might  be  used  for  their  support.    It 
is  plain  that  he  would  have  greatly  wished  some  friend, 
some  of  the  supposed  conspirators,  to  send  him  there 
without  his  asking  it ;  but  as  no  one  thought  of  doing 
so,   the  circular  was  issued.      It  was   all  a  pretence. 
At  Ermenonville,  he  immediately   became    so  much 
pleased  with  the  place,  that  he  began  writing,   and 
seemed  as  contented  as  his  nature  would  allow  him 
to   be.     Two   friends,    much    attached    to   him,    and 
alarmed  by  the  tone  of  the  circular,  ascertained  that  it 
was  all  a  trick — there  is  no  other  word  to  give  it — a 
trick  to  attract  pity,  and  make  his  persecutions  be  cre- 
dited.    Nor  can  any  one  doubt,  that   had   he  been 
taken   at   his   word,    he  would  have  proclaimed  the 
grand  plot  as  having  reached  its  consummation.     He 
died  suddenly,  on  the  2d  of  July,  1778,  apparently  of 
apoplexy,  having  immediately  before    come  home  ill 
from  a  walk,  and  complained  of  a  pain  in  the  head. 
He  had  only  been  at  Ermenonville  six  weeks.    He  was 
buried,  at  his  own  request,  on  the  island  in  the  lake 
there.     The  report  of  his  suicide  was  utterly  without 
foundation,  though  Madame  de  Stael,  in  her  clever 
'Essay'  on  his  genius,  gives  it  countenance.     It  has 
been  again  and  again  completely  disproved. 


ROUSSEAU.  181 

In  1790  the  National  Assembly  bestowed  a  pension 
of  1200  francs  on  his  widow,  which  the  Convention, 
in  1793,  increased  to  1500,  ordering  also  a  statue  to 
his  memory.  The  following  year  his  remains  were 
transferred  to  the  Pantheon,  with  those  of  Voltaire, 
and  others  of  the  great  men  to  whom  the  simple  and 
striking  inscription  of  that  noble  edifice  refers.*  The 
example  of  Paris  was  followed  in  the  other  towns  which 
he  had  at  any  time  honoured  with  his  residence.  His 
statue  was  erected  at  Geneva ;  and  at  Lyons,  Grenoble, 
Montpelier,  almost  wherever  he  had  dwelt,  celebra- 
tions in  honour  of  his  memory  were  had. 

The  pension,  and  the  interest  of  considerable  funds 
(nearly  40,000  francs)  which  the  different  publishers 
owed  her  husband,  amply  provided  for  his  widow.  But 
that  worthless  creature,  immediately  after  his  death, 
formed  a  connexion  with  an  Irishman,  a  groom  of 
M.  Girardin,  owner  of  Ermenonville.  With  him  she 
lived  until  he  had  spent  all  her  money,  and  she  was 
in  her  old  age  reduced  to  beggary.  In  that  state  she 
used  to  take  her  stand  and  beg  at  the  door  of  the 
theatre.  She  died  in  1801,  at  the  age  of  80. 

All  Rousseau's  works,  except  his  posthumous  me- 
moirs, the  '  Confessions/  we  have  had  occasion  already 
to  consider.  But  that  is,  beyond  any  question,  and  very 
much  beyond  any  comparison,  his  masterpiece.  There 
is  no  work  in  the  French  language  of  which  the  style 
is  more  racy,  and,  indeed,  more  classically  pure.  But 
its  diction  is  idiomatical  as  well  as  pure.  As  if  he  had 
lived  long  enough  away  from  Geneva  to  lose  not  only 

*  Aux  Grands  Hommes,  la  Patrie  Reconnaissante. 


182  ROUSSEAU. 

all  the  provincialisms  of  that  place,  but  also  to  lose  all 
its  pedantry  and  precision,  he  writes  both  with  the 
accuracy  and  elegance  of  a  Frenchman,  and  with  the 
freedom  of  wit  and  of  genius,  even  of  humour  and 
drollery — yes,  even  of  humour  and  drollery ;  for  the 
picture  of  the  vulgar  young  man  who  supplanted  him 
with  Madame  de  Warens  shows  no  mean  power  of 
caricature ;  and  the  sketches  of  his  own  ludicrous  situ- 
ations, as  at  the  concert  he  gave  in  the  Professor's 
house  at  Lausanne,  show  the  impartiality  with  which 
he  could  exert  this  power  at  his  own  proper  cost  and 
charge.  The  subject  is  often  tiresome  ;  it  is  almost 
always  his  own  sufferings,  and  genius,  and  feelings  ;  al- 
ways, of  course,  but  of  that  no  complaint  can  be  justly 
made,  of  his  own  adventures ;  yet  we  are  carried  irre- 
sistibly along,  first  of  all  by  the  manifest  truth  and 
sincerity  of  the  narrative  which  the  fulness  of  the  hu- 
miliating confessions  at  every  step  attests,  and  then, 
and  chiefly,  by  the  magical  diction, — a  diction  so  idio- 
matical  and  yet  so  classical — so  full  of  nature  and  yet 
so  refined  by  art — so x  exquisitely  graphic  without  any 
effort,  and  so  accommodated  to  its  subject  without  any 
baseness, — that  there  hardly  exists  another  example  of 
the  miracles  which  composition  can  perform.  The 
subject  is  not  only  wearisome  from  its  sameness,  but, 
from  the  absurdities  of  the  author's  conduct,  and 
opinions,  and  feelings,  it  is  revolting ;  yet  on  we 
go,  enchained  and  incapable  of  leaving  it,  how  often 
soever  we  may  feel  irritated  and  all  but  enraged. 
The  subject  is  not  only  wearisome  generally,  revolting 
frequently,  but  it  is  oftentimes  low,  vulgar,  grovelling, 
fitted  to  turn  us  away  from  the  contemplation  with 


ROUSSEAU.  183 

aversion,  even  with  disgust ;  yet  the  diction  of  the 
great  magician  is  our  master ;  he  can  impart  elegance 
to  the  most  ordinary  and  mean  things,  in  his  descrip- 
tion of  them  ;  he  can  elevate  the  lowest,  even  the  most 
nasty  ideas,  into  dignity  by  the  witchery  of  his  lan- 
guage. We  stand  aghast  after  pausing,  when  we  can 
take  breath,  and  can  see  over  what  filthy  ground  we 
have  been  led,  but  we  feel  the  extraordinary  power  of 
the  hand  that  has  led  us  along.  It  is  one  of  Homer's 
great  praises,  that  he  ennobles  the  most  low  and  homely 
details  of  the  most  vulgar  life,  as  when  he  brings 
Ulysses  into  the  swineherd's  company,  and  paints  the 
domestic  economy  of  that  unadorned  and  ignoble  pea- 
sant. No  doubt  the  diction  is  sweet  in  which  he 
warbles  those  ordinary  strains ;  yet  the  subject,  how 
humble  soever,  is  pure  unsophisticated  nature,  with  no 
taint  of  the  far  more  insufferable  pollution  derived 
from  vice.  Not  so  Rousseau's  subject:  he  sings  of 
vices,  and  of  vices  the  most  revolting  and  the  most 
base — of  vices  which  song  never  before  came  near  to 
elevate  ;  and  he  sings  of  the  ludicrous  and  the  offensive 
as  well  as  the  hateful  and  the  repulsive,  yet  he  sings 
without  impurity,  and  contrives  to  entrance  us  in 
admiration.  No  triumph  so  great  was  ever  won  by 
diction.  The  work  in  this  respect  stands  alone  ;  it  is 
reasonable  to  wish  that  it  may  have  no  imitators. 

But  is  it  as  faithful  in  all  particulars  as  it  is  striking 
and  attractive — as  scrupulously  faithful  as  the  awful 
eloquence  of  its  commencement  ought  to  have  kept  it 
throughout?  In  the  great  majority  of  instances,  it 
certainly  is  entitled  to  this  praise;  but  exceptions, 


184  ROUSSEAU. 

it  must  be  admitted,  there  are.  One  has  been  noted 
respecting  his  age  when  he  committed  the  great  crime 
against  his  fellow-servant  at  Turin;  though  this  is 
rather  apparent  than  real,  inasmuch  as  he  himself  has 
furnished  the  means  of  detection. — But  the  '  Corre- 
spondence' frequently  indicates  suppressions  in  the '  Con- 
fessions/ especially  his  letter  1732  to  his  father,  and 
1735  to  his  aunt;  for  he  there  speaks  of  grave  faults 
which  he  had  committed,  and  of  which  the  '  Confes- 
sions' give  no  intimation. — It  is  also  certain  both  that 
his  friends  represent  his  manner  of  living  with  Theresa 
differently  from  himself,  and  that  his  letter  to  her 
after  their  marriage  gives  an  idea  of  her  wholly  differ- 
ent from  that  conveyed  by  the  'Memoirs.' — The  story 
of  the  attack  upon  his  house  at  Neufchatel,  too,  is 
quite  a  fiction,  and  must  have  been,  by  the  evidence  of 
1'Eschery,  a  wilful  one. — The  account  of  his  bold  and 
resolute  conduct  towards  Count  de  Montaigue,  at 
Venice,  is  probably  much  exaggerated.  Nothing  can  be 
more  unlike  the  rest  of  his  life  ;  and  his  letters  to  the 
Foreign  Department  omit  every  portion  of  it,  though 
they  are  very  full  on  all  the  other  circumstances.* — 
The  letter  he  wrote  to  Voltaire,  too,  in  1765,  saying 
he  was  "  an  impudent  liar"  if  he  represented  him  as 
having  been  a  servant  instead  of  Secretary  of  Embassy 
at  Venice,  seems  somewhat  too  strong,  when  we  find 
him,  in  his  own  letters  to  the  Foreign  Department, 
plainly  calling  himself,  over  and  over  again,  a  "domes- 


*  Compare  Conf.,  Part  ii.,  lib.  vii.  (CEuv.,  i.  299),  and  Corresp., 
i.  (GEuv.,  vii.) 


ROUSSEAU.  185 

tique,"  and  though  sometimes  a  secretary,  yet  speaking 
of  the  relations  between  master  and  domestique  in 
plain  terms.*  He  drew  the  distinction  between  do- 
mestique and  valet,  indeed ;  but  surely  he  could  not 
after  this  complain  of  any  one  doubting  whether  he  ever 
had  been  Secretary  of  Embassy. — It  is  another  great 
discrepancy  between  his  book  and  his  '  Correspond- 
ence/ that  while  he  complains  to  the  Foreign  Office 
of  being  left  penniless  at  Venice,  and  without  the  means 
of  returning  home,  he  states,  in  his  'Confessions/ 
that  at  the  Consul's,  where  he  dined  the  day  he  quitted 
the  Embassy,  "every  purse  at  table  was  opened  to 
him,"  and  he  accepted  a  sum  which  he  mentions,  forty 
sequins,  for  the  necessary  expenses  of  his  journey  ;  and 
he  also  gives  the  names  of  the  two  persons  who  lent 
him  the  money.f — The  remark  seems  quite  fair,  too, 
as  well  as  obvious,  that  from  the  moment  when  he 
first  formed  the  plan  of  reading  his  book  to  select 
circles,  we  lose  the  entire  confidence  inspired  by  the 
earlier  parts  of  the  book ;  and  though  he  may  not,  till 
after  he  grew  tired  of  England,  and  returned  to 
Bougoin,  have  intended  to  give  these  readings  at 
Paris,  he  probably  had,  for  some  time  before,  an  idea 
that  he  should  at  one  period  or  other  read  or  show,  if 
not  publish,  them. 

Of  his  character  it  is  almost  as  easy  to  speak  with 
confidence  as  of  his  writings.  It  seems  certain  that 
so  much  genius  never  was  in  any  other  man  united  to 


*  Compare  Cor.,  ii.  (CEuv.,  viii.,  p.  71)  and  i.  (OEuv.,  vii.  53,  p. 
53-59). 

f  Conf.  and  Cor.,  ib. 


186  ROUSSEAU. 

so  much  weakness.  The  fruits  of  an  education  ex- 
ceedingly neglected,  nay,  in  his  earlier  years  very  ill 
directed,  were  gathered  from  his  youth  upwards  at 
each  stage  of  his  progress ;  but  many  men  have  been 
as  much  neglected,  and  many  more  spoilt  in  their 
childhood  and  boyhood,  without  ever  becoming  what 
he  was.  We  are  to  add,  therefore,  to  the  causes  of  his 
misery,  perhaps  of  his  misconduct,  an  hereditary  dis- 
position to  melancholy,  to  brooding  sadly  over  realities, 
and  to  indulging  in  the  sad  miseries  of  the  imagination. 
Nor  was  this  all:  he  formed  a  kind  of  system  or 
principle  for  himself  of  the  most  unsound  nature  and 
dangerous  consequences.  He  seems  to  have  thought 
that  the  free  indulgence  of  the  feelings  was  a  duty  as 
well  as  a  privilege,  and  never  to  have  doubted  that 
those  feelings  which  naturally  arise  in  the  breast  are 
therefore  innocent  and  right.  The  only  evil  which 
he  could  perceive  was  in  their  restraint ;  and  as  even 
to  regulate  them  is  to  restrain,  he  not  only  regarded 
such  self-government  as  superfluous,  but  as  hurtful. 
The  current  was  in  his  view  pure  and  harmless  ;  the 
obstacles  which  broke  its  course,  the  dykes  which  con- 
fined it,  the  canals  which  guided  it,  were  the  only  ob- 
jects of  aversion  and  of  blame.  It  is  obvious  to  ask  if 
he  who  had  undertaken  to  write  upon  education  a  work 
of  much  length  and  elaboration,  had  ever  observed  the 
workings  of  our  nature  in  infants,  in  very  young  chil- 
dren. It  is  a  branch  of  the  subject  which  he  seems 
never  to  have  studied ;  else  he  must  have  seen  how 
the  mere  animal  predominates  at  that  age.  At  first 
pure  selfishness  prevails,  and  indulgence  of  every  ap- 
petite is  the  rule.  Next  succeeds,  with  nearly  equal 


KOUSSEAU.  187 

selfishness,  fear  as  soon  as  any  restraint  is  applied,  and 
fear  invariably  gives  rise  to  the  protection  of  falsehood. 
All  natural  propensities  are  eagerly  indulged ;  all  re- 
straint is  distasteful.  Among  others,  the  love  of  truth 
is  a  restraint  imposed  by  tuition,  and  like  all  restraints, 
it  is  a  violence  to  natural  propensities.  Now  Rousseau 
erected  into  his  rule  of  conduct  the  self-indulgence 
which  the  rules  of  reason  and  virtue  proscribe  alike. 
The  divinity  he  worshipped  was  sentiment,  feeling, 
often  amiable,  often  reasonable,  sometimes  contrary  to 
reason,  sometimes  inconsistent  with  virtue  ;  and  always, 
when  indulged  in  excess,  offending  against  reason,  and 
leading  to  offences  against  virtue.  Whoever  reads  his 
'  Confessions'  must  perceive  that  he  never  could  conceive 
he  was  acting  wrong  when  he  was  following  the  bent 
of  his  feelings ;  scarcely  that  he  was  acting  imprudently 
when  he  was  sacrificing  to  them  his  own  plainest  and 
highest  interests.  To  such  a  pitch  was  his  folly  on 
this  point,  this  cardinal  point,  carried,  that  we  find 
him  unable  to  conceive  how  any  one  could  ever  re- 
proach a  man  with  his  worst  crimes  after  he  had  once 
openly  avowed  them,  or  rather  after  he  had  allowed 
certain  things  to  be  wrong  ;  for,  having  admitted  in 
the  '  Emile '  that  whoever  under  any  pretext  or  from 
any  motive  whatever  withdrew  from  the  performance 
of  his  parental  duties,  must  expect  ever  after  to  weep 
bitterly  over  his  fault  (sa  faute),  he  declares  that  it 
"  was  surprising  any  person  after  such  an  avowal  could 
ever  have  the  courage  to  reproach  him  with  the  fault " 
(faute)  of  sending  his  five  infants  to  the  Foundling 
Hospital.  He  altogether  forgets  that  the  courage  of 
making  such  confessions,  even  had  they  been  much  more 


188  HOUSSEATJ. 

full  and  specific,  instead  of  being  any  defence  to  ward 
off  the  punishment  of  universal  reprobation,  was  a  vir- 
tue of  an  equivocal  kind,  and  might  be  taken  as  easily 
for  callous  impudence  as  for  sincere  penitence. 

The  natural  result  of  the  system  on  which  his  moral 
feelings  were  built,  was  that  the  most  undeviating  self- 
ishness took  possession  of  his  whole  soul.  Self- 
indulgence  was  his  rule — self-restraint  his  abhorrence. 
The  sophistry  with  which  he  so  constantly  seeks  to 
cover  over  this  vice  is  pitiable  when  it  is  not  ridiculous. 
For  many  years  he  had  almost  ceased  even  to  write  to 
Madame  de  Warens ;  and  for  above  two  years  after  his 
removal  to  Neufchatel,  the  last  years  of  her  miserable 
life,  she  was,  as  he  too  well  knew,  plunged  in  the 
depths  of  misery — she  who  had  supported  him  while 
she  had  a  farthing  to  give — she  to  whom  he  owed  his 
whole  existence  for  the  first  ten  years  and  the  most  des- 
titute of  his  life — she  for  whom  he  had  so  often  avowed, 
and  also  felt,  the  most  tender  affection,  and  who  had 
ever  treated  him  like  an  anxious  mother — not  only  did 
he  remain  for  those  two  years  a  day's  journey  from  her 
residence  without  ever  repairing  to  see  and  to  console, 
if  he  could  not  relieve  and  reclaim  her,  but  he  never 
gave  her  the  comfort  of  a  letter  to  show  he  still  bore 
her  image  in  his  heart — and  why  ?  "  because  he  feared 
to  sadden  her  heart  (contrister  son  cceur)  with  the 
story  of  his  disasters  !"* — As  if  she  had  not  real  disas- 
ters of  her  own — as  if  the  straw  on  which  she  was 
perishing  of  want  offered  not  wherewithal  to  touch 
her  more  nearly  than  the  tale  of  his  fancied  wrongs 

*  Conf.  and  Cor.,  600. 


ROUSSEAU.  189 

and  trumpery  persecutions!  The  least  sagacity  is 
enough,  to  pierce  through  this  flimsy  veil  of  hypocriti- 
cal cant.  Every  one  sees  that  he  was  unwilling  to  in- 
terrupt his  own  enjoyments  by  the  sight  of  her  misery, 
and  therefore  did  not  repair  to  Chambery — that  he 
was  unwilling  to  interrupt  his  walks,  or  his  readings, 
or  his  writings,  or  his  musings,  and  therefore  did  not 
write  letters  that  might  have  led  to  asking  assistance 
which  he  did  not  choose  to  give. 

The  sentiment  of  religion,  if  not  its  principles,  was 
deeply  impressed  on  his  mind ;  he  never  could  endure 
the  infidelity  of  the  d'Holbach  circle,  nor  even  the 
modified  infidelity  of  Voltaire.  It  is  indeed  made  the 
main  ground  of  his  charges  against  him.  Though  he 
himself  aimed  deadly  blows,  and  with  malice  afore- 
thought, at  Revelation,  he  was  as  intolerant  of  Vol- 
taire's sneers  and  scoffs  as  if  he  had  been  the  most  pious 
of  men  ;  and  as  if  of  too  pure  eyes  to  behold  such  ini- 
quity, he  refused  even  to  read  '  Candide,'  though  he  says 
it  was  written  in  answer  to  his  own  '  Letter  on  Evil/ 
To  trifle  with  so  sacred  a  subject,  therefore,  was  in 
his  eyes  a  crime  of  a  deep  dye.  To  shelter  himself 
from  temporal  power  by  spiritual,  to  make  a  gain  by 
belief,  was  to  him  a  vice  of  a  more  vile  and  sordid 
aspect  still.  Yet  did  he,  with  his  eyes  open  and  his 
understanding  uncontrolled,  change  his  religion  twice 
— becoming  a  Catholic  for  the  hope  of  an  income,  a 
Protestant  for  the  rank  of  a  burgess,  when  probably  he 
neither  at  the  one  change  nor  the  other  was  a  Christian 
at  all ;  and  at  a  subsequent  period,  long  after  he  had 
proclaimed  his  unbelief  to  the  world,  he  went  through 
the  mockery  of  taking  the  sacrament  in  the  hope  of 


190  ROUSSEAU. 

screening  himself  from  annoyances  or  of  reconciling 
himself  to  the  favour  of  the  Calvinists  at  Geneva.  No 
more  selfish  and  unprincipled  conduct  can  be  easily  cited 
of  any  man  who  had  Rousseau's  deep  feelings  of  the  im- 
portance properly  attached  to  all  religious  subjects. 

The  crime  of  his  life  which  is  most  dwelt  upon,  and 
can  never  be  held  up  to  sufficient  execration,  has  been 
already  more  than  once  referred  to ;  it  was  entirely  the 
result  of  the  same  selfish  disposition,  the  same  confirmed 
incapacity  to  see  or  feel  any  other  existence  than  his  own. 
What  incurable  folly  to  suppose  that  any  one  could  be 
duped,  or  that  he  was  himself  duped,  by  the  pretence 
of  his  having  an  insufficient  income,  and  being  unwill- 
ing that  his  children  should  be  brought  up  in  penury ! 
How  could  a  man  of  ordinary  reflection  avoid  perceiv- 
ing a  refutation  of  his  defence  each  time  that  he  swal- 
lowed a  morsel  more  palatable  than  bread  and  water  ? 
How  could  a  man  of  ordinary  feeling  avoid  tasting  in 
each  such  morsel  the  bitterness  of  an  asp's  gall  ?    But 
his  circumstances    mended — he    became   possessed   of 
money — did  he  endeavour  to  repair  the  mischief  he 
had  done?     He  hardly  allowed  Madame  de  Luxem- 
bourg to  make  inquiry  as  to  one  of  his  exposed  chil- 
dren, and  after  none  of  them  did  he  himself  ever  in- 
quire.    He  was  determined  to  lead  his  own  life  of 
misery,  and  vanity,  and  self-indulgence,  uninterrupted 
by  the  cries  or  the  claims  of  a  family,  the  bringing  of 
whom  into  the  world  was  his  own  act,  also  an  act  of 
self-indulgence. 

A  part  of  this  his  moral  nature,  and  a  material  part 
of  it,  was  his  vanity,  perhaps  greater  than  ever  had 
dominion  over  a  highly  gifted  mind.  That  this  was 


ROUSSEAU.  191 

the  point,  as  not  unfrequently  happens,  upon  which 
the  insanity  turned  which  clouded  some  of  his  later 
years,  is  certain ;  but  no  less  certainly  may  we  perceive 
its  malignant  influence  through  the  whole  of  his 
course.  He  laboured  under  a  great  delusion  upon  this 
subject ;  for  he  actually  conceived  that  he  had  less 
vanity  than  any  other  person  that  ever  existed ;  and 
he  has  given  expression  to  this  notion.  The  ground 
of  the  delusion  plainly  was,  that  he  often  forgot  this 
indulgence  in  pursuit  of  others  ;  and  also,  that  he  had 
less  shame  than  other  men  in  unveiling  his  faults  and 
frailties,  when  their  disclosure  ministered  to  any  ruling 
propensity,  not  seldom  when  it  fed  that  same  vanity 
itself.  But  no  one  can  read  his  account  of  the  fancies 
he  took  in  his  early  years,  and  not  perceive  how  strik- 
ingly the  love  of  distinction  prevailed  in  him  even 
then,  and  while  his  existence  was  perfectly  obscure. 
The  displays  that  captivated  him,  excited  his  envy,  and 
even  led  to  his  uncouth  attempts  at  imitation,  were  not 
the  solid  qualities  or  valuable  acquirements  of  those  he 
saw  at  Annecy  or  at  Turin,  but  the  base  tricks  and 
superficial  accomplishments  of  a  Bacler  and  a  Venture, 
performers  of  the  lowest  order,  but  who,  he  perceived, 
were  followed  by  public  applause.  Later  in  life  he 
seems  to  have  been  almost  insensible  to  any  existence 
but  his  own,  or  when  he  could  believe  in  that  of  exter- 
nal objects,  it  was  always  in  reference  to  himself;  and 
at  last  this  feeling  reached  the  morbid  temperature  of 
fancying  that  he  and  his  concerns  were  the  only  thing 
about  which  all  other  men  cared,  and  with  which 
all  were  occupying  themselves ;  thus  absorbing  in  self- 


192  ROUSSEAU. 

contemplation  all  the  faculties  and  all  the  feelings  of 
his  own  mind.* 

That  with  all  his  failings  and  all  his  faults,  he  could 
win  his  way  to  many  hearts,  is  easily  to  be  understood ; 
for,  beside  the  genius,  and  latterly  the  fame,  which 
dazzled  beholders,  some  of  his  weaknesses  were  of  a 
kind  that  interested  benevolent  natures,  partly  through 
compassion,  partly  from  the  openness  and  infantine 
simplicity  with  which  they  were  attended  ;  and  as  long 
as  he  did  not  conceive  the  suspicions  which  generally 
broke  out  sooner  or  later,  none  of  those  weaknesses 
were  of  a  kind  which  offended  others.  The  interest 
which  not  only  kindly  natures,  like  that  of  the  Lux- 
embourgs,  and  such  good-humoured  companions  as 
David  Hume,  but  such  stern  personages  as  St.  Lambert, 
St.  Germain,  Lord  Mareschal,  took  in  him  and  his 
fortunes,  is  a  sufficient  illustration  of  these  remarks ; 
but  it  may  be  doubted  if  that  interest  could  have  sur- 
vived such  a  full  disclosure  as  we  now  have  of  his 
defects  since  his  death. 

In  society  he  must  have  been,  when  his  mind  was 
sound  and  his  irritability  calmed,  and  his  painful  con- 
stitutional maladies  soothed  or  intermitted,  f  a  very 

*  Perhaps  the  most  extraordinary  creation  of  fancy  in  which  his 
morbid  vanity  indulged,  was  his  believing  that  he  perceived  a  marked 
increase  of  Hume's  popularity  at  Paris  in  consequence  of  his  having 
asked  Rousseau's  company  on  his  journey  to  London  (CEuv.,  viii. 
166,  and  again  in  his  crazy  letter  to  Hume  himself,  ib.  186),  and 
this  while  he  was  complaining  of  having  no  supporters,  and  of  all 
men  being  his  enemies  ! 

f  He  had  not  only  a  bladder  complaint  and  a  hemorrhoidal  ma- 
lady, but  was  for  years  supposed  to  have  the  stone.  On  his  being 


ROUSSEAU.  193 

pleasing  mixture,  possibly  a  delightful  companion.  He 
greatly  underrates  himself  in  this  particular.  It  is  true, 
as  he  frequently  says,  that  his  shyness  often  made  him 
appear  dull,  often  gave  birth  to  absurd  sayings,  and 
even  grotesque  conduct ;  it  is  also  possibly  true  that 
he  was  not  ready  in  repartee,  which  he  expressed  by 
saying  "  Qu'il  avait  1'esprit  un  quart  d'heure  apres 
tout  le  monde."  Yet  we  have  a  strong  testimony  to 
the  charms  of  his  conversation  in  the  words  of  a  re- 
spectable witness,  M.  Dussaulx,  who,  speaking  of  a 
party  he  gave  to  Rousseau,  among  others,  in  1771,  ex- 
claims "  A  quelque  nuages  pres,  mon  Dieu,  qu'il  fut 
aimable  ce  jour  la ! — tantot  enjoue,  tantot  sublime. 
Avant  le  diner  il  nous  donnait  a  quelquesuns  les  plus 
innocentes  anecdotes  consignees  dans  les  '  Confessions/ 
Plusieurs  d'entre  nous  les  connaissaient  deja ;  mais  il 
sut  leur  donner  une  physiognomie  nouvelle,  et  plus  de 
mouvement  encore  que  dans  son  livre.  J'ose  dire  qu'il  ne 
se  connaissait  pas  lui-meme  lorsqu'il  pretendait  que 
la  nature  lui  avait  refuse  le  don  de  la  parole.  La  soli- 
tude sans  doute  avait  concentre  ce  talent  en  lui-meme ; 
mais  dans  ces  moments  d'abandon,  et  lorsque  rien  ne 
I'offusquait,  il  debordait  comme  un  torrent  impetueux 
que  rien  ne  resiste."* 

It  is  never  permitted  to  vindicate,  or  even  to  palli- 
ate, crimes  by  citing  the  defects  of  physical  tempera- 
ment ;  no  course  can  be  more  dangerous  to  virtue ;  and 
where  the  reason  is  only  undermined  by  indulgence, 

sounded,  in  1 762,  this  was  found  to  be  a  mistake  :  he  was,  however, 
found  to  have  a  scirrhous  prostate  gland. 

*  De  mes  Rapports  avec  J.  J.  Rousseau,  p.  99. 

O 


194  ROUSSEAU. 

by  weaknesses  which  exertion  and  self-restraint  might 
in  time  have  extirpated  or  counteracted,  the  excuse 
which  is  sometimes  made  of  mental  disease  likewise 
fails.  Rousseau's  malady  was  probably  of  this  descrip- 
tion ;  but  weaknesses  are  to  be  palliated,  if  not  pitied, 
by  a  view  of  bodily  sufferings  such  as  he  certainly  en- 
dured ;  and  as  far  as  irritable  temper  and  restless  dis- 
position are  concerned,  let  no  one  severely  blame  them, 
or  even  look  down  too  proudly  on  the  conduct  which 
they  prompted,  without  reflecting  charitably  and  com- 
passionately upon  the  diseased  state  in  which  much  of 
his  life  was  passed,  and  considering  in  common  fair- 
ness how  much  less  impatient  and  irritable  he  would 
himself  have  proved  under  the  same  infliction. 


APPENDIX. 

IT  appears  from  the  whole  correspondence  with  M.  de  St. 
Germain,  which  I  have  seen,  that  two  or  three  letters  not 
published  were  written  to  him  by  Rousseau  after  his  arrival 
in  Paris,  1770  and  1771.  From  that  time  to  his  death,  in 
1778,  none  appear. 

The  following  epitaph  on  Voltaire  by  Rousseau  has  not,  as 
it  seems,  ever  before  been  published.  It  may  appear  some- 
what to  qualify  the  praise  bestowed  on  the  latter  for  his  treat- 
ment of  that  great  man;  and  though  written  with  spirit,  is  ex- 
tremely unjust. 

a  Plus  bel  esprit  que  grand  ge"nie, 
Sans  loi,  sans  moeurs,  et  sans  vertu ; 
II  est  mort  comme  il  a  vecu, 
Couvert  de  gloire  et  d'infamie." 


o  'j'j  i ;:   .1 . 


JSuvwudE  1'tt  'ir.  //.>// 


BAYIB   HUME 


C  i 


-y///  £%> 

V&tteA 


,  •• 


(  195  ) 


HUME. 


GREATLY  distinguished  as  the  people  of  Great  Britain 
had  ever  been  for  their  achievements  in  all  the  other 
walks  of  literature  and  science,  it  is  certain  that  there 
never  had  appeared  among  them  any  historian  of  emi- 
nence before  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
country  of  Bacon,  of  Newton,  of  Locke,  of  Napier — 
the  country  of  Milton,  of  Shakspeare,  and  Buchanan 
— of  Dryden,  Swift,  Bolingbroke — had  as  yet  nothing 
more  to  produce  as  the  rival  of  ancient  historical  fame 
than  the  crude  and  partial  annals  of  Buchanan, 
great  only  as  a  poet,  and  the  far  more  classical  and  less 
prejudiced  political  Memoirs  rather  than  '  History '  of 
Clarendon.  While  Italy  had  her  Davila  and 
Guicciardini,  and  France  her  Thuanus  (Du  Thou), 
this  island  was  nearly  unknown  for  any  native  annals, 
and  a  Frenchman  (Rapin  de  Thoyras)  had  provided 
the  only  '  History  of  England  '  which  any  one  could 
find  readable,  nor  in  reading  that  could  he  affect  to 
find  pleasure.  It  was  reserved  for  two  natives  of 
Scotland  to  remove  such  an  unhappy  peculiarity,  and 
to  place  our  fame  in  this  important  walk  of  literature 
upon  a  level  with  our  eminence  in  all  its  other  depart- 
ments. Mr.  Hume  first  entered  the  field ;  and  though 
his  is  by  no  means  the  work  on  which  the  historical 

o  2 


196  HUME. 

merit  of  the  country  mainly  rests  (for  he  had  neither 
the  impartiality  nor  the  patience  of  the  historical 
office),  yet  he  is  decidedly  to  be  praised  as  having  been 
the  first  to  enter  the  field  with  the  talents  of  a  fine 
writer,  and  the  habits  of  a  philosophic  inquirer. 

David  Hume  was  born  at  Edinburgh,  in  April, 
1711.  He  was  the  younger  son  of  Mr.  Hume  of 
Ninewells,  in  the  county  of  Berwick,  and  related  to 
Earl  Hume's,  or  Home's,  family  ;  his  mother  was  the 
daughter  of  Sir  David  Falconer,  Lord  President,  arid 
niece  of  Lord  Halkerston,  one  of  the  Judges,  of  the  Court 
of  Session.  His  father  dying  soon  after  his  birth,  his 
guardians  intended  him  for  the  bar ;  but  he  tells  us  that 
while  "  he  was  supposed  to  be  poring  over  Voet  and  Vin- 
ning,  he  was  secretly  devouring  the  pages  of  Cicero  and 
Virgil."  He  neglected  Greek  in  his  early  years,  and  had 
to  make  up  for  this  deficiency,  with  some  labour,  in  after 
life. 

The  fortune  of  his  father,  to  which  his  eldest  bro- 
ther Joseph  succeeded,  was  inconsiderable  ;  and  his  own 
portion  being  necessarily  very  small,  it  was  deemed  expe- 
dient, as  he  refused  to  be  a  lawyer,  that  he  should  exert 
himself  in  some  other  way  to  provide  for  his  support. 
He  was  therefore  sent  to  a  mercantile  house  at  Bristol, 
in  1734 ;  but  he  found  the  drudgery  of  this  employ- 
ment intolerable,  and  he  retired  to  Rheims,  in  the 
north  of  France,  determined,  while  he  prosecuted  his 
favourite  studies,  to  supply,  by  rigorous  economy  and 
a  life  of  abstinence,  the  want  of  fortune.  From 
Rheims  he  removed  to  La  Fleche,  in  Anjou,  and  there 
wrote  his  'Treatise  on  Human  Nature/  It  was  pub- 
lished in  1737,  and  fell,  as  he  says,  still-born  from  the 


HUME.  197 

press.  He  afterwards  distributed  it  into  separate 
'  Essays/  which,  with  additions,  he  published  in  1742, 
and  it  had  more  success. 

After  his  first  publication  he  retired  to  his  bro- 
ther's house,  and  lived  so  happily  there  among  his 
books  that  he  afterwards  says,  in  a  letter  to  Dr.  Robert- 
son, that  he  should  never  have  left  it,  had  not  his 
brother's  marriage  made  a  change  in  the  family. 
Although  he  appears  to  have  felt  much  more  and 
much  earlier  than  Robertson  the  love  of  literary  fame, 
his  first  work  having  been  published  when  he  was  only 
26,  while  the  '  History  of  Scotland '  only  appeared  in 
the  author's  38th  year,  yet  manifestly  the  same  love  of 
literary  pursuits  for  their  own  sake,  the  desire  of 
knowledge,  the  indulgence  of  a  speculative  turn,  and 
meditating  on  the  events  of  past  times  and  on  the  sys- 
tems of  former  inquirers,  appears  to  have  been  the 
mainspring  of  both  their  movements  ;  and  Hume  was 
happy  in  being  allowed  to  gratify  these  strong  pro- 
pensities of  his  nature. 

The  last  Marquess  of  Annandale  was  a  person  of 
weak  intellect.  Though  neither  insane  nor  idiotic,  he 
required  the  company  of  a  friend,  as  his  imbecility  ex- 
cluded him  from  society,  and  he  was  not  ill  enough  to 
require  the  care  of  a  keeper.  Mr.  Hume,  in  1745,  ac- 
cepted this  situation,  as  a  large  salary  was  very  natu- 
rally given  to  induce  him.  But  after  a  year's  resi- 
dence, finding,  as  we  see  from  the  late  publication  of 
some  querulous  letters  very  little  like  his  ordinary  cor- 
respondence, that  he  could  no  longer  submit  to  such  a 
life,  he  left  this  occupation,  and  was  fortunate  enough  to 
receive  an  invitation  immediately  after  of  a  very  different 


198  HUME. 

kind.  It  was  to  attend,  as  private  secretary,  General 
St.  Clair  (uncle  of  Lord  Loughborough,  and  great- 
uncle  of  the  late  Lord  Rosslyn),  whose  family  has 
always  been  honourably  distinguished  by  their  love  of 
literary  society.  The  General  was  appointed  to  com- 
mand an  expedition,  at  first  destined  for  the  conquest 
of  Canada,  but  afterwards  very  unwisely,  and  with  no 
result  any  more  than  any  rational  design,  diverted  to 
the  folly  of  making  an  incursion  on  the  coast  of 
France.  The  following  year,  1747,  he  accompanied 
the  General  on  his  embassy  to  the  courts  of  Vienna 
and  Turin.  This  mission  was  of  a  military  nature, 
and  the  philosopher  tells  us  that  he  was  not  only 
Secretary,  but  Aide-de-camp,  with  two  military  men 
— Captain,  afterwards  General,  Grant,  and  Sir  Henry 
Erskine,  afterwards  a  General  officer  also,  and  who  mar- 
ried the  Ambassador's  sister.  These  two  years,  1746 
and  1747,  formed  the  only  interruption  ever  given  to 
his  studies  ;  but  they  appear  to  have  satisfied  him  in 
one  important  particular ;  for,  "not  only,"  he  says,  "  I 
passed  this  period  of  time  agreeably  and  in  good  com- 
pany, but  my  appointments  with  frugality  had  made 
me  reach  a  fortune  which  I  called  independent,  though 
most  of  my  friends  were  incited  to  smile  when  I  said 
so ;  in  short,  I  was  now  master  of  near  a  thousand 
pounds." 

While  he  was  at  Turin,  his  '  Inquiry  concerning  the 
Human  Understanding'  was  published  in  London.  It 
was  the '  Treatise  on  Human  Nature'  presented  in  a  new 
form,  and  was  not  much  more  successful  than  its  pre- 
decessor ;  but  he  nevertheless  began  to  perceive  symp- 
toms of  his  books  coming  into  notice ;  "  for,"  says  he, 


HUME.  199 

"  I  found,  by  Dr.  Wai-burton's  railing,  that  they  are 
beginning  to  be  esteemed  in  good  company."    Return- 
ing to  Scotland,  he  again  resided  with  his  brother, 
and   wrote   his    '  Political   Discourses/   which    were 
published  in    1752,    and  immediately   excited    much 
attention.     "  The  work  was/'  he  says,  "  well  received 
both  at  home  and  abroad."     But  he  published,  the 
same  year,  the  '  Inquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of 
Morals/  which  "  came/'  he  says,  "  unnoticed  and  unob- 
served into  the  world ;"  though  he  adds,  that  "  in  his 
own  opinion   it  is  incomparably  the  best  of  all  his 
writings,  historical,  philosophical,  or  literary."     It  is 
plain,  then,  that  neither  in  their  original  forms  of  trea- 
tises, forms  three  times  varied,  nor  when  broken  down 
into  separate  essays,  did  his  metaphysical  and  theo- 
logical speculations  succeed  so  far  as  even  to  obtain 
any   attention.      This    is    the   more   surprising,    that 
beside    the    great   ingenuity     and    novelty    of  some 
theories  which  they  contain,  they  are  tinged  through- 
out with  an  excessive  scepticism  upon  all  subjects  of  a 
religious  nature,  and  upon  some  with  an  openly  pro- 
fessed unbelief,  which  might  have  been  expected  to  ex- 
cite   indignation,   and   so   rescue   the    writings  from 
neglect.     The  '  Essays,  Moral  and  Metaphysical/  are 
the  form  in  which  we  now  read  these  speculations, 
and  a  life  of  Hume  which  should  not  speak  of  their 
merits   would   be   imperfect,    as    they   certainly  have 
long  obtained  the  full  share  of  celebrity  which  was  at 
first  denied  them. 

To  refuse  these  well-known  Essays  the  praise  of 
great  subtilty,  much  clever  argument,  some  successful 
sarcasm,  and  very  considerable  originality,  is  impos- 


200  HUME. 

sible ;  but  a  love  of  singularity,  an  aversion  to  agree 
with  other  men,  and  particularly  with  the  bulk  of  the 
people,  prevails  very  manifestly  throughout  the  work ; 
and  we  may  recollect  that  it  is  the  author's  earliest  pro- 
duction, the  'Treatise  on  Human  Nature/  which  formed 
the  basis  of  the  whole,  having  been  written  before 
his  six  and  twentieth  year,  at  an  age  when  the  distinc- 
tion of  differing  with  the  world,  the  boldness  of 
attacking  opinions  held  sacred  by  mankind  at  large,  is 
apt  to  have  most  charms  for  vain  and  ambitious  minds. 
Accordingly,  he  finds  all  wrong  in  the  opinions 
which  men  generally  entertained,  whether  upon  mo- 
ral, metaphysical,  or  theological  subjects,  and  he 
pushes  his  theories  to  an  extreme  point  in  almost 
every  instance.  Thus,  that  we  only  know  the  con- 
nexion between  events  by  their  succession  one  to  ano- 
ther in  point  of  time,  and  that  what  we  term  causa- 
tion, the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  is  really  only  the 
constant  precedence  of  one  event,  act,  or  thing  to 
another,  is  now  admitted  by  all  reasoners;  and  we 
owe  to  Mr.  Hume  the  discovery,  it  may  be  well  called, 
of  this  important  truth.  But  he  will  not  stop  here : 
he  must  deny  that  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as 
one  act,  or  effect,  or  event  causing  another :  he  must 
hold  that  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  causation,  no 
such  thing  as  power ;  he  must  discard  from  our 
belief  those  ideas  which  all  men  in  all  ages  have 
held  so  distinctly,  and  so  universally,  as  to  have  given 
them  names,  specific  appellations,  in  all  languages. 
He  denies  all  connexion,  all  influence,  all  power,  and 
holds  it  impossible  that  any  such  things  should  be — 
that  any  rational  meaning  should  belong  to  such  words. 


HUME.  201 

— In  like  manner,  every  one  is  ready  to  admit  the 
solidity  of  the  distinction  which  he  takes  between 
the  impressions  of  memory  and  those  of  imagination. 
But  this  won't  satisfy  him ;  he  will  have  all  belief  to  con- 
sist merely  in  this  difference,  and  that  we  only  believe  or 
disbelieve  any  thing  or  any  event  according  as  our 
minds  have  a  more  or  less  vivid  idea  of  it  from 
memory,  or  from  sensation,  than  from  imagination. — In 
like  manner,  while  no  objection  could  be  taken  to  his 
holding  that  a  miracle  is,  prima  facie,  to  be  regarded 
incredible,  because  it  is  much  more  likely,  and  much 
more  according  to  the  laws  of  nature,  that  human  tes- 
timony should  deceive  us,  even  that  men's  senses  should 
delude  them,  than  that  those  laws  should  be  sud- 
denly and  violently  suspended,  yet  he  will  not  be 
satisfied  unless  we  go  a  great  step  farther,  and  admit 
not  merely  the  improbability  but  the  impossibility  of 
miracles,  as  if  the  weight  of  testimony  never  could 
be  so  accumulated  as  to  make  it  more  unlikely,  more  a 
miracle,  that  it  should  be  false,  than  that  the  alleged 
deviation  from  the  laws  of  nature  should  have  taken 
place.*  Indeed,  had  he  lived  to  see  the  late  discoveries  in 
Fossil  Ostelogy,  he  would  have  been  placed  in  a  complete 
dilemma ;  for  these  plainly  show,  that  at  one  remote 
period  in  the  history  of  the  globe  there  was  such  an  in- 
terposition of  creative  power  as  could  alone  form  man 
and  other  animals  not  previously  existing  ;  and  thus  he 
must  either  have  distrusted  the  evidence  of  thousands 


*  In  the  first  part  of  the  '  Essay  '  this  qualification  is  introduced, 
but  the  second  part  roundly  asserts  the  absolute  impossibility,  on 
the  ground  of  the  laws  of  nature  being  broken. 


202  HUME. 

now  alive,  and  even  of  his  own  senses,  the  phenomenon 
being  visible  daily,  or  he  must  have  admitted  the  miracle 
of  creation ;  that  is,  the  interposition  of  a  being  powerful  to 
suspend  the  existing  order  of  things,  and  make  a  new  one. 
It  is  by  no  means  correct  to  affirm,  as  some  do,  and 
Mr.  Hume  himself  among  the  number,  that  his  writ- 
ings are  only  sceptical.  Many  of  them  amount  merely 
to  doubts ;  but  some,  under  the  mask  of  doubts,  are 
essentially  dogmatical.  Indeed,  some  of  his  specula- 
tions are  upon  subjects  which  cannot  be  treated  scepti- 
cally ;  for  the  question  in  these  cases  being  whether 
we  have  evidence  or  not  of  the  position,  whoever 
maintains  the  negative  denies  the  position.  Thus,  to 
take  the  most  important  example  of  all,  the  argument 
upon  Providence  and  a  Future  State  is  of  this  very 
character.  The  question,  and  none  other  equal  in  im- 
portance can  exercise  the  human  faculties,  is,  whether 
we  have  or  not,  by  the  light  of  nature,  sufficient  evi- 
dence to  make  us  believe  in  a  Deity  and  the  Soul's 
Immortality.  His  argument  is,  not  that  there  is  any 
doubt  on  the  subject,  but  that  we  have  no  such  evi- 
dence; consequently  his  position  must  be  that  there 
is  no  ground  for  believing  in  a  God  or  a  Future  State. 
It  is  easy  to  say  Mr.  Hume  was  not  an  atheist ;  and 
that  neither  he  nor  any  man  can  in  one  sense  of  the 
word  be  an  atheist  is  certain.  If  by  denying  a  God  we 
mean  believing  that  his  non-existence  is  proved,  there 
neither  is  nor  can  be  an  atheist,  because  there  cannot 
possibly  be  conceived  any  demonstration  of  that  nega- 
tive proposition.  To  prove  that  a  man  asserted  to  be 
in  existence,  exists  not,  we  must  either  show  that  he 
once  existed,  and  has  ceased  to  exist,  or  that  he  never 


HUME.  203 

existed,  but  more  certainly  the  former  than  the  latter, 
because  the  former  alone  can  be  considered  to  leave 
the  proposition  quite  certain.  Now,  clearly  this  kind 
of  proof  is  inconceivable  as  to  a  Deity  ;  consequently 
no  man  in  this  sense  can  be  an  atheist,  if  his  under- 
standing be  sound.  But  we  really  mean  by  atheist  as 
contradistinguished  from  sceptic,  one  who  holds  that 
there  exists  no  evidence  of  a  Deity,  as  contradistin- 
guished from  him  who  only  entertains  doubts  on  the 
subject — doubts  whether  there  be  evidence  or  no. 
Mr.  Hume's  argument,  if  solid,  shows  that  there  is  no 
evidence,  and  not  that  there  are  doubts  :  consequently 
the  inference  from  his  argument  is,  not  that  we  have 
reason  for  doubting  whether  or  not  there  is  proof,  but 
that  we  have  no  proof,  and,  therefore,  if  consistent 
with  ourselves,  admitting  his  argument,  we  must  not 
believe;  that  is,  we  must  disbelieve.  In  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word,  and  as  far  as  it  is  possible  for  the 
thing  to  exist,  this  is  atheism,  not  scepticism.  On 
miracles,  no  one  has  ever  contended  that  the  author's 
doctrine  amounted  only  to  scepticism.  He  does  not  doubt 
at  all — he  denies,  and  not  only  denies  negatively  that 
any  miracle  was  ever  proved  by  evidence,  but  affirms 
positively  that  none  ever  can  be  so  proved.  His  whole 
argument  goes  to  this ;  and  between  the  impossibility 
of  a  miracle  ever  having  been  performed,  and  the  total 
want  of  evidence  of  a  Deity  by  the  light  of  nature,  we 
are  left  not  to  doubt,  but  to  deny  both  providence  and 
a  future  state.  The  one  argument  shows  supernatural 
evidence  to  be  impossible ;  it  shuts  out  light  from 
above :  the  other  shows  natural  evidence  to  be  non- 
existent; it  shuts  out  light  from  the  world  around 


204  HUME. 

us.  The  two  together  amount  to  plain  and  practical 
atheism,  as  far  as  such  a  belief  is  compatible  with 
sanity  of  mind. 

Of  the  *  Political  Discourses*  it  would  be  difficult 
to  speak  in  terms  of  too  great  commendation.  They 
combine  almost  every  excellence  which  can  belong  to 
such  a  performance.  The  reasoning  is  clear,  and  unin- 
cumbered  with  more  words  or  more  illustrations  than 
are  necessary  for  bringing  out  the  doctrine.  The 
learning  is  extensive,  accurate,  and  profound,  not  only 
as  to  systems  of  philosophy,  but  as  to  history,  whether 
modern  or  ancient.  The  subjects  are  most  happily 
chosen ;  the  language  is  elegant,  precise,  and  vigo- 
rous ;  and  so  admirably  are  the  topics  selected,  that 
there  is  as  little  of  dryness  in  these  fine  essays  as  if 
the  subject  were  not  scientific  ;  and  we  rise  from  their 
perusal  scarce  able  to  believe  that  it  is  a  work  of  phi- 
losophy we  have  been  reading,  having  all  the  while 
thought  it  a  book  of  curiosity  and  entertainment. 
The  great  merit,  however,  of  these  discourses,  is  their 
originality,  and  the  new  system  of  politics  and  politi- 
cal economy  which  they  unfold.  Mr.  Hume  is,  beyond 
all  doubt,  the  author  of  the  modern  doctrines  which 
now  rule  the  world  of  science,  which  are  to  a  great 
extent  the  guide  of  practical  statesmen,  and  are  only 
prevented  from  being  applied  in  their  fullest  extent  to 
the  affairs  of  nations,  by  the  clashing  interests  and  the 
ignorant  prejudices  of  certain  powerful  classes  ;  for  no 
one  deserving  the  name  of  legislator  pretends  to  doubt 
the  soundness  of  the  theory,  although  many  hold  that 
the  errors  of  our  predecessors  require  a  slow  recourse  to 
right  principle  in  conducting  the  practical  business  of 


HUME.  205 

the  world.  The  peculiar  felicity  of  the  author  in  distri- 
buting his  doctrines  as  the  subjects  of  separate  essays, 
whereby  he  avoided  the  repulsive  forms  of  a  treatise, 
and  yet  moulding  these  separate  treatises  into  one 
body  and  one  harmonious  system,  cannot  be  too  much 
admired.  We  read  them  as  different  and  as  short 
works  on  various  subjects  ;  but  we  perceive  at  each 
step  that  we  are  guided  by  the  same  genius, — that  one 
spirit  of  inquiry  pervades  the  whole — one  view  of 
human  society  and  of  national  interests  is  taken 
throughout — one  sagacious  unfolder  of  truth,  one 
accurate  and  bold  discoverer  of  popular  error,  is  at 
work  in  each  discourse  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  Dr. 
Smith's  celebrated  work,  with  all  its  great  merits,  is 
less  of  a  regular  system  than  the  detached  essays  of 
Mr.  Hume.  The  originality  of  the  latter's  opinions  is 
wholly  undeniable :  they  were  published  full  fourteen 
years  before  the  '  Wealth  of  Nations.' 

As  for  his  'Inquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of 
Morals,'  of  which  he  had  himself  formed  so  high  an 
estimate,  this  is  indeed  a  very  excellent  work,  and  ap- 
pears well  to  deserve  the  opinion  pronounced  upon  it 
by  the  author,  although  his  'Political  Discourses* 
may  be  superior  in  the  originality  and  importance  of 
their  views.  But  the  composition  of  the  '  Inquiry '  is 
more  careful  and  better  elaborated  than  that  of  his 
other  philosophical  writings,  at  the  same  time  that 
it  loses  none  of  the  ease  or  grace  by  which  his  man- 
ner is  always  so  remarkably  distinguished.  There  is 
in  this  treatise  a  copiousness  and  felicity  of  illus- 
tration rarely  anywhere  else  to  be  found ;  and  it  is 
full  of  learned  allusions  and  references,  showing 


206  HUME. 

the  various  and  extensive  reading  in  which  he 
had  indulged.  Nor  is  it  the  least  remarkable  fea- 
ture of  the  work,  that  though  preferred  by  him 
before  all  the  other  productions  of  his  genius,  it 
contains  nothing  at  all  even  bordering  upon  scep- 
tical opinions.  On  the  contrary,  he  reprobates  the 
selfish  system  of  morals,  and  is  a  strenuous  advocate  of 
that  which  recognises  the  benevolent  feelings,  and 
traces  human  conduct  to  a  desire  of  enjoying  their 
gratification.  Of  utility  he  largely  states  the  importance, 
but  rather  as  one  leading  motive  than  as  the  sole  source 
of  either  our  actions  or  our  judgments  upon  them  ;  and 
assuredly  both  in  this  and  the  other  branches  of  the 
argument  a  wider  departure  from  the  commonly 
received  standard  of  morals  may  be  seen  in  the  philo- 
sophy of  Paley  than  in  that  of  the  '  Inquiry/ 

In  the  same  year  that  he  published  the  c  Poli- 
tical Essays,'  1752,  he  was  appointed  their  libra- 
rian by  the  Faculty  of  Advocates.  He  obtained  this 
place  after  a  very  severe  contest,  in  which  the  ut- 
most force  of  the  party  opposed  to  his  known  opinions 
was  brought  to  bear  in  favour  of  his  antagonist.  The 
emoluments  of  the  office  were  not  above  fifty  pounds 
a-year ;  but  the  violence  of  the  parties  was  propor- 
tioned to  their  zeal  for  and  against  the  principles  of 
the  candidates  ;  and  I  find  in  his  unpublished  letters 
curious  indications  of  his  anxiety  for  success,  and  of  his 
delight  at  the  victory  which  he  gained,  chiefly,  he  says, 
through  the  assistance  of  the  younger  members  of  the 
Scottish  bar  and  of  the  ladies  of  Edinburgh.  "  There 
is  nothing,"  he  says,  in  a  letter  to  his  intimate  friend 
Dr.  Clephane,  then  a  physician  in  London,  "  since  the 


HUME.  207 

rebellion  (1745),  that  ever  so  much  drew  the  attention 
of  this  town,  except  Provost  Stuart's  trial ;  and  there  is 
scarce  a  man  whose  friendship  or  acquaintance  I  could 
desire,  who  has  not  given  me  undoubted  proofs  of  his 
concern  and  regard."  His  adversary  was  Mr.  Kenneth 
Mackenzie,  professor  of  civil  law  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.* 

Although  the  salary  of  the  office  which  he  thus  ob- 
tained was  inconsiderable,  the  situation  for  a  literary 
man  was  very  desirable.  He  thus  had  constant  and  easy 
access  to  an  excellent  library.  This  induced  him  to 
undertake  a  work  which  he  thought  much  wanted,  a 
classical  history  of  England ;  but  he  was  afraid  of  at- 
tempting it  on  so  extensive  a  scale  as  to  begin  at  the 
earliest  period,  and  continue  it  for  seventeen  cen- 
turies ;  and  he  therefore  confined  himself  at  first  to 
the  Stuarts,  commencing  with  the  accession  of  James  I., 
and  closing  with  the  expulsion  of  his  grandson 
James  II.,  at  the  revolution  of  1688.  This  work  made 
two  volumes,  of  which  one  was  published  in  1754,  and 
another  in  1756.  He  entertained  a  sanguine  expecta- 
tion that  his  first  volume,  containing  the  reigns  of 
James  I.  and  Charles  I.,  would  have  met  with  a  favour- 
able reception  ;  and  we  find  the  grounds  of  his  con- 
fidence stated  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Dr.  Clephane. 
His  election  was  in  February,  1752,  and  in  the  follow- 
ing January  he  must  have  made  great  progress ;  for  he 
thus  describes  his  having  already  consulted  his  friends 

*  It  is  singular  that  a  contest  and  a  victory  which  once  so  much 
occupied  him,  and  which  he  regarded  as  the  battle  and  the  triumph 
of  his  free  opinions  over  bigotry,  is  not  even  glanced  at  in  his  '  Life* 
of  himself. 


208  HUME. 

upon  his  performance  : — "  As  there  is  no  happiness," 
he  says,  "  without  occupation,  I  have  begun  a  work 
which  will  employ  me  several  years,  and  which  yields 
me  much  satisfaction.  Tis  a  history  of  Britain,  from 
the  union  of  the  crowns  to  the  present  time.  I  have 
already  printed  the  reign  of  King  James.  My  friends 
flatter  me  (by  this  I  mean  that  they  do  not  flatter  me) 
that  I  have  succeeded.  You  know  that  there  is  no 
path  of  honour  on  the  English  Parnassus  more  vacant 
than  that  of  history.  Style,  judgment,  impartiality, 
ease,  every  thing  is  wanting  to  our  historians ; 
and  even  Rapin,  during  his  latter  period,  is  ex- 
tremely deficient.  I  make  my  work  very  concise, 
after  the  manner  of  the  ancients.  It  divides  into 
three  very  moderate  volumes — one  to  end  with  the 
death  of  Charles  I.,  the  second  at  the  Revolution,  the 
third  at  the  Accession,  1714;  for  I  dare  come  no 
nearer  the  present  times.  The  work  will  neither 
please  the  Duke  of  Bedford  nor  James  Frazer,  but  I 
hope  it  will  please  you  and  posterity." — "  I  was,  I 
own,"  he  says  in  his  account  of  his  life,  "  sanguine  in 
my  expectations  of  the  success  of  this  work.  I  thought 
I  was  the  only  historian  that  had  at  once  neglected 
present  power,  interest,  and  authority,  and  the  cry  of 
popular  prejudices ;  and  as  the  subject  was  suited  to 
my  capacity,  I  expected  proportionate  success." 

But  whatever  might  be  the  want  of  such  a  work, 
and  how  much  soever  he  relied  on  his  superior  qualifi- 
cations for  the  task,  he  was  doomed  to  a  bitter  dis- 
appointment. "  I  was  assaulted,"  says  he,  "  by  one 
cry  of  reproach,  disapprobation,  and  even  detestation. 
English,  Scotch,  and  Irish,  Whig  and  Tory,  church- 


HUME.  209 

man  and  sectary,  freethinker  and  religionist,  patriot 
and  courtier,  united  against  the  man  who  had  pre- 
sumed to  shed  a  generous  tear  for  the  fate  of  Charles  I. 
and  the  Earl  of  Strafford."  But  the  singularity  of 
the  case,  and  the  great  mortification  of  the  author, 
was  this  :  that  with  all  the  universal  clamour,  all  the 
storm  did  not  save  him  from  neglect ;  it  subsided 
as  quickly  as  it  had  been  raised,  and  the  '  History'  sunk 
into  oblivion.  In  a  year's  time,  only  five  and  forty 
copies  were  sold,  at  least  in  London ;  and  although  he 
tells  us  in  another  letter,  that  "  at  Edinburgh  no 
book  was  ever  more  bought,  or  furnished  more 
subject  of  conversation,"  yet  in  London  it  was  other- 
wise. The  author's  discouragement  was  great;  he 
was  disgusted  with  belonging  to  a  country  so  subject 
to  the  tyranny  of  faction  and  the  clamours  of  the  mob, 
while  it  boasted  so  constantly,  and  blustered  so  loud- 
ly, about  its  liberties:  he  even  entertained  serious 
thoughts  of  leaving  it  for  ever,  changing  his  name, 
and  passing  the  rest  of  his  days  in  some  French  pro- 
vincial town,  far  from  those  braggarts  and  intolerant 
brawlers.  Nor  does  he  appear  to  have  been  deterred 
from  this  project,  excepting  by  the  obstacles  to  its 
execution  which  the  war,  breaking  out  immediately 
after,  interposed.  The  only  encouragement  which 
he  received  under  his  disappointment  was  from  the 
two  Primates,  Herring  and  Stone,  who  approved  of 
the  book,  and  sent  him  messages,  bidding  him  not  to 
be  cast  down  by  the  temporary  failure. 

During  the  interval  between  the  first  and  second 
volume  appeared  his  'Natural  History  of  Religion,' 
which  so  far  attracted  notice,  that  Bishop  Hurd  wrote 


210  HUME. 

an  answer  to  it ;  and  about  as  elegantly  feeble  as  might 
be  expected  from  that  moderate  prelate,  unless  that 
some  part  of  it  came  from  the  more  haughty  and 
vigorous  pen  of  his  patron  Warburton,  and  redeemed 
the  tract  from  the  imputation  of  candour,  toleration,  and 
temper.  The  second  volume  of  the  '  Stuarts '  "  hap- 
pened to  give  less  offence  to  the  Whigs  than  the  first,"  he 
says,  "  and  being  therefore  somewhat  better  received, 
helped  to  buoy  up  its  unfortunate  brother."  Three  years 
after  he  published  the  '  House  of  Tudor,'  which  con- 
taining his  account  of  ecclesiastical  matters  in  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  and  of  Queen  Mary's  conduct,  revived  the 
clamour  raised  against  the  first  volume,  and,  like  that, 
was  soon  neglected  and  forgotten.  In  1761  he 
finished  the  work  by  publishing  the  two  volumes  con- 
taining the  earlier  history  :  "  they  had,"  he  says,  "  tole- 
rable, and  but  tolerable,  success."  It  is,  however,  also 
stated  by  him,  as  an  indication  of  growing  popularity, 
that  all  the  clamour  and  all  the  neglect  did  not  prevent 
the  booksellers  from  giving  him  more  money  when 
they  purchased  the  copyrights  than  had  ever  before 
been  paid  in  England  ;  so  that,  with  his  sober  habits 
and  moderate  desires,  he  was  become  not  only  inde- 
pendent, but  opulent.  It  is  to  be  observed  that,  for  his 
'  History  of  Scotland,'  Dr.  Robertson  had  only  received 
600/.,  the  publishers  having  cleared  600Q/.  For 
'  Charles  V.'  he  received  3,600/.,  and  for  '  America* 
2,400Z.  (being  in  the  same  proportion),  while,  no 
doubt,  50,000/.  at  the  least  must  have  been  realised  by 
those  works. 

In  considering  the  merits  of  the  c  History  of  Eng- 
land/ we  must  first  of  all   observe   upon   the   great 


HUME.  211 

difference  which  appears  between  the  pains  bestowed 
upon  this  celebrated  work  and  those  which  the  rival 
historian  was  wont  to  bestow  upon  his  writings.  Dr. 
Robertson's  '  Scotland/  consisting  of  about  a  volume 
and  a  half  (for  the  rest  of  the  second  volume  is  com- 
posed of  original  documents  printed  as  an  appendix), 
occupied  his  almost  undivided  attention  for  above  six 
years.*  Hume's  first  volume  could  not  have  been  the 
work  of  above  a  year  or  fifteen  months ;  for  it  was 
begun  when  he  went  to  the  Advocates'  Library  early 
in  1752,  and  it  was  published  in  1754.  The  second 
volume  succeeded  in  1756,  but  he  had  written  half 
of  it  when  the  first  was  published  ;  and  in  1755  there 
appeared  also  his  '  Natural  History  of  Religion.'  Con- 
sequently we  are  positively  certain  that  he  wrote  more 
of  his  'History'  in  less  than  two  years  than  Dr. 
Robertson  wrote  of  his  in  above  six  ;  and  that  his  whole 
'  History  of  the  Stuarts '  could  not  have  taken  above 
three  years  to  prepare  and  to  write.  It  is  impossible 
to  doubt  that  this  mode  of  writing  history  must  leave 
no  room  for  a  full  investigation  of  facts  and  weighing 
of  authorities.  He  had  no  right  to  number  "care" 
among  the  items  of  superiority  to  his  predecessors, 
upon  which  he  had  plumed  himself  in  his  letter  to 
Dr.  Clephane.  The  transactions  of  James's  time  com- 
prised perhaps  the  most  important  period  of  our 
constitutional  history,  because  the  struggle  between 


*  Though  by  his  letter  to  Lord  Hailes  he  seems  only  to  have 
begun  it  in  1742,  yet  I  have  heard  his  eldest  sister  often  say  that 
he  had  a  whole  room  full  of  books  to  read  or  consult  for  some  time 
before  at  Gladsmuir,  where  she  lived  with  him. 

p2 


212  HUME. 

the  Crown  and  the  Commons  then  began,  and  occu- 
pied the  greater  part  of  his  reign.  It  was  impossible 
to  examine  the  period  too  closely,  or  in  too  minute 
detail.  The  struggle  continued  in  Charles's  time,  and 
ended  in  the  quarrel  between  the  King  and  the  people, 
in  the  usurpations  of  the  Parliament,  and  in  the  over- 
throw of  the  Monarchy.  The  Commonwealth  then 
followed,  and  the  Cromwell  usurpation.  Now  there 
is  hardly  one  passage  in  all  this  history,  from  1600  to 
1650,  which  is  not  the  subject  of  vehement  controversy 
among  parties  of  conflicting  principles,  and  among 
inquiring  men  of  various  opinions ;  yet  all  this  was 
examined  by  Mr.  Hume  in  less  than  two  years,  and 
his  history  of  it  was  actually  composed,  as  well  as 
his  materials  collected  and  his  authorities  investigated 
and  compared  and  weighed,  within  that  short  period 
of  time.  No  one  can  be  surprised  if,  in  so  short  a  time 
allotted  to  the  whole  work,  far  more  attention  was 
given  to  the  composition  of  the  narrative  than  to  the 
preparation  of  the  materials.  It  was  altogether  im- 
possible that,  in  so  short  a  period,  the  duty  of  the 
historian  should  be  diligently  performed.  The  execution 
of  the  work  answers  to  the  mode  of  its  performance. 

But  if  the '  History '  be  not  diligently  prepared,  is  it 
faithfully  written?  There  are  numberless  proofs  of 
the  contrary ;  but  we  have  the  most  express  evidence 
in  the  author's  own  statement  to  prove  this  position. 
The  temper  in  which  his  work  was  written  upon  all 
the  constantly  recurring  points  in  contest  between  the 
two  opposing  parties  may  be  judged  of  with  accuracy, 
and  towards  himself  with  perfect  justice,  by  the  avowal 
which  he  makes  respecting  the  alterations  introduced 


HUME.  213 

after   the   first  publication.       "  Though  I  had  been 
taught,"  he  says>  "  that  the  Whig  party  were  in  pos- 
session of  bestowing  all  places,  both  in  the  State  and 
in  literature,  I  was  so  little  inclined  to  yield  to  their 
senseless  clamour,  that  in  above  a  hundred  alterations, 
which  further  study,   reading,  or  reflection,  engaged 
me  to  make  in  the  reigns  of  the  two  first  Stuarts,  I 
have  made  all  of  them   invariably  to  the  Tory  side." 
We  have  here  indeed  a  double  confession.     To  the  first 
volume  is  confined  the  reign  of  the  first  two  Stuarts, 
and  to  that  consequently  is  this  remarkable  admission 
limited.     Now,  if  that  volume  had  been  written  with 
any  "  care,"  could  subsequent  reading  and  reflection  have 
suggested  above  a  hundred  alterations,  all  admitted  to 
be  material,  by  the  statement  that  they  affected  the 
complexion  of  the  political  opinions  conveyed  in  those 
passages  ?     But  again,   if  the  author's  mind  was  in 
a   state    of  impartiality   when  he  thus   finally    com- 
posed his  book,  how  could  it  happen  that  every  one  of 
his  corrections  should  be  on  one  side,  and  not  a  single 
correction   on  the   other,  unless  he  had  written  the 
work  originally  with  a  strong  bias  towards  the  Whig 
side,  instead  of  which  his  bias  is,  on  all  hands,  allowed 
to  have  been  strongly  the  other  way  ? 

The  '  History  of  the  Tudors'  has  the  same  cardinal 
imperfection  of  carelessness  and  haste,  but  in  a  lesser 
degree,  because  he  had  fewer  controverted  points  to  con- 
sider, and  a  smaller  mass  of  authorities  to  examine.  He 
had  also  less  temptation  to  give  his  narrative  and  reflec- 
tions a  bias  from  the  leaning  of  his  opinions,  because, 
excepting  the  questions  relating  to  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,  there  are  few  passages  from  Henry  VII.  to 


214  HUME. 

Elizabeth  subject  to  much  controversy  between  the 
Whig  and  the  Tory  parties.  The  earlier  period  before 
the  Conquest,  and  from  the  Conquest  to  Richard  III., 
is  wholly  free  from  questions  of  this  description ;  but 
also  it  must  be  observed  that  the  historian's  diligence 
did  not  increase  as  he  approached  the  termination  of 
his  labours ;  the  Anglo-Saxon  history  is  in  every 
respect  the  most  meagre  and  superficial  part  of  the 
whole  work.  We  shall  afterwards  see  how  his  friends 
explained  this  inferiority  (Life  of  Robertson). 

The  bias  of  Mr.  Hume's  mind,  from  which  his  chief 
partialities  proceed,  was  the  prejudice  which  he  had 
conceived  against  Whig,  and  generally  against  popular, 
principles.  This  arose,  in  great  part,  from  his  con- 
tempt of  vulgar  errors,  and  his  distrust  of  the  more 
numerous  and  ignorant  classes  of  the  community,  whom 
those  errors  chiefly  may  be  supposed  to  affect.  His 
acquaintance  with  antiquity,  too,  had  not  tended  to 
lessen  his  belief  of  the  giddiness  and  violence  of  mul- 
titudes when  they  interfere  directly  in  the  conduct  of 
affairs.  To  these  considerations  must  certainly  be 
added  the  connexion  between  the  Whig  party  in  the 
State  and  the  fanatical  party  in  the  Church.  The 
Roundheads  were  religious  bigots  in  his  eyes,  and 
were,  in  fact,  deeply  tinged  with  superstition  ;  and 
they  were  the  original  of  the  Whigs  both  in  England 
and  in  Scotland.  The  Cavaliers  held  cheap  all  such  ob- 
servances, regarding  religious  enthusiasm  with  mingled 
dislike  and  derision  ;  and  from  them  came  the  Tories 
in  both  parts  of  the  island.  Nor  was  the  connexion 
merely  genealogical  or  historical.  As  late  as  the 
times  of  Addison  and  Bolingbroke,  we  find  the  friends 


HUME.  215 

of  the  Hanoverian  succession  distinguished  by  their 
respect  for  religion,  and  the  Jacobites  chiefly  giving  in 
to  the  fashionable  deism,  or  the  latitudinarian  princi- 
ples, of  Catholic  countries  in  modern  times. 

A  contempt  of  popular  rights,  a  leaning  towards 
power,  a  proneness  to  find  all  institutions  already 
established  worthy  of  support,  a  suspicion  of  all  mea- 
sures tending  towards  change,  is  thus  to  be  seen  pre- 
vailing through  Mr.  Hume's  reflections,  and  influencing 
both  his  faith  in  historical  evidence  and  his  manner  of 
conducting  the  narration  of  facts.  A  bias  of  the  like 
kind  is  plainly  perceptible  in  his  remarks  and  in  his 
recital,  wherever  the  Church,  the  sects  are  concerned, 
and  generally  wherever  religion  forms  the  subject  of 
either.  Independent  of  the  testimony  which  he  has  un- 
wittingly borne  against  himself,  in  respect  of  his  Tory 
partialities,  the  proofs  of  his  perverting  facts,  especially 
in  the  last  two  volumes  of  his  work,  have  been  multiplied 
by  the  industry  of  succeeding  historians,  till  the  discre- 
dit of  the  book,  as  a  history,  has  become  no  longer  a 
matter  of  any  doubt.  It  is  of  no  avail  that  he  himself 
and  his  admirers  cite  the  disrepute  and  even  odium  into 
which  his  account  of  the  Stuarts  fell  with  the  Jacobites, 
as  much  as  with  the  Whigs,  from  its  first  appearance. 
That  party's  unreasonable  demands  upon  our  faith  would 
be  satisfied  with  nothing  short  of  absolutely  acquitting 
all  the  Stuarts  of  all  guilt  and  of  all  indiscretion ;  and 
they  probably  felt  more  disappointed,  because  they  were 
certainly  more  injured,  by  the  admissions  of  one  mani- 
festly ranged  on  their  side,  when  he  was  compelled  to 
stop  short  of  their  pure  and  perfect  creed.  Afterwards 
the  Tudor  history  completed  their  discontent ;  but  it 


216  HUME. 

affords  no  proof  whatever  of  his  impartiality.  He  had, 
of  course,  far  too  much  sense  and  too  penetrating  a  saga- 
city to  doubt  the  guilt  of  Queen  Mary  during  the  Scot- 
tish portion  of  her  life,  admitted  as  the  greater  part  of  the 
charges  against  her  were,  by  her  own  conduct  in  the 
open  profligacy  of  her  connexion  with  her  husband's 
murderer ;  and  the  prejudice  which  this  unavoidable 
conviction  raised  in  his  mind,  extended  itself  to  the 
more  doubtful  question  of  her  accession  to  Babing- 
ton's  conspiracy,  a  question  which  he  appears  to 
have  examined  with  much  less  patience  of  research, 
though  it  belonged  to  his  own  subject,  than  he  had 
applied  to  the  Scottish  transactions  of  the  queen,  which, 
in  their  detail  at  least,  had  far  less  connexion  with  his 
work. 

If  patient  investigation  of  the  subject  be  a  merit — 
and  next  to  fidelity  it  is  the  chief  merit  of  history — 
Mr.  Hume's  work  is  here  most  defective.  The  time 
taken  to  compose  it  sufficiently  proves  this,  as  has 
already  been  shown  ;  but  there  is  continual  proof  that 
he  took  what  he  found  set  down  in  former  works 
without  weighing  the  relative  value  of  conflicting  au- 
thorities, and  generally  resorted  to  the  most  acces- 
sible sources  of  information.  There  have  been  in- 
stances without  number  adduced  of  his  inaccuracy  in 
citing  even  the  authorities  to  which  he  confined  his 
researches. 

Nor  can  we  acquit  him  on  another  charge  not  rarely 
brought  against  him,  and  partaking  of  the  two  former 
— neglect  or  carelessness  about  the  truth,  and  infidelity 
in  relating  it.  He  loved  effect  in  his  narrative,  and 
studied  it.  Unmindful  of  the  ancient  critic's  golden 


HUME.  217 

rule,  "  Historia  tanto  robustior  quanto  verier,"*  he  oc- 
casionally adorned  and  enlivened  his  page  by  excursions 
into  the  field,  to  the  historian  forbidden,  of  fancy; 
and  either  perverted  or  forgot  the  facts  of  the  true 
story.  Sometimes  he  overlooked  inconsistencies  in 
matters  within  his  own  knowledge,  as  when  he  made 
Charles  I.  be  disturbed  in  his  sleep  by  the  erection  of 
the  scaffolding  for  his  execution,  when  he  is  proved  to 
have  known  that  Charles  suffered  by  cold  in  the  walk 
across  the  park  from  St.  James's,  where  he  really  slept.  J" 
As  for  his  picturesque  description  of  sudden  deaths  and 
female  miscarriages  being  occasioned  by  the  execution, 
and  of  equally  violent  effects  produced  by  the  Restora- 
tion, these  appear  to  be  mere  fancy  pieces,  no  authority 
whatever  being  cited  to  support  them. 

If  from  the  cardinal  virtues  of  fidelity,  research,  and 
accuracy,  we  turn  to  the  great  but  secondary  accom- 
plishments of  the  historian,  we  can  scarcely  find  ex- 
pressions too  strong  to  delineate  the  merit  of  Mr. 
Hume.  His  style  is  altogether  to  be  admired.  It  is 
not  surpassed  by  Livy  himself.  There  is  no  pedantry 
or  affectation,  nothing  forced  or  far-fetched.  It  flows 
smoothly  and  rapidly,  according  to  the  maxim  of  the 
critic,  "  Currere  debet  et  ferri."  J  It  seems  to  have  the 
"  lactea  ubertas  "§  of  Livy,  with  the  "  immortalis 
velocitas  "||  of  Sallust.  Nothing  can  be  more  narra- 


*  Quinct.  ii.  4,  2. 

•\  His  marks  are  upon  Lord  Herbert's  narrative  in  the  Advocates* 
Library  at  Edinburgh ;  but  he  prefers  citing  Walker's  l  History  of 
the  Independents,'  which  contains  the  false  statement,  although  the 
very  next  page  mentions  his  coming  from  St.  James's. 

t  Quinct.  ix.  4,  18.  §  Ib.  x.  1,  32.  ||  Ib.  x.  1,  102. 


218  HUME. 

tive ;  the  story  is  unbroken,  it  is  clear,  all  its  parts  dis- 
tinct, and  all  succeeding  in  natural  order ;  nor  is  any 
reflection  omitted  where  it  should  occur,  or  introduced 
where  it  would  encumber  or  interrupt.  In  both  his 
narrative  and  his  descriptions  there  is  nothing  petty,  or 
detailed  more  than  is  fit  or  needful ;  there  is  nothing 
of  what  painters  call  spotty — all  is  breadth  and  bold 
relief.  His  persons  are  finely  grouped,  and  his  subjects 
boldly  massed.  His  story  is  no  more  like  a  chronicle, 
or  his  views  like  a  catalogue  of  particulars,  than  a  fine 
picture  is  like  a  map  of  the  country  or  a  copy  of  the  subject. 
His  language  is  more  beautiful  and  powerful  than  cor- 
rect. He  has  no  little  tendency  to  Gallicisms.  He  has 
many  very  inaccurate,  some  ungrammatical  phrases.  In 
this  respect  he  is  far  behind  Robertson.  The  general 
effect,  however,  of  his  diction  is  unequalled.  He  cannot 
be  said  to  write  idiomatic  English,  being  indeed  a 
foreigner  in  that  sense ;  but  his  language  is  often,  nay, 
generally,  racy,  and  he  avails  himself  of  the  expressions, 
both  the  terms  and  the  phrases,  which  he  finds  in 
older  writers,  transferring  them  to  his  own  page.  In 
this  he  enjoys  a  great  advantage  over  Robertson,  who, 
resorting  necessarily  to  Latin,  or  to  foreign  or  pro- 
vincial authors,  could  not  manage  such  transfers,  and 
was  obliged  to  make  all  undergo  the  digestive  and 
assimilating  process,  converting  the  whole  into  his  own 
beautiful,  correct,  and  uniform  style.  Another  reach 
of  art  Hume  has  attained,  and  better  than  any  writer 
in  our  language  :  he  has  given  either  a  new  sense  to 
expressions,  or  revived  an  old,  so  as  never  to  offend  us 
by  the  neology  of  the  one  process  or  by  the  archaism 
of  the  other.  With  this  style,  sustained  by  his  pro- 


HUME.  219 

found  philosophy,  there  can  be  nothing  more  beau- 
tiful than  some  of  his  descriptions  of  personal  charac- 
ter, or  of  public  feeling,  or  of  manners,  or  of  individual 
suffering ;  and,  like  all  great  masters  of  composition, 
he  produces  his  effect  suddenly,  and,  as  it  were,  with  a 
single  blow. 

Who  that  has  read  can  ever  forget  his  account, 
fanciful  though  it  be,  of  the  effects  produced  on  the 
people  by  Charles's  death  and  his  son's  return?  Or  his 
picture  of  the  French  Ambassador  at  his  first  audi- 
ence of  Elizabeth,  after  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartho- 
lomew, proceeding  "  through  the  palace, — silence, 
as  in  the  dead  of  night,  reigning  through  all  the 
chambers,  and  sorrow  sitting  on  every  face — the 
courtiers  and  ladies  clad  in  deep  mourning,  ranged  on 
each  side,  and  allowing  him  to  pass  without  affording 
him  one  salute  or  favourable  look  :"  Or  Cromwell's 
state  of  mind  when  "  society  terrified  him,  surrounded 
by  numerous,  unknown,  implacable  enemies ;  solitude 
astonished  him  by  withdrawing  the  protection  neces- 
sary for  his  security  :"f  Or  the  groups  of  great  men 
who  subverted  the  monarchy,  when  "  was  celebrated 
the  sagacity  of  Pym,  more  fitted  for  use  than  orna- 
ment ;  matured,  not  chilled  by  age " — when  "  was 
displayed  the  mighty  ambition  of  Hampden,  taught 
disguise,  not  moderation,  from  former  constraint ;  sus- 
tained by  courage,  conducted  by  prudence,  embellished 
by  modesty" — when  "were  known  the  dark,  ardent, 
and  dangerous  character  of  St.  John,  the  impetuous 
spirit  of  Hollis,  violent,  open,  and  entire  in  his  enmities 

*  Chap.  xl.  t  ChaP-  lxii- 


220  HUME. 

and  in  his  friendships ;  the  enthusiastic  genius  of  young 
Vane,  extravagant  in  the  ends  which  he  proposed, 
sagacious  and  profound  in  the  means  which  he  em- 
ployed, incited  by  the  appearances  of  religion,  negli- 
gent of  the  duties  of  morality."*  These  are  the  strokes 
of  a  master's  pencil,  and  beauties  such  as  these  would 
make  this  the  first  of  histories,  if  the  grace  of  form 
could  atone  for  the  defect  of  substance  ;  if  the  trans- 
gressions against  fidelity  and  the  want  of  diligence 
could  be  covered  over  by  the  magical  power  of  diction. 
The  sagacious  reflections  and  spirit  of  profound  phi- 
losophy must  not  be  passed  over ;  they  are  another  praise 
of  this  work.  These  rarely  fail  the  author,  whether  in 
judging  of  the  connexion  and  the  influence  of  events  ; 
or  in  estimating  the  value  of  conflicting  accounts,  where 
he  will  give  himself  the  trouble  of  comparison ;  or  in 
noting  the  errors  and  the  merits  of  the  policy  pursued 
by  statesmen.  It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that  as 
in  treating  of  ecclesiastical  affairs  he  generally  suffers 
his  peculiar  religious  opinions  to  be  superseded  by  the 
received  principles  of  those  rulers  whose  conduct  he 
describes,  and  of  their  subjects ;  so  does  he  not  often 
obtrude  his  sound  and  enlightened  views  of  public 
policy,  especially  of  economical  science,  upon  his  reader, 
rather  conforming  himself  to  the  vulgar  errors  on  the 
subject,  as  when  he  speaks  of  the  balance  being  for  or 
against  a  commercial  state.  Perhaps,  too,  in  ranking 
Galileo  above  Bacon  he  made  the  same  kind  of  sacri- 
fice, though  certainly  his  disrespectful  remarks  on 
Shakspeare  run  counter  to  the  critical  faith  commonly 

*  Chap.  lix. 


HUME.  221 

received  in  England  ;  and  the  contempt  with  which  he 
treats  the  political  writings  of  Locke  and  Sidney  in  his 
concluding  chapter  is  a  sacrifice  of  his  own  taste  as 
well  as  of  his  reader's  feelings  to  the  prejudices  of  his 
party.  It  must  be  added — because  great  mistakes 
have  been  committed  in  this  matter — that  though  the 
whole  work  was  written  in  too  short  a  time  to  give  an 
opportunity  for  investigating  the  subject,  yet  the  com- 
position was  exceedingly  careful,  and  anything  rather 
than  hasty.  He  is  represented  as  having  written  with 
such  ease  that  he  hardly  ever  corrected.  Even  Mr. 
Stewart  has  fallen  into  the  error  ;*  and  Mr.  Gibbon 
commends  as  a  thing  admitted  the  "careless,  inimi- 
table beauties  "  of  Hume's  style.  It  was  exactly  the 
reverse,  of  which  evidence  remains  admitting  of  no 
doubt  and  no  appeal.  The  manuscript  of  his  reign 
before  that  of  Henry  VI.,  written  after  the  c  History 
of  the  Stuarts  and  the  Tudors,'  is  still  extant,  and  bears 
marks  of  composition  anxiously  laboured,  words  being 
written  and  scored  out,  and  even  several  times  changed, 
until  he  could  find  the  expression  to  his  mind.  The 
manuscript  of  his  '  Dialogues '  also  remains,  and  is 
written  in  the  same  manner.  Nay,  his  very  letters 
appear  by  this  test  to  have  been  the  result  of  care  and 
labour.  The  rnaxim  of  Quinctilian — "  Quseramus  op- 
timum, nee  protinus  offerentibus  gaudeamus" — seems 
always  to  have  been  his  rule  as  to  words ;  and  his  own 
testimony  to  the  same  effect  is  to  be  found  in  a  letter 
which  I  have  obtained. f  Certainly  it  would  have  been 
well  if  he  had  not  adopted  the  opposite  principle  as  to 

*    Life  of  A.  Smith.  f  See  Appendix. 


222  HUME. 

facts  and  authorities.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  that  he 
hesitated  much  as  to  the  subject  he  should  choose  for  his 
historical  labours,  and  more  strange  still  that  he  should 
have  balanced  between  England  and  the  Church. 
From  this  he  was  dissuaded  chiefly  by  the  strong 
recommendations  of  Adam  Smith  and  Sir  Gilbert 
Elliott.  I  have  this  fact  upon  the  authority  of  Dr. 
Robertson,  who,  in  relating  it  to  the  late  Lord 
Meadowbank,  added,  "It  would,  at  any  rate,  have 
suited  me  had  he  adhered  to  the  plan  he  himself  pro- 
posed, as  the  '  History  of  England '  would  have  thus 
been  left  open,  which  fell  in  with  an  early  plan  of  my 


own." 


After  the  publication  of  his  '  History'  was  closed  in 
1761,  being  now  fifty  years  old,  and  possessed  of  an 
ample  competency,  Mr.  Hume  resolved,  he  tells  us, 
"  never  more  to  set  his  foot  out  of  his  native  country, 
enjoying  the  satisfaction  of  never  having  asked  a 
favour,  or  made  advances  to  any  great  man's  acquaint- 
ance/' In  less  than  two  years,  however,  a  great 
man's  repeated  solicitation  to  him  changed  his  plan 
of  life ;  and  he  accompanied  Lord  Hertford,  the 
British  Ambassador,  to  Paris,  with  the  immediate 
prospect  of  being  appointed  Secretary  of  Embassy. 
This  was  realized ;  and  in  1765,  when  the  Ambas- 
sador went  to  Ireland  as  Lord  Lieutenant,  the  phi- 
losopher was  for  part  of  the  year  charge  d'affaires. 
His  station,  his  agreeable  manners,  but  above  all  his 
philosophical,  including  his  irreligious,  fame,  were 
well  suited  to  make  a  deep  impression  upon  the  society 
of  the  Paris  circles.  He  was  as  popular  among  the 
wits,  the  philosophers,  the  coteries,  and  the  women, 


HUME.  223 

.as  Franklin  was  at  a  later  period,  when  his  name  was 
given  to  articles  of  fashionable  attire.  One  of  his  let- 
ters gives  an  amusing  account  of  the  Dauphin,  after- 
wards Louis  XVI.,  then  a  child,  having  paid  him 
court  at  his  presentation,  by  speaking  familiarly  of  his 
works,  and  of  his  younger  brother,  afterwards  Louis 
XVIIL,  having  followed  in  the  same  complimentary 
strain.  The  charms,  however,  of  such  society  as 
Paris  then  presented,  the  elegance  of  the  manners, 
the  easy  good  humour  of  the  inhabitants,  the  freedom 
from  all  coarse  dissipation,  and,  above  all,  from  fac- 
tious brawls,  naturally  made  a  pleasing  contrast  with 
that  which  he  had  left  behind  him  at  home.  There 
certainly  was  nothing  in  this  country  more  alien  to 
his  nature,  and  less  suited  to  his  taste,  than  our  poli- 
tical violence ;  and  the  intolerance  of  our  religious 
feelings,  as  well  as  the  rudeness  of  our  manners,  he 
had  some  right  to  complain  of,  when  a  man  like  Dr. 
Johnson  could  be  found  to  roar  out  "  No,  Sir !"  in  his 
presence,  on  being  asked  by  a  common  friend  to  let 
him  present  the  Historian  to  the  Moralist.  Upon  a 
subsequent  occasion  the  same  intolerant  believer  be- 
haved with  personal  insolence  and  vulgar  rudeness  to 
Dr.  Smith,*  as  good  a  Christian  as  himself,  and  a  man 
of  purer  moral  life,  merely  because  he  had,  while 
afflicted  with  Mr.  Hume's  recent  death,  vented  his 
grief  in  a  touching  panegyric  upon  his  undoubtedly 
profound  wisdom,  and  his  virtue  free  from  all  re- 


*  Mr.  Smith  came  to  a  company,  of  which  Professor  Millar,  the 
relater  of  the  fact,  was  one,  and  seemed  to  be  much  disturbed.  It 
turned  out  that  Dr.  Johnson  had  just  said  to  him,  before  another 
company,  with  great  rudeness,  "  You  lie.'1 


221  HUME. 

proach.  This  model  of  bigotry  and  rudeness  had, 
notwithstanding,  met  at  dinner,  with  perfect  satisfac- 
tion, and  conversed  for  hours,  with  Wilkes,  whose  life 
was  as  abandoned  as  his  faith  was  scanty,  who  had 
been  convicted  of  blasphemy  and  obscenity  in  a  court 
of  justice,  and  who  held  in  bitter  scorn  every  one  of 
the  sturdy  moralist's  religious  and  political  principles. 
But  Wilkes  was  English,  Hume  Scotch.  From  the 
country  of  the  Johnsons,  the  latter  deemed  that  he 
had  made  a  happy  escape,  when  he  found  himself 
among  the  gay,  the  polite,  the  tolerant  French ;  and 
he  remained  there  happy,  and  respected,  and  beloved, 
till  1766,  when  he  was  diverted  from  his  project  of 
settling  in  Paris  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  by  being 
appointed  Under-Secretary  of  State  in  General  Con- 
way's  ministry,  who  was  Lord  Hertford's  brother. 
He  held  that  office  for  about  two  years,  and  in  1769 
returned  to  Edinburgh  with  an  income  of  a  thousand 
a-year,  the  produce  of  his  own  honest  industry, 
"  healthy,"  as  he  says,  "  but  somewhat  stricken  in 
years,  with  the  prospect  before  him  of  long  enjoying 
his  ease,  and  of  seeing  his  reputation  increase/' 

During  the  first  few  months  of  his  residence  at 
Paris  he  was  not  Private  Secretary,  as  he  tells  one  of 
his  correspondents  whom  he  chides  for  making  that 
mistake,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  Appendix  ;  and  he  adds 
that  he  performed  all  the  duties  of  the  Secretary  of 
Embassy,  Sir  Charles  Bunbury,  who  was  the  brother- 
in-law  of  Lord  Holland  and  the  Duke  of  Richmond, 
and  who,  being  thus  protected,  did  nothing  beyond 
receiving  the  salary.  Lord  Hertford,  however,  ex- 
erted his  influence  to  obtain  Mr.  Hume's  appoint- 


HUME.  225 

ment  in  the  room  of  Sir  Charles  ;  and  Marshal  Con  way 
being  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  he  prevailed  over 
Sir  Charles's  family  interest.  Mr.  Hume  was  appointed 
2d  July,  1765  ;  and,  on  Lord  Hertford's  immediately 
after  being  removed  to  Ireland  as  Lord-Lieutenant,  he 
became  Charge  d'Affaires  until  the  Duke  of  Richmond's 
arrival  as  Ambassador  in  the  month  of  October.  By 
Lord  Aberdeen's  kindness  I  have  been  allowed  to 
examine  the  correspondence  of  the  Embassy  with  Mar- 
shal Conway  during  these  four  months ;  and  it  is 
highly  creditable  to  the  philosopher's  business-like 
talents,  and  his  capacity  for  affairs.  The  negotiations  of 
which  he  had  the  sole  conduct  related  to  the  impor- 
tant and  interesting  discussions  of  Canada  ;  matters 
arising  out  of  the  cession  by  the  Peace  of  Paris  ;  and  to 
the  demolition  of  the  works  at  Dunkirk,  also  stipulated 
by  that  treaty.  His  dispatches,  some  of  them  of  great 
length,  most  of  them  in  his  own  hand,  are  clearly  and 
ably  written.  The  course  which  he  describes  himself 
as  pursuing  with  the  very  slippery  and  evasive  minis- 
ters against  whom  he  had  to  contend,  particularly  the 
Due  de  Praslin,  appears  to  have  been  marked  by  firm- 
ness and  temper,  as  well  as  by  quickness  and  sagacity. 
His  memorials,  of  which  two  or  three  are  given, 
show  a  perfect  familiarity  with  diplomatic  modes  and 
habits,  and  they  are  both  well  written  and  ably 
reasoned.  His  information  must  have  been  correct ; 
for  he  obtained  a  knowledge  of  the  secret  proceedings  of 
the  Assembly  of  Clergy,  which,  though  convoked  for 
the  purpose  of  obtaining  the  usual  don  gratuit,  chose 
to  enter  upon  the  discussion  of  all  the  clerical  griev- 
ances, while  they  kept  their  deliberations  carefully 

Q 


226  HUME. 

secret,  and  were  opposed  by  the  Parliament  of  Paris  as 
soon  as  their  proceedings  became  known.  Mr.  Hume 
obtained  a  very  early  though  somewhat  exaggerated 
account  of  these  things  through  two  of  the  foreign 
ambassadors  ;  and  when  he  communicated  it  to  the 
Bishop  of  Senlis,  he  was  treated  with  contempt,  as  if 
nothing  could  be  so  wild,  and  as  if  some  enemy  of  the 
Church  had  invented  the  fable  to  discredit  her.  Mar- 
shal Con  way  appears  by  his  dispatches  (which  are  also 
excellent)  to  have  rested  his  hopes  of  these  differ- 
ences passing  off  on  the  prevailing  irreligious  spirit  in 
France,  where  "  the  Dauphin  alone,"  he  says,  "  has  any 
care  for  such  matters  ;  and  he  has  of  late  taken  a  mili- 
tary turn."  In  a  short  time  the  whole  ferment  was 
allayed  by  the  prudent  and  able  conduct  of  Brienne, 
Archbishop  of  Toulouse ;  the  don  gratuit  was  voted ; 
and  the  Assembly  was  prorogued  to  the  following 
May.  Mr.  Hume  praises  Brienne  very  highly  on  this, 
as  indeed  he  did  on  all  occasions.  In  John  Home's 
Journal  of  his  excursion  with  the  historian  to  Bath, 
in  his  last  illness  (1776),  we  find  the  same  opinion 
expressed ;  Hume  considering  him  as  the  only  man  in 
France  fit  to  be  minister,  and  relating  several  instances 
of  his  great  ability.1*  It  was  the  same  prelate,  thus 
highly  commended,  who  proved  so  insufficient  to  meet 
the  tempest  of  the  Revolution,  when,  twelve  years  later, 
he  was  placed  in  the  situation  for  which  the  partiality 
of  the  historian  had  early  predicted  his  exclusive  fit- 
ness. -\ 


*  Mackenzie's  Life  of  John  Home,  p.  170. 

•f  One  writer  has  taken  upon  him  to  decide  against  Mr.  Hume's 


HUME.  227 

While  Mr.  Hume  lived  in  Paris,  he  was  applied  to  by 
some  friends  of  Rousseau,  who  had  become  tired  of  his 
fantastic  plans  of  solitude  in  Switzerland,  and  who  was 
doubtful  of  his  reception  in  French  society,  as  others 
naturally  were  of  his  power  to  demean  himself  so  as 
to  make  himself  bearable  in  it ;  and  intending  shortly 
to  remove  from  France,  and  settle  in  England,  he  ex- 
pressed his  readiness  to  take  charge  of  the  "interest- 
ing solitary,"  as  he  was  called,  whose  writings  he  ad- 
mired in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  He 
wrote  to  Rousseau,  and  offered  to  take  him  over  to 
England  ;  the  offer  was  immediately  accepted,  with  the 
warmest  expressions  of  gratitude.  He  came  to  Paris,  on 
a  permission  of  the  Government  to  pass  through  France, 
notwithstanding  the  decree  of  arrest  still  in  force  against 
him.  On  his  arrival,  in  December,  1765,  he  chose  to 
parade  himself  daily  in  the  neighbourhood  of  his  hotel, 
in  his  ridiculous  Armenian  dress.  The  insolence  of 
this  proceeding  in  a  person  only  by  sufferance  at  large, 
made  the  police  intimate  that  he  must  leave  the  coun- 
try ;  and  he  accompanied  Mr.  Hume  to  London,  at  the 
beginning  of  January.  He  does  not  deny  that  he  was 


talents  for  public  business,  certainly  in  perfect  ignorance  of  the  sub- 
ject. After  saying  that  it  would  be  superfluous  to  inquire  in  what 
manner  he  executed  the  duties  of  his  office  as  Under  Secretary, 
he  adds,  ll  Certain  it  is  that  the  state  papers  of  those  times  evince 
no  extraordinary  marks  of  splendid  abilities "  (Ritchie's  Life  of 
Hume,  p.  281)  ;  as  if  the  Under  Secretary  of  State  had  any  con- 
nexion with  these  papers — or  as  if  this  writer  had  carefully  exa- 
mined them,  when  he  had  just  said  the  inquiry  would  be  super- 
fluous !  But  he  who  so  discharged  the  similar — nay,  the  same  duties 
of  Ambassador,  must  have  acted  with  equal  ability  as  Foreign  Under 
Secretary. 

Q2 


228  HUME. 

treated  with  the  utmost  kindness,  and  that  every  thing 
was  done  which  friendship  could  devise  to  render  his 
stay  in  London  and  its  neighbourhood  agreeable.  Mr. 
Hume  then,  finding  that  he  was  resolved  to  live  at  a 
distance  from  society,  and  had  intended  going  into 
Wales,  introduced  him  to  Mr.  Davenport,*  who  kindly 
offered  him  the  use  of  his  house  at  Wootton,  in 
Derbyshire.  The  silly,  misplaced  pride  of  the  poor 
man  would  not  suffer  him  to  accept  this  without  pay- 
ing an  equivalent ;  and  he  was  allowed  to  sit  at  an 
almost  nominal  rent  of  thirty  pounds. 

He  went  to  Wootton  about  the  20th  of  March, 
1766.  His  letters  to  Mr.  Hume,  of  the  22nd  and 
29th,  are  full  of  gratitude  and  affection,  though  he 
had  seen  three  weeks  before  the  supposed  letter  of 
Frederick  II. ;  for  he  speaks  of  it  to  his  friend  De 
Peyron,  llth  March;  and  he  says,  that  on  asking 
Hume  if  it  was  Horace  Walpole's,  "he  neither  said 
yes  nor  no,"  a  silence  afterwards  made  one  of  his 
charges  against  Hume.  On  the  5th  of  April  he 
writes  to  Madame  de  Bouffiers,  still  full  of  gratitude  to 
Mr.  Hume,  who,  he  says,  had  obtained  for  him  the 
comfort  and  pleasure  of  his  retreat  in  Derbyshire. 
Two  days  after,  7th  April,  he  writes  to  a  friend  not 
named,  and  sends  a  contradiction  of  Frederick's  letter  to 
a  newspaper  :  Rousseau's  letter  speaks  of  secret  enemies, 
under  the  "  mask  of  perfidious  friendship,  seeking  to 
dishonour  him ;"  and  on  the  9th  he  writes  his  ac- 
cusation of  Mr.  Hume  to  Madame  de  Boufflers,  so  that  it 
is  clear  he  had  all  at  once,  between  the  5th  and  7th, 

*  Grandfather  of  Lady  Williams,  wife  of  Mr.  Justice  Williams. 


HUME.  229 

by  exciting  his  warm  and  feverish  imagination,  sud- 
denly broke  with  his  benefactor  and  "  dear  patron,"  as 
he  before  called  him.  His  proofs  of  the  conspiracy,  and 
of  Mr.  Hume's  secret  enmity,  are  truly  the  workings  of 
a  sick  brain,  and  sick  with  vanity  ;  as  appears,  among 
other  symptoms,  from  his  declaring  how  happy  it 
made  him  to  observe  the  popularity  Hume  had  gained 
at  Paris  by  his  kindness  to  Rousseau  ;  and  as  also  ap- 
pears, by  his  roundly  asserting  that  his  own  popu- 
larity and  following  in  England  was  extraordinary, 
until  this  plot  was  concocted  to  decry  him.  The  let- 
ter is  at  the  bottom  of  it  all.*  He  at  once  pronounced 
that  he  knew  it  from  its  style  to  be  D'Alembert's,  and 
was  enraged  when  told  that  it  was  certainly  written 
by  Horace  Walpole — "  as  if,"  said  he,  "  it  were  pos- 
sible I  could  mistake  D'Alembert's  style,  and  imagine 
an  Englishman's  French  to  be  his."  Then  D'Alem- 
bert  was  a  friend  of  Hume's  ;  and  though  D'Alembert 
had  no  more  to  do  with  the  joke  than  Rousseau  him- 
self, this  was  made  the  foundation  of  a  quarrel ;  for 
not  only  was  D'Alembert  Hume's  friend,  but  a  M. 
Tronchin  was  Hume's  landlord,  whose  father  had 
slandered  Rousseau  at  Geneva  ;  and  others  of  his  ene- 
mies, real  or  supposed,  turned  out  to  be  Hume's  friends 
also.  This  was,  he  gravely  asserts,  a  clear  case  of 
conspiracy  made  out  against  Hume,  who  must  have  in- 
veigled him  over  to  England  in  order  to  ruin  his  repu- 
tation. One  of  the  overt  acts  of  this  plot  was  the 
obtaining,  through  General  Conway,  a  pension  for  him 
who  was  starving,  of  a  hundred  a-year.  But  it  is  to 

*  See  these  letters  in  CEuv.,  vol.  vii.,  p.  138,  139,  148  et  seq. 


230  HUME. 

be  remarked,  that  the  only  part  of  the  whole  statement 
which  he  at  once  willingly  disbelieved,  although  it  was 
the  only  part  that  had  a  real  foundation,  was  Hume's 
helping  him  to  the  pension.  Therefore,  having  in  the 
heroics  of  his  first  indignation  thrown  it  up,  he  at  once 
offered  afterwards  to  take  it  back,  and  complained  of 
the  whole  arrears  not  having  been  paid. 

Mr.  Hume  hearing  that  this  frantic  creature  was 
writing  constantly  to  Paris  complaints  of  being  de- 
ceived and  persecuted  by  him,  wrote  to  desire  he  would 
specify  his  grounds  ;  and  then  came  a  letter,  full  of  the 
most  ridiculous  charges,  ascribing  to  Mr.  Hume's  most 
indifferent  acts,  even  to  his  looks,  the  most  black  de- 
signs; a  letter  plainly  proving  that  the  writer  was 
deranged  in  one  region  of  his  mind,  and  that  vanity 
was,  if  not  the  main  cause  of  his  malady,  certainly  the 
pivot  on  which  it  turned.  No  one  can  read  that  let- 
ter without  a  feeling  of  indignation ;  for  it  shows 
throughout  quite  reason  enough  to  make  its  writer 
answerable  for  his  pure  selfishness  and  his  unbearable 
suspicions.  It  is  a  source,  too,  of  irritation  to  the  reader, 
that  of  the  many  persons  whom  he  called  in  as  arbi- 
trators, by  sending  them  copies  of  his  favourite  pro- 
duction, not  any  one  appears  to  have  had  the  manly 
firmness,  the  true  and  rational  friendship  for  Rousseau 
himself,  of  at  once  plainly  declaring,  what  all  of  them 
must  needs  have  felt  when  they  read  it,  that  the 
whole  was  a  fiction  of  the  man's  own  brain.  Lord 
Marischal  seems,  indeed,  to  have  perceived  that  any 
communication  with  such  a  creature  was  unsafe;  and 
he  let  him  know  that  henceforth  they  must  no 
longer  correspond.  But  for  this  notice,  he  no  doubt 


HUME.  231 

would  have  been  the  plotter  of  the  next  conspiracy ; 
for  Rousseau  had  for  some  years  desired  to  consider 
him  as  a  father,  and  always  addressed  him,  a  steady 
old  soldier  and  political  intriguer,  wholly  void  of  any 
sentiment  beyond  those  of  heat  and  cold,  hunger  and 
thirst,  by  that  endearing  and  ridiculous  title. 

It  is  known  that  Rousseau,  a  year  or  two  after  his 
return  to  France,  admitted  that  the  foggy  climate  of 
England  had  produced  in  him  a  mental  affection,  and 
that  he  had  been  to  blame  in  his  quarrel  with  Hume  ;* 
but  he  never  had  the  common  fairness  and  gratitude 
to  address  this  confession  to  his  benefactor,  or  to  any 
of  those  whose  ears  he  had  sought  to  poison  with  his 
malignant  slanders. 

Contrary  to  his  invariable  practice,  when  attacked 
for  his  writings,  Mr.  Hume  very  unadvisedly  gave 
himself  the  trouble,  and  underwent  the  anxiety,  of 
writing  an  answer  to  this  silly  and  malignant  indi- 
vidual. He  published  a  short  but  detailed  statement 
of  all  that  had  passed  between  them,  This  step  he 
took  contrary  to  the  earnest  advice  of  Adam  Smith, 
whose  letter  remains,  strongly  dissuading  him  from 
taking  any  notice  of  Rousseau's  slanders.  He  ap- 
pears to  have  been  overpowered  by  D'Alembert  and 
D'Holbach,  who,  living  in  the  gossip  and  slander- 
loving  credulity  of  Paris  society,  were  afraid  lest  Rous- 
seau's constant  letter -writing  might  produce  an  effect 


*  See  Bernardin  de  St.  Pierre's  statement  of  his  conversation 
(L'Arcadie,  Preambule),  or  Appendix  aux  Confessions,  CEuv.,  vol.i., 
p.  642.  The  passage  is  given  in  the  Life  of  Rousseau,  which  imme- 
diately precedes  the  present  piece. 


232  HUME. 

unfavourable  to  their  friend.  Certain  it  is,  that 
Hume's  publication,  wholly  superfluous  to  all  men  of 
ordinary  sense  and  common  candour,  was  insufficient 
to  convince  such  ill-natured  and  silly  people  as  the 
Deffands  and  their  flatterers,  who  were  anxious  to 
have  a  pretext  for  levelling  their  malice  at  the  Eng- 
lishman and  the  philosopher;  and  though  despising 
Rousseau  from  the  bottom  of  their  hearts,  were  willing 
enough  to  make  his  fancied  grievances  a  cloak  for  their 
attacks  upon  Mr.  Hume.  It  seems  plain  that  his  own 
subsequent  reflection  upon  the  matter  brought  him  over 
to  Mr.  Smith's  opinion :  for  in  the  sketch  which  he 
has  left  of  his  own  life,  he  makes  not  the  least  allusion 
to  his  quarrel  with  Rousseau,  although,  in  his  pam- 
phlet, he  says  that  it  gave  him  more  trouble  and  annoy- 
ance than  any  thing  that  had  ever  happened  to  him. 

Mr.  Hume  returned  to  Edinburgh  in  1766,  but 
early  next  year  he  was  appointed  Under-Secretary  of 
State  under  Marshal  Conway,  and  held  that  office 
above  a  year.  In  1769,  some  time  after  he  resigned 
it,  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  and  took  a  house  in 
the  only  part  of  the  new  town  then  built,  St.  An- 
drew's Square.  With  the  exception  of  a  journey  to 
Harrowgate  for  his  health,  and  another  to  Bath  the 
year  he  died,  he  lived  in  his  native  country  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life,  enjoying  the  constant  society 
of  his  old  friends ;  and  himself  the  delight  of  their 
circles  by  his  abundant  spirits,  his  never-failing  good- 
humour,  and  even  temper,  and  the  kindness  as  well 
as  the  uprightness  of  his  character.  In  the  spring 
of  1775,  he  tells  us,  he  was  seized  with  a  disease  in 
his  bowels.  "  At  first,"  he  says,  "  it  gave  me  no 


HUME.  233 

alarm,  but  has  since,  as  I  apprehend  it,  become  mor- 
tal and  incurable.  I  now,"  adds  the  philosopher, 
reckon  on  a  speedy  dissolution.  I  have  suffered 
very  little  pain  from  my  disorder,  and  what  is  more 
strange,  have,  notwithstanding  the  great  decline  of 
my  person,  never  suffered  a  moment's  abatement  of 
my  spirits  ;  insomuch  that,  were  I  to  name  the  period 
of  my  life  which  I  should  most  choose  to  pass  over 
again,  I  might  be  tempted  to  point  to  this  latter 
period.  I  possess  the  same  ardour  as  ever  in  study, 
and  the  same  gaiety  in  company,  I  consider,  besides, 
that  a  man  of  sixty-five,  by  dying,  cuts  off  only  a  few 
years  of  infirmities ;  and  though  I  see  many  symptoms 
of  my  literary  reputation  breaking  out  at  last  with 
additional  lustre,  I  could  have  but  few  years  to  enjoy 
it.  It  is  difficult  to  be  more  detached  from  life  than 
I  am  at  present." 

While  he  continued  to  decline  by  a  gradual  ex- 
haustion, he  continued  to  see  his  friends  about  him  as 
usual,  and  his  gaiety  was  never  clouded  by  the  pros- 
pect before  him  now  drawing  to  a  close.  A  few  weeks 
before  his  death,  when  there  were  dining  with  him 
two  or  three  of  his  intimate  companions,  one  of  them, 
Dr.  Smith,  happening  to  complain  of  the  world  as 
spiteful  and  ill-natured,  "No,  no,"  said  Mr.  Hume, 
"  here  am  I,  who  have  written  on  all  sorts  of  subjects 
calculated  to  excite  hostility,  moral,  political,  and 
religious,  and  yet  I  have  no  enemies ;  except,  indeed, 
all  the  Whigs,  all  the  Tories,  and  all  the  Christians.'* 

When  his  strength  gradually  failed,  he  was  un- 
able to  remain  so  long  as  before  in  the  company  of 
his  friends.  By  degrees  he  became  confined  to  his 


234  HUME. 

room  the  greater  part  of  the  day,  and  at  last  alto- 
gether. But  his  intellect  and  his  calmness  continued 
to  the  last.  A  letter  to  Madame  de  Bouftlers  remains, 
written  only  five  days  before  his  death,  and  occasioned 
by  the  decease  of  the  Prince  de  Conti,  her  great  friend. 
"  I  am,"  he  says,  "  certainly  within  a  few  weeks,  and 
perhaps  a  few  days,  of  my  own  death ;  yet  I  cannot 
help  being  struck  with  the  Prince's,  as  a  great  loss  in 
every  particular/' — "I  see  death,"  he  adds,  "approach- 
ing gradually,  without  anxiety  or  regret.  I  salute  you 
with  great  affection  and  regard,  for  the  last  time." 
This  was  written  on  the  20th  of  August ;  on  the  25th 
he  was  no  more.  On  that  day  he  gently  expired,  with- 
out a  struggle,  in  the  sixty-fifth  year  of  his  age.  He 
was  buried  in  the  cemetery  on  the  Calton  Hill,  where 
a  conspicuous  monument  is  erected  to  his  memory. 

He  had  shown  a  feverish  anxiety  for  the  publication 
of  one  work,  his  '  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion ;' 
and  he  left  this  with  his  other  manuscripts  to  Dr. 
Smith  ;  but  giving  positive  injunctions  to  publish  this 
work,  and  allowing  no  discretion  whatever  upon  the 
subject.  Nay,  he  left  a  legacy  of  two  hundred  pounds, 
to  be  paid  on  the  publication,  though  all  the  other 
legacies  were  made  payable  at  the  first  term  after  his 
death  :  that  is,  Whitsuntide  or  Martinmas,  according 
to  the  prevailing  habit  of  the  Scotch  in  their  money 
arrangements.  Smith  refused  to  publish  them ;  and 
there  exists  a  curious  correspondence  between  him  and 
Mr.  Hume  of  Ninewells,  the  philosopher's  brother,  on 
the  subject.  Smith,  about  the  same  time,  stopped  a 
publication  of  all  the  '  Essays,'  which  included  one  on 
the  *  Immortality  of  the  Soul,'  and  another,  both  be- 


HUME.  235 

lieved  to  be  spurious.  The  '  Dialogues'  were  so  con- 
stantly corrected  in  his  own  hand,  that  they  appear  as 
if  wholly  re-written  :  a  specimen  of  this  is  given  in 
the  Appendix.  His  nephew,  afterwards  Mr.  Baron 
Hume,  published  them  in  1779. 

Having  spoken  of  his  writings  at  large,  it  remains  to 
add  that,  though  respecting  these  men  may  form  various 
opinions,  and  especially  respecting  his  philosophical 
works,  of  his  character  as  a  man  there  never  was,  nor 
could  there  be,  but  one.  His  great  capacity  all  admit ; 
his  genius  for  metaphysical  inquiries,  those  who  most 
differ  with  him,  even  those  who  most  lament  the  use 
to  which  he  directed  it,  confess  to  have  been  of  the 
highest  order — at  once  bold,  penetrating,  original. 
His  talents  for  political  speculation  were  of  as  brilliant 
a  description,  and  were  so  admirably  and  so  usefully 
applied,  that  his  works  are  as  yet  unrivalled  in  that 
most  important  department  of  practical  science  ;  and 
he  may  justly  be  deemed  the  father  of  the  liberal, 
enlightened,  and  rational  system  of  national  polity 
which  has  the  general  approval  of  statesmen,  and 
would  be  everywhere  adopted  but  for  conflicting 
interests,  and  popular  ignorance. 

But  universal  as  is  the  assent  to  these  positions,  the 
judgment  is  no  less  unanimous  which  must  be  pro- 
nounced upon  his  character  as  a  member  of  society, 
unless  we  reject  all  the  testimony  of  all  his  contem- 
poraries, supported  as  it  is  by  the  tone  and  spirit  of 
all  his  correspondence  which  has  come  down  to  us. 
He  was  a  man  of  perfectly  honest  and  single  heart, 
of  the  kindest  nature,  of  unequalled  good-humour  in 
the  intercourse  of  society,  carrying  the  same  placid 


236  HUME. 

disposition  into  those  controversies  which  are  most 
apt  to  ruffle  or  to  sour  the  temper ;  and  even  under 
disappointments  which  would  have  embittered  the 
existence  of  most  men,  and  disheartened  almost  all, 
neither  losing  his  general  good  will  towards  others, 
nor  suffering  himself  to  be  cast  down.  The  party 
violence  and  delusions  to  which  the  failure  of  his 
'  History'  was  in  part  owing,  he  often  has  exposed, 
but  certainly  in  no  other  terms  than  he  would  have 
used  had  his  work  succeeded :  for  he  employed  the 
same  language  in  writing  the  portion  first  published 
at  a  time  when  he  made  sure  of  its  success  ;  and  he 
never  afterwards  troubled  himself  with  doing  more 
than  uttering  a  good-humoured  exclamation,  or,  per- 
haps, passing  a  joke  at  the  expense  of  those  who  make 
themselves  the  tools  of  others  by  being  the  slaves  to 
their  own  factious  prejudices  or  propensities.  But  the  re- 
ception of  the  <  History'  was  not  his  only  disappoint- 
ment, though  it  was  the  most  severe.  It  would  not  be 
easy  to  find  any  instance  of  conduct  more  truly  worthy 
of  a  philosopher  than  his  bearing  up  against  the  repeated 
failures  of  the  works  he  most  esteemed,  and  the 
mortifying  neglect  which  at  first  all  his  writings  ex- 
perienced, with  but  one  exception.  He  looked  steadily 
forward,  with  a  confidence  truly  surprising  and  amply 
justified  by  the  event,  to  the  time  when,  probably  after 
his  course  was  run,  his  fame  would  shine  out  with 
surpassing  lustre.  Even  in  his  latter  hours,  when  he 
had,  in  some  measure,  seen  the  failure  of  the  injustice 
under  which  he  originally  suffered,  he  retained  a 
confident  belief  that  his  renown  had  not  yet  nearly 
reached  its  highest  pitch  ;  and  that  most  admirable 


HUME.  237 

• 

passage  above  cited  from  his  'Life,'  written  a  few  weeks 
before  his  death,  makes  a  touching  reference  to  the 
prospects  which  then  cheered  him,  but  which  he 
knew  were  never,  while  he  lived,  to  be  realized.  They 
were  the  only  prospects,  unhappily  for  him,  which 
shed  light  around  his  dying  couch ;  yet  such  was  the 
truly  admirable  temper  of  his  mind,  that  no  believer 
could  possess  his  spirit  in  more  tranquil  peace,  in  con- 
templation of  the  end  which  he  saw  fast  approaching, 
nor  meet  his  last  hour  with  more  cheerful  resignation. 
It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  charges  made  against 
Mr.  Hume  for  his  sceptical  writings,  and  for  the  irre- 
ligious doctrines  which  he  published  to  the  world,  are 
in  almost  every  respect  ill-founded.  He  never  had  re- 
course to  ribaldry,  hardly  ever  invoked  the  aid  even  of 
wit  to  his  argument.  He  had  well  examined  the  subject 
of  his  inquiries.  He  had,  with  some  bias  in  favour  of  the 
singularity  or  the  originality  of  the  conclusions  to  which 
they  led,  been  conducted  thither  by  reasoning,  and 
firmly  believed  all  he  wrote.  It  may  be  a  question, 
whether  his  duty  required  him  to  make  public  the  re- 
sults of  his  speculations,  when  these  tended  to  unsettle 
established  faith,  and  might  destroy  one  system  of  belief 
without  putting  another  in  its  place.  Yet  if  we  suppose 
him  to  have  been  sincerely  convinced  that  men  were 
living  in  error  and  in  darkness,  it  is  not  very  easy  to  deny 
even  the  duty  of  endeavouring  to  enlighten  them,  and  to 
reclaim.  But  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that,  with  his 
opinions,  even  if  justified  in  suppressing  them,  he  never 
would  have  stood  excused  had  he  done  anything  to 
countenance  and  uphold  what  he  firmly  believed  to  be 
errors  on  the  most  important  of  all  questions.  Nor  is 


238  HUME. 

it  less  manifest  that  lie  was  justified  in  giving  his  own 
opinions  to  the  world  on  those  questions  if  he  chose, 
provided  he  handled  them  with  decorum,  and  with  the 
respect  due  from  all  good  citizens  to  the  religious  opi- 
nions of  the  State.  There  are  but  one  or  two  passages 
in  them  all,  chiefly  in  the  '  Essay  on  Miracles,'  which 
do  not  preserve  the  most  unbroken  gravity,  and  all 
the  seriousness  befitting  the  subject. 

In  his  familiar  correspondence  he  was  a  little  less 
precise,  though  even  here  he  was  very  far  from  resem- 
bling the  Voltaire  school.  In  his  conversation  he 
seldom  alluded  to  the  subject,  but  occasionally  his 
opinions  were  perceivable.  Thus,  when  one  of  the 
University,  the  late  Mr.  John  Bruce,  professor  of 
logic,  asked  him  to  revise  the  syllabus  of  his  lectures, 
he  went  over  the  proof-sheets  with  him ;  and  on 
coming  to  the  section  entitled  '  Proofs  of  the  Exist- 
ence of  the  Deity/  Mr.  Hume  said,  "  Right ;  very 
well."  But  the  next  section  was  entitled  '  Proof  of 
the  Unity  of  the  Deity/  and  then  he  cried  out,  "  Stop, 
John,  stop  :  who  told  you  whether  there  were  ane  or 
mair?"  The  same  professor  met  him  one  day  on 
the  staircase  of  the  College  Library,  where  the  in- 
scription "  Christo  et  Musis  has  cedes  sacrarunt  ewes 
Edinenses"  drew  from  the  unbeliever  an  irreverent 
observation  on  the  junction  which  the  piety  rather 
than  the  classical  purity  of  the  good  town  had  made 
between  the  worship  of  the  heathen  and  our  own. 

That  his  conversation,  however,  was  habitually  free 
from  all  irreverent  allusion,  there  can  be  no  more 
complete  proof  than  his  uninterrupted  intimacy  with 
a  man  who  never  would  have  tolerated  the  least  devia- 


HUME.  239 

tion  from  perfect  decorum  in  that  particular,  Dr.  Ro- 
bertson. The  reflection  which  naturally  arises  from 
their  friendship  is,  first,  that  so  venerable  an  authority 
has  pronounced  in  favour  of  his  friend's  conduct ;  that 
he  never  deemed  his  writings  an  offence  against  even 
the  ecclesiastical  laws  of  his  country,  much  less  against 
good  morals ;  that  he  regarded  those  speculations  which 
he  the  least  approved  and  the  most  lamented,  as  justi- 
fied by  their  author's  honest  sincerity  of  purpose  ;  and 
that  he  considered  the  conduct  of  his  argument  as 
liable  to  no  reprobation  even  from  himself,  a  sincere 
believer,  a  pious  Christian,  a  leading  Presbyter  of  a 
Church  whose  discipline  is  peculiarly  strict,  a  man 
above  almost  all  other  men  regardful  of  decorum  in 
his  own  demeanour,  professional  and  private.  It  is 
another  reflection,  suggested  by  the  same  fact,  that  such 
bigots  as  Dr.  Johnson  are  exposed  to  our  reprobation, 
almost  to  our  contempt,  for  being  unable  to  bear  the 
presence  of  a  man  with  whom  Robertson  deigned,  and 
even  loved,  to  associate.  Assuredly  the  English  lay- 
man had  not  a  more  pious  disposition  than  the  Scottish 
divine  ;  the  historian  of  the  Reformation  had  rendered 
as  valuable  service  to  the  cause  of  religion  as  the  essay- 
ist. The  man  who  had  passed  his  nights  with  Savage 
in  the  haunts  of  dissipation,  and  whom  a  dinner  could 
tempt  to  sit  for  hours  by  Wilkes,  might  well  submit  to 
the  society  of  a  man  through  his  whole  life  as  pure  in 
morals,  as  blameless  in  conduct,  as  those  others  were 
profligate,  and  abandoned.  But  Robertson's  faith  was 
founded  on  reason  and  inquiry,  not  built  upon  the 
blind  devotion  to  established  usages  ;  and  his  piety, 
while  charity  tempered  it,  was  warmed  at  the  genial 


240  HUME. 

fire  of  a  learned  and  inquiring  philosophy,  and  pro- 
ceeded from  his  reason,  not,  like  the  dogmatical  zeal  of 
Johnson,  inspired  by  fierce  passions,  matured  by  hypo- 
chondriacal  temperament,  stimulated  by  nervous  fears. 
The  one  could  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in 
him — the  other  believed  upon  trust ;  the  one  believed 
because  he  could  argue — the  other  because  he  was 
afraid  ;  the  one  grounded  his  religion  upon  his  learn- 
ing— the  other  upon  his  wishes  and  his  temper.  The 
intolerant  layman  seemed  to  betray  in  his  demeanour 
his  soreness,  in  his  horror  of  discussion  a  lurking  sus- 
picion that  all  was  not  sound  in  the  groundwork  of  his 
system.  The  tolerant  and  philosophic  divine  showed 
a  manly  confidence  in  the  solidity  of  the  altar  at 
which  he  ministered.  While  Johnson  was  enraged  at 
the  foundations  of  his  ill-understood,  unexamined  belief 
being  scrutinized  for  fear  they  should  be  shaken,  Robert- 
son, who  well  comprehended  on  what  his  faith  rested, 
defied  the  utmost  inquiry  and  most  active  efforts  of  his 
adversaries,  well  assured  that  out  of  the  conflict,  how- 
ever fiercely  sustained,  the  system  to  which  he  was  at- 
tached, because  he  understood  it,  must  come  with  new 
claims  to  universal  acceptation. 


(  241   ) 


APPENDIX. 


I  HAVE  been  favoured  with  some  unpublished  letters  of  Mr. 
Hume  by  the  kindness  of  my  learned  kinsman  Lord  Meadow- 
bank  and  other  friends.  By  the  following  part  of  a  letter  to  Dr. 
Clephane,  we  may  perceive  that  he  had  once,  at  least,  gone  out 
of  his  line,  and  attempted  something  purely  fanciful,  apparently 
in  verse.  From  the  sample  of  his  imaginative  writing  in  the 
Essays,  the  e  Epicurean'  especially,  little  room  is  left  for  lament- 
ing that  he  did  not  further  pursue  this  deviation  from  his  ap- 
pointed walk.  The  letter  is  dated  18th  February,  1751.  His 
low  estimate  of  Shakspeare  breaks  out  in  this  letter ;  but  he 
became  convinced  in  the  sequel,  that  his  kinsman's  tragedy, 
'Douglas,'  to  which  he  alludes,  deserved  the  success  which  he 
justly  predicts ;  for  we  find  him  afterwards,  to  the  same  friend, 
giving  his  opinion,  after  reading  the  tragedy,  and  he  terms  it 
"  a  singular  as  well  as  fine  performance,  steering  clear  of  the 
spirit  of  the  English  theatre,  not  devoid  of  Attic  and  French 
elegance."  He  seems  to  have  formed  a  very  low  estimate  of  the 
English  genius  in  those  days ;  for,  speaking  of  Lord  Ly  ttelton's 
'  Henry  III.,'  which  he  hears  is  to  be  in  three  quarto  volumes, 
he  exclaims,  "  O  magnum,  horribile,  et  sacrum  libellum ! — 
the  last  epithet  probably  applicable  to  it  in  more  senses  than 
one" — and  adds,  "  however,  it  cannot  well  fail  to  be  readable, 
which  is  a  great  deal  for  an  English  book  now-a-days." 

"Ninewells,  near  Berwick,  18th  February,  1751. 
..."  But  since  I  am  in  the  humour  of  displaying  my  wit, 
I  must  tell  you  that  lately,  at  our  idle  hours,  I  wrote  a  sheet 
called  the  c  Bellman's  Petition,'  wherein  (if  I  be  not  partial, 


242  HUME. 

which  I  certainly  am)  there  was  great  pleasantry  and  satire. 
The  printers  in  Edinburgh  refused  to  print  it  (a  good  sign, 
you'll  say,  of  my  prudence  and  discretion).  Mr.  Mure,  the 
member,  has  a  copy  of  it :  ask  it  of  him  if  you  meet  with  him, 
or  bid  the  Colonel,  who  sees  him  every  day  in  the  house,  ask 
it;  and,  if  you  like  it,  read  it  to  the  General,  and  then  return 
it.  I  will  not  boast,  for  I  have  no  manner  of  vanity.  But 
when  I  think  of  the  present  dulness  of  London,  I  cannot 
forbear  exclaiming,  (  Rome  n'est  pas  dans  Rome :  c'est  par- 
tout  oil  je  suis.' 

"  A  namesake  of  mine  has  wrote  a  tragedy,  which  he  ex- 
pects to  come  on  this  winter.  I  have  not  seen  it,  but  some 
people  commend  it  much.  It  is  very  likely  to  meet  with 
success,  and  not  to  deserve  it ;  for  the  author  tells  me  he  is  a 
great  admirer  of  Shakspeare,  and  never  read  Racine. 

(t  If  you  answer  this  any  time  within  the  twelvemonth,  it  is 
sufficient ;  and  I  promise  not  to  answer  your  next  at  less  than 
six  months'  interval.  And  so,  as  the  Germans  say,  '  Je  me 
recomante  a  fos  craces.' 

"  Yours, 

"  DAVID  HUME." 

The  following,  to  the  same  correspondent,  gives  an  account 
of  his  establishment  after  his  election  as  librarian : — 

"  Edinburgh,  5th  February,  1752. 

"  I  must  now  set  you  an  example  and  speak  of  myself;  by 
this  I  mean  that  you  are  to  speak  to  me  of  yourself.  I  shall 
exult  and  triumph  to  you  a  little  that  I  have  now  at  last,  being 
turned  of  forty,  to  my  honour,,  to  that  of  learning,  and  to  that  of 
the  present  age,  arrived  at  the  dignity  of  being  a  householder. 
About  seven  months  ago  I  got  a  house  of  my  own,  and  com- 
pleted a  regular  family,  consisting  of  a  head,  viz.  myself,  and 
two  inferior  members,  a  maid  and  a  cat.  My  sister  has  since 
joined  me,  and  keeps  me  company.  With  frugality  I  can 
reach,  I  find,  cleanliness,  warmth,  light,  plenty,  and  content- 
ment. What  would  you  have  more  ?  Independence  ?  I 
have  it  in  a  supreme  degree.  Honour  ?  That  is  not  altogether 
wanting.  Grace  ?  That  will  come  in  time.  A  wife  ?  That 


HUME.  243 

is  none  of  the  indispensable  requisites  of  life.  Books?  That 
is  one  of  them,  and  I  have  more  than  I  can  use.  In  short,  I 
cannot  find  any  blessing  of  consequence  that  I  am  not  pos- 
sessed of  in  a  greater  or  less  degree ;  and  without  any  great 
effort  of  philosophy,  I  may  be  easy  and  satisfied. 

"As  there  is  no  happiness  without  occupation,  I  have 
begun  a  work  which  will  employ  me  several  years,  and  which 
yields  me  much  satisfaction." 

The  following  is  his  letter  introducing  the  future  Chancellor, 
then  a  young  man  of  twenty,  going  for  the  first  time  to 
London,  which  he  visited  before  he  was  admitted  an  advocate 
in  Scotland : — 

"  DEAR  DOCTOR,  "  Edinburgh,  6th  March,  1753. 

(t  This  is  delivered  to  you  by  my  friend  Mr.  Wedder- 
burn,  who  makes  a  jaunt  to  London,  partly  with  a  view  to 
study,  partly  to  entertainment.  I  thought  I  could  not  do  him 
a  better  office,  nor  more  suitable  to  both  these  purposes,  than 
to  recommend  him  to  the  friendship  and  acquaintance  of  a 
man  of  learning  and  conversation.  He  is  young  ; 

*  Mais  dans  les  ames  bien  nees 
La  vertu  n'attend  point  le  nombre  des  annees.' 

"  It  will  be  a  great  obligation  both  to  him  and  me  if  you  give 
him  encouragement  to  see  you  frequently ;  and  after  that,  I 
doubt  not  but  you  will  think  that  you  owe  me  an  obligation, 
'  Ha  in  giovanile  corpo  senile  senno.' 

But  I  will  say  no  more  of  him,  lest  my  letter  fall  into  the  same 
fault  which  may  be  remarked  in  his  behaviour  and  his  conduct 
in  life — the  only  fault  which  has  been  remarked  in  them — 
that  of  promising  so  much  that  it  will  be  difficult  for  him  to 
support  it.  You  will  allow  that  he  must  have  been  guilty  of 
some  error  of  this  kind  when  I  tell  you,  that  the  man  with 
whose  friendship  and  company  I  have  thought  myself  very 
much  favoured,  and  whom  I  recommend  to  you  as  a  friend 
and  a  companion,  is  just  twenty. 

et  I  am,  dear  Doctor, 

"  Your  affectionate  friend  and  servant, 
"  Dr.  Clephane."  "  DAVID  HUME. 

R  2 


244  HUME. 

There  is  a  long  letter  to  Dr.  Clephane  anxiously  desiring 
his  opinion  upon  the  true  causes  of  his  l  History '  having  so 
entirely  failed,  and  indicating  his  own  notion  that  this  was 
owing  to  his  freedom  in  treating  religious  and  ecclesiastical 
subjects,  but  expressing  his  surprise  that  such  a  tone  should 
not  rather  have  recommended  his  book  to  the  favour  of  one 
class  and  the  hostility  of  another,  than  have  made  it  sink  into 
oblivion  and  neglect.  In  a  letter  to  Colonel  Edmonstone  he 
treats  the  same  disappointment  in  a  more  jocose  manner, 
indicating  what  he  conceives  to  be  the  taste  of  the  public,  and 
their  fondness  for  worthless  writings. 

"  Edinburgh,  25th  September,  1757. 

"  I  am  engaged  in  writing  a  new  volume  of  history  from 
the  beginning  of  Henry  VII.  till  the  accession  of  James  I. 
It  will  probably  be  published  in  the  winter  after  next.  I 
believe  I  shall  write  no  more  history,  but  proceed  directly  to 
attack  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  the  Ten  Commandments,  and 
the  Single  Catechism,  and  to  recommend  suicide  and  adultery, 
and  persist  until  it  shall  please  the  Lord  to  take  me  to 
himself.  "  Yours  ever, 

"D.  H." 


To  ANDREW  MILLAR,  the  Bookseller. 

"  12th  April,  1755. 

"  The  second  volume  of  my '  History'  I  can  easily  find  a 
way  of  conveying  to  you,  when  finished,  and  corrected,  and 
fairly  copied.  Perhaps  I  may  be  in  London  myself  about 
that  time.  I  have  always  said  to  all  my  acquaintance,  that  if 
the  first  volume  bore  a  little  of  a  Tory  aspect,  the  second 
would  probably  be  as  grateful  to  the  opposite  party.  The 
two  first  princes  of  the  House  of  Stuart  were  certainly  more 
excusable  than  the  two  second.  The  constitution  was  in  their 
time  very  ambiguous  and  undetermined,  and  their  parliaments 
were  in  many  respects  refractory  and  obdurate.  But  Charles 
the  Second  knew  that  he  had  succeeded  to  a  very  limited 
monarchy.  His  Long  Parliament  was  indulgent  to  him,  and 
even  consisted  almost  entirely  of  Royalists,  yet  he  could  not 
be  quiet  nor  contented  with  a  legal  authority.  I  need  not 


HUME.  245 

mention  the  oppressions  in  Scotland,  nor  the  absurd  conduct 
of  King  James  the  Second:  these  are  obvious  and  glaring 
points.  Upon  the  whole,  I  wish  the  two  volumes  had  been 
published  together  ;  neither  one  party  nor  the  other  would  in 
that  case  have  had  the  least  pretext  for  reproaching  me  with 
partiality. 

' '  I  shall  give  no  further  umbrage  to  the  godly  ;  though  I  am 
far  from  thinking  that  my  liberties  on  that  head  have  been  the 
real  cause  of  checking  the  sale  of  the  first  volume  :  they  might 
afford  a  pretence  for  decrying  it  to  those  -who  were  resolved, 
on  other  accounts,  to  lay  hold  of  pretexts. 

"  Pray  tell  Dr.  Birch,  if  you  have  occasion  to  see  him,  that  his 
story  of  the  warrant  for  Lord  Loudon's  execution,  though  at 
first  I  thought  it  highly  improbable,  appears  to  me  at  present 
a  great  deal  more  likely.  I  find  the  same  story  in  Scotstarvel's 
'  Staggering  State,'  which  was  published  here  a  few  months 
ago.  The  same  story,  coming  from  different  channels,  with- 
out any  dependence  on  each  other,  bears  a  strong  air  of  pro- 
bability. I  have  spoke  to  Duke  Hamilton,  who  says  I  shall 
be  very  welcome  to  peruse  all  his  papers.  I  shall  take  the 
first  opportunity  of  going  to  the  bottom  of  that  affair ;  and  if 
I  find  any  confirmation  of  the  suspicion,  will  be  sure  to 
inform  Dr.  Birch.  I  own  it  is  the  strongest  instance  of  any 
which  history  affords  of  King  Charles's  arbitrary  principles. 

"  I  have  made  a  trial  of  *  Plutarch,'  and  find  that  I  take 
pleasure  in  it,  but  cannot  yet  form  so  just  a  notion  of  the  time 
and  pains  which  it  will  require,  as  to  tell  you  what  sum  of 
money  I  would  think  an  equivalent.  But  I  shall  be  sure  to 
inform  you  as  soon  as  I  come  to  a  resolution.  The  notes 
requisite  will  not  be  numerous,  nor  so  many  as  in  the  former 
edition.  I  think  so  bulky  a  book  ought  to  be  swelled  as  little 
as  possible,  and  nothing  added  but  what  is  absolutely  requi- 
site. The  little  trial  I  have  made  convinces  me  that  the 
undertaking  will  require  time.  My  manner  of  composing  is 
slow,  and  I  have  great  difficulty  to  satisfy  myself." 

The  conclusion  of  this  letter  is  extremely  interesting, 
as  proving  the  truth  of  the  assertion  in  the  '  Life'  respect- 


246  HUME. 

ing  his  careful  and  deliberate  manner  of  composing.     This 
Appendix  gives  further  proofs  from  the  MS.  of  his  Works. 


To  ANDREW  MILLAR. 

"  Edinburgh,  22nd  September,  1756. 

<(  Mr.  Strachan  in  a  few  days  will  have  finished  the 
printing  this  volume ;  and  I  hope  you  will  find  leisure  before 
the  hurry  of  winter  to  peruse  it,  and  to  write  me  your  remarks 
on  it.  I  fancy  you  will  publish  about  the  middle  of  November. 
I  must  desire  you  to  take  the  trouble  of  distributing  a  few 
copies  to  my  friends  in  London,  and  of  sending  me  a  few 
copies  here ;  the  whole  will  be  fifteen  copies. 

"  Notwithstanding  Mr.  Mallet's  impertinence  in  not  answering 
my  letter  (for  it  deserves  no  better  a  name),,  if  you  can  engage 
him,  from  yourself,  to  mark,  on  the  perusal,  such  slips  of  lan- 
guage as  he  thinks  I  have  fallen  into  in  this  volume,  it  will 
be  a  great  obligation  to  me :  I  mean  that  I  shall  lie  under  an 
obligation  to  you ;  for  I  would  not  willingly  owe  any  to  him. 
"  I  am,  dear  Sir, 

te  Your  most  humble  Servant, 

"  DAVID  HUME." 


To  ANDREW  MILLAR. 
«  DEAR  SIR,  1758  or  1759. 

"  I  am  very  glad  that  Mr.  Robertson  is  .entering  on 
terms  with  you.  It  was,  indeed,  my  advice  to  him,  when  he 
set  out  for  London,  that  he  should  think  of  no  other  body ; 
and  I  ventured  to  assure  him  that  he  would  find  your  way  of 
dealing  frank,  and  open,  and  generous.  He  read  me  part  of 
his  '  History ;'  and  I  had  an  opportunity  of  reading  another 
part  of  it  in  manuscript  about  a  twelvemonth  ago.  Upon  the 
whole,  my  expectations,  both  from  what  I  saw,  and  from  my 
knowledge  of  the  author,  are  very  much  raised,  and  I  consider 
it  as  a  work  of  uncommon  merit.  I  know  that  he  has  em- 
ployed himself  with  great  diligence  and  care  in  collecting  the 
facts.  His  style  is  lively  and  entertaining,  and  he  judges 
with  temper  and  candour.  He  is  a  man  generally  known  and 
esteemed  in  this  country ;  and  we  look  upon  him  very 


HUME.  247 

deservedly  as  inferior  to  nobody  in  capacity  and  learning. 
Hamilton  and  Balfour  have  offered  him  a  very  unusual  price, — 
no  less  than  five  hundred  pounds  for  an  edition  of  two  thou- 
sand ;  but  I  own  that  I  should  be  better  pleased  to  see  him  in 
your  hands.  I  only  inform  you  of  the  fact,  that  you  may  see 
.how  high  the  general  expectations  are  of  Mr.  Robertson's 
performance.  It  will  have  a  quick  sale  in  this  country,  from 
the  character  of  the  author ;  and  in  England,  from  the  merit 
of  the  work,  as  soon  as  it  is  known. 

"  Some  part  of  the  subject  is  common  with  mine  ;  but  as  his 
work  is  a  History  of  Scotland,  mine  of  England,  we  do  not 
interfere ;  and  it  will  rather  be  an  amusement  to  the  reader 
to  compare  our  method  of  treating  the  same  subject.  I  give 
you  thanks,  however,  for  your  attention  in  asking  my 
opinion." 

It  is  not  without  some  reluctance  that  I  add  the  following 
letter,  because  it  is  likely  to  give  an  unfavourable  and  also  an 
unfair  impression  of  the  writer's  principles.  But  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  he  sincerely  believed  in  the  unhappy  dogmas 
of  infidelity,  and  consequently  held  the  whole  subject  of  reli- 
gious opinions  cheap.  To  have  done  so  in  public  would 
have  been  exceedingly  blameable ;  in  private,  it  seemed  to  his 
mind  a  necessary  consequence  of  his  indifference  or  contempt, 
that  he  should  fall  into  the  lax  morality  of  the  ancients  on 
this  point,  and  give  an  exoterical  conformity  to  what  he  eso- 
terically  disbelieved.  In  my  very  clear  opinion  this  course 
is  wholly  repugnant  to  sound  morals  ;  and  is  to  be  reprobated, 
whether  in  the  excess  to  which  Mr.  Hume  carried  it,  or  in 
the  lesser  degree  to  which  such  reasoners  as  Dr.  Paley  have 
adopted  it.  The  suppression  of  such  a  letter  would  have  ap- 
peared inconsistent  with  the  plan  of  writing  Mr.  Hume's  life" 
historically,  and  not  merely  composing  a  panegyric  upon 
him. 

To  COLONEL  EDMONSTONE. 
"  DEAR  EDMONSTONE,  Not  dated,  but  supposed,  1764. 

"  I  was  just  projecting  to  write  a  long  letter  to  you,  and 
another  to  Mr.  V.,  when  your  last  obliging  epistle  came  to 


248  HUME. 

hand.  I  immediately  put  pen  to  paper  to  assure  you  that  the 
report  is  entirely  groundless,  and  that  I  have  not  lost,  nor 
ever  could  have  lost,  a  shilling  by  Fairholm's  bankruptcy. 
Poor  John  Adams  is  very  deeply  engaged  with  him ;  but  I 
had  a  letter  last  post  from  Dr.  Blair  which  informs  me  that 
he  will  yet  be  able  to  save  fifteen  or  sixteen  thousand  pounds. 
I  am  glad  to  give  you  also  this  piece  of  intelligence. 

"  What — do  you  know  that  Lord  Bute  is  again  all-powerful? 
— or  rather  that  he  was  always  so,  but  is  now  acknowledged 
for  such  by  all  the  world  ?  Let  this  be  a  new  motive  for  Mr. 
V.  to  adhere  to  the  ecclesiastical  profession,  in  which  he  may 
have  so  good  a  patron,  for  civil  employments  for  men  of  letters 
can  scarcely  be  found.  All  is  occupied  by  men  of  business, 
or  by  Parliamentary  interest.  It  is  putting  too  great  a  respect 
on  the  vulgar,  and  on  their  superstitions,  to  pique  oneself  on 
sincerity  with  regard  to  them.  Did  ever  one  make  it  a  point 
of  honour  to  speak  truth  to  children  or  madmen  ?  If  the 
thing  were  worthy  being  treated  gravely,  I  should  tell  him 
that  the  Pythian  oracle,  with  the  approbation  of  Xenophon, 
advised  every  one  to  worship  the  Gods  vo/txo;  9roXews-.  I  wish  it 
were  still  in  my  power  to  be  a  hypocrite  in  this  parti- 
cular. The  common  duties  of  society  usually  require  it; 
and  the  ecclesiastical  profession  only  adds  a  little  more  to  an 
innocent  dissimulation,  or  rather  simulation,  without  which  it 
is  impossible  to  pass  through  the  world.  Am  I  a  liar  because 
I  order  my  servant  to  say  I  am  not  at  home  when  I  do  not 
desire  to  see  company  ? 

"  How  could  you  imagine  that  I  was  under- secretary  to 
Lord  Hertford,  or  that  I  would  ever  be  prevailed  on  to  accept 
such  a  character  ?  I  am  not  secretary  at  all,  but  do  the  busi- 
ness of  secretary  to  the  embassy  without  any  character.  Bun- 
^>ury  has  the  commission  and  appointment — a  young  man  of 
three  or  four  and  twenty,  somewhat  vain  and  ignorant,  whom 
Lord  Hertford  refused  to  accept  of,  as  thinking  he  would  be 
of  no  use  to  him.  The  King  gave  me  a  pension  of  200/. 
a-year  for  life  to  engage  me  to  attend  his  Lordship.  My  Lord 
is  very  impatient  to  have  me  secretary  to  the  embassy,  and 
writes  very  earnest  letters  to  that  purpose  to  the  ministers — 
and  among  the  rest  to  Lord  Bute.  He  engaged  me  somewhat 


HUME.  249 

against  my  will  to  write  also  to  such  of  my  friends  as  had  credit 
with  that  favourite,  Oswald,  Elliot,  Sir  Harry  Erskine,  and 
John  Hume  of  Douglas.  The  King  has  promised  that  my 
Lord  Hertford  shall  soon  be  satisfied  in  this  particular ;  and 
yet  I  know  not  how,  I  suspect  that  some  obstacle  will  yet  in- 
terpose, though  nothing  can  be  more  scandalous  than  for  a 
man  to  enjoy  the  revenue  of  an  office  which  is  exercised  by 
another.  Mr.  Bunbury  has  great  interest,  being  married  to 
a  sister  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  and  sister-in-law  to  Lord 
Holland.  The  appointments  of  this  office  are  above  1000Z. 
a- year,  and  the  expense  attending  it  nothing ;  and  it  leads  to 
all  the  great  employments.  I  wait  the  issue  with  patience, 
and  even  with  indifference .  At  my  years,  and  with  my  for- 
tune, a  man  with  a  little  common  sense,  without  philosophy, 
may  be  indifferent  about  what  happens. 

"  I  am,  dear  Edmonstone, 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  DAVID  HUME." 


The  following  fac-simile  extracts  from  the  MS.  of  the  '  His- 
tory' prove  two  things : — First,  that  Hume  carefully  composed 
and  diligently  corrected  his  composition;  but  secondly,  that 
the  finer  passages  having  more  occupied  his  attention,  he  had, 
before  committing  them  to  paper,  more  attentively  elaborated 
and  more  nearly  finished  them.  The  characters  of  Alfred 
and  of  Edward  III.  are  of  this  description,  so  is  the  earlier 
part  of  the  magnificent  description  of  the  E-omish  Interdict's 
operation.  The  MS.  of  the  '  Dialogues  '  affords  an  example  of 
his  repeated  correction  in  his  more  ordinary  passages.  In  the 
second  edition  of  his  works  he  again  and  again  corrected ;  and 
even  his  familiar  letters  appear  to  have  been  laboured  with 
similar  care  : — 

merit  in  private 

"  The  personal  bo"  character  of  this  Prince,  both  personal 

life, 
&  public  A      may  with  advantage  be   set   in  opposition   to 

that  whioh  that  of  any  Monarch  or  citizen,  which  the  Annals 


250  HUME. 

of  any  age  or  any  Nation,  can  present  to  us.  He  seems 
indeed  to  4ta-  be  the  compleat  model  of  that  perfect  character, 
which,  under  the  denomination  of  a  Sage  or  Wiseman,  the 

been  fond  of  delineating 
Philosophers  have  ever    ^^  framed,    rather  as  a  fiction   of 

ever 
their   imagination,  than  with   the   hopes   of   over   seeing  it 

reduc'd  to  Practice :  so  happily  were  all  his  virtues  temper'd 

justly 

together :  so  nicely  were  they  blended :  and  so  powerfully 
did  each  prevent  the  other  from  exceeding  its  proper  Bounds. 
He  knew  how  to  conciliate  the  boldest  enterprize  with  the 
coolest  moderation:  the  most  obstinate  Perseverance  with 
the  easiest  Flexibility :  the  most  severe  justice  with  the  greatest 

greatest  affability  of 

lenity :    the  most  rigorous  command  with  the  most  affable 

and  inclination       science 

deportment :  the  highest  capacity  A  for  -knowledge-  with  the 
most  shining  talents  for  action.  His  civil  and  his  military 
virtues  are  almost  equally  the  objects  of  our  admiration: 

ing 

except  A  only,  that  the  former,  being  more  rare  among 
princes,  as  well  as  more  useful  seem  chiefly  to  challenge 
our  applause.  Nature  also,  as  if  desirous,  that  so  bright  a 
production  of  her  skill  shoud  be  set  in  the  fairest  light, 
him  bestowed  on  him 

had  endowed  A  with  A  all  bodily  accomplishments,  vigour 
of  limbs,  Dignity  of  shap  and  air,  and  a  pleasant,  engaging, 
and  open  countenance.  Fortune,  alone,  by  throwing  him  into 
that  barbarous  age,  deprived  him  of  historians  worthy  to 
transmit  his  Fame  to  Posterity:  and  we  wish  to  see  him 
painted  delineated  in  more  lively  strokes  colours,  and  with 

particular  strokes 

more  lively  colours,  that  we  may  at  least  -see-  see-  perceive 
some  of  those  small  Specks  and  Blemishes,  from  which,  as  a 
man,  it  is  impossible  he  coud  be  entirely  free  exempted." 


"  The  sentence  of  Interdict  was  at  that  time  the  great 
instrument  of  Vengeance  and  Policy  employd  by  the  Court 
of  Rome  :  was  pronounc'd  against  sovereigns  for  the  lightest 
offences:  and  for  the  guilt  of  one  pcroon  made  the  guilt 


HUME.  251 

of  one  person  involve  the  Ruin  of  Millions,  even  in  their 
spiritual  and  eternal  Welfare.  The  execution  of  it  was 
artificially  calculated  to  strike  the  senses  in  the  highest 

with  irresistable  force 

degree,  and  to  operate  A  on  the  superstitious  minds.  The 
Nation  was  of  a  sudden  deprivd  of  all  exterior  exercise  of 
its  religion.  The  altars  were  despoild  of  f£r  their  orna- 
ments. The  crosses,  the  relicts,  the  images,  the  statues  of 
the  saints  were  laid  on  the  ground,  and  as  if  the  air  itself 
were  profan'd  and  might  pollute  them  by  its  contact,  the 
priests  carefully  cover'd  them  up,  even  from  their  own 
approach  and  veneration..  The  use  of  bells  entirely  ceas'd 
in  all  the  churches.  The  bells  themselves  were  removd 
from  the  steeples  and  laid  on  the  ground  with  the  other 

*  B59%     churches 
sacred  utensils.      Mass  was   celebrated  in  tho  church  with 

admitted  to 

shut  doors,  and  none  but  the  priests  were  allowed  to  attend 

The  laity  partook  of  no  religious  rite  ^ 

except  baptism  to  new  born  infants,  and  the  communion  to 
the  dying.  The  dead  were  not  allowed  to  bo  interred  in 
consecrated  ground.  They  were  thrown  into  ditches,  and 
bury'd  in  common  fields  :  and  the  obsequies  were  not  attended 
with  prayers  or  any  hallow'd  ceremony.  Marriage  was  cele- 

the 
brated  in  A  churchyards,  and  that   fio-  every  action   in  life 

might  bear  marks  of  this  dreadful  situation,  the  people  were 

prohibited 

forbid  the  use  of  meat,  as  in  lent  or  tfe©-.  times  of  the  highest 
penance,  were  debarrd  from  all  pleasures  and  entertainments, 
and  were  forbid  even  to  salute  each  other,  or  so  much  as  to 
shave  their  beards  and  give  any  decent  attention  to  their 

carryd  the  symptoms 

person  and  apparel.     Every  circumstance  Jjorc_thc  marks  of 

immediate 

the  deepest  distress,  and  of  the  most  dreadful  expectation 
apprehensions  of  divine  vengeance  and  indignation." 


*  Illegible. 


252  HUME. 

HENRY  III. 
"  I  reckon  not  among  the  violations  of  the  great  charter 

arbitrary 

some  practices  A  Exertions   of    Prerogative,   which   Henry's 

without  producing  any  discontents 

necessities  oblig'd  him  to  practice,  and  which  A  were  uniformly 

continued 

practiced  by  all  his  successors  till  the  last  century.  As  the  par- 

that  -somctimco  in  a  manner  somewhat 
liament  often  refusd  him  supplies,  and  A  often  in  a  very  rude 

and  indecent-rfteamer-,  he  obliged  his  opulent  subjects,  parti- 
cularly the  citizens  of  London,  to  grant  him  loans  of  money : 

want  of  economy 

and  it  is  natural  to  imagine,  that  the  same  necessities-  which 

reduced  him  to  the  necessity  of  borrowing          him  from 

obliged  him  to  borrow,  would  prevent  -btrfr  being  very  regular 

He  demanded  benevolences,  or  pretended  voluntary 

their  contributions  from  his  nobility  &  prelates. 

in  4ke  payment  of  his    dobtc  A    He  was  the  first  King  of 
England   since    the  Conquest  who  could   be  fairly  said  to 

also 

lye  under  the  restraint  of  law :     and  he  was  A  the  first  who 
practicd   the  dispensing    power,  and   employ'd   the  famous 

Patents 
clause  of  non  obstante  in  his  grants  and  charters.   The  Princes 

notwithstanding  the  great  power  of  the  monarchs, 

both  of  the  Saxon  &  Norman  line  own  country 

of  Wales  A  still  preserved  authority  in  their  mountains ;  and 

had  often  -fead  been  constraind  to  pay  tribute 
tho'  they  oontinuod  to  do  homage  to  the  crown  of  England, 

in  subordination  or  even  in  peace 

they  were  with  difficulty  retaind   in  oubj  action,  and  almost 
throughout 
4a- every  reign  since  the  conquest  had  infested  the  English 

inroads 
frontiers  with  petty  incursions  and  sudden  •inourciono,  which 

-dooonrod  to  bo  mentioned  merited  to  have  place 
seldom  merited  to  havo  place  in  a  general  history." 


"  The   behaviour   of  John  show'd   him  not  unworthy  of 

-  gcncrouo  courteous  never 

this  A  treatment.      His  present   abject  fortune  A  made  him 
never  forget  a  moment  that  he  was  a  King.     More  sensible 

Edward's 

to  hio  the  Princes  generosity  than  to  his  own  calamities,  he 


HTJME.  253 

confess'd,  that,  notwithstanding  his  Defeat  and  Captivity,  his 
Honour  was  still  unimpair'd  :  and  that,  if  he  yielded  the 
victory,  it  was  at  least  gain'd  by  a  Prince  of  such  consummate 
Valour  and  Humanity." 


EDWARD  III. 

"  The  prisoners  were  everywhere  treated  with  Humanity  and 
were  soon  after  dismissd  on  paying  moderate  Ransoms  to  the 
Persons  into  whose  hands  they  had  fallen.  The  extent  of  their 
fortunes  was  consider'd,  and  no  more  was  exacted  of  them, 
that*  what  woud  still  leave  them  sufficient  to  enable  them 
for  the  future,  to  take  the  field  in  a  manner  suitable  to  their 

quality 

rank  &  atation.     Yet  so   numerous  -and  ouch  a-  were   the 
noble  Prisoners,  that  these  Ransoms  woro  sufficient  to  onri 

Field 
join'd  to  the  spoils  of  the  -Battle-  were  sufficient    to  enrich 

the  Princes  army  :  and  as  they  had  sufferd  very  little  in  the 

joy  &  exultation 

action,  their  triumph  was  complete." 


DIALOGUES  ON  NATURAL  RELIGION. 

"  Now  Cleanthes  said  Philo,  with  an  air  of  Alacrity  & 
Triumph — Mark  the  consequence.     First  By  this  Method  of 

claim 
Reasoning,  you  renounce  all  Pretensions  to  Infinity  in  any  of 

the  attributes  of  the  Deity.    For  as  the  Cause  ought  only  to  be 
proportion'd  to  the  Effect,  and  the  Effect  so  far  as  it  falls  under 

you  will        ,  upon  your  supposition 
our  cognisance :   what  Pretensions  youll  oay  have  we  to  ascribe 

Attribute  You  will  still  resist  that,  by 

that  Epithet-  to  the  Divine  Being  ?A  >:&?  removing  him  so 

hypothesis 

4>y  th  give  into  the  most  arbitrary •cuppoiritionc  &  at  the  same  time  weaken 
much  from  all  similarity  to  human  creatures,  we  A  destroy  all 
Proofs  of  his  Existence. 


Sic. 


254  HUME. 

"  This  Theory,  I  own,  replyd  Cleanthes,  has  never  before 
occurd  to  me,  tho*  a  pretty  natural  one;  and  I  cannot 
readily  deliver  any  opinion  abcut  it  upon  so  short  an  exami- 

deliver  any  opinion  wilh  regard  to  it 
nation  &  reflection  *  •     You  are  very  scrupulous  indeed,  said 

Were  examine 

Philo  :  and  .woie  I  to  start  objections  and  diffieultief  to-  any 

system   of  yours,   I   should   not  have  acted  with  half  that 
in  starting  objections  &  difficulties  to  it 

caution  and  reserve  * .    However,  if  any  thing  occur  to  you, 

will 
youH*  oblige  us  by  proposing  it. 

between 
"  I  allow  of  your  comparison  bctwist  the  Stoics  &  Sceptics, 

may 
-ae  just)  replyd  Philo.     But  you  anuet  observe,  at  the  same 

time,  that  the  mind  cannot  in  Stoicism,  support  the  highest 
Flights  of  Philosophy,  yet  even  when  it  sinks  lower,  it 
still  retains  somewhat  of  its  former  Disposition;  &  the 

The  Stoics  -the  Stoioo 

his  The  Cloic  kis-  will  his 

effects  of  4tfr  A  Reasoning  A  appear  in  A  4fcs- conduct  in  common 

thro'  his 

Life,  and  A  the  whole  Tenor  of  4fe-  actions.      The  Antient 


that  of 
A        schools,  particularly  that  of  A  Zeno,   produced  examples   of 

Virtue    &  Constancy  which    seem   astonishing  to   present 
times." 


It  is  necessary  to  correct  a  very  gross  misstatement  into 
which  some  idle  or  ill-intentioned  person  has  betrayed  an  in- 
genious and  learned  critic  respecting  the  papers  of  Mr.  Hume 
still  remaining  and  in  Edinburgh.  "  Those  who  have  exa- 
mined the  Hume  papers,  which  we  know  only  from  report, 
speak  highly  of  their  interest,  but  add  that  they  furnish  pain- 
ful disclosures  concerning  the  opinions  then  prevailing  among 
the  clergy  of  the  northern  metropolis ;  distinguished  ministers 
of  the  Gospel  encouraging  the  scoffs  of  their  familiar  friend, 
the  author  of  the  '  Essay  on  Miracles/  and  echoing  the  blas- 
phemies of  their  associate  the  author  of  the  *  Essay  on  Sui- 
cide.' "  These  Edinburgh  clergymen  are  then  called  "  be- 


HUME.  255 

trayers  of  their  Lord,"  and  much  more  is  added  of  a  like  kind.* 
Now  this  heavy  charge  against  some  of  the  most  pious  and 
most  virtuous  men  who  ever  adorned  any  church,  Dr.  Robert- 
son, Dr.  Blair,  Dr.  Jardine,  Dr.  Drysdale,  and  others,  seemed 
eminently  unlikely  to  be  well  founded.  I  have  caused 
minute  search  to  be  made ;  and  on  fully  examining  all  that 
collection,  the  result  is  to  give  the  most  unqualified  and 
peremptory  contradiction  to  this  scandalous  report.  It  is  in- 
conceivable how  such  a  rumour  should  have  arisen  in  any 
quarter. 

A  severe,  and  we  may  well  be  permitted  to  add,  a  singularly 
absurd  observation  of  Archbishop  Magee  is  cited  in  the  same 
criticism. f  His  Grace  describes  Hume's  heterodox  writings  as 
1 '  standing  memorials  of  a  heart  as  wicked  and  a  head  as  weak  as 
ever  pretended  to  the  character  of  philosopher  and  moralist." 

Now  I  have  no  right  to  complain  of  the  Most  Reverend 
Prelate  for  forming  so  low  an  estimate  of  Mr.  Hume's  under- 
standing, and  entertaining  so  bad  an  opinion  of  his  heart ;  an 
estimate  and  an  opinion  not  confined  by  his  Grace  to  one  class 
of  his  writings,  though  undeserved  by  any.  Yet  it  does  appear 
somewhat  strange  that  merely  because  one  of  the  most  able 
men  that  ever  lived,  and  one  of  the  most  virtuous,  unhappily 
entertained  religious  opinions  very  different  from  those  of  the 
Archbishop,  therefore  he  must  be  proclaimed  both  a  dunce  and 
a  knave.  It  may  also  be  permitted  us  to  wish  that  the  disciples 
of  the  religion  in  which  "  the  greatest  of  these  things  is 
charity,"  and  in  which  erring  mortals  are  forbidden  "  to  judge 
lest  they  be  judged,"  should  emulate  the  candour  and  the 
charity  of  unbelievers ;  for  assuredly  if  Mr.  Hume  had  lived  to 
read  the  Archbishop's  work  on  the  'Atonement/  though  he 
might  not  have  been  converted  by  it,  he  would  freely  have 
confessed  the  great  talents  and  the  unspotted  virtue  of  its 
author. 

*  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  Ixxiii.  p.  556.  f  ^*> 


(256) 


ROBERTSON. 


JOINED  in  friendship  and  in  fame  with  the  great 
man  whose  life  and  writings  we  have  been  contem- 
plating, and,  equally  with  him,  founder  of  the  repu- 
tation of  our  country  for  excellence  in  historical  com- 
position, was  William  Robertson,  also  a  native  of 
Scotland.  His  father,  a  learned,  pious,  and  eloquent 
divine,  was  settled  for  several  years  as  minister  of  the 
Scotch  church  in  London  Wall,  but  had  returned  to 
Scotland  before  his  marriage  with  Miss  Pitcairn  of 
Dreghorn,  in  the  county  of  Edinburgh,  and  was  settled 
at  Borthwick,  in  the  same  county,  at  the  time  of  the 
historian's  birth,  on  the  19th  of  September,  1721.  I 
have  been  curious  to  ascertain  the  kind  of  genius  which 
distinguished  his  father  beside  his  talent  for  drawing, 
of  which  I  possess  a  specimen  showing  some  skill,* 
and  by  the  kindness  of  a  kinsman  I  have  had  the  great 


*  It  is  a  miniature  in  Indian  ink  of  James,  Earl  of  Seafield,  one 
of  the  forfeited  Lords,  to  whom  he  was  believed  to  be  distantly  re- 
lated. A  tradition  prevailed  in  the  family  that  they  descended 
from  John  Knox.  The  historian  professed  himself  quite  unac- 
quainted with  the  reasons  of  this  rumour  which  connected  him  with 
"  the  rustic  Apostle,"  whose  character  and  conduct  he  has  described 
most  faithfully  and  strikingly. 


ROBERTSON.  257 

satisfaction  of  receiving  a  copy  of  the  only  sermon  which 
he  ever  published,  as  well  as  of  two  or  three  hymns, 
translations,  and  paraphrases  from  the  Hebrew  of  the 
Old  Testament.     The  sermon  is  able,  judicious,  cor- 
rectly composed,  both  for  accuracy  of  diction  and  se- 
verity of  taste,  and  contains  passages  of  great  beauty  and 
effect.     It  resembles  what  in  England  would  be  called 
an  Ordination  Sermon  or  Charge,  being  delivered  at 
the  opening  of  the  Metropolitan  Synod  in  May,  1737, 
and  is  a  full  description  of  the  duties  of  ministers,  the 
title  of  it  being  that  "  they  should  please  God  rather 
than   men."      The    poetry  is    elegant   and   classical. 
Both  productions  plainly  show  that  good  taste,  as  well 
as  strong  but  sober  reason,  came  to  the  great  historian 
by  descent  as  well  as  by  study.     But  that  his  father 
held  opinions  more  strict  on  some  subjects  than  the 
relaxed  rigour  of  the  Presbyterian  rule  prescribed  half 
a  century  later,  may  be  seen  from  his  requiring  his 
son's  promise  never  to  enter  a  play-house.     This  was 
stated  by  him  in  reference  to  his  father,  when  debating 
the  question  of  John  Home's  having  written  the  play 
of  '  Douglas/     It  is   needless  to   add  that,  however 
much  he  differed  with  his  father  on  this  subject,  he 
strictly  adhered  through  life  to  the  promise  thus  given, 
insomuch  that  when  Garrick  and  Henderson  at  dif- 
ferent times  visited  him,  they  entertained  and  interested 
him  by  exhibiting  to  him  in  private  specimens  of  the 
art  in  which  both  so  eminently  excelled.     The  tra- 
ditional  character  of  the  venerable  person  whom    I 
have  mentioned,  in  his  family,  was  anything  rather 
than  sour  or  stern,  how  severe  and  unbending  soever 
may  have  been  his  moral  feelings.     For  the  sweetness 

s 


258  ROBERTSON. 

of  his  placid  temper,  and  the  cheerfulness  of  his  kindly 
disposition,  I  have  heard  him  spoken  of  in  terms  of 
the  warmest  enthusiasm  by  such  of  his  children  as 
were  old  enough  at  the  time  of  his  decease  to  recollect 
him  distinctly.  The  idea  of  again  meeting  him  in 
another  state  was  ever  present  to  my  grandmother's 
mind,  (who  was  his  eldest  daughter,)  and  especially 
when  stricken  with  any  illness.  It  was  with  her  a 
common  source  of  argument  for  a  future  state,  as 
proved  by  the  light  of  nature,  and  in  her  pious  mind  a 
confirmation  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  that,  believ- 
ing in  the  Divine  goodness,  she  could  not  conceive 
the  extinction  of  so  much  angelical  purity  as  adorned 
her  parent,  and  so  fine  an  understanding  as  he  pos- 
sessed. Their  mother  was  a  woman  of  great  ability 
and  force  of  character  ;  but  like  many  of  that  cast, 
women  especially,  she  was  more  stern,  and  even  severe, 
than  amiable ;  and  this  contrast,  unfavourable  to  the 
one,  redounded  to  the  augmented  love  of  the  other. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  son's  character  derived 
a  strong  tincture  from  both  parents,  but  that  while  he 
was  mild  and  gentle  in  his  temper,  and  of  an  engaging 
demeanour,  his  firmness  and  decision,  nay,  his  inclina- 
tion towards  the  Stoical  system  of  morals,  and  even  to 
a  certain  degree  of  Stoical  feeling  too,  was  derived  from 
his  mother. 

The  death  of  these  two  excellent  persons  was  singu- 
larly melancholy,  and  served  to  impress  on  the  minds  of 
their  family  a  mournful  recollection  of  their  virtues. 
Mr.  Robertson  had  been  removed  to  the  Old  Grey  Friars 
Church  of  Edinburgh  in  1733  ;  and  ten  years  after- 
wards, both  he  and  his  wife,  seized  with  putrid  fever, 


ROBERTSON.  259 

died  within  a  few  days  of  one  another,  leaving  eight 
children,  six  daughters  and  two  sons,  of  whom  Wil- 
liam was  the  elder.  He  had  been  educated  first  at  the 
school  of  Dalkeith,  under  a  very  able  teacher  of  the 
name  of  Leslie,  a  gentleman  at  that  time  of  the  great- 
est eminence  in  his  profession.  On  his  father's  removal 
to  Edinburgh,  he  was  taken  thither  and  placed  at  the 
University,  though  only  twelve  years  old.  His  dili- 
gence in  study  was  unremitting,  and  he  pursued 
his  education  at  the  different  classes  for  eight  years 
with  indefatigable  zeal.  He  had  laid  down  for  himself 
a  strict  plan  of  reading ;  and  of  the  notes  which  he 
took  there  remain  a  number  of  books,  beginning  when 
he  was  only  fourteen,  all  bearing  the  sentence  as  a 
motto  which  so  characterised  his  love  of  learning,  indi- 
cating that  he  delighted  in  it  abstractedly,  and  for  its 
own  sake,  without  regarding  the  uses  to  which  it  might 
be  turned — "  Vita  sine  litteris  mors."  I  give  this  gloss 
upon  the  motto  or  text  advisedly.  His  whole  life  was 
spent  in  study.  I  well  remember  his  constant  habit  of 
quitting  the  drawing-room  both  after  dinner  and  again 
after  tea,  and  remaining  shut  up  in  his  library.  The 
period  of  time  when  I  saw  this  was  after  the  '  History 
of  America'  had  been  published,  and  before  Major  Ren- 
nell's  map  and  memoir  appeared,  which  he  tells  us 
first  suggested  the  '  Disquisition  on  Ancient  India/ 
Consequently,  for  above  ten  years  he  was  in  the  course 
of  constant  study,  engaged  in  extending  his  inform- 
ation, examining  and  revolving  the  facts  of  history, 
contemplating  ethical  and  theological  truths,  amus- 
ing his  fancy  with  the  strains  of  Greek  and  Roman 
poetry,  or  warming  it  at  the  fire  of  ancient  eloquence 


260  ROBERTSON. 

so  congenial  to  his  mind,  at  once  argumentative  and 
rhetorical ;  and  all  this  study  produced  not  one  written 
line,  though  thus  unremittingly  carried  on.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  ten  years  he  passed  in  constant 
study  from  1743,  the  beginning  of  his  residence  in  a 
small  parish,  of  very  little  clerical  duty,  to  1752,  when 
we  know  from  his  letter  to  Lord  Hailes  he  began  his 
first  work.  But,  indeed,  the  composition  of  his  three 
great  works,  spread  over  a  period  of  nearly  thirty  years, 
clearly  evinces  that  during  this  long  time  his  studies 
must  have  been  much  more  subservient  to  his  own  grati- 
fication than  to  the  preparation  of  his  writings,  which 
never  could  have  required  one  half  that  number  of  years 
for  their  completion. 

Translations  from  the  classics,  and  especially  from 
the  Greek,  of  which  he  was  a  perfect  master,  formed  a 
considerable  part  of  his  labour.  He  considered  this 
exercise  as  well  calculated  to  give  an  accurate  know- 
ledge of  our  own  language,  by  obliging  us  to  weigh 
the  shades  of  difference  between  words  or  phrases,  and 
to  find  the  expression,  whether  by  the  selection  of  the 
terms  or  the  turning  of  the  idiom,  which  is  required 
for  a  given  meaning  ;  whereas,  when  composing  origi- 
nally, the  idea  may  be  varied  in  order  to  suit  the  dic- 
tion which  most  easily  presents  itself,  of  which  the 
influence  produced  manifestly  by  rhymes,  in  moulding 
the  sense  as  well  as  suggesting  it,  affords  a  striking  and 
familiar  example.*  His  translationshowever,  were  not 
wholly  confined  to  their  purpose  of  teaching  composi- 

*  I  may  mention  that  both  he  and  his  son,  the  Judge,  prescribed 
this  exercise  to  me,  and,  among  others,  made  me  translate  all  the 
4  History '  of  Floras. 


ROBERTSON.  261 

tion ;  he  appears  to  have  at  the  same  time  indus- 
triously completed  the  work  of  rendering  some  ancient 
treatises,  which  peculiarly  interested  him.  He  had  even 
prepared  for  the  press  a  translation  of  Antoninus's  '  Me- 
ditations/* having  thus  early  felt  a  strong  leaning 
towards  the  Stoical  philosophy.  The  appearance  of  a 
very  poor  translation  at  Glasgow  prevented  the  execu- 
tion of  this  design,  but  the  work  remains  :  I  have  it 
now  in  my  possession,  and  shall  give  one  or  two  pas- 
sages in  the  Appendix.  In  elocution  he  acquired  faci- 
lity and  correctness  by  attending  a  society  which  met 
weekly  to  debate  literary  and  philosophical  questions. 
This  society  gave  rise  many  years  later  to  another, 
which  was  frequented  by  the  men  who  in  after  life 
proved  the  most  distinguished  of  their  countrymen  : 
Hume,  Smith  (neither  of  whom  ever  took  part  in  de- 
bate), Wedderburn  (afterwards  Chancellor),  Fergu- 
son, Home  (Lord  Kames),  were  of  the  number.  But 
his  thirst  of  knowledge  was  not  confined  to  these  its 
more  easy  and  more  inviting  walks.  He  had  deeply 
studied  some  branches  of  the  severer  sciences.  It  is 
not,  therefore,  without  good  cause  that  he  speaks  of 
mathematical  subjects  (in  his  preface  to  the  work  on 
India)  as  having  been  embraced  in  his  course  of  study, 
though  not  having  been  carried  so  far  as  a  discussion 
of  the  Brahminical  astronomy  might  require. 

In  1741,  according  to  the  constitution  of  the  Scotch 
Church,  he  was  licensed  by  the  Presbytery  of  Edin- 
burgh to  preach ;  orders  being  only  conferred  upon  a 

*  Marc.  Aurel. :  1W  EIQ  iavrov. 


262  ROBERTSON. 

presentation  to  a  living  or  Kirk.  Two  years  after,  he 
was  appointed  minister  of  Gladsmuir,  a  country  parish 
in  East  Lothian  ;  and  this  event  happened  fortunately 
on  the  eve  of  the  irreparable  loss  sustained  by  the 
family  in  the  death  of  both  their  parents,  which  left  his 
brother  and  his  sisters  wholly  without  provision.  He 
immediately  took  the  care  of  them  upon  himself,  and 
would  form  no  connexion  in  marriage  until  he  had  seen 

O 

them  placed  in  situations  of  independence.  He  thus 
remained  single  for  eight  years,  during  which  his  eldest 
and  favourite  sister  superintended  his  family.  In  her 
sound  judgment  he  always  placed  the  greatest  con- 
fidence ;  for  he  knew  that  to  great  beauty  she  added  a 
calm  and  a  firm  temper,  inherited  from  their  mother, 
but  with  greater  sweetness  of  disposition.  An  instance 
of  her  fortitude  and  presence  of  mind  was  sometimes 
mentioned  by  him,  though  never  alluded  to  by  herself, 
that  a  swarm  of  bees  having  settled  on  her  head  and 
shoulders  while  sitting  in  the  garden,  she  remained 
motionless  until  they  took  wing,  thus  saving  her  life, 
which  was  in  imminent  jeopardy.  She  was  married  in 
1750,  and  the  year  after  he  married  his  cousin,  Miss 
Nesbit. 

While  at  Gladsmuir,  where  he  remained  fifteen 
years,  his  life  was  passed  in  constant  study,  and  in  the 
duties  of  his  sacred  profession.  He  rose  very  early, 
and  devoted  the  whole  morning  to  his  books.  Later 
in  the  day  he  had  ample  time  for  visiting  the  sick  and 
the  poor  generally ;  and  he  gave  great  attention  to  the 
important  duty  of  examining  and  catechising  the  young 
people  under  his  care.  But  nothing  can  be  more 
absurd  than  the  statement  in  some  of  the  lives  which 


ROBERTSON.  263 

have  been  published,  as  if  his  whole  time  after  break- 
fast was  devoted  to  these  duties.  It  would  have  been 
utterly  impossible  to  find  subjects  for  his  visits  in 
that  small  country  parish,  not  containing  two  hundred 
families. 

It  is  remarkable  that,  with  all  the  love  of  study 
which  formed  so  striking  a  feature  of  his  character,  nay, 
with  the  contemplative  disposition  which  his  thirst  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  plainly  indicates,  he  should 
have  joined  an  extraordinary  fitness  for  the  less 
speculative  pursuits  of  active  life,  and  a  manifest 
willingness  to  bear  a  part  in  them.  The  rebellion  of 
1745  afforded  an  occasion  on  which  he  conceived  that 
the  dangers  surrounding  civil  and  religious  liberty 
called  for  the  exertions  of  all  good  citizens  in  its 
defence.  On  the  news  of  the  rebels  marching  towards 
Edinburgh  he  quitted  his  parsonage  (manse)  and  joined 
the  volunteers  of  the  capital.  How  far  they  marched 
is  not  known ;  but  that  they  must  have  proceeded 
towards  the  Highlands,  and  for  some  time  remained 
under  arms,  is  certain  from  this,  that  he  always  men- 
tioned the  effect  of  the  first  coal  fire  on  his  head  after 
he  had  been  for  some  time  accustomed  to  burn  peat 
only.  When  Edinburgh  was  surrendered  he  joined  a 
small  body  of  persons  from  the  city,  who  offered  their 
services  at  Haddington  to  the  Commander-in-Chief. 

Soon  after  his  marriage  he  was  returned  as  a  member 
to  the  General  Assembly,  and  again  his  capacity  and 
his  inclination  for  active  life ,  appeared.  He  devoted 
himself  assiduously  to  the  business  of  that  body ;  and, 
having  a  very  strong  and  clear  opinion  in  favour  of  lay 
patronage,  the  great  question  which  divided  the  Church 


264  ROBERTSON. 

of  Scotland  in  that  day,  as,  in  truth,  it  again  does  in 
our  own,  he  assumed  the  lead  of  its  advocates.  At  first 
they  formed  a  small  minority  of  the  Assembly ;  but, 
by  degrees,  reason  enforced  by  eloquence  had  its  course, 
and  he  gained  ultimately  a  complete  victory  over  his 
adversaries. 

The  persecution  of  John  Home,  by  the  fanatical 
party,  for  writing  the  moral  and  innocent  and  even 
pious  tragedy  of '  Douglas/  gave  another  occasion  to 
show  Dr.  Robertson's  liberal  and  rational  sentiments. 
Such  of  the  clergy  as  had  attended  the  theatre  to 
witness  the  representation  were  involved  in  the  same 
bigoted  outcry.  Home  himself  bent  to  the  storm,  and 
resigned  his  living  ;  Robertson's  judicious  but  spirited 
defence  saved  the  rest  from  more  than  a  rebuke  to 
some,  and  a  few  weeks'  suspension  to  others.  He  man- 
fully explained  why  he  had  never  attended  himself,  say- 
ing, that  it  was  only  owing  to  the  promise  already  men-  ' 
tioned  ;  but  he  avowed  that  he  saw  no  harm  in  the  at- 
tendance of  his  brethren  whom  no  such  promise  bound. 

He  was  now  looked  up  to  as  the  acknowledged 
leader  of  the  moderate  party  ;  and,  as  they  soon  after 
became  the  ruling  body  in  the  Church,  he  must  be 
considered  as  the  leading  minister  of  that  venerable 
body  during  all  the  time  he  continued  in  the  Assembly. 
Of  the  lustre  with  which  his  talents  now  shone  forth 
all  men  are  agreed  in  giving  the  same  account.  I  have 
frequently  conversed  with  those  who  could  well  re- 
member his  conduct  as  a  great  party  chief,  and  their 
uniform  observation  was  upon  the  manifest  capacity 
which  he  displayed  for  affairs.  "  That  he  was  not  in 
his  right  place  when  only  a  clerical  leader  or  a  literary 


ROBERTSON.  265 

man,  but  was  plainly  designed  by  nature,  as  well  as 
formed  by  study,  for  a  great  practical  statesman  and 
orator,"  is  the  remark  which  seems  to  have  struck  all 
who  observed  his  course.  His  eloquence  was  bold  and 
masculine  ;  his  diction,  which  flowed  with  perfect  ease, 
resembled  that  of  his  writings,  but  of  course  became 
suited  to  the  exigencies  of  extemporaneous  speech.  He 
had  the  happy  faculty  of  conveying  an  argument  in  a 
statement,  and  would  more  than  half  answer  his 
adversary  by  describing  his  propositions  and  his  reason- 
ings. He  showed  the  greatest  presence  of  mind  in 
debate  ;  and,  as  nothing  could  ruffle  the  calmness  of  his 
temper,  it  was  quite  impossible  to  find  him  getting  into 
a  difficulty,  or  to  take  him  at  a  disadvantage.  He  knew 
precisely  the  proper  time  of  coming  forward  to  debate, 
and  the  time  when,  repairing  other  men's  errors, 
supplying  their  deficiencies,  and  repelling  the  adverse 
assaults,  he  could  make  sure  of  most  advantageously 
influencing  the  result  of  the  conflict,  to  which  he  ever 
steadily  looked,  and  not  to  display.  If  his  habitual 
command  of  temper  averted  anger  and  made  him  loved, 
his  undeviating  dignity  both  of  demeanour  and  of  con- 
duct secured  him  respect.  The  purity  of  his  blameless 
life,  and  the  rigid  decorum  of  his  manners,  made  all 
personal  attacks  upon  him  hopeless ;  and,  in  the 
management  of  party  concerns,  he  was  so  far  above 
any  thing  like  manoeuvre  or  stratagem,  that  he  achieved 
the  triumph  so  rare,  and  for  a  party  chief  so  hard  to 
win,  of  making  his  influence  seem  always  to  rest  on 
reason  and  principle,  and  his  success  in  carrying  his 
measures  to  arise  from  their  wisdom,  and  not  from  his 
own  power. 

They  relate  one  instance  of  his  being  thrown  some- 


266  ROBERTSON. 

what  off  his  guard,  and  showing  a  feeling  of  great 
displeasure,  if  not  of  anger,  in  a  severe  remark  upon  a 
young  member.  But  the  provocation  was  wholly  out 
of  the  ordinary  course  of  things,  and  it  might  well 
have  excused,  nay,  called  for,  a  much  more  unsparing 
visitation  than  his  remark,  which  really  poured  oil 
into  the  wound  it  made.  Mr.  Cullen,  afterwards 
Lord  Cullen,  was  celebrated  for  his  unrivalled  talent 
of  mimicry,  and  Dr.  Robertson,  who  was  one  of  his 
favourite  subjects,  had  left  the  Assembly  to  dine, 
meaning  to  return.  As  the  aisle  of  the  old  church, 
consecrated  to  the  Assembly  meetings,  was  at  that  late 
hour  extremely  dark,  the  artist  took  his  opportunity  of 
rising  in  the  Principal's  place  and  delivering  a  short 
speech  in  his  character,  an  evolution  which  he  accom- 
plished without  detection.  The  true  chief  returned 
soon  after  ;  and,  at  the  proper  time  for  his  interposition, 
rose  to  address  the  house.  The  venerable  Assembly 
was  convulsed  with  laughter,  for  he  seemed  to  be 
repeating  what  he  had  said  before,  so  happy  had  the 
imitation  been.  He  was  astonished  and  vexed  when 
some  one  explained  the  mystery — opened  as  it  were  the 
dark  passage  where  Mr.  Cullen  had  been  acting.  He 
said  he  saw  how  it  was,  and  hoped  that  a  gentleman 
who  could  well  speak  in  his  own  person  would  at 
length  begin  to  act  the  character  which  properly 
belonged  to  him.* 

That  great  additional  weight  accrued  to  him  as  ruler 

*  A  somewhat  similar  scene  occurred  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  the  publication  of  Mr.  Tickell's  celebrated  jeu  d'esprit,  '  Anti- 
cipation/ It  only  appeared  on  the  morning  of  the  day  when  the 
session  opened,  and  some  of  the  speakers  who  had  not  read  it 
verified  it,  to  the  no  small  amusement  of  those  who  had. 


BOBEETSON.  267 

of  the  Church,  from  the  lustre  of  his  literary  fame, 
cannot  be  doubted ;  and  that  the  circumstance  of  his 
connexion  with  the  University  always  securing  him  a 
seat  in  the  Assembly,  while  others  went  out  in  rotation, 
tended  greatly  to  consolidate  his  influence,  is  equally 
clear.  But  these  accidents,  as  they  are  with  respect  to 
the  General  Assembly,  would  have  availed  him  little, 
had  not  his  intrinsic  qualities  as  a  great  practical 
statesman  secured  his  power.  He  may  be  said  to  have 
directed  the  ecclesiastical  affairs  of  Scotland  for  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  with  unexampled  success, 
and  without  any  compromise  of  his  own  opinions,  or 
modification  of  his  views  of  church  policy  ;  and  he 
quitted  the  scene  of  his  brilliant  career  while  in  the 
full  vigour  of  his  faculties,  and  the  untarnished  lustre 
of  his  fame. 

At  the  latter  end  of  George  II/s  reign,  that  Prince, 
or  his  advisers,  deemed  it  expedient  to  make  a  proposal, 
having  for  its  object  the  elevation  of  this  eminent 
person  to  a  high  rank  in  the  English  Church.  The 
particulars  are  not  known ;  but  Mr.  Stewart,  who 
probably  had  some  intimation  of  them,  says  that  the 
offer  was  met  with  "  a  rejection,  in  terms  which 
effectually  prevented  a  repetition  of  the  attempt." 
Probably  he  considered  it  as,  in  substance,  an  insult  to 
his  character  for  sincerity  as  well  as  independence ; 
for  though  no  man  was  less  tainted  by  narrow-minded 
bigotry,  and  none  probably  could  regard  less  than  he 
did  the  differences,  rather  political  than  religious, 
which  separate  the  two  churches  as  matters  of  con- 
science, he  yet  had  declared  his  aversion  to  Episcopacy 
on  grounds  not  to  be  shaken,  at  any  rate  not  to  be 
shaken  by  a  proposal  accompanied  with  temporal 


268  ROBERTSON. 

advantage,  and  lie  would  have  deemed  his  entertaining 
it  for  an  instant  a  corrupt  sacrifice  of  his  principles  to 
the  gratification  of  his  ambition. 

While  the  conflict  was  raging  in  the  Church  Courts 
on  Patronage,  he  had  given  to  theworld  his  first  pub- 
lished works — his  historical  articles  contributed  to  a 
periodical  work  established  by  Smith,  Wedderburn 
(afterwards  Chancellor),  Jardine,  Blair,  Russell,  and 
others,  under  the  name,  since  become  more  famous,  of  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  and  a  sermon  preached  before  the 
Society  for  promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  in  January 
1755.  The  Review  contained  many  able  and  learned 
papers,  and  reached  a  second  number,  when  its  con- 
ductors were  obliged  to  give  it  up,  in  consequence 
of  the  fanatical  outcry  raised  against  a  most  justly 
severe  criticism  upon  a  wretched  production  of  theolo- 
gical bigotry  and  intolerance  which  had  just  disgraced 
the  extreme  party  in  the  Church.*  The  subject  of 
the  sermon  is  one  peculiarly  suited  to  his  habits  of 
inquiry — the  situation  of  the  world  at  the  time  of  our 
Saviour's  appearance  as  connected  with  the  success  of 
his  mission.  The  merits  of  this  piece,  as  a  sermon, 
are  very  great ;  and  it  is  admirable,  as  an  historical 
composition,  in  that  department  which  Voltaire  first 
extended  to  all  the  records  of  past  times.  It  was 

*  This  criticism  was  from  the  elegant  pen  of  Dr.  Jardine,  one  of 
the  most  pious  ministers  of  the  Church,  and  a  very  intimate  friend  of 
the  Principal.  The  papers  of  the  latter  appear  to  have  been  chiefly 
written  on  subjects  which  he  had  occasion  to  consider  as  incidental  to 
his  historical  researches,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  put  forth  his 
strength  in  their  composition.  They  are  slight  as  compared  with  Adam 
Smith's  review  of  Johnson's  Dictionary,  and  his  excellent  letter  to 
the  editors  on  the  General  State  of  Literature,  recommending  an  en- 
largement of  their  plan,  which  was  confined  to  Scottish  publications. 


ROBERTSON.  269 

written  and  published  before  the  appearance  of  the 
1  Essai  sur  les  Moeurs ;'  though,  as  has  been  already 
said,*  detached  portions  of  that  work  had  appeared  in 
a  Paris  periodical  work. 

As  a  preacher  he  was  most  successful.  His  lan- 
guage, of  course,  was  pure,  his  composition  graceful, 
his  reasoning  cogent,  his  manner  impressive.  He  spoke 
according  to  the  custom  of  the  Scottish  Church,  hav- 
ing only  notes  to  assist  his  memory.  His  notions  of 
usefulness,  and  his  wish  to  avoid  the  fanaticism  of  the 
High  Church  party  (what  with  us  would  be  called  the 
Low  Church,  or  Evangelical),  led  him  generally  to 
prefer  moral  to  theological  or  Gospel  subjects.  Yet 
he  mingled  also  three  themes  essential  to  the  duties  of  a 
Christian  pastor.  He  loved  to  dwell  on  the  goodness 
of  the  Deity,  as  shown  forth  not  only  in  the  monu- 
ments of  creation,  but  the  work  of  love  in  the  redemp- 
tion of  mankind.  He  delighted  to  expatiate  on  the 
fate  of  man  in  a  future  state  of  being,  and  to  contrast 
the  darkness  of  the  views  which  the  wisest  of  the  heathen 
had,  with  the  perfect  light  of  the  new  dispensation.  He 
oftentimes  would  expound  the  Scriptures,  taking,  as  is 
the  usage  of  the  Kirk,  a  portion  of  some  chapter  for 
the  subject  of  what  is  called  lecture  as  contradis- 
tinguished from  sermon ;  and  in  these  discourses,  the 
richness  of  his  learning,  the  remarkable  clearness  of  his 
explanation,  the  felicity  of  his  illustration,  shone  forth, 
as  well  as  the  cogency  and  elegance  of  his  practical 
application  to  our  duties  in  life,  the  end  and  aim  of  all 
his  teaching.  I  have  heard  him  repeatedly,  occupying 
as  he  did  from  1759  to  his  death  the  pulpit  of  the  Old 

*  Life  of  Voltaire. 


270  ROBERTSON. 

Grey  Friars,  where  his  father  had  been  minister  before 
him.  But  one  sermon,  though  I  was  very  young  at  the 
time,  I  never  can  forget.  The  occasion  was  the  celeb  ra- 
tion (5th  November,  1T88)  of  the  centenary  of  the  Revo- 
lution, and  his  sister,  considering  that  to  have  heard 
such  a  man  discourse  on  such  a  subject  was  a  thing  to 
be  remembered  by  any  one  through  life  ever  after,  took 
me  to  hear  him.  It  was  of  singular  and  striking  inte- 
rest, for  the  extreme  earnestness,  the  youthful  fervour 
with  which  it  was  delivered.  But  it  was  in  some  pas- 
sages upon  a  revolution  which  he  expected  and  saw 
approaching,  if  not  begun,  as  well  as  upon  the  one 
which  was  long  past,  and  almost  faded  from  the 
memory  in  the  more  absorbing  interest  of  present 
affairs,  I  well  remember  his  referring  to  the  events 
now  going  on  on  the  Continent,  as  the  forerunners  of 
far  greater  ones  which  he  saw  casting  their  shadows 
before.  He  certainly  had  no  apprehensions  of  mischief, 
but  he  was  full  of  hope  for  the  future,  and  his  exult- 
ation was  boundless  in  contemplating  the  deliverance 
of  "  so  many  millions  of  so  great  a  nation  from  the 
fetters  of  arbitrary  government."  His  sister  and  I 
often  afterwards  reflected  on  this  extraordinary  dis- 
course with  wonder,  and  I  feel  almost  certain  of  some 
such  expressions  as  these  having  been  used,  and  of  his 
foretelling  that  our  neighbours  would  one  day  have  to 
celebrate  such  an  event  as  had  now  called  us  together. 
We  dined  with  him  the  same  day  on  leaving  the 
church,  for  it  was  the  afternoon  service  that  he  had 
performed.  His  eldest  son,  afterwards  Lord  Robert- 
son, was  of  the  company ;  and  when  the  Principal 
expressed  his  satisfaction  at  having  had  his  presence  at 
church  (a  thing  by  no  means  of  weekly  occurrence), 


ROBERTSON.  271 

the  answer  was,  "  Aye,  sir,  if  you'll  always  give  us  such, 
sermons,  you  may  make  it  worth  our  while."  "  Ah," 
answered  he,  "you  would  like  it,  as  the  boys  say," 
referring  to  a  vulgar  school  taunt.  I  have  again  and 
again  asked  my  learned  kinsman  to  show  me  the  ser- 
mon, which  he  admitted  he  possessed  among  his 
father's  papers,  fairly  written  out.  His  answer  was 
that  he  wished  to  avoid  giving  it  publicity,  because,  in 
the  violence  of  the  times,  the  author  of  it  would  be 
set  down  for  a  Jacobin,  how  innocent  soever  he  was 
at  the  day  of  its  being  preached.  Those  times  have  hap- 
pily long  since  passed  away.  I  cannot  believe  that  any 
one  has  ventured  to  destroy  this  remarkable  produc- 
tion, though  hitherto  it  has  not  been  found.* — I  return 
to  the  course  of  his  life. 

From  1752  to  1758  he  had  been  diligently  occu- 
pied with  the  '  History  of  Scotland  ;'  in  1759  it  ap- 
peared. The  success  of  this  admirable  work  was  as 
immediate  and  as  universal  as  it  was  deserved.  The 
whole  edition,  though  of  two  quarto  volumes,  was  ex- 
hausted in  less  than  a  month.  There  was  but  one 
voice  in  every  part  of  the  country,  and  among  all 
ranks  and  descriptions  of  men,  both  upon  its  pure  and 
beautiful  composition,  its  interesting  narrative,  and 
its  anxious  and  conscientious  accuracy.  A  murmur 
was  heard  from  the  Jacobite  party,  who  in  Scotland 


*  My  kinsman,  executor  of  Lord  Robertson,  has  at  length,  after 
many  a  fruitless  search,  succeeded  in  finding  the  sermon,  and  it 
now  lies  before  me,  written  in  his  own  hand.  I  can  see  the  places 
where  he  added  remarks  made  on  the  inspiration  of  the  moment, 
particularly  the  one  above  cited,  of  which  I  am  the  more  certain 
from  the  subsequent  conversations  of  his  sister,  who  heard  it  with  me. 


272  ROBERTSON. 

were  more  wild  and  romantic,  and  more  unreasoning, 
than  in  the  southern  parts  of  the  island.  Not  satis- 
fied with  the  far  less  harsh  view  of  Mary's  conduct 
which  he  had  taken  compared  with  Hume's,  partial  as 
Hume  was  to  the  Stuarts,  it  was  the  fashion  of  this 
little  set  of  enthusiasts  to  say  that  he  had  "  cut  her 
with  a  razor  dipped  in  oil."  It  was  no  little  conces- 
sion to  have  acquitted  her  of  all  part  in  Babington's 
conspiracy,  to  have  left  her  share  in  Darnley's  murder 
hanging  in  doubt,  to  have  pronounced  a  decisive  judg- 
ment against  Elizabeth,  for  her  whole  conduct  both 
towards  the  Scots  and  their  Queen.  These  silly  per- 
sons would  not  be  appeased  unless,  in  the  face  of  all 
her  own  conduct  and  her  own  words,  she  was  ac- 
quitted of  the  outrage  on  common  decency  of  wed- 
ding her  husband's  murderer,  and  screening  his  accom- 
plices from  punishment.  But  the  clamour,  though  it 
produced  a  book  or  two  in  support  of  this  most  des- 
perate cause,  spread  very  little  even  in  Scotland ;  and 
the  national  vanity  was  inexpressibly  gratified  by  this 
great  triumph  in  the  most  important  and  most  popu- 
lar of  all  the  walks  of  polite  learning.  The  delight  of 
his  friends  was  of  course  still  more  lively.  Aware  of 
his  merits,  as  they  always  had  been,  and  somewhat 
impatient  of  the  length  of  time  which  he  had  suffered 
his  known  capacity  to  remain  barren,  now  that  they 
saw  the  abundant  fruits  crowning  his  works,  they 
exulted  as  if  they  gathered  in  the  rich  harvest  in 
common,  and  confessed  that  the  postponement  had  not 
stunted  the  growth,  but,  like  a  fallow,  made  it  more 
plenteous  and  more  rich.  Ill  truth,  the  discipline  of 
so  many  years'  study  to  which  he  had  subjected  him- 
self, the  long  delay  which  he  had  interposed,  though 


ROBERTSON.  273 

all  the  while  thoroughly  versed  in  all  the  arts  of  com- 
position, had  the  salutary  effect  of  making  his  first 
work  as  mature  as  his  latest  production.  This  is  per- 
haps a  singular  instance  of  one  who  had  from  his  early 
youth  been  studying  diction,  who  had  been  constantly 
writing,  and  had  for  long  years  been  almost  as  expert  as 
he  ever  became,  withholding  himself  from  employing 
the  faculty  which  he  had  acquired,  except  to  render 
himself  still  more  dexterous  in  its  use,  and  continuing 
four  and  twenty  years  ere  he  appeared  before  the 
world,  nay,  eighteen  years  before  he  even  began 
to  write  the  work  which  should  lay  the  foundation 
of  his  fame.  He  was  eight  and  thirty  when  he 
published  it.  But  then  it  is  another  singularity 
as  great,  that  considerable  doubt  remains  if  any 
of  his  subsequent  works  surpassed  this  first  pro- 
duction. 

Among  his  exulting  friends,  David  Hume  deserve 
to  be  singled  out  for  the  heartiness  of  his  disinterested 
joy.  Far  from  not  bearing  a  brother  near  the 
throne,  he  entirely  rejoiced  in  his  rival's  success,  and 
even  in  the  uniting  of  all  testimonies  to  his  merits,  so 
strongly  contrasted  with  the  universal  clamour  for 
some  years  raised  against  his  own  'History/  and  the 
niggard  praise  which,  even  after  five  years,  that  work 
received.  Among  other  kind  acts,  he  encouraged 
some  literary  men  at  Paris  to  translate  the  new  l  His- 
tory ;'  and  he  thus  jocosely  touches  upon  the  loss  of 
his  undivided  superiority  as  an  historian  :  "  I  warn 
you,  however,  this  is  the  last  time  I  shall  ever  speak 
the  least  good  of  it.  A  plague  take  you !  Here  I  sat 

T 


274  ROBERTSON. 

near  the  historical  summit  of  Parnassus,  immediately 
under  Dr.  Smollett,*  and  you  have  the  impudence  to 
squeeze  yourself  past  me,  and  place  yourself  directly  un- 
der his  feet!  Do  you  imagine  that  this  can  be  agree- 
able to  me  ?  and  must  not  I  be  guilty  of  great  simpli- 
city to  contribute  by  my  endeavours  to  your  thrusting 
me  out  of  my  place  both  at  Paris  and  in  London  ? 
But  I  give  you  warning  that  you  will  find  the  matter 
somewhat  difficult,  at  least  in  the  former  city.  A 
friend  of  mine  who  is  there,  writes  home  to  his  father 
the  strangest  accounts  of  that  kind,  which  my  modesty 
will  not  allow  me  to  repeat,  but  which  it  allowed  me 
very  deliciously  to  swallow." 

Just  before  the  '  History '  was  published,  the  author 
visited  London  for  the  first  time ;  and  his  merit  hav- 
ing been  made  known  to  some  persons  of  eminence 
and  of  good  taste,  who  had  been  allowed  to  peruse  por- 
tions, at  least,  of  the  proof  sheets,  his  reception  was  of 
a  distinguished  kind.  I  have  now  before  me  some  letters 
of  his  to  his  bosom  friend,  and  steady  coadjutor  in 
ecclesiastical  politics,  Dr.  Jardine,  and  it  is  pleasing 
to  mark  the  natural  expression  of  his  satisfaction  with 
his  visit. 

The  first  letter  which  I  shall  give  begins  with 
a  good  deal  of  narrative  upon  the  success  of  John 
Home's c  Agis/  At  that  time  the  violence  and  folly  of 
the  fanatical  party  made  the  subject  of  this  elegant 
and  amiable  writer's  dramas  doubly  interesting  to  his 
friends.  The  tragedy,  so  successful  at  first,  chiefly  be- 

*  He  of  course  had  the  lowest  opinion  of  this  writer's  parts  as 
an  historian. 


ROBERTSON.  275 

cause  of  its  predecessor,  '  Douglas,'*  having  succeeded 
through  merit,  and  partly  because  of  high  patronage, 
is  a  very  middling  performance,  and,  like  all  Mr. 
Home's  plays,  except  '  Douglas,'  has  long  since  sunk 
into  deserved  oblivion.  Dr.  Robertson's  amiable  zeal 
for  his  friend,  and  his  exultation  at  the  success  of  his 
piece,  is  very  striking  in  this  letter. 

"  MY  DEAR  SlB,  "  Thursday,  March  16th. 

"  When  I  wrote  you  the  history  of  '  Agis,'  I  certainly 
foresaw  some  of  the  purposes  for  which  it  would  serve,  and 
that  you  would  naturally  employ  it  for  an  use  of  mortification 
to  the  wicked,  as  well  as  of  comfort  to  the  pious.  I  could  not, 
however,  have  any  presage  either  of  the  absurdity  of  the 
players,  or  of  the  malice  and  credulity  of  Home's  enemies, 
which  rendered  my  account  doubly  seasonable.  I  now  put 
it  in  your  power  to  mortify  them  with  still  fuller  accounts 
of  the  triumphs  of '  Agis.'  Never  were  there  more  crowded 
houses  than  during  the  whole  run  of  the  play.  The  Prince 
of  Wales  was  present  no  less  than  three  different  nights,  one 
of  which  a  benefit  night.  Such  honourable  distinction  was 
never  formerly  bestowed  upon  any  new  piece.  The  snarlers 
and  small  critics  are  somewhat  enraged  at  this,  and  every  one 
against  Lord  Bute ;  though  I  can  assure  you,  the  frequency  of 
the  Prince's  attendance  was  his  own  proper  motion,  and  pro- 
ceeded from  his  admiration  of  '  Agis.'  But  what  is  still  more 
honourable  for  Home,  since  the  ninth  night,  '  Agis'  has  been 
acted  twice,  and  both  times  the  house  was  more  crowded  (if 
possible),  and  the  applause  louder  than  ever.  There  has  ap- 

*  *  Douglas'  was  the  second  in  date  of  composition,  though  the  first 
performed.  Garrick  had  rejected  it  peremptorily;  and  it  was 
brought  out  with  great  success  at  Edinburgh.  Garrick  had  also 
rejected  all  Home's  other  pieces  ;  until  Lord  Bute  and  other  persons 
of  distinction  patronised  the  poet,  when  the  manager,  following  his 
ignoble  nature,  suddenly  became  the  zealous  and  forward  patron  of 
all  he  wrote,  and  joined  those  noble  supporters  in  fencing  the  very 
poor  tragedy  of  <  Agis'  on  the  public. 

T   2 


'276  ROBERTSON, 

peared  a  critic  on  'Agis,'  one  Henerden.  I  am  persuaded 
Home  has  hired  him,  and  given  him  a  crown  to  write  such 
execrable  stuff.  Every  body  laughs  at  it ;  and,  in  the  wicked 
language  of  this  town,  it  is  called  a  d d  tame  piece  of  non- 
sense. Wedderburn  makes  all  the  progress  we  could  wish : 
even  the  door-keeper  of  the  House  of  Peers  tells  me  that  '  he 

is  a  d d  clever  fellow,  and  speaks  devilish  good  English.' 

This  very  morning  he  was  retained  in  a  Plantation  cause 
before  the  Privy  Council,  which  is  a  thing  altogether  extra- 
ordinary for  so  young  a  man.  You  cannot  imagine  what  odd 
fellows  his  rivals  are,  and  how  far  and  how  fast  he  is  likely 
to  go. 

"  I  can't  say  so  much  about  my  own  progress.  I  unluckily 
have  but  one  copy  of  my  '  History/  otherwise  I  might  advance 
with  more  rapidity.  I  have  been  with  Horace  Walpole,  a  son 
of  Sir  Robert's,  a  very  clever  man,  and  of  great  leading  among 
the  literary  people  of  fashion.  We  had  much  conversation  about 
Mary.  He  is  one  of  the  greatest  critics  I  ever  met  with,  as 
to  the  facts  in  the  period.  Our  notions  jumped  perfectly. 
Part  of  my  papers  are  in  his  hands  ;  the  Duke  of  Argyle  has 
another ;  Scott,  who  was  preceptor  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  a 
third  ;  and  Lord  Royston  a  fourth.  I  have  got  from  this  last 
a  vast  collection  of  original  papers  ;  many  of  them  are  curious. 
I  am  advised  by  several  people  to  transcribe  as  many  as  will 
swell  the  book  to  a  guinea  price.  The  taste  of  this  town  is 
such,  that  such  an  addition  will  be  esteemed  very  meritorious ; 
and  though  it  cost  me  little  but  having  an  amanuensis,  it  will 
add  to  the  price  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  bulk.  You 
see  I  begin  to  learn  the  craft  of  authorship.  I  have  hitherto 
industriously  avoided  meeting  with  booksellers,  but  shall  soon 
begin  my  operations  with  them.  I  have  had  a  great  offer 
from  Hamilton  and  Balfour,  which  you'll  probably  have  heard 
of.  I  can  scarcely  believe  that  even  the  effrontery  of 

W r's  roguery  could  have  seriously  set  his  face  to  such  a 

scheme  as  that  you  mention.  I  scarce  think  it  necessary, 
upon  such  a  surmise,  to  write  to  Lord  Milton ;  but  I  shall 
drop  a  line  to  Mrs.  Wedderburn  or  Miss  Hepburn,  in  order 
to  prevent  any  such  foolish  measure  being  heard  with  patience. 
I  have  not  yet  seen  either  Dr.  Chandler  or  the  Lions.  All  the 


ROBERTSON.  277 

other  scenes  you  recommend  to  me  I  have  seen.  I  have 
heard  the  Bishops  of  Salisbury  and  Oxford.  There  was  some 
elegance,  a  spice  of  drollery,  and  not  a  little  buffoonery  in 
the  sermon  of  the  latter ;  and  his  audience  admired  and 
laughed,  and  were  edified.  Blair  is  but  a  ninny  of  an  orator  ; 
he  makes  his  hearers  serious,  and  sets  them  a- crying;  but 
here  they  go  to  heaven,  laughing  as  they  go.  You  cannot 
imagine  what  strange  characters  I  have  met  with,  which  I 
cannot  now  take  off.  I  am  a  sort  of  domestic  with  Dr. 
Campbell,  the  best  of  all  the  authors  I  have  seen.*  I  am  often 
with  Tucker  of  Bristol.  I  dined  and  drank  claret  with  Douglas, 
the  murderer  of  Bower." — "  There  were  nine  other  persons  in 
company  (at  another  dinner),  all  of  them  retainers  to  the  author 
or  bookseller ;  and  I  will  draw  you  such  a  picture  of  that  night, 
that  you  shall  say  the  seeing  of  it  alone  was  worth  my  coming 
to  London.  I  wrote  Bruce  a  long  letter  about  news  some 
days  ago :  you  would  probably  meet  with  him  and  hear  its 
contents.  The  Hanoverians  are  still  making  progress,  as  you 
will  read  more  at  large  in  the  '  Chronicle/  The  only  thing 
which  engrosses  the  talk  of  politicians  is  the  flight  of  Bonneville. 
He  was  the  officer  who  dissuaded  the  landing  at  Rochefort, 
and  who,  before  the  court-martial,  gave  evidence  directly 
opposite  to  Clerk's.  He  went  over  to  Holland ;  was  seen  often 
at  d'Affry's,  the  French  Ambassador's :  he  told  him,  '  Sir, 
I  do  possess  some  merit;  I  saved  one  town  to  France, 
and  three  generals  to  England.'  His  evidence  acquitted 
Mordant,  &c.  From  Holland  he  went  over  to  France.  You 
may  believe  Pitf  and  Colonel  Clerk,  &c.,  enjoy  this  adventure, 
which  is  indeed  a  remarkable  one.  Last  day  I  was  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  of  which  I  am  made  free  by  "- 

Unfortunately  the  MS.  breaks  off  just  as  he  was  about 
to  describe  the  debate. 

*  The  able  author  of  the  fine  historical  pieces  in  the  edition 
1740  of  Harris's  *  Voyages.'  Dr.  R.  always  used  to  mention  his 
Presbyterian  horror  of  the  "  profane  expletives  "  which  he  found 
formed  a  part  of  all  English  colloquial  discourse  in  those  days. 

t  Sic. 


278  ROBERTSON. 

The  following  letter  gives  a  further  account  of 
the  historian's  progress  in  preparing  for  the  publica- 
tion of  his  work.  It  is  written  to  the  same  friend, 
Dr.  Jardine  : — 

«  MY  DEAR  JOHN,  "  London,  20th  April,  1759. 

i(  I  write  this  in  the  British  Coffee-House,*  in  the  middle 
of  a  company  playing  at  cards  and  drinking  claret.  After  this 
preamble,  you  are  not  to  expect  either  a  very  long  or  a  very 
distinct  epistle.  As  to  your  letter,  I  postponed  writing  an 
answer  to  it,  in  expectation  of  hearing  some  account  of  the 
transactions  of  the  Haddington  Presbytery ;  but  as  that  has 
not  come  to  hand,  I  must  proceed  to  write  without  it.  I  am 
as  much  interested  as  you  can  possibly  be  in  preventing  the 
intended  elevation  of  Turnstill  to  the  Moderator's  chair.  But 
how  could  it  possibly  enter  into  the  head  of  such  a  politician  as 
you  are,  and  one  who  has  seen  London  too,  that  there  was  any 
method  of  engaging  our  laymen  here  to  take  part  in  a  ques- 
tion about  which  they  (laymen)  are  totally  indifferent  ?  At 
the  same  time,  I  am  earnest  in  giving  opposition,  and  I  think 
it  may  be  made  with  great  probability  of  success ;  but  I 
should  be  apt  to  imagine  that  neither  Dick  nor  Hamilton  are 
the  proper  candidates.  You  know  neither  of  them  stand  well 
with  Lord  Milton ; j  and  if  either  you  or  I  should  give  our 
interest  or  solicit  for  them,  you  know  what  a  handle  might 
be  made  of  it.  If  Morrison,  or  some  such  grave,  inoffensive, 
ecclesiastical  personage  could  be  set  up,  I  join  you  with  all  my 
vigour.  You  must  make  the  choice  as  well  as  you  can. 
Why  may  you  not  stand  yourself  ?  At  any  rate,  fix  upon  some 
feasible  man.  Write  a  few  letters,  and  endeavour  to  raise  the 
jealousy  of  the  brethren  against  a  perpetual  moderator,  and 
I  don't  doubt  of  our  defeating  the  Doctor.  If  we  can  dis- 
comfit him  by  our  own  strength,  this  will  render  him  incon- 
siderable :  all  other  methods  of  doing  so  would  be  ineffectual. 

*  Much  frequented  then,  as  it  still  is,  by  Scotchmen.  The  gentle- 
woman who  at  that  time  kept  it  was  sister  to  Bishop  Douglas,  and  a 
person  of  excellent  manners  and  abilities. 

|  Then  a  kind  of  minister  for  Scotland,  being  Lord  Bute's  uncle. 


ROBERTSON.  279 

"  I  have  now  brought  my  offers  to  a  conclusion  with  An- 
drew Millar.  After  viewing  the  town,  and  considering  the 
irresistible  power  of  a  combination  of  booksellers,  I  have 
agreed  to  sell  him  the  property  for  £600.  This,  you  see,  is 
the  sum  I  originally  fixed  upon  as  the  full  price  of  my  work, 
and  is  more  than  was  ever  given  for  any  book  except  David 
Hume's.  You  cannot  imagine  how  much  it  has  astonished 
all  the  London  authors,  nor  how  much  Andrew  Millar  was 
astonished  at  the  encomiums  of  my  book  which  he  got  from 
people  of  rank.  I  have  got  some  of  the  best  puffers  of 
England  on  my  side.  Mr.  Doddington,  Horace  Walpole, 
Lady  Hervey,  and  the  Speaker  are  my  sworn  friends ;  and 
you  will  wonder,  even  in  this  great  place,  how  I  have  got  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  to  be  a  subject  of  conversation.  Every  body 
here  approves  of  the  bargain  I  have  made  with  Millar,  and  I 
am  fully  satisfied  of  the  prudence  of  my  own  conduct ;  but 
of  this  I  shall  have  full  leisure  to  talk  with  you  soon.  The 
exploits  which  Carlyle  and  I  have  performed  among  the  Dis- 
senters are  beyond  belief.  Poor  Dr.  Chandler  is  humbled  to 
the  dust,  and  he  feels  it  as  much  as  other  quack  doctors  feel 
their  mortification.  This  day  I  signed  my  contract  with 
Andrew  Millar,  and  am,  according  to  your  advice,  to  be 
a  Doctor  of  Divinity  within  six  months,  so  that  I  shall  take 
place  immediately  after  Dr.  Blair,  as  he  taketh  place  immedi- 
ately after  Dr.  Turnstill.  What  great  things  have  I  to  say  of 
Mr.  Pit,*  who  yesterday  brought  all  the  Tories  to  approve  of 
continental  measures  as  the  only  thing  for  the  good  of  old 
England !  Yesterday  I  dined  with  Mr.  Garrick,  in  spite  of 
John  Hyndmanf  and  the  Presbytery  of  Dalkeith.  To- 
morrow I  go  to  Portsmouth,  to  wait  on  Admiral  Hawke  and 
see  the  E-oyal  George.  How  much  have  I  to  tell  you  !  I  ever 
am  yours, 

«  WM.  E." 

The  rank  of  the  '  History  of  Scotland  '  stands  very 
high  indeed  among  the  most  eminent  of  historical 
compositions.  The  philosophical  spirit  which  per- 

*  Sic.         |   A  leader  among  the  fanatical  party  in  the  Kirk. 


280  ROBEKTSON. 

vades  it,   the  enlarged  views  of    polity  in    which  it 
abounds,  the  sober  and  rational,  but  bold  speculations 
with  which  it  is  variegated,  and  the  constant  references 
to  authorities  which  accompany  it,  place  it  above  the 
works  of  antiquity,  deficient  in   all   these    particulars, 
altogether  wanting  in  some  of  them.     The  skilful  and 
striking  delineations  of  individual  character  which  are 
mingled  with  the  narrative,  but  never  overlaying  it,  and 
the  reference  to  the  histories  of  other  countries  which 
is  introduced   wherever    it   became  necessary   or   in- 
structive, forms  another  high  merit  of  the  work.    But 
it  is  as  a  history,  and  a  history  of  Scotland,  that  its 
execution  must  mainly  be  regarded,  and  in  this  it  is 
truly  a  great  performance.     It  is  difficult  to  admire 
sufficiently  the   graphic    power    which  the  historian 
displays  in  bringing  before  us  the  rude  and  stormy 
period  he  has  chosen  to  describe — the  strange  mixture 
of  simple  barbaric  manners  in  some  classes  with  arti- 
ficial refinement  in  others — of  poverty  in  the  country 
with  splendour  at  court,  and  among  the  chiefs — of 
great  crimes  with  striking  virtues — the  morality  of 
unprincipled  and  ferocious  men    with  the  vehement 
religious  opinions  of  fanatics — the  spectacle  of  a  nation 
hardly  half-civilized,  barely  emerging  from  a  rude  state, 
conducted  by  rulers,  and  disputed  by  factious  leaders, 
with  all  the  refinements  and  corruption  of  statesmen 
bred  in  the  Italian  courts.     In  the  great  staple  of  all 
historical  excellence,  the   narrative,    it  has  certainly 
never  been  surpassed.     There  is  nothing  obscure  or 
vague,  nothing  affected  or  epigrammatic,  nor  is  any 
sacrifice  made  of  the  sense  to  the  phrase ;  the  diction 
is  simple  and  pure,  and  soberly,  if  at  all,  adorned ;  but 


ROBERTSON.  281 

it  is  also  striking ;  the  things  described  are  presented 
in  the  clearest  light,  and  with  the  most  vivid,  natural, 
and  unambitious  colouring,  without  exaggeration,  ap- 
parently without  effort ;  like  the  figures  of  Raphael, 
which,  for  this  reason,  never  captivate  us  so  much  on  the 
first  view  as  after  we  have  repeatedly  gazed  upon  them 
with  still  increasing  wonder.  The  even  flow  of  the  story, 
the  last  perfection  and  the  most  difficult  which  the  nar- 
rative art  attains,  is  likewise  complete.  If  not  overlaid 
with  ornament,  nor  disfigured  by  declamation,  nor 
studded  with  points  and  other  feats  of  speech,  so  neither 
is  it  broken  by  abrupt  transitions  and  unseemly  pauses, 
but  holds  its  clear,  simple,  majestic  course  unin- 
terrupted and  untroubled.  The  story  of  Livy  does 
not  more  differ  from  that  of  Tacitus  in  all  these  essen- 
tials than  the  simple  but  striking  narration  of  the 
Scotch  historian  from  the  tinsel,  the  epigram,  the 
word-catching  of  Gibbon. 

For  examples  to  illustrate  the  high  merits  of  this 
narrative,  we  need  not  have  recourse  to  a  curious  selec- 
tion of  remarkable  scenes  or  events,  because  the  texture 
of  the  '  History '  in  the  ordinary  portions  of  its  fabric 
where  the  mere  common  annals  are  related,  would  be 
sufficient.  There  may,  however,  be  no  harm  in  not- 
ing the  singular  effect  *of  the  story  when  Rizzio's 
murder  is  related,  or  Gowrie's  conspiracy,  or  Mary's 
execution.  The  artistlike  selection  of  particulars  is  to 
be  marked  in  all  these  cases ;  as  in  the  first,  Ruthven's 
figure  clad  in  armour,  and  ghastly  pale  from  his  late 
illness  ;  in  the  second,  the  trembling  of  the  mysterious 
armed  man  with  a  dagger  near  him,  and  a  sword  in 
the  small  study  whither  the  Earl  had  led  the  King, 


282  ROBERTSON. 

closing  the  doors  behind  them,  and  up  a  staircase ;  in 
the  third,  the  Queen's  majestic  air  and  noble  dress,  the 
pomander  chain  of  her  Agnus  Dei  round  her  neck,  the 
beads  at  her  girdle,  the  crucifix  of  ivory  in  her  hand. 
By  all  these  skilful  selections  we  are  made  to  see,  as  it 
were,  the  things  represented  to  us,  and  the  pen  of  the 
great  historian  produces  the  effect  of  the  great  artist's 
pencil,  while  its  pictures  are  not  subject  to  the  destroy- 
ing influence  of  time.* 

There  seems  considerable  reason  to  lament  that  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  great  scenes  and  cele- 
brated characters  of  history,  in  all  ages,  should  have 
made  the  historian  too  familiar  with  the  crimes  on  a 
great  scale  of  importance,  and  therefore  of  wickedness, 
perpetrated  by  persons  in  exalted  stations,  so  that  he 
suppresses  in  recounting  or  in  citing  them  the  feelings 
of  severe  reprobation  to  which  a  more  pure  morality, 
a  more  strict  justice,  would  certainly  have  given  vent. 
It  is  painful  to  see  him  fall  into  the  vulgar  and  perni- 
cious delusion  which  secures  for  the  worst  enemies  of 
their  species  the  praise  and  the  increase  of  worldly 
greatness.  It  is  equally  painful  to  see  the  worst  crimes, 
even  of  a  more  ordinary  description,  passed  over  in 
silence  when  they  sully  the  illustrious  culprit.  J^et  us 

*  Hume,  as  well  as  Robertson,  has  given  this  scene  of  Mary's 
death  ;  the  latter  with  by  far  greater  effect.  But  it  is  singular  that 
he  should  have  left  out  her  noble  remonstrance  with  the  commis- 
sioners when  refused  the  assistance  of  her  servants.  It  has  a  great 
effect  in  Hume.  The  observations  of  the  latter  on  the  trial  are 
really  beneath  contempt.  The  gross  errors  into  which  he  falls  on 
the  principles  of  evidence  seem  hardly  credible,  and  arise  from  his 
careless  habits,  and  from  his  undertaking  rashly  to  deal  with  matters 
of  which  he  was  ignorant. 


ROBERTSON.  283 

only,  by  way  of  example,  and  for  explanation,  survey 
the  highly-wrought  and  indeed  admirably  composed 
character  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  It  opens  with  enrolling 
Henry  V.  and  Edward  III.  among  "  the  monarchs 
who  merit  the  people's  gratitude  ;"  nay,  it  singles  them 
out  from  among  the  list  on  which  William  III.,  Ed- 
ward I.,  and  Alfred  himself  stand  enrolled,  and  holds 
them  up  as  the  most  gratefully  admired  of  all  for  the 
"  blessings  and  splendour  of  their  reigns."  Yet  the 
wars  of  Henry  V.  are  the  only,  and  of  Edward  III. 
almost  the  only  deeds  by  which  we  can  know  them ; 
or  if  any  benefit  accrued  to  our  constitution  by  these 
princes,  it  was  in  consequence  of  the  pecuniary  diffi- 
culties into  which  those  wars  plunged  them,  but 
plunged  their  kingdoms  too,  so  that  our  liberties  made 
some  gain  from  the  dreadful  expense  of  blood  and  of 
treasure  by  which  those  conquerors  exhausted  their 
dominions.  Then  Elizabeth  is  described  as  "  still 
adored  in  England  ;"  and  though  her  "  dissimulation 
without  necessity,  and  her  severity  beyond  example," 
are  recorded  as  making  her  treatment  of  Mary  an 
exception  to  the  rest  of  her  reign,  it  is  not  stated  that 
her  whole  life  was  one  tissue  of  the  same  gross  false- 
hood whenever  she  deemed  it  for  her  interest,  or  felt  it 
suited  her  caprices,  to  practise  artifices  as  pitiful  as  they 
were  clumsy.  But  a  graver  charge  than  dissimulation 
and  severity  as  regards  her  connexion  with  the  history  of 
Mary  is  entirely  suppressed,  and  yet  the  foul  crime  is 
described  in  the  same  work.  It  is  undeniable  that 
Elizabeth  did  not  cause  her  to  be  executed  until  she  had 
repeatedly  endeavoured  to  make  Sir  Amyas  Paulett  and 
Sir  Drue  Drury,  who  had  the  custody  of  her  person, 


284  ROBERTSON. 

take  her  off  by  assassination.  When  those  two  gallant 
cavaliers  rejected  the  infamous  proposition  with  indigna- 
tion and  with  scorn,  she  attacked  them  as  "  dainty  "  and 
"  precise  fellows/'  "  men  promising  much  and  perform- 
ing nothing ;"  nay,  she  was  with  difficulty  dissuaded 
from  displacing  them,  and  employing  one  Wingfield  in 
their  stead,  "  who  had  both  courage  and  inclination  to 
strike  the  blow."  Then  finding  she  could  not  commit 
murder,  she  signed  the  warrant  for  Mary's  execution ; 
and  immediately  perpetrated  a  crime  only  less  foul  than 
murder,  treacherously  denying  her  handwriting,  and 
destroying  by  heavy  fine  and  long  imprisonment  the 
Secretary  of  State  whom  she  had  herself  employed  to 
issue  the  fatal  warrant.  History,  fertile  in  its  records  of 
royal  crimes,  offers  to  our  execration  few  such  characters 
as  that  of  this  great,  successful,  and  popular  princess. 
An  assassin  in  her  heart,  nay,  in  her  councils  and  her 
orders ;  an  oppressor  of  the  most  unrelenting  cruelty 
in  her  whole  conduct ;  a  hypocritical  dissembler,  to 
whom  falsehood  was  habitual,  honest  frankness  strange 
— such  is  the  light  in  which  she  ought  to  be  ever  held 
up,  as  long  as  humanity  and  truth  shall  bear  any  value 
in  the  eyes  of  men.  That  she  rendered  great  services 
to  her  subjects ;  that  she  possessed  extraordinary  firm- 
ness of  character  as  a  sovereign,  with  despicable  weak- 
ness as  an  individual ;  that  she  governed  her  dominions 
with  admirable  prudence,  and  guided  her  course 
through  as  great  difficulties  in  the  affairs  of  the  state, 
and  still  more  in  those  of  the  church,  as  beset  the  path 
of  any  who  ever  ruled — is  equally  incontrovertible; 
but  there  is  no  such  thing  as  "  right  of  set-off"  in  the 
judgments  which  impartial  history  has  to  pronounce — 


ROBERTSON.  285 

no  doctrine  of  compensation  in  the  code  of  public 
morals ;  and  he  who  undertakes  to  record  the  actions 
of  princes,  and  to  paint  their  characters,  is  not  at 
liberty  to  cast  a  veil  over  undeniable  imperfections,  or 
suffer  himself  like  the  giddy  vulgar  to  be  so  dazzled  by 
vulgar  glory  that  his  eyes  are  blind  to  crime.* 

A  few  months  previous  to  the  publication  of  his 
'  History,'  Dr.  Robertson,  who  had  before  received  the 
degree  of  Doctor  in  Divinity  from  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  removed  to  that  city,  being  presented  to 
the  kirk  of  the  Old  Grey  Friars.  In  1759  he  was 
made  one  of  the  chaplains  royal,  a  sinecure  in  the 
Scotch  Church ;  in  1762  he  was  appointed  Principal 
of  the  University,  and  a  proposition  was  now  made,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  King  through  his  favourite  minister, 
Lord  Bute,  who  communicated  it  to  Lord  Cathcart,  and 
he  to  the  Principal,  that  if  he  would  undertake  to  write 
the  History  of  England,  every  source  of  information 
which  the  government  could  command  would  be  laid 
open  to  his  researches,  and  such  provision  settled  upon 
him  as  might  enable  him  to  bestow  his  whole  attention 
and  time  upon  this  important  work  without  the  inter- 
ruptions occasioned  by  his  professional  duties.  This 
plan  was  so  far  favourably  received  that  he  expressed 
his  willingness  now  to  undertake  the  subject,  as  he  could 

*  Hume's  highly-wrought  character  of  Elizabeth,  perhaps  the 
finest  of  all  his  historical  portraits,  is  liable  to  the  same  grave  ob- 
jection ;  somewhat  mitigated  by  the  circumstance  that  he  seemed  to 
lend  less  implicit  credence  to  Davidson's  testimony  against  her  than 
Robertson  does.  It  is  remarkable  that  neither  historian  has  remarked 
in  Mary's  vindication  the  undoubted  right  she  had,  without  commit- 
ting an  offence  against  the  law  or  against  morals,  to  join  in  any  mea- 
sures of  hostility  against  Elizabeth,  who  held  her  in  an  illegal  custody. 


286  ROBERTSON. 

not  any  longer  come  into  conflict  with  his  friend  Mr. 
Hume,  whose  work  would  have  been  all  published 
many  years  before  the  new  '  History'  could  appear.  His 
former  objection  of  Mr.  Hume's  '  History'  being  then  in 
progress  when  a  similar  plan  was  pressed  upon  him  by 
the  booksellers  had  thus  been  removed ;  and  though  he 
declined  on  any  account  to  lay  down  his  clerical  cha- 
racter, and  withdraw  from  his  station  in  the  church,  he 
had  yet  no  objection,  if  he  could  still  retain  his  con- 
nexion with  that  venerated  establishment,  to  be  relieved 
from  the  parochial  labours  connected  with  the  cure  of 
souls ;  and  provided  Edinburgh  should  continue  to  be  his 
place  of  residence,  he  purposed  passing  each  year  two 
or  three  months  in  London  for  the  benefit  of  the 
collections  offered  to  be  placed  at  his  service.  It  is 
probable  that  the  retirement  of  Lord  Bute  from  office, 
which  happened  soon  after,  put  an  end  to  this  import- 
ant negotiation ;  important  in  a  very  high  degree  to 
the  literature,  and,  indeed,  to  the  constitutional  inte- 
rests of  the  country.  Nothing  more  seems  to  have 
resulted  from  the  correspondence  except  the  reviving 
in  his  favour  the  place  of  historiographer  for  Scotland, 
to  which  he  was  appointed  in  1764.  But  who  that 
values  the  accuracy  of  historical  narration,  and  sets  a 
right  estimate  upon  the  benefits  derived  to  our  political 
system  from  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  records 
and  the  events  of  former  times,  during  which  our 
mixed  government  was  slowly  formed  and  gradually 
matured,  can  avoid  deeply  lamenting  that  the  subject 
of  English  history  had  not  fallen  into  the  hands  of 
him  who  was,  by  a  competent  judge,  though  a  rival 
author,  justly  called  "  the  most  diligent  and  most 


ROBERTSON.  287 

faithful  of  penmen?"  We  should  then  have  possessed 
a  work  of  which  the  brilliant  outside  gloss  being  sus- 
tained by  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  coin,  it  would  no 
longer  have  been  necessary  for  the  student  to  read  one 
narrative  for  its  dramatic  effect,  while  he  sought  in 
another  the  real  facts  of  the  story,  and  to  refuse  giving 
the  first  praise  of  an  historian  to  the  first  master  of 
historical  composition.  Nor  would  the  acquisition  of 
an  English  history,  at  once  readable  and  credible,  have 
been  purchased  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  other  works  with 
which  this  great  writer,  after  the  failure  of  the  treaty, 
enriched  our  literature.  It  was  part  of  the  conditions 
which  he  imposed  that  he  should  first  be  allowed  to  finish 
his '  Charles  V. ;'  and  when  we  reflect  on  ten  years  having 
elapsed  after  he  finished  his  'America,'  without  resuming 
his  pen,  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he  could  have 
written  this  and  the  English  history  also  during  the  pe- 
riod between  1769,  when  '  Charles '  was  published,  and 
1789,  when  he  began  the  '  Disquisition  on  Ancient 
India/  The  failure  of  the  treaty,  therefore,  is  a  matter 
of  unmingled  regret ;  and  is  one  of  the  worst  of  the 
many  mischiefs  which  we  owe  to  the  English  plan  of 
conducting  government  by  the  conflict  of  adverse 
parties,  with  the  consequence  inevitably  flowing  from 
it,  of  all  the  principles,  and  all  the  measures,  and  all  the 
designs  of  one  ministry  becoming,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
an  object  of  suspicion,  and  even  of  dislike,  to  their 
successors. 

It  is  probable  that  he  did  not  begin  his  second  work 
for  some  little  time  after  the  publication  of  the  first ; 
but  from  the  correspondence  just  now  referred  to,  we 
learn  that  in  July,  1762,  a  third  part  of  it  was  finished, 


288  ROBERTSON. 

and  that  he  reckoned  two  years  more  sufficient  for  its 
completion.  In  this  he  was  deceived,  whether  it  he  that 
he  underrated  the  labour  required  by  the  portion  of  his 
task  still  before  him,  or  that  he  was  interrupted  in  it  (as 
has  been  supposed)  by  the  fierce  dissensions  which  during 
that  period  raged  in  the  Scottish  Church,  and  which 
must  no  doubt  have  occupied  some  portion  of  his  leisure, 
though  with  so  severe  an  economist  of  his  time,  and  a 
mind  so  little  liable  to  be  disturbed,  there  seems  little 
reason  to  think  that  these  proceedings  could  seriously 
distract  his  attention  from  his  studies  for  any  consi- 
derable portion  of  the  year.  At  length  the  public  im- 
patience was  gratified  by  the  appearance  of  the  work 
in  1769,  exactly  ten  years  after  his  '  Scotland/  Its 
success  was  not  a  matter  of  doubt,  and  it  fully  an- 
swered the  expectations  which  had  naturally  been 
formed.  The  prevailing  opinion  places  this  work  at 
the  head  of  his  writings ;  and  certainly,  if  the  extent 
and  importance  of  the  subject  be  regarded,  and  the 
great  value  be  considered  of  a  clear  and  distinct  narra- 
tive, embracing  the  history  of  Europe  during  the 
period  when  its  different  states  assumed  the  position 
with  relation  to  each  other  in  which  they  now  stand, 
and  most  of  them  also  adopted  the  political  system 
which  is  established  for  the  government  of  their  several 
affairs,  there  can  be  no  comparison  between  this  and 
any  other  of  his  works ;  to  which  must  doubtless  be 
added,  the  far  greater  difficulty  of  executing  so  vast  a 
plan,  tracing  the  complicated  parts  of  the  great  Euro- 
pean commonwealth  in  their  connexion  with  each 
other,  and  drawing,  as  Mr.  Stewart  has  happily  ex- 
pressed it,  a  meridian  line  through  modern  history,  to 


ROBERTSON. 

which  all  the  branches  of  separate  annals  may  be  re- 
ferred. But  though  the  same  felicitous  narrative  is  in 
this  work  to  be  always  found,  and  though  the  first 
book  contains  the  most  perfect  example  of  general  or 
philosophical  history  anywhere  to  be  seen,  yet  I  hesi- 
tate greatly  in  preferring  it  as  an  historical  composition 
to  either  its  predecessor  or  its  immediate  successor. 
There  are  more  remarkable  beauties  of  a  purely  histo- 
rical kind  in  both  of  these,  according  to  my  humble 
judgment.  As  a  whole,  as  a  history  of  a  country  for 
a  given  period,  I  am  much  disposed  to  place  his  *  Scot- 
land' first;  while  I  conceive  that  the  '  America'  pre- 
sents particular  passages,  feats  of  narrative  excel- 
lence, unrivalled  by  anything  in  either  of  the  other 
works,  perhaps  not  to  be  matched,  and  certainly  not 
exceeded,  by  any  other  historical  composition  of 
any  age. 

In  proof  of  this  last  position  I  will  refer  to  the  fasci- 
nating account  of  Cortez's  arrival  at  Mexico,  and  of 
his  subsequent  bold  and  masterly,  though  most  cruel 
and  profligate  measures ;  to  the  romantic  history  of 
Pedro  de  la  Gasca's  quelling  by  his  individual  wisdom 
and  firmness  the  great  rebellion  of  Peru ;  but,  above 
all,  to  the  grand  event,  the  most  important  recorded  in 
the  annals  of  our  race,  the  discovery  of  the  New  World 
by  Columbus.  The  skill  with  which  this  last  narra- 
tive is  managed,  and  the  conduct  of  the  story,  may 
truly  be  pronounced  matchless.  I  am  now  speaking 
merely  of  the  composition.  The  dramatic  effect  of  the 
whole  is  extraordinary.  We  are  at  first  interested  in 
Columbus's  sagacity,  and  boldness,  and  science,  by 
which  he  was  led,  through  a  course  of  private  study 

u 


290  ROBERTSON. 

and  contemplation,  to  form  the  adventurous  and  novel 
opinion  that  the  East  Indies  was  to  be  reached  by 
steering  a  westerly  course  from  Europe  across  the  At- 
lantic. His  difficulties  in  obtaining  the  assent  of  his 
contemporaries  to  so  strange  a  doctrine  are  then  de- 
scribed, and  our  interest  in  his  theory  is  increased. 
But  the  successive  obstacles  which  he  had  to  encounter 
in  his  efforts  to  obtain  the  assistance  of  various  sove- 
reigns, that  he  might  be  enabled  to  test  his  theory  by 
navigating  the  unknown  and  pathless  ocean,  wind  up 
our  anxiety  to  the  highest  pitch.  We  follow  him  to 
the  Genoese  senate,  to  the  court  of  Portugal,  to  Eng- 
land, whither  he  had  dispatched  his  brother,  whose 
strange  adventures  among  pirates  and  his  utter  indi- 
gence in  London  so  as  to  make  it  necessary  he  should 
subsist  by  selling  maps  till  he  could  scrape  together 
enough  to  purchase  decent  clothes  wherein  he  might 
appear  before  Henry  VIII.,  form  a  striking  episode  in 
the  narrative.  Finally,  we  have  his  own  arrival  in  Spain, 
and  his  constant  repulses  for  twelve  long  years  in  all  his 
attempts  to  make  that  country  the  richest  and  most 
glorious  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  All  these  wander- 
ings and  disappointments  for  so  vast  a  portion  of  this 
great  man's  life  create  a  breathless  impatience  for  his 
success,  when  our  wishes  are  at  length  crowned  by  the 
warm  support  of  his  steady  patroness  Isabella ;  and  he 
finally  sets  sail  on  the  3rd  of  August,  1 492. — Such  is 
the  man  whose  fortunes  we  are  to  follow,  now  far  past 
the  middle  age,  for  he  was  in  his  fifty-sixth  year,  of 
which  above  twenty  had  been  spent  in  preparing  for 
his  magnificent  enterprise ;  but  full  of  the  vigour  of 
youth,  in  the  height  of  his  powerful  faculties,  and  in- 


ROBERTSON.  291 

spired  with  the  sanguine  temper  which  enables  genius 
to  work  its  wonders. 

The  voyage  is  related  with  absolute  clearness  as  re- 
gards all  its  nautical  details,  which  are  given  so  as  to 
fix  our  attention  without  wearying  it,  and  elucidate  the 
narrative  without  encumbering  it.  But  in  the  inci- 
dents of  the  passage  we  take  the  greatest  interest, 
placed,  as  we  feel  ourselves  to  be,  in  the  position  of  the 
navigators,  to  whom  every  occurrence  was  of  moment, 
because  everything  was  of  necessity  new.  Their  con- 
duct and  their  feelings,  however,  occupy  us  still  more, 
for  beside  our  sympathy  with  them,  upon  them  the  fate 
of  the  great  enterprise  depends. 

But  one  figure  ever  stands  out  from  the  group ;  it  is 
the  great  Captain  who  guides  the  voyage  through  the 
unknown  ocean,  and  whom,  beside  his  past  history, 
we  all  the  while  feel  by  anticipation  to  be  piercing 
through  the  night  of  ages  to  bring  into  acquaintance 
with  each  other  the  old  world  and  the  new.  Upon 
his  steady  courage,  undismayed  by  the  dark  uncertainty 
of  all  his  steps,  upon  his  fortitude  which  no  peril  can 
shake,  his  temper  unruffled  by  all  opposition,  upon  his 
copious  resources  under  every  difficulty,  we  dwell  with 
the  most  profound  attention ;  sometimes  hardly  ven- 
turing to  hope  for  his  successful  conquest  over  so 
many  difficulties.  The  voyage  meanwhile  proceeds, 
and  the  distance  from  any  known  portion  of  the  world 
becomes  tremendous,  while  nothing  but  sea  and  air  is 
on  all  hands  to  be  discerned.  At  length  some  slight 
indications  of  approach  to  land  begin  to  be  perceived ; 
but  so  slight  that  universal  despondency  creates  a 
general  resistance,  breaking  out  into  actual  mutiny. 

u2 


292  ROBERTSON. 

Our  anxiety  for  the  result,  and  our  interest  in  the  great 
admiral,  is  now  wound  up  to  the  highest  pitch,  when 
he  obtains  a  promise  of  his  crew  persevering,  "  watch- 
ing with  him  "  yet  three  days.  The  indications  of  land 
being  not  far  off  now  become  less  doubtful ;  and  from 
among  them  are  selected  the  more  striking,  closing 
with  this  picturesque  passage  : — "  The  sailors  aboard 
the  Nina  took  up  the  branch  of  a  tree  with  red  berries, 
perfectly  fresh.  The  clouds  around  the  setting  sun 
assumed  a  new  appearance ;  the  air  was  more  mild  and 
warm,  and  during  the  night  the  wind  became  unequal 
and  variable."  When  we  are  thus  in  painful  suspense, 
comes  the  crowning  victory — at  once  of  the  great  navi- 
gator who  has  happily  traced  the  unknown  ocean,  and 
of  the  great  historian  who  has  strictly  pursued  his  path, 
but  so  as  to  give  the  well-known  truth  all  the  interest 
and  all  the  novelty  of  a  romantic  tale  now  first  told. 

I  beg  any  one  who  thinks  these  remarks  overrate 
his  merit,  to  mark  the  exquisite  texture  of  the 
following  sentences,  in  which  the  grand  result,  the 
development  of  the  whole,  is  given ;  and  to  mark  the 
careful  simplicity  of  the  diction,  the  self- concealed  art 
of  the  master,  and  his  admirable  selection  of  particu- 
lars, by  which  we,  as  it  were,  descend  and  perch  upon 
the  deck  of  the  great  admiral : — "  From  all  these  symp- 
toms Columbus  was  so  confident  of  being  near  land, 
that  on  the  evening  of  the  1 1th  of  October,  after  public 
prayers  for  success,  he  ordered  the  sails  to  be  furled, 
and  the  ships  to  lie- to,  keeping  strict  watch,  lest  they 
should  be  driven  on  shore  in  the  night.  During  this 
interval  of  suspense  and  expectation  no  man  shut  his 
eyes;  all  kept  upon  deck,  gazing  intently  towards  that 


ROBERTSON.  293 

quarter  whence  they  expected  to  discern  the  land 
which  had  been  so  long  the  object  of  their  wishes." 
It  is  a  judicious  thing,  though  it  seems  trivial,  that  he 
here  breaks  off  j  as  it  were,  and  begins  a  new  paragraph  ; 
and  mark  well  its  structure  : — 

"  About  two  hours  before  midnight  Columbus,  stand- 
ing on  the  forecastle,  observed  a  light  at  a  distance,  and 
privately  pointed  it  out  to  Pedro  Guttierez,  a  page  of  the 
queen's  wardrobe.  Guttierez  perceived  it,  and  calling 
to  Salcedo,  comptroller  of  the  fleet,  all  three  saw  it  in 
motion,  as  if  it  were  carried  from  place  to  place.  A 
little  after  midnight  the  joyful  sound  si  Land!  Land  I 
was  heard  from  the  Pinta,  which  kept  always  ahead  of 
the  other  ships.  But  having  been  so  often  deceived  by 
fallacious  appearances,  every  man  now  became  slow  of 
belief,  and  waited  in  all  the  anguish  of  uncertainty 
and  impatience  for  the  return  of  day.  As  soon  as 
the  morning  dawned,  all  doubts  and  fears  were  dis- 
pelled. From  every  ship  an  island  was  seen  about  two 
leagues  to  the  north,  whose  flat  and  verdant  fields, 
well  stored  with  wood,  and  watered  with  many  rivulets,  *>> 
presented  the  aspect  of  a  delightful  country.  The  t 
crew  of  the  Pinta  instantly  began  the  Te  Deum,  as  a 
hymn  of  thanksgiving  to  God,  and  were  joined  by 
those  of  the  other  ships,  with  tears  of  joy  and  trans- 
ports of  congratulation.  This  office  of  gratitude  to 
Heaven  was  followed  by  an  act  of  justice  to  their  com- 
mander. They  threw  themselves  at  the  feet  of  Co- 
lumbus with  feelings  of  self-condemnation  mingled 
with  remorse.  They  implored  him  to  pardon  their 
ignorance,  incredulity,  and  injustice,  which  had  created 
him  so  much  unnecessary  disquiet,  and  had  so  often  ob- 


294  ROBERTSON. 

structed  the  execution  of  his  well-concerted  plan ;  and 
passing  in  the  warmth  of  their  admiration  from  one 
extreme  to  another,  they  now  pronounced  the  man 
whom  they  had  so  lately  reviled  and  threatened,  to  be  a 
person  inspired  by  Heaven  with  sagacity  and  fortitude 
more  than  human  in  order  to  accomplish  a  design  so  far 
beyond  the  ideas  and  conception  of  all  former  ages." 

In  like  manner  is  the  landing  and  the  meeting 
with  the  natives  painted  rather  than  described.  The 
impression  made,  for  instance,  by  the  Spaniards  on  the 
minds  of  these  simple  folk  shows  that  the  great  writer 
can  place  himself  in  the  position  of  the  savage  as  well 
as  the  sage.  "  The  vast  machines  in  which  they  had 
traversed  the  ocean,  that  seemed  to  move  upon  the 
waters  with  wings,  and  uttered  a  dreadful  sound  like 
thunder,  accompanied  with  lightning  and  smoke, 
struck  them  with  such  terror,  that  they  began  to 
respect  their  new  guests  as  a  superior  order  of  beings, 
and  concluded  that  they  were  children  of  the  sun,  who 
had  descended  to  visit  the  earth." 

The  simple  language  of  these  passages,  to  make  but 
one  observation,  is  remarkable  ;  and  their  dignity  is 
with  this  perfect  plainness  perfectly  sustained.  It  is 
always  in  such  language  that  a  master  of  diction  will 
make  his  impression ;  and  the  near  approach  of  any 
catastrophe,  whether  awful  or  pathetic,  may  always 
be  suspected  when  the  language  becomes  very  simple, 
and  the  particulars  begin  to  abound.  There  is  but 
one  word  above  the  most  homely  style  of  the  most 
ordinary  conversation  in  all  that  I  have  cited.  The 
fields  are  "  verdant,"  not  green  ;  and  this  word  is  cor- 
rectly chosen  for  the  rhythm,  which  would  not  allow 


ROBERTSON.  295 

a  monosyllable.  Possibly  "  descend  "  was  unnecessary ; 
"  come  down  "  would  have  been  sufficiently  sustained. 
The  technical  words  "lie-to "and  "ahead"  were  in 
like  manner  necessary,  because  there  is  ridicule  attached 
to  speaking  of  a  ship  "  stopping,"  or  one  being  before 
another,  as  on  the  road ;  besides  that  these  phrases  have 
been  imported  from  nautical  language,  and  are  now 
naturalised  on  shore. 

The  effect  which  the  passage  adverted  to  is  calcu- 
lated to  produce  on  readers  of  understanding  and  of 
feeling  was  once  remarkably  seen  by  me,  when  I  made 
my  illustrious  and  venerated  friend  Lord  Wellesley 
attend  to  it.  He  told  me  next  day  that  he  had  never 
been  so  much  moved  by  any  modern  writing ;  that  he 
had  shed  tears  while  he  read  it,  and  that  it  had  broken 
his  rest  at  night. 

If  the  word  dramatic  has  been  applied  to  this  nar- 
rative, it  has  been  advisedly  chosen  ;  because  no  one 
can  doubt  that,  with  the  most  scrupulous  regard  to  the 
truth,  and  even  to  the  minute  accuracy  of  history,  this 
composition  has  all  the  beauties  of  a  striking  poem.  To 
judge  of  its  merits  in  this  respect,  I  will  not  compare 
or  rather  contrast  it  with  the  Histories  of  Oviedo,  or 
Herrera,  or  Ferdinand  Columbus,  or  even  with  the 
far  better  composition  of  Dr.  Campbell,  or  whoever 
wrote  the  history  of  the  discovery  in  Harris's  '  Bibli- 
otheca  Itinerantium,'*  nor  yet  with  the  ambitious  but 

*  This  work,  in  two  folio  volumes,  contains  some  admirable  his- 
torical pieces.  Burke's  'European  Settlements'  is  very  much 
taken  from  it.  I  refer  to  the  edition  of  1740,  by  Dr.  Campbell, 
whose  acquaintance  Dr.  Robertson  appears  by  his  '  Letters '  above 
cited  to  have  had  great  pleasure  in  making  when  he  visited  London. 


296  ROBERTSON. 


worse  written  narrative  of  Mr.  Washington  Irvine,  in 
his  'Life  and  Voyages  of  Columbus;'*  but  I  will 
refer  to  a  poetical  work  written  purely  for  effect,  and 


*  It  is  no  part  of  my  intention  to  underrate  the  merits  of  this  very 
popular  author ;  but  I  speak  of  the  manner  in  which  he  has  treated  the 
subject ;  and  coming  after  so  great  a  master,  it  was  not  judicious  in  him 
to  try  aftereffect,  instead  of  studying  the  chaste  simplicity  of  his  pre- 
decessor. These  are  a  few  of  his  expressions  : — The  ships  "  were 
ploughing  the  waves  ;"  Columbus  was  "  wrapped  in  the  shades  of 
night ;"  he  "  maintained  an  intense  watch ;"  he  "  ranged  his  eye  along 
the  dusky  horizon  ;"  he  beheld  "  suddenly  a  glimmering  light."  Ro- 
bertson had  never  thought  of  saying  "  suddenly,"  as  knowing  that 
light  must  of  necessity  be  sudden.  Then  the  light  has  "  passing 
gleams ;"  his  feelings  "  must  have  been  tumultuous  and  intense,"  con- 
trary to  the  fact,  and  to  the  character  of  the  man  ;  "  the  great  mystery 
of  the  ocean  was  revealed ;"  "  what  a  bewildering  crowd  of  conjectures 
thronged  on  his  mind  !"  All  this  speculation  of  the  writer  to  insure 
the  effect,  Dr.  Robertson  rejects  as  fatal  to  effect,  and  gives  only  what 
actually  happened.  Finally,  he  was  possibly  to  find  "  the  morning 
dawn  upon  spicy  groves,  and  glittering  fanes,  and  gilded  cities." 
Surely  no  one  can  hesitate  which  of  the  two  pictures  to  prefer.  If  the 
one  is  not  absolutely  tawdry,  the  other  is  assuredly  more  chaste.  To 
compare  the  two  pieces  of  workmanship  is  a  good  lesson,  and  may  tend 
to  cure  a  vitiated  taste  (Book  iii.  chap.  3).  To  take  only  one  in- 
stance : — "  About  two  hours  before  midnight,  Columbus,  standing 
on  the  forecastle,  observed  a  light  at  a  distance,  and  presently  pointed 
it  out  to  Pedro,"  &c.  Thus  Robertson.  Irvine  says,  "  Wrapped 
from  observation  in  the  shades  of  night,  he  maintained  an  intense 
and  unremitting  watch,  ranging  his  eye  along  the  dusky  horizon. 
Suddenly,  about  ten  o'clock,  he  thought  he  beheld  a  light  glimmer- 
ing at  a  distance."  Can  any  one  doubt  which  of  the  two  passages 
is  the  most  striking — the  chaste  and  severe,  or  the  ornamented  and 
gaudy  and  meretricious?  The  account  of  Robertson  makes  the 
ships  lie-to  all  night.  Irvine  either  makes  them  lie-to,  and  after- 
wards go  on  sailing  rapidly,  or  the  lying-to  was  the  night  before,  and 
they  sailed  quicker  the  nearer  they  came  to  land,  and  in  the  dusk. 
The  one  makes  them  only  see  the  shore  after  dawn  ;  the  other  makes 
them  see  it  two  leagues  off,  in  a  dark  night,  at  two  in  the  morning, 
within  the  tropics. 


ROBERTSON.  297 

of  which  the  author  was  at  full  liberty  to  indulge  his 
fancy  in  selecting,  or  indeed  in  imagining  the  facts  and 
the  scenes  he  represented.  That  author,  too,  is  a  poet  of 
no  mean  fame,  the  late  Mr.  Southey,  who  has  sung 
the  discovery  of  America  by  Madoc ;  and  his  verse  is 
much  less  fine,  and  as  a  poem,  than  the  history  which 
I  have  been  asking  the  reader  to  contemplate.  The 
poet  leaves  out  all  the  most  picturesque  matters,  the 
truly  poetical  matters  ;  and  instead  of  them  all,  after  a 
mutiny  he  raises  a  storm,  which  so  cripples  the  ships 
that  the  seamen  cannot  sail  back  if  they  would.  All 
he  says  of  the  discovery  is,  that  the  commander 
watched  upon  deck  till  dawn,  and  then  saw  the  distant 
land  arise  like  a  grey  cloud  from  the  ocean.  He  also 
makes  the  sea  shallow,  though  at  such  distance  as  that 
the  land  looks  like  a  cloud.  It  really  should  seem 
as  if  he  had  refrained  from  looking  at  Robertson's 
'  History '  because  he  was  to  write  a  poem  on  the  sub- 
ject, as  he  tells  us  he  did  from  reading  Voltaire's  poem 
before,  and,  indeed,  also  after  he  wrote  '  Joan  of  Arc.' 
There  is  one  reflection  which  arises  very  naturally 
on  examining  the  rare  excellence  of  such  narratives  as 
that  of  Pedro  de  la  Gasca  and  Columbus's  voyage. 
The  subject  of  the  latter  is  altogether  free  from  warlike 
interest ;  of  the  former,  nearly  so ;  and  of  neither  scene 
is  the  effect  at  all  heightened  by  the  vices  or  the  ex- 
cesses of  the  actors.  Then  who  can  find  any  more 
interesting  narrative  of  events  where  great  crimes  are 
the  subject,  and  who  can  doubt  that  the  same  pen 
which  could  so  admirably  paint  the  scenes,  peaceful  and 
guiltless,  which  compose  the  subject  of  such  historical 
pictures,  could  in  like  manner  have  lent  an  interest 


298  ROBERTSON. 

to  others  of  a  like  kind,  without  exalting,  at  the  expense 
of  public  virtue,  the  merits  of  wicked  men?  But 
if  it  be  said  that  the  quieting  a  great  republic,  or  dis- 
covering a  new  hemisphere,  are  acts  of  such  interest  as 
lend  themselves  to  the  historian's  pen,  and  are  easily 
made  to  rivet  our  attention,  surely  the  same  pen  which 
described  them  can  represent  even  the  wars  that  deso- 
late the  earth,  and  the  crimes  that  disgrace  humanity,  in 
such  colours  as  shall  at  once  make  us  see  the  things  per- 
petrated, and  yet  lament  the  wretchedness  of  the  events, 
and  execrate  the  cruelties  or  scorn  the  perfidies  of  the 
criminals,  instead  of  making  us,  with  a  preposterous 
joy  and  a  guilty  admiration,  exult  in  the  occurrence  of 
the  one,  and  revere  the  memory  of  the  other.  Refer- 
ence has  been  made  already  to  the  Plantagenet  Prince 
and  the  Tudor  Princess,  so  much  the  theme  of  admir- 
ation with  historians  for  great  capacity,  crowned  with 
dazzling  success.  But  why  could  not  the  diction  of 
Hume  and  of  Robertson  have  been  employed  for  the 
far  more  worthy  purpose  of  causing  men  to  despise  the 
intrigues  and  execrate  the  wars  of  such  rulers  ?  The 
same  events  had  then  studded  their  page,  the  same 
picturesque  details  given  it  striking  effect,  the  same 
graphic  colours  added  life  to  it,  and  yet  the  right 
feelings  of  the  reader  would  have  been  exerted  and 
cherished  ;  nor  would  the  historians  have  made  them- 
selves accomplices  with  the  vulgar  in  the  criminal 
award  of  applause  and  of  fame,  by  which  the  wicked 
actions  of  past  times  are  rewarded,  and  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  same  offences  encouraged. 

Historians,  too,  are  capricious  and  uncertain  in  their 
panegyrics.  Some  princes  of  undoubted  genius,  of  great 


ROBERTSON.  299 

courage,  of  singular  skill  in  conquest  and  in  government, 
nay,  even  who  have  rendered  services  to  mankind,  not- 
withstanding their  vices,  are  set  apart  to  be  loaded 
with  obloquy — quite  just  in  their  instance,  but  incon- 
sistent enough  with  the  suppression  of  all  reprobation 
in  other  cases  of  less  atrocity,  indeed,  yet  of  deep 
shades  of  guilt.  The  Borgia  family  are  proverbial  for 
profligacy  and  cruelty  ;  yet  both  father  and  son  showed 
talents  of  the  highest  order,  to  which  the  latter  added 
great  bravery,  while  the  family  were  generous  protect- 
ors of  learning,  especially  of  the  study  of  jurisprudence, 
and  do  not  seem  to  have  misgoverned  the  people  of 
their  states  more  than  others  of  the  same  age  and  coun- 
try, their  violence  being  exhausted  on  foreign  princes 
and  on  their  own  feudal  barons.*  Of  them,  however,  all 
anecdotes  without  evidence  are  believed.  So  the  least 
credible  stories  of  our  Richard  III.  are  easily  received 
without  proof,  and  he  is  universally  regarded  as  a 
monster  living  in  the  habitual  commission  of  murder ; 
yet  his  capacity  and  his  courage  were  universally  ad- 
mitted to  be  of  the  very  highest  order,  and  his  reign 
conferred  great  advantages  on  the  jurisprudence  of 
England,  while  the  nobles  only,  and  not  the  com- 
munity at  large,  suffered  from  his  tyranny.  Is  it  not 
somewhat  inconsistent  in  the  same  historians  who  are 
so  hostile  to  these  great  bad  men  that  they  can  discover 
no  merit  in  them,  to  be  so  dazzled  by  the  battles  of  the 
Plantagenets  and  the  policy  of  the  Tudors  that  they 
can  discover  no  blame  in  the  sanguinary  ambition  of 


*  Livy's   character   of  Hannibal    has  been,  and   not   unjustly, 
likened  by  Hume  to  Guicciardini's  account  of  Alexander  VI. 


300  ROBERTSON. 

the  one  and  the  tyranny  and  perfidy  of  the  other  ? 
Henry  VIII.,  indeed,  by  his  cruelty  to  his  wives,  has 
been  deprived  of  much  palliation  which  otherwise  his 
abilities  and  his  accomplishments  would  have  obtained 
for  his  despotic  life,  his  numerous  judicial  murders 
actually  perpetrated,  as  well  as  his  plot  for  an  ordinary 
assassination,  that  of  Cardinal  Beaton,  only  prevented 
by  his  own  decease.  But  his  daughter,  who  was  as 
tyrannical  to  the  full,  and  only  restrained  by  the  reli- 
gious difficulties  of  her  position,  who  was  a  model  of 
falsehood  in  all  its  more  hateful  and  despicable 
forms,  who  had  all  the  guilt  of  murder  on  her  head, 
and  was  only  saved  from  its  actual  perpetration  by  hav- 
ing a  Paulett  for  her  agent,  whom  she  would  fain 
have  suborned  to  commit  it,  instead  of  a  Tyrrel,  is 
loaded  with  the  praise  due  to  the  most  pure  and  vir- 
tuous of  sovereigns,  because  she  had  talents  and  firm- 
ness and  ruled  successfully  in  difficult  times. 

It  is  not,  however,  merely  by  abstaining  from 
indiscriminate  praise,  or.  by  dwelling  with  dispro- 
portioned  earnestness  upon  the  great  qualities,  and 
passing  lightly  over  the  bad  ones,  of  eminent  men, 
and  thus  leaving  a  false  general  impression  of  their 
conduct,  that  historians  err,  and  pervert  the  opinions 
and  feelings  of  mankind.  Even  if  they  were  to  give  a 
careful  estimate  of  each  character,  and  pronounce  just 
judgment  upon  the  whole,  they  would  still  leave  by 
far  the  most  important  part  of  their  duty  unperformed, 
unless  they  also  framed  their  narrative  so  as  to  excite 
our  interest  in  the  worthy  of  past  times  ;  to  make  us 
dwell  with  delight  on  the  scenes  of  human  improve- 
ment ;  to  lessen  the  pleasure  too  naturally  felt  in  con- 


ROBERTSON.  301 

templating  successful  courage  or  skill,  whensoever  these 
are  directed  towards  the  injury  of  mankind  ;  to  call 
forth  our  scorn  of  perfidious  actions,  however  successful ; 
our  detestation  of  cruel  and  bloodthirsty  propensities, 
however  powerful  the  talents  by  which  their  indul- 
gence was  secured.  Instead  of  holding  up  to  our 
admiration  the  "  pride,  pomp,  and  circumstance  of 
glorious  war,"  it  is  the  historian's  duty  to  make 
us  regard  with  unceasing  delight  the  ease,  worth,  and 
happiness  of  blessed  peace ;  he  must  remember  that 

"  Peace  hath  her  victories, 
No  less  renown'd  than  War  :"* 

and  to  celebrate  these  triumphs,  the  progress  of  science 
and  of  art,  the  extension  and  security  of  freedom,  the 
improvement  of  national  institutions,  the  diffusion  of 
general  prosperity — exhausting  on  such  pure  and 
wholesome  themes  all  the  resources  of  his  philo- 
sophy, all  the  graces  of  his  style,  giving  honour  to 
whom  honour  is  due,  withholding  all  incentives  to 
misplaced  interest  and  vicious  admiration,  and  not 
merely  by  general  remarks  on  men  and  on  events,  but 
by  the  manner  of  describing  the  one  and  recording  the 
other,  causing  us  to  entertain  the  proper  sentiments, 
whether  of  respect  or  of  interest,  or  of  aversion  or  of 
indifference,  for  the  various  subjects  of  the  narration. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  that  history  written  in  this 
spirit  must  differ  materially  from  any  of  which  we 
have  as  yet  the  experience  :  it  is  only  to  be  lamented 
that  those  great  masters,  whose  writings  we  have  been 
contemplating,  did  not  consecrate  their  mighty  talents 

*  Milton. 


302  ROBERTSON. 

to  so  good  a  work.  To  the  historians  of  all  ages 
joining  with  the  vulgar,  and,  indeed,  writing  as  if 
they  belonged  themselves  either  to  the  class  of  am- 
bitious warriors  and  intriguing  statesmen,  or  to  the 
herd  of  ordinary  men  whom  successful  crimes  de- 
frauded at  once  of  their  rights  and  their  praises, 
may  be  ascribed  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  en- 
couragement held  out  to  profligate  conduct  in  those 
who  have  the  destinies  of  nations  in  their  hands.  At 
all  events,  this  is  certain :  if  they  could  not  eradicate 
the  natural  propensity  in  the  human  mind  towards 
these  errors  when  unrefined,  they  might  have  en- 
lightened it,  and  have  gradually  diffused  a  sounder 
and  better  feeling. 

So  deeply  have  I  always  felt  the  duty  of  attempting 
some  such  reformation  in  the  historical  character  and 
practice,  that  I  had  begun  to  undertake  the  reigns  of 
Henry  V.,  of  Elizabeth,  and  of  Alfred,  upon  these 
great  principles.  A  deep  sense  of  the  inadequate 
powers  which  I  brought  to  this  hard  task,  would 
probably  have  so  far  grown  upon  me  as  its  execution 
advanced,  that  I  should  have  abandoned  it  to  abler 
hands ;  but  professional,  and  afterwards  judicial,  duties 
put  an  end  to  the  attempt  before  it  had  made  any 
considerable  progress.  Nevertheless,  I  found  no 
small  reason  to  be  satisfied  of  success  being  attainable, 
when  I  came  narrowly  to  examine  the  interesting 
facts  connected  with  national  improvement  and  vir- 
tuous conduct ;  and  I  am  sure,  that  whoever  may 
repeat  the  attempt  will  gather  encouragement  from 
the  proof,  which  I  have  drawn  from  the  master-piece 
we  have  been  contemplating,  that  the  events  and 


ROBERTSON.  303 

characters  of  past  times  lend  themselves  to  an  affecting 
narrative,  conducted  on  right  principles. 

The  last  work  of  Dr.  Robertson,  and  which  he 
published  little  more  than  two  years  before  his  death, 
was  his  '  Disquisition  concerning  India/  It  is  an 
able  and  most  learned  inquiry,  critical  and  historical, 
into  the  knowledge  of  India  possessed  by  the  ancient 
nations  who  dwelt  on  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  No- 
thing can  be  more  unjust  than  the  notion  that  this 
work  is  so  incorrect,  or  grounded  on  information  so 
imperfect,  as  to  have  been  superseded  by  more  full  and 
accurate  books  since  published.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  account  of  the  native  customs  and  manners 
given  in  the  Appendix  has  been  rendered  less  useful 
by  the  more  copious  details  since  obtained,  and  that 
some  dispute  has  been  made  of  the  views  which  the 
author  occasionally  takes  in  that  Appendix ;  but  the 
Disquisition  itself  remains  perfectly  untouched  by  any 
controversy  ;  and  so  far  is  it  from  having  been  super- 
seded, that  no  other  work  has  ever  been  since  given 
to  the  world  on  the  same  subject.  It  is,  from  its 
accuracy,  its  knowledge  of  the  ancient  writings,  its 
judicious  reasoning  and  remarks,  as  well  as  its  admi- 
rable composition,  quite  worthy  of  a  place  by  the 
author's  former  and  more  celebrated  writings ;  and  it 
proves  his  great  faculties  to  have  continued  in  their 
entire  vigour  to  the  latest  period  of  his  life. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  Robertson's  style.  No  one 
ever  doubted  of  its  great  excellence,  but  it  has  some- 
times been  objected  to  as  less  idiomatic  and  more 
laboured  than  is  consistent  with  the  perfection  of  com- 
position. The  want  of  purely  idiomatic  expressions 


304  ROBERTSON. 

is  the  almost  unavoidable  consequence  of  provincial 
education  and  habits.  Many  forms  of  speech  which 
are  English,  are  almost  entirely  unknown  in  the 
remote  parts  of  the  kingdom ;  many  which  are  per- 
fectly pure  and  classical,  a  person  living  in  Scotland 
would  fear  to  use  as  doubting  their  correctness.  That 
Robertson,  however,  had  carefully  studied  the  best 
writers,  with  a  view  to  acquire  genuine  Anglicism, 
cannot  be  doubted.  He  was  intimately  acquainted 
with  Swift's  writings ;  indeed,  he  regarded  him  as 
eminently  skilled  in  the  narrative  art.  He  had  the 
same  familiarity  with  Defoe,  and  had  formed  the  same 
high  estimate  of  his  historical  powers.  I  know,  that 
when  a  Professor  in  another  University  consulted  him 
on  the  best  discipline  for  acquiring  a  good  narrative 
style,  previous  to  drawing  up  John  Bell  of  Antermony 's 
'Travels  across  Russia  to  Tartary  and  the  Chinese 
Wall,'  the  remarkable  advice  he  gave  him  was  to  read 
f  Robinson  Crusoe'  carefully ;  and  when  the  Professor 
was  astonished,  and  supposed  it  was  a  jest,  the  his- 
torian said  he  was  quite  serious :  but  if  '  Robinson 
Crusoe'  would  not  help  him,  or  he  was  above  studying 
Defoe,  then  he  recommended  '  Gulliver's  Travels.' 

The  works  of  Dr.  Robertson  involved  him,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  in  some  controversy  of  considerable 
violence  ;  but  as  all  men  have  done  ample  justice  to  his 
diligence  in  consulting  his  authorities,  and  as  all  candid 
men  have  testified  to  his  strict  impartiality,  the  attacks 
which  were  made  upon  him,  and  to  which  he  never 
would  offer  any  answer,  proceeded  from  two  unworthy 
sources — the  bitter  zeal  of  party,  and  the  still  more 
bitter  enmity  of  personal  spleen.  The  Jacobites  have 


ROBERTSON.  305 

ever   regarded   Queen  Mary's   honour  as  an  integral 
part  of  their  political  faith ;  and  they  could  not  forgive 
any  one  who,  with  whatever  leaning  towards  a  prin- 
cess  the    victim    of   such    cruel   treatment,    and  the 
sufferer  under  misfortunes  so  long  and  so  heavy,  and 
with  whatever  disposition  to  free  her  from  any  charges 
unsupported  by  evidence,  had  yet  performed  faithfully 
his  duty  as  an  historian  and  as  a  moralist,  of  condemn- 
ing profligate  conduct,  and  exposing  gross  imprudence 
amounting  to  absolute  infatuation   even   if   guilt  be 
denied.     Nothing  could  have  satisfied  the  blind  zeal 
of  this  faction,  neither  respectable  from  number,  nor 
distinguished  for  ability,  but  acquitting  Mary  of  every 
charge  that  she    did   not    herself  confess,  and    then 
approving  of  her  marriage  with  the  murderer  of  her 
husband  within    three    months    of  his    assassination. 
By  far  the  ablest  of  the  writings  which  the  contro- 
versy produced,    was  the  f  Inquiry'   of  Mr.  Tytler,   a 
lawyer  by  profession,  a  man  of  strong  prejudices,  but 
equally  strong  understanding,  and  a  very  diligent  and 
accurate  investigator  of  particular   facts.     The  most 
learned,  but  the  most  repulsive  from   its  dogmatism 
and  its  overbearing  tone,    was  the   'Vindication'   of 
Mr.  Whittaker,  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land,   settled   in   Cornwall,  and    remarkable   for   his 
industrious  study  of  ancient  British  antiquities.    With 
Mr.    Hume    Dr.    Robertson   likewise   differed,  but  it 
was    in   an    opposite   direction :    he    could   not   yield 
to   that  able  writer's  arguments   in  proof  of  Mary's 
having  been  accessary  to  the  Babington   conspiracy ; 
and    though  he    minutely  considered   both    the    new 

x 


306  ROBERTSON. 

evidence  supposed  to  be  printed  in  Murdin's  '  State 
Papers'  since  the  ( History  of  Scotland'  was  composed, 
and  also  carefully  examined  again  all  his  authorities 
on  the  points  on  which  he  had  been  assailed  by  the 
Jacobite  forces,  yet,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  unim- 
portant errors  or  oversights,  which  he  corrected,  he 
adhered  to  his  original  statements,  well  weighed  and 
maturely  framed  as  they  had,  in  all  instances,  been. 

The  personal  resentment  of  an  able  but  unprincipled 
man  was  the  cause  of  the  most  unworthy  and  un- 
measured attacks,  both  on  his  '  Scottish  History'  and 
on  his  subsequent  publications.  Gilbert  Stuart  was  a 
person  of  undoubted  parts,  but  of  idle  and  dissipated 
habits.  An  able  and  learned  work  which  he  had 
published  at  a  very  early  age,  on  the  t  History  of  the 
British  Constitution,'  made  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh give  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws,  when 
little  more  than  one  and  twenty ;  and  he  soon  after 
published  his  '  View  of  Society  in  Europe/  being  an 
historical  inquiry  concerning  laws,  manners,  and  go- 
vernment. Immediately  after  this  he  was  a  candidate 
for  the  Professorship  of  Public  Law,  in  the  University, 
and  he  fancied  that  he  owed  his  rejection  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Principal.  Nothing  could  be  more  fitting 
than  that  such  should  be  the  case;  for  the  life  of 
Stuart  was  known  to  be  that  of  habitual  dissipation, 
in  the  intervals  only  of  which  he  had  paroxysms  of 
study.  To  exclude  such  a  person  from  the  professor's 
chair  would  have  been  a  duty  incumbent  upon  the 
head  of  any  university  in  Christendom,  whatever,  in 
other  respects,  might  be  his  merits ;  but  no  admission 


ROBERTSON.  307 

was  ever  made  by  the  Principal's  friends  that  he  had 
interfered,  or  indeed  that  the  opinions  and  inclinations 
of  the  magistrates,  who  are  the  patrons,  rendered  any 
such  interference  necessary.  But  the  disappointed 
candidate  had  no  doubt  upon  the  subject,  and  he  set  no 
bounds  to  his  thirst  of  revenge.  He  repaired  to  Lon- 
don, where  he  became  a  writer  in  reviews,  and  made 
all  the  literary  men  of  Edinburgh  the  subjects  of  his 
envious  and  malignant  attacks,  from  1768  to  1773 ; 
the  editors  of  these  journals,  as  is  usual  with  persons 
in  their  really  responsible  situation,  but  who  think 
they  can  throw  the  responsibility  upon  their  unknown 
contributors,  never  inquiring  whether  the  criticisms 
which  they  published  proceeded  from  the  honest  judg- 
ment or  the  personal  spite  of  the  writers.  He  returned 
to  Edinburgh,  and  set  up  a  magazine  and  review,  of 
which  the  scurrility,  dictated  by  private  resentments, 
was  so  unremitting  that  it  brought  the  work  to  a  close 
in  less  than  three  years,  when  he  returned  to  London, 
and  recommenced  his  anonymous  vituperation  of  Scot- 
tish authors  through  the  periodical  press.  He  also 
published  in  1779,  1780,  and  1782,  three  works :  one 
on  the  *  Constitutional  History  of  Scotland/  being  an 
attack  on  Dr.  Robertson's  first  book ;  another  on 
the  '  History  of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland  ;'  and  the 
third  on  the  'History  of  Queen  Mary,'  being  also  an 
elaborate  attack  upon  the  Principal.  The  ability  and 
the  learning  of  these  works,  and  their  lively  and  even 
engaging  style,  has  not  saved  them  from  the  oblivion 
to  which  they  were  justly  consigned  by  the  manifest 
indications  prevailing  throughout  them  all,  of  splenetic 
temper,  of  personal  violence,  and  of  a  constant  disturb- 

x2 


308  ROBERTSON. 

ance  of  the  judgment  by  these  vile,  unworthy  passions.* 
The  same  hostility  towards  the  person  of  the  Princi- 
pal even  involved  this  reckless  man  in  a  quarrel  with 
his  eldest  son  ;  it  led  to  a  duel,  in  which  neither  party 
was  hurt.  An  accommodation  having  taken  place  on 
the  field,  I  have  heard  Stuart's  second  say  that  he  was 
obliged,  knowing  his  friend's  intemperate  habits,  to 
oppose  the  proposal  which  he  made  with  his  usual 
want  of  conduct,  and  indeed  of  right  feeling,  that  all 
the  parties  should  dine  together  on  quitting  the  field. 
That  second,  an  able  and  an  honourable  man,  always 
admitted  Stuart's  unjustifiable  conduct  towards  the 
historian,  one  of  whose  nieces  he  (the  second)  after- 
wards married.  Stuart's  dissipation  continued  un- 
broken, excepting  by  his  occasional  literary  work,  and 
he  died  of  a  dropsy,  in  1786,  at  the  early  age  of  forty. 
•  Others,  far  more  deserving  of  attention,  have  raised 
an  objection  to  the  *  History  of  America,'  from  which 
it  is  difficult  to  defend  it.  There  is  induced  by  the 
narrative,  in  the  mind  of  the  reader,  far  too  great 
sympathy  with  the  conquerors  of  the  New  World. 

*  Next  to  the  Principal  no  one  was  more  bitterly  assailed  than  my 
late  venerated  friend  and  master,  Dr.  Adam,  rector  of  the  High 
School.  His  admirable  '  Grammar'  was  received  universally  by  the 
literary  and  didactic  world  (by  the  scholar  as  well  as  the  teacher) 
with  the  approbation  which  it  so  well  deserved.  But  it  had  one 
fault — it  was  on  a  subject  on  which  Stuart's  cousin,  Ruddirnan,  had 
published  a  book.  This  was  enough  to  enlist  Stuart's  ferocity  against 
both  the  work  and  the  writer.  He  published  anonymous  reviews 
without  end,  and  he  also  published,  under  the  name  of  Busby,  a 
bitter  attack  upon  the  personal  peculiarities  of  Dr.  Adam.  Every 
one  felt  unmingled  disgust  at  such  base  and  unprincipled  proceed- 
ings, and  the  Rector,  like  the  Principal,  gave  the  unworthy  author 
the  mortification  of  leaving  his  assaults  unanswered. 


ROBERTSON.  309 

This  may  in  part  be  palliated  by  the  feeling  so  diffi- 
cult for  any  historian  to  avoid,  and  which  leads  him 
to  paint  in  interesting,  if  not  in  attractive  colours, 
the  deeds  and  the  heroes  of  his  story.  But  the  atro- 
cious crimes  of  those  Spanish  invaders,  who,  with  a 
combination  of  fanatical  violence  and  sordid  avarice, 
subjugated  or  extirpated  unoffending  millions  because 
of  their  pagan  ignorance  and  their  precious  mines, — 
those  bigoted  furies  who  poured  out  the  blood  of  men 
like  water,  in  order  to  establish  the  Gospel  of  peace 
and  good  will  towards  man,— those  monsters  of  cruelty, 
who,  after  wearying  themselves  with  massacre,  racked 
their  invention  for  tortures,  which  might  either  glut 
their  savage  propensities  or  slake  their  execrable  thirst 
of  gold, — all  ought  to  have  called  for  reprobation,  far 
more  severe  than  any  which  the  historian  of  their 
guilt  has  denounced  against  them.  This  is  a  great 
stain  upon  the  work,  and  it  can  only  be  palliated  by 
the  excuse  already  offered, — an  excuse  by  which  the 
stain  never  can  be  wiped  out. 


After  the  Principal's  publication  of  '  Charles  V.,'  and 
while  he  was  writing  the  'America,'  no  event  of  im- 
portance occurred  in  his  life,  which  was  tranquil  and 
dignified,  occupied  only  with  his  duties  as  head  of  the 
University,  where  the  habitual  deference  of  his  col- 
leagues rendered  the  administration  of  its  concerns 
easy  and  prosperous,  diversified  also  with  his  conduct 
of  the  Scottish  church,  now  under  his  guidance,  un- 
opposed by  any  rival.  He  occasionally  visited  London, 
where  he  was  received  by  all  the  more  distinguished 


310  ROBERTSON. 

characters,  whether  statesmen  or  men  of  letters,  with 
the  highest  distinction ;  and  the  charms  of  his  con- 
versation, at  once  easy,  lively,  good-humoured,  and  yet 
perfectly  dignified  as  became  his  sacred  profession  and 
his  elevated  position,  added  greatly  to  the  interest  that 
naturally  arose  from  his  literary  renown. 

In  1778,  the  concessions  to  the  English  and  Irish 
Roman  Catholics,  by  repealing  the  most  oppressive  parts 
of  the  penal  laws,  suggested  to  those  of  Scotland  the 
obtaining  a  similar  boon,  or  rather  a  similar  act  of  jus- 
tice. The  Principal  approved  and  supported  their  claims. 
An  alarm  was  excited,  and  the  Puritanical  party  in 
the  General  Assembly  urged  the  adoption  of  a  remon- 
strance against  the  proposed  measure,  but  the  Princi- 
pal's salutary  interference  occasioned  its  rejection.  The 
alarm  was,  however,  stimulated  by  all  the  means  to 
which  the  unscrupulous  fury  of  religious  faction  has 
recourse ;  and  so  great  a  dread  of  violence  was  excited, 
that  the  Catholics  at  once  abandoned  their  attempt. 
Their  concessions,  however,  came  too  late  to  allay  the 
popular  ferment  which  the  Puritans  had  raised  ;  and  a 
fanatical  mob  attacking  the  Protestant  chapels  at 
Edinburgh,  burnt  one  and  pulled  down  another,  then, 
proceeding  to  the  college,  were  about  to  assail  the 
Principal's  house,  which  they  beleaguered,  with  the 
most  savage  imprecations  against  him,  but  having  had 
notice  of  their  approach  he  had  withdrawn  his  family, 
and  a  body  of  soldiers  stationed  there  saved  the  build- 
ing and  the  rest  of  the  university.  At  the  next 
Assembly  in  1780  he  made  a  speech  of  singular  elo- 
quence, declaring  his  unaltered  opinion  on  the  justice 
of  the  measure,  but  adding  that  before  the  riots  he 


ROBERTSON.  311 

had  been  disposed  to  recommend  a  postponement  of  it 
until  time  should  be  given  to  enlighten  the  public 
mind,  and  free  it  from  the  gross  delusions  under  which 
it  had  been  brought  through  the  acts  of  unprincipled 
men.  This  speech  is  given  with  tolerable  fulness  in  the 
Scotch  Magazine  for  that  year,  and  it  fully  justifies 
the  exalted  opinion  traditionally  entertained  of  the 
Principal's  oratory.  He  declared  on  this  memorable 
occasion  his  intention  to  withdraw  from  public  life, 
and  stated  that  his  friends  well  knew  this  resolution 
had  been  taken  some  time  before  the  late  controversy. 

Nothing  memorable  occurred  to  this  eminent  and 
virtuous  person  after  the  period  to  which  reference 
has  now  been  made.  A  matrimonial  alliance  between 
his  eldest  daughter  and  Mr.  Brydone,  the  celebrated 
traveller,  a  gentleman,  too,  known  for  his  scientific 
pursuits,  as  well  as  distinguished  for  his  amiable 
manners  and  kindness  of  disposition,  had  contributed 
materially  to  her  father's  happiness ;  and  he  liked  to 
pass  a  few  weeks  in  the  summer  or  autumn  at  the  de- 
lightful residence  of  Lennel  on  the  southern  border, 
where  that  excellent  person  lived,  and  where  as  late  as 
1814  he  ended  his  days. 

In  the  autumn  of  1791  the  Principal's  health  first 
began  to  fail;  and  a  jaundice,  proceeding  from  an 
affection  of  the  liver,  brought  him  early  in  1793  to  a 
state  of  weakness  which  left  no  hope  of  his  recovery. 
He  bore  his  infirmity  with  entire  patience,  and  beheld 
the  prospect  of  death,  which  was  for  many  months 
before  him,  with  unshaken  fortitude.  A  month  or  two 
previous  to  his  decease,  he  was  removed  to  Grange 
House,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Edinburgh.  Profes- 


312  ROBERTSON. 

sor  Stewart  there  saw  him  more  than  once ;  and  far 
from  avoiding  the  subject,  he  said  it  would  be  satisfac- 
tory to  him  that  his  friend  should  write  the  account 
of  his  life — it  being,  according  to  the  usage  of  the 
Royal  Society  (of  Edinburgh),  customary  to  give  in  their 
'  Transactions'  the  lives  of  deceased  members  who  have 
attained  distinction  by  their  works.  On  another  occa- 
sion an  observation  was  made  on  the  fruit-trees  then  in 
blossom  ;  and  he  alluded,  with  cheerful  composure,  to 
the  event  which  must  happen  before  they  came  to 
their  maturity,  and  prevent  him  who  now  looked  upon 
the  flower  from  seeing  the  fruit.  His  strength  of 
body  gradually  declining,  though  his  mind  remained 
quite  entire,  he  died  on  the  llth  June,  1793,  in  the 
72nd  year  of  his  age.  His  funeral  in  the  Grey  Friars 
church-yard  was  attended  by  the  professors,  the  magis- 
trates of  the  city,  the  heads  of  the  law,  and  many 
of  the  other  respectable  inhabitants  of  Edinburgh. 
It  was,  as  I  can  testify,  a  scene  peculiarly  impressive 
to  all  who  witnessed  it,  from  the  sterling  virtue  as 
well  as  the  great  celebrity  and  intrinsic  merits  of  the 
illustrious  deceased. 

The  history  of  the  author  is  the  history  of  the  indi- 
vidual, excepting  as  regards  his  private  life  and  his 
personal  habits  :  these  were  in  the  most  perfect  de- 
gree dignified  and  pure.  Without  anything  of  harshness 
or  fanaticism,  he  was  rationally  pious  and  blamelessly 
moral.  His  conduct,  both  as  a  Christian  minister,  as 
a  member  of  society,  as  a  relation,  and  as  a  friend,  was 
wholly  without  a  stain.  His  affections  were  warm, 
they  were  ever  under  control,  and  therefore  equal  and 
steady.  His  feelings  might  pass  for  being  less  strong 


ROBERTSON.'  313 

and  lively  than  they  were,  partly  because  he  had  an 
insuperable  aversion  to  extremes  in  all  things,  partly 
because,  for  fear  of  any  semblance  of  pretension,  to 
which  he  was  yet  more  averse,  he  preferred  appearing 
less  moved  than  he  really  was,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
possibility  of  feeling  less  than  he  externally  showed. 
But  he  was  of  opinions  respecting  conduct  which  led 
to  keeping  the  feelings  under  curb,  and  never  giving 
way  to  them  ;  he  leant  in  this  towards  the  philosophy 
and  discipline  of  the  Stoics ;  and  he  also  held,  which 
was  apt  to  beget  the  same  mistake  as  to  the  warmth  of 
his  heart,  that  exhibitions  of  sorrow,  any  more  than  of 
boisterous  mirth,  were  unfit  to  be  made  ;  that  such 
emotions  should  as  far  as  possible  be  reduced  to  mode- 
ration, even  in  private  ;  but  that  in  society  they  were 
altogether  misplaced  and  mistimed.  He  considered, 
and  rightly  considered,  that  if  a  person  labouring  under 
any  afflictive  feelings  be  well  enough  at  ease  to  go 
into  company,  he  gives  a  sort  of  pledge  that  he  is  so 
far  recovered  of  his  wound,  or  at  least  can  so  far  con- 
ceal his  pains,  as  to  behave  like  the  rest  of  the  circle. 
He  held,  and  rightly  held,  that  men  frequent  society, 
not  to  pour  forth  their  sorrows,  or  indulge  their  un- 
wieldy joys,  but  to  instruct,  or  improve,  or  amuse  each 
other,  by  rational  and  cheerful  conversation.  For 
himself,  when  he  left  his  study,  leaving  behind  him, 
with  the  dust  of  his  books,  the  anxious  look,  the 
wrinkled  brow,  the  disturbed  or  absent  thoughts,  he 
also  expected  others  to  greet  his  arrival  with  the  like 
freedom  from  cares  of  all  sorts,  and  especially  he  dis- 
liked to  have  his  hours  of  relaxation  saddened  with 
tales  of  misery,  interesting  to  no  one,  unless,  which  is 


314  ROBERTSON. 

never  the  object  of  such  narratives,  there  be  a  purpose 
of  obtaining  relief. 

His  conversation  was  cheerful,  and  it  was  varied.  Vast 
information,  copious  anecdote,  perfect  appositeness  of 
illustration, — narration  or  description  wholly  free  from 
pedantry  or  stiffness,  but  as  felicitous  and  as  striking 
as  might  be  expected  from  such  a  master — great  liveli- 
ness, and  often  wit  and  often  humour,  with  a  full  dis- 
position to  enjoy  the  merriment  of  the  hour,  but  the 
most  scrupulous  absence  of  everything  like  coarseness 
of  any  description — these  formed  the  staples  of  his 
talk.  One  thing  he  never  tolerated  any  more  than  he 
did  the  least  breach  of  decorum ;  it  was  among  the 
few  matters  which  seemed  to  try  his  temper — he  could 
not  bear  evil  speaking,  or  want  of  charity.  No  one  was 
likely  ever  to  wrangle  with  another  before  him ;  but  he 
always  put  down  at  once  any  attempt  to  assail  the  ab- 
sent. His  own  nature  was  singularly  charitable  and 
kindly ;  he  always  viewed  the  conduct  of  others  in  the 
least  unfavourable  light ;  and  when  he  heard  any  ob- 
jections urged,  he  would  suggest  something  that  at 
least  left  the  blame  mitigated  when  it  could  not  be 
warded  off  or  made  doubtful.  Of  course,  this  remark 
applies  to  cases  where  the  matter  was  ambiguous,  and 
the  general  character  and  conduct  were  good.  No  man 
ever  expressed  a  greater  abhorrence  of  anything  plainly 
bad,  or  a  nobler  scorn  of  anything  mean  ;  and  his  sen- 
tence went  forth  in  such  cases  with  an  awful  and  an 
overpowering  force. 

His  very  decided  opinions  on  all  subjects  of  public 
interest,  civil  and  religious,  never  interrupted  his 
friendly  and  familiar  intercourse  with  those  who  held 


ROBERTSON.  315 

different  principles.  With  his  colleague,  Dr.  Erskine, 
leader  of  his  antagonists  in  the  Church,  he  lived  upon 
terms  of  uninterrupted  friendship,  as  that  «great  pres- 
byter feelingly  testified  on  preaching  his  funeral 
sermon.  With  Mr.  Hume  his  intimacy  is  well 
known.  His  political  principles  were  those  of  a  mo- 
derate Whig,  a  Whig  of  1688,  as  he  used  to  express 
it ;  but  no  man  held  in  greater  contempt  the  petty 
manoeuvres  of  party.  Horace  Walpole  has  thought 
lit  to  record  a  dialogue  as  having  passed  between  them, 
in  which  he  makes  the  Principal  say,  "  You  must 
know,  sir,  that  I  am  a  moderate  Whig;"  and  himself 
answer,  "  Yes,  Doctor,  a  very  moderate  Whig,  I'll 
engage  for  it" — a  sneer  not  likely  to  have  been  risked 
by  such  an  amateur  with  such  an  artist.  What  the 
great  historian  intended  by  using  the  word  "  moderate'* 
plainly  was  to  guard  himself  against  being  supposed 
to  enter  into  the  squabbles  of  faction,  and  partake  of 
its  blind  fury  in  a  degree  unsuited  to  his  station. 
On  religious  matters  he  ever  expressed  himself  with 
solemnity  and  warmth.  While  he  was  wishing  well 
to  liberty  in  France,  before  the  excesses  that  profaned 
its  name,  and  indeed  before  the  revolution  broke  out, 
he  was  deploring  the  irreligious  tone  of  French  litera- 
ture :  "  Really,"  said  he,  "  one  would  think  we  were 
living  under  a  new  dispensation."  Of  American 
independence  he  was  the  warm  friend ;  but  Washing- 
ton's character  was  far  more  to  his  mind  than 
Franklin's,  of  whose  violence  and  contempt  of  revealed 
religion  he  had  formed  a  very  unfavourable  opinion. 

His  manner  was  not  graceful  in  little  matters,  though 
his  demeanour  was  dignified  on  the  whole.     In  public 


316  ROBERTSON. 

it  was  unimpassioned  till  some  great  burst  came  from 
him  ;  then  it  partook  of  the  fire  of  the  moment,  and 
soon  relapsed  into  dignified  composure.  In  private  it 
had  some  little  awkwardnesses,  not  very  perceptible 
except  to  a  near  and  minute  observer.  His  language 
was  correct  and  purely  English,  avoiding  both  learned 
words  and  foreign  phraseology  and  Scottish  expres- 
sions, but  his  speech  was  strongly  tinged  with  the 
Scottish  accent.  His  voice  I  well  remember,  nor  was 
it  easy  to  forget  it ;  nothing  could  be  more  pleasing. 
It  was  full  and  it  was  calm,  but  it  had  a  tone  of 
heartiness  and  sincerity  which  I  hardly  ever  knew  in 
any  other.  He  was  in  person  above  the  middle  size — 
his  features  were  strongly  marked — his  forehead  was 
high  and  open — the  expression  of  his  mouth  was  that 
of  repose,  of  meditation,  and  of  sweetness  at  the  same 
time.  The  portrait,  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  is  a  strik- 
ing likeness,  and  it  is  the  one  which  is  engraved.  I 
never  knew  an  instance,  I  should  say,  of  so  strong  a 
resemblance  as  that  which  his  eldest  daughter,  Mrs. 
Brydone,  bore  him.  In  her  latter  years,  too,  the  sound 
of  her  voice  was  nearly  his  own.  The  only  particulars 
of  his  manners  and  person  which  I  recollect  are  his 
cocked  hat,  which  he  always  wore,  even  in  the  country  ; 
his  stately  gait,  particularly  in  a  walk  which  he  loved 
to  frequent  in  the  woods  at  Brougham,  where  I  at- 
tended him  once  while  he  visited  there,  and  in  which 
he  slowly  recited  sometimes  Latin  verses,  sometimes 
Greek ;  a  very  slight  guttural  accent  in  his  speech, 
which  gave  it  a  peculiar  fulness  ;  and  his  retaining 
some  old-fashioned  modes  of  address,  as  using  the  word 
"  madam"  at  full  length  ;  and,  when  he  drank  wine 


ROBERTSON.  317 

with  any  woman,  adding,  "  My  humble  service  to  you." 
When  in  the  country  he  liked  to  be  left  entirely  to 
himself  in  the  morning,  either  to  read  or  to  walk  or  to 
drive  about ;  and  he  said  that  one  of  his  great  enjoy- 
ments at  Lennel  was  Mr.  Brydone  and  himself  doing 
precisely  each  as  he  chose,  and  being  each  as  if  the 
other  were  not  in  the  same  house. 

To  give  any  notion  of  the  anecdotes,  simple,  racy, 
unpretending,  which  he  would  introduce  when  per- 
fectly apposite  to  the  subject  matter,  would  not  be 
easy.  Good  nature  and  good  humour  prevailed  through 
his  conversation,  in  which  there  was  nothing  ambitious 
or  forced,  or  any  thing  to  show  a  desire  of  display. 
It  always  seemed  as  if  he  merely  wished  to  enjoy  him- 
self, and  contribute  his  share  to  the  enjoyment  of 
others.  The  late  Lord  Meadowbank,  a  kinsman  of 
his,  and  indeed  his  ward,  when  preparing  his  Lectures 
on  General  History,  of  which  he  was  Professor,  asked 
him  if  he  had  ever  remarked  how  very  superficial  Mr. 
Hume's  Anglo-Saxon  period  is,  more  so  than  the 
other  parts,  though  the  last  written,  of  his  'History?' 
"  Why,  yes,  I  have,"  said  the  Principal ;  "  but  the 
truth  is,  David  (so  he  always  called  him)  had  the 
most  unfortunate  thing  happen  to  him  that  can  'befall 
an  author — he  was  paid  for  it  before  he  wrote  it." 


(  318  ) 


APPENDIX. 


ADDRESS  OF  PRINCIPAL  ROBERTSON  ON  LAYING  THE  FOUNDA. 
TION  STONE  OF  THE  EDINBURGH  COLLEGE,  1791. — (LORD 
NAPIER  WAS  THE  GRAND  MASTER  OF  THE  MASONS.) 

"  MY  LORD, 

"From  very  humble  beginnings  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  has  attained  to  such  eminence  as  entitles  it  to  be 
ranked  among  the  most  celebrated  seminaries  of  learning. 
Indebted  to  the  bounty  of  several  of  our  sovereigns  ;  distin- 
guished, particularly,  by  the  gracious  prince  now  seated  on 
the  British  throne,  whom,  with  gratitude,  we  reckon  amongst 
the  most  munificent  of  our  royal  benefactors  ;  and  cherished 
by  the  continued  attention  and  good  offices  of  our  honourable 
patrons,*  this  University  can  now  boast  of  the  number  and 
variety  of  its  institutions  for  the  instruction  of  youth  in  all 
the  branches  of  literature  and  science. 

"  With  what  integrity  and  discernment  persons  have  been 
chosen  to  preside  in  each  of  these  departments,  the  character 
of  my  learned  colleagues  affords  the  most  satisfying  evidence. 
From  confidence  in  their  abilities  and  assiduity  in  discharg- 
ing the  duties  of  their  respective  offices,  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  has  not  only  become  a  seat  of  education  to  youth 
in  every  part  of  the  British  dominions,  but,  to  the  honour  of 
our  country,  students  have  been  attracted  to  it  from  almost 
every  nation  in  Europe,  and  every  state  in  America. 

"  One  thing  still  was  wanting.  The  apartments  appropriated 
for  the  accommodation  of  professors  and  students  were  so  ex- 
tremely unsuitable  to  the  flourishing  state  of  the  University, 
that  it  had  long  been  the  general  wish  to  have  buildings  more 
decent  and  convenient  erected.  What  your  Lordship  has 
now  done  gives  a  near  prospect  of  having  this  wish  accom- 

*  The  magistrates  of  the  city. 


KOBERTSON.  319 

plished ;  and  we  consider  it  as  a  most  auspicious  circumstance 
that  the  foundation  stone  of  this  new  mansion  of  science  is 
laid  by  your  Lordship,  who,  among  your  ancestors,  reckon  a 
man  whose  original  and  inventive  genius  places  him  high 
among  the  illustrious  persons  who  have  contributed  most 
eminently  to  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  human  knowledge. 

"Permit  me  to  add  what  I  regard  as  my  own  peculiar  feli- 
city, that,  by  having  remained  in  my  present  station  much 
longer  than  any  of  my  predecessors,  I  have  lived  to  witness 
an  event  so  beneficial  to  this  University,  the  prosperity  of 
which  is  near  to  my  heart,  and  has  ever  been  the  object  of  my 
warmest  wishes. 

"  May  the  Almighty  God,  without  the  invocation  of  whom 
no  action  of  importance  should  be  begun,  bless  this  undertak- 
ing, and  enable  us  to  carry  it  on  with  success  :  may  He  con- 
tinue to  protect  our  University,  the  object  of  whose  insti- 
tutions is  to  instil  into  the  minds  of  youth  principles  of  sound 
knowledge,  to  inspire  them  with  the  love  of  religion  and 
virtue,  and  to  prepare  them  for  filling  the  various  stations  in 
society  with  honour  to  themselves,  and  with  benefit  to  their 
country.  All  this  we  ask  in  the  name  of  Christ ;  and  unto 
the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  we  ascribe  the 
kingdom,  power,  and  glory. — Amen." 


LETTER  OF  THE  LATE  PROFESSOR  FERGUSON,  THEN  IN  HIS 
NINETY- SECOND  YEAR,  TO  THE  LATE  LORD  ROBERTSON,  ON 

THE  SUBJECT  OF  HIS  FATHER'S  EPITAPH. 

"  MY  DEAR  LORD,  "  St.  Andrew's,  Nov.  24th,  1814. 

"  I  have  received  your  letter,  enclosing  the  two  copies 
of  the  inscription  on  your  father's  monument,  one  for  Mr. 
Dempster,  which  I  have  delivered,  and  know  his  sense  of 
your  kind  remembrance,  as  well  as  my  own  of  the  honour 
you  have  done  me.  In  these  acknowledgments  I  am  afraid 
you  will  think  me  all  too  slow ;  but  this  is  now  the  mode  of 
my  existence,  and  ill  qualified  to  change  it. 


320  ROBERTSON. 

"  It  has  enabled  me  to  communicate  with  some  of  the  learned 
here,  who  join  me  in  applauding  the  elegance  and  the  appro- 
priate terms  of  that  composition. 

"  The  authority  of  Dr.  Gregory  has  no  need  of  such  sup- 
ports ;  but  I  am  fond  to  mention  it. 

"  I  thought  your  father's  birth  and  mine  had  been  more 
nearly  dated ;  but  I  see  that  his  preceded  mine  by  two  whole 
years,  although  I  have  survived  so  long  to  become  my  own 
monument — perishing  you  will  say,  but  only  more  so,  or  less 
permanent,  than  some  other  grave-stones.  I  remember  to 
have  seen  in  Italy  miles  and  leagues  of  ancient  highways, 
strewed  on  right  and  left  with  continual  vestiges  of  monu- 
ments, now  destroyed  or  in  ruins,  with  scarce  a  name  to  mark 
for  whom  they  were  intended ;  but  your  father's  memory  is 
independent  of  any  such  materials.  More  fortunate  than 
Tacitus  or  Livy,  his  works  entire  remain  for  ages  indefinite, 
to  show  that  in  his  time  the  British  style  in  able  hands  was 
fit  to  emulate  or  cope  with  theirs.  It  were  too  much  vanity 
for  me  to  think  the  opportunity  will  then  exist  of  giving  judg- 
ment how  little  I  had  profited  by  the  example  which  he  set  me, 
of  literary  talents  and  intellectual  eminence.  My  way  is  now 
directed  to  the  trackless  grave,  and  there  my  course  should 
terminate,  but  for  the  happy  thought  that  there  is  somewhat 
after  death  to  which  this  nursery  and  school  of  human  life  is 
no  more  than  a  preparation  or  a  prelude.  Meantime,  however, 
I  remain,  with  just  esteem  and  gratitude  for  kind  attentions, 
"  Your  most  obliged  and  most  humble  servant, 

"ADAM  FERGUSON. 

"  The  Right  Honourable  Lord  Robertson, 
Edinburgh." 


The  translation,  of  which  the  following  forms  the  first  two 
pages  of  the  Principal's  MS.,  was  made,  as  appears  by  the 
date  January  21,  1742,  when  he  was  about  twenty — he  hav- 
ing been  born  19th  September,  1721.  The  whole  is  carefully 
and  admirably  executed,  combining  clearness  with  elegance. 


ROBERTSON.  321 

The  other  translations  which  I  have  seen  of  the  (  Meditations/ 
will  bear  no  comparison  with  this ;  Gataker's  ( 1 692)  in  Latin 
seems  the  best,  but  it  is  not  good.  To  give  an  example,  take 
the  first  paragraph  :  TO  xaXoyjOss-  is  rendered  by  the  translation  of 
1 692  "  to  be  gentle  and  meek ;"  by  Mr.  Graves's,  of  1 792,  "  vir- 
tuous disposition  of  mind."  aopyojrov,  by  the  former  "  to  refrain 
from  all  anger  and  passion  ;"  by  the  latter  ' '  habitual  command 
of  my  temper."  Robertson  gives  both  together  clearly  and 
elegantly,  "  to  be  of  a  complaisant  and  dispassionate  temper  of 
mind."  xaXo-yjQs*  is  a  word  only  found  in  Antoninus.  Ste- 
phanus  renders  it  "  qui  pulcra  indole — probus — honestus  ;" 
the  late  editors  of  Passow,  in  their  excellent  work  (Messrs. 
Liddell  and  Scott),  have  rendered  it  "  well  disposed  :"  Gataker 
(1692),  lf  moris  candidi."  Robertson's  version  seems  prefer- 
able, though  not  widely  different.  In  the  second  paragraph 
we  have  ai$w/j.w  rendered,  unhappily  enough,  by  the  edi- 
tion of  1692,  "  shamefacedness,"  as  a^tpevtxov  is  "  manly  be- 
haviour ;"  while  Graves  gives  both  prolixly  "  modesty  and 
manly  firmness  on  all  occasions."  In  paragraph  16  we  find 
Ttyxepov  xat  ^evsrixov  oKjaXsvrajf,  the  first  word  of  which  the 
edition  of  1692  gives  as  "  meekness ;"  the  edition  of  1792, 
"  mild  condescension,"  which  is  a  fanciful  version ;  the  Ox- 
ford Greek-Latin  edition  of  1704,  (t  mansuetudinem ;"  and 
Robertson,  "  mild  disposition." 


BOOK  I. 

"Jan.  21,  1742. 

''  I.  From  my  grandfather,  Verus,  I  learned  to  be  of  a 
complaisant  and  dispassionate  temper  of  mind. 

"II.  By  the  fame  and  reputation  of  my  father  I  was  taught 
to  be  modest,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  to  form  steady  and 
manly  resolutions. 

"III.  By  my  mother  I  was  taught  to  be  of  a  religious  turn 
of  mind ;  and  not  only  to  abstain  from  all  evil  actions,  but 
from  every  inclination  towards  them ;  to  study  simplicity  in 
my  diet,  and  keep  at  a  distance  from  all  the  vain  pomp  of 
riches. 


322  ROBERTSON. 

"  IV.  By  my  great  grandfather  I  was  advised  not  to  fre- 
quent the  public  schools  of  declaimers ;  but  to  hear  the  best 
masters  in  private,  and  to  spare  no  expense  in  procuring 
such. 

"  V.  By  my  governor  I  was  taught  to  take  no  side  in  those 
factions  which  divide  the  Circus  and  Theatre ;  to  be  patient 
of  labour,  to  be  content  with  little,  and  to  be  able  to  work 
with  my  own  hands ;  not  to  meddle  in  other  men's  matters, 
and  to  discourage  all  informers. 

"VI.  By  Diognetus  I  was  taught  not  to  amuse  myself  with 
empty,  trifling  studies,  not  to  give  credit  to  the  marvellous 
stories  related  of  wizards,  enchanters,  and  the  exorcising  of 
daemons ;  not  to  spend  my  time  in  the  breeding  of  quails  and 
such  like  trifles  ;  to  endure  it  patiently  when  men  speak 
freely  of  me,  and  to  apply  myself  wholly  to  the  study  of  philo- 
sophy. By  his  advice  I  heard  Bacchius,  Tyndarides,  and 
Marcianus,  and,  when  very  young,  employed  myself  in  com- 
posing dialogues ;  used  a  mean  bed,  covered  only  with  a 
skin ;  and  in  every  other  thing  emulated  the  manners  of  the 
Grecian  philosophers. 

"  VII.  To  Rupheus  I  am  indebted  for  my  resolution  of  re- 
forming and  watching  over  my  own  morals,  and  that  I  did 
not  fall  into  an  imitation  of  the  pride  of  the  Sophists ;  that  I 
did  not  write  upon  merely  speculative  points,  or  compose 
quaint  and  finical  exhortations  to  virtue ;  that  my  exercises 
were  not  calculated  to  strike  the  fancy,  and  to  carry  with 
them  an  air  of  importance  and  austerity;  that  I  applied  my- 
self neither  to  rhetoric  nor  poetry,  nor  studied  any  affected 
elegance  in  my  expressions ;  that  I  did  not  wear  the  stola 
while  within  doors,  and  shunned  all  extravagant  pride  in  my 
dress.  By  him  I  was  taught  to  write  my  letters  in  a  sim- 
ple style,  after  the  model  of  those  he  sent  from  Sinuessa ;  to 
show  myself  of  a  placable  disposition  towards  those  who  have 
injured  and  offended  me,  and  ready  to  be  reconciled  to  them 
whenever  they  desire  to  return  to  my  favour ;  to  read  with 
accuracy,  not  to  be  content  with  a  superficial  consideration 
of  things,  and  not  rashly  to  give  ear  to  great  talkers.  To 
him,  likewise,  I  owe  my  acquaintance  with  the  Commentaries 
of  Epictetus,  which  he  furnished  me  with. 


ROBERTSON.  323 

"  VIII.  From  Apollonius  I  learned  to  be  at  the  same  time 
free,  and  yet  without  any  fluctuating  uncertainty  in  my  reso- 
lutions ;  to  have  a  regard  to  nothing  beside  reason,  even  in 
things  of  the  smallest  moment ;  to  preserve  an  equal  mind 
under  the  most  acute  pain,  upon  the  death  of  a  child,  and 
during  the  most  lingering  diseases  ;  and  by  a  living  example 
in  himself,  he  showed  me  that  it  was  possible  for  the  same 
person  to  be  upon  occasion  rigid  or  humane ;  that  we  should 
instruct  others  with  mildness  and  gentleness,  and  look  upon 
our  erudition  and  dexterity  in  delivering  speculative  truths  as 
among  the  meanest  of  qualifications.  By  him  also  I  was  taught 
in  what  manner  to  receive  presents  from  my  friends,  so  as 
neither  to  appear  too  highly  indebted  to  their  favour,  nor  yet 
to  dismiss  them  with  cold  indifference." 


Y    2 


(  324   ) 


B    L    A    C    1C, 


THE  physical  sciences  have  few  more  illustrious  names 
to  boast  than  that  of  Joseph  Black.  With  all  the 
habits  and  the  disciplined  faculties  of  a  true  philoso- 
pher, with  the  temper  as  well  as  the  capacity  of  a 
sage,  he  possessed  that  happy  union  of  strong  but 
disciplined  imagination,  powers  of  close  undivided 
attention,  and  ample  resources  of  reasoning,  which 
forms  original  genius  in  scientific  pursuits  ;  arid,  as  all 
these  qualities  may  be  combined  in  an  individual 
without  his  happening  to  signalise  his  investigations 
of  nature  by  any  discovery,  we  must  add  that  his  life 
was  crowned  with  the  good  fortune  of  opening  to 
mankind  new  paths  in  which  both  himself  and  his 
followers  successfully  trod,  enlarging  to  an  incalculable 
extent  the  bounds  of  human  knowledge.  The  modesty 
of  his  nature  making  him  averse  to  publish  his  specu- 
lations, and  the  genuine  devotion  to  the  investigation 
of  truth,  for  its  own  sake,  rendering  him  most  open  in 
his  communications  with  all  who  were  engaged  in  the 
same  pursuits,  his  incontestable  claim  to  be  regarded  as 
the  founder  of  modern  chemistry  has  been  oftentimes 
overlooked ;  and,  while  some  have  endeavoured  more 
or  less  obscurely  to  mingle  themselves  with  his  dis- 
coveries, others  have  thought  it  becoming  to  post-date 


BJLACSL 


/,•, 


BLACK.  325 

the  new  system,  that  it  might  seem  the  produce  of  a 
somewhat  later  age.  The  interests  of  truth  and  justice 
therefore  require  that  we  should  minutely  examine  the 
facts  of  the  case  ;  and,  happily,  the  evidence  is  so  clear 
that  it  only  requires  an  attentive  consideration  to 
remove  all  doubt  from  the  subject.  I  feel  it  a  duty 
imperatively  cast  upon  me  to  undertake  a  task  from 
which,  did  I  not  regard  it  as  less  difficult  than  sacred, 
I  might  shrink.  But  I  had  the  great  happiness  of 
being  taught  by  himself,  having  attended  one  of  the 
last  courses  of  lectures  which  he  delivered ;  and  the 
knowledge  thus  gained  cannot  be  turned  to  a  better 
use  than  in  recording  the  glory  and  in  vindicating  the 
fame  of  my  illustrious  master. 

The  story  of  a  philosopher's  life  is  soon  told.  Black 
was  born,  in  1721,  at  Bordeaux,  where  his  father,  a 
native  of  Belfast,  was  settled  as  a  merchant :  he  was, 
however,  a  Scotchman,  and  his  wife  too  was  of  a  Scot- 
tish family,  that  of  Gordon  of  Hillhead,  in  Aberdeen- 
shire,  settled  like  Mr.  Black  at  Bordeaux.  The  latter 
was  a  person  of  extraordinary  virtues,  and  a  most  amiable 
disposition.  The  celebrated  Montesquieu  honoured 
him  with  his  especial  regard ;  and  his  son  preserved,  as 
titles  of  honour  in  his  family,  the  many  letters  of  the 
President  to  his  parent.  In  one  of  them  he  laments 
the  intended  removal  of  the  Black  family  as  a  thing 
he  could  not  reconcile  himself  to,  for  his  greatest  plea- 
sure was  seeing  them  often,  and  living  himself  in  their 
society.  Though  Mr.  Black  sent  his  son,  at  the  age 
of  twelve,  for  some  years  to  a  school  in  Ireland,  he 
was  removed  to  the  College  of  Glasgow  in  the  year 
1746,  and  ever  after  lived  in  that  which  was,  properly 


326  BLACK. 

speaking,  his  native  country.  At  that  college  he 
studied  under  the  celebrated  Cullen,  then  Professor  of 
Anatomy  and  Lecturer  on  Chemistry  ;  and,  having 
removed  in  1750  to  Edinburgh  for  the  benefit  of  that 
famous  medical  school,  he  took  his  degree  there  in 
1754.  In  1756  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Dr. 
Cullen  in  the  chair  of  anatomy  and  chemistry  at  Glas- 
gow, and  he  continued  to  teach  there  for  ten  years, 
when  he  was  appointed  to  the  chemistry  professorship 
at  Edinburgh.  He  then  lectured  for  thirty  years  to 
numerous  classes,  and  retiring  in  1796  lived  till  1799, 
and  died  on  the  26th  of  November  in  that  year.  His 
health  never  was  robust ;  it  was  indeed  precarious  at  all 
times  from  a  weakness  in  the  bronchia  and  chest,  but 
he  prolonged  life  by  a  system  of  the  strictest  absti- 
nence, frequently  subsisting  for  days  together  on  water 
gruel  and  diluted  milk.  He  never  was  married  ;  but 
he  cherished  with  unvarying  affection  his  near  relatives, 
who  well  deserved  his  care.  His  favourite  niece,  Miss 
Burnet,  a  person  of  great  sense  and  amiable  temper, 
was  married  to  his  friend  and  second  cousin,  Professor 
Ferguson,  the  historian  and  moral  philosopher.  Dr. 
Black  lived  in  a  select  circle  of  friends,  the  most  illus- 
trious men  of  the  times  in  science  and  in  letters, 
Watt,  Hutton,  Hume,  Robertson,  Smith,  and  after- 
wards with  the  succeeding  generation  of  Scottish 
worthies,  Robison,  Playfair,  Stewart.  Delighting 
to  commune,  to  speculate,  and  to  investigate  with  them, 
he  was  careless  of  the  fame  which  however  he  could 
not  but  be  sensible  his  labours  must  achieve.  He  was 
extremely  averse  to  publication,  contemning  the  im- 
patience with  which  so  many  men  of  science  hurry 


BLACK.  327 

to  the  press,  often  while  their  speculations  are  crude, 
and  their  inquiries  not  finished.  Nor  could  the  reason 
often  urged  in  defence  of  this  find  much  favour  with 
one  who  seemed  never  to  regard  the  being  anticipated 
by  his  fellow-labourers  as  any  very  serious  evil,  so  the 
progress  of  science  was  secured.  Except  two  papers, 
one  in  the  'London  Philosophical  Transactions'  for 
1775  on  the  freezing  of  boiled  water  ;  the  other,  in  the 
second  volume  of  the  ( Edinburgh  Transactions,'  on 
the  Iceland  hot  springs ;  he  never  published  any  work 
after  that  of  which  we  are  now  to  speak,  in  1755, 
and  which,  but  for  the  accidental  occasion  that  gave 
rise  to  it,  would  possibly,  like  his  other  original 
speculations,  never  have  been  given  by  himself  to  the 
press. 

Upon  taking  his  degree  at  Edinburgh  College  he 
wrote  and  published  a  Latin  Thesis,  after  the  manner 
of  that  as  well  as  the  foreign  universities.  The  subject 
was  'Magnesia,  and  the  Acid  produced  by  Food  in  the 
Stomach'  (De  Acido  e  Cibis  orto  ;  et  de  Magnesia),  and 
it  contained  the  outline  of  his  discoveries  already  made. 
Having  sent  some  copies  of  this  Thesis  to  his  father 
at  Bordeaux,  one  was  given  to  Montesquieu,  who  at 
once  saw  the  vast  importance  of  the  truths  which  it 
unfolded.  He  called  a  few  days  after  and  said  to  Mr. 
Black,  "  I  rejoice  with  you,  my  very  good  friend :  your 
son  will  be  the  honour  of  your  name  and  of  your 
family."  But  though  the  discoveries  were  sketched 
distinctly  enough  in  this  writing,  they  were  only 
given  at  large  the  following  year  in  his  celebrated 
work,  'Experiments  on  Magnesia,  Quicklime,  and 
other  Alkaline  Substances,'  incontestably  the  most 


328  BLACK. 

beautiful  example  of  strict  inductive  investigation  since 
the  '  Optics'  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  His  fervent  ad- 
miration of  that  masterly  work  was  indicated  by  his 
giving  it  to  Professor  Robison,  then  a  student,  and 
desiring  him  to  "  make  it  the  model  of  all  his  studies," 
recommending  him  at  the  same  time  a  careful  study  of 
the  mathematics.  It  appears  that  this  important 
inquiry  concerning  the  alkaline  earths,  the  results 
of  which  were  destined  to  change  the  face  of  chemical 
science,  was  suggested  by  the  attempts  then  making  to 
find  a  solvent  for  the  stone.  I  distinctly  recollect  Dr. 
Black,  in  his  lectures,  prefacing  the  admirable  and 
most  interesting  account  which  he  gave  of  his  dis- 
coveries, with  the  statement  that  the  hopes  of  finding 
a  solvent  which  should  not,  like  the  caustic  alkalies, 
destroy  the  substance  of  the  bladder  in  melting  the 
stone,  first  led  him  to  this  investigation.  Professor 
Robison  has  given  a  note  from  his  memorandum-book 
indicating  that  he  had  at  first  fallen  into  the  notion  of 
alkalies,  when  treated  with  quicklime,  deriving  from 
it  their  caustic  quality;  the  common  belief  (which 
gave  rise  to  the  term  caustic)  being  that  lime  obtained 
from  the  fire  the  quality  of  growing  extremely  hot, 
even  to  ignition  when  united  with  water.  But  expe- 
riment soon  corrected  this  idea ;  for,  having  exposed 
the  caustic  or  quicklime  to  the  air  till  it  became  mild, 
he  says,  "  Nothing  escapes  (meaning  no  fire  or  heat) ; 
the  cup  rises  considerably  by  absorbing  air."  Another 
observation  on  the  comparative  loss  of  weight  sustained 
by  chalk  when  calcined  (in  the  fire),  and  when  dis- 
solved in  an  acid,  is  followed  by  the  account  of  a 
medical  case,  which  the  Professor  knew  to  have 


BLACK.  329 

occurred  in  1752.  A  third  note  follows,  and  proves 
him  to  have  now  become  possessed  of  the  true  theory  of 
causticity,  namely,  the  expulsion  of  air,  and  of  mildness, 
namely,  its  absorption.  The  discovery  was  therefore 
made  as  early  as  1752 — it  was  published  generally  in 
1754 — it  was  given  in  its  fullest  details  in  1755.  At 
this  time  M.  Lavoisier  was  a  boy  at  school — nine 
years  old  when  the  discovery  was  made — eleven  when 
it  was  published — twelve  when  it  was  as  fully  given 
to  the  world  as  its  author  ever  delivered  it.  No  pos- 
sibility therefore  existed  of  that  great  man  finding  out 
when  he  composed  his  great  work  that  it  was  a 
discovery  of  his  own,  as  he  did  not  scruple  to  describe 
oxygen,  though  Dr.  Priestley  had  first  communicated  it 
to  him  in  the  year  1774  ;  or  that  Black  and  he  dis- 
covered it  about  the  same  time,  as  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  stating  with  respect  to  other  gases,  with  a  con- 
venient degree  of  ambiguity  just  sufficient  for  self- 
defence,  should  he  be  charged  with  unfair  appropriation. 
Who  that  reflects  on  the  noble  part  which  this  great 
philosopher  acted,  both  in  his  life  and  in  his  death,  can 
avoid  lamenting  that  he  did  not  rest  satisfied  with  the 
fame  really  his  due,  of  applying  the  discoveries  of  others, 
in  which  he  had  no  kind  of  share,  to  the  investigation 
of  scientific  truths,  as  entirely  the  result  of  his 
extraordinary  faculty  of  generalization,  and  genius  for 
philosophical  research,  as  those  discoveries,  the  mate- 
rials of  his  induction,  were  the  undivided  property  of 
others ! 

The  capital  discovery  of  Black,  thus  early  made,  and 
to  any  share  in  which  no  one  has  ever  pretended,  was 
that  the  causticity,  as  it  was  formerly  termed  upon  a 


330  BLACK. 

false  theory,  of  the  alkalis  and  alkaline  earths,   was 
owing  to  the  loss  of  a  substance  with  which  they  had 
been  combined,  and  that  their  reunion  with  this  sub- 
stance again  rendered  them  mild.     But  the  nature  of 
this  substance  was  likewise  ascertained  by  him,  and  its 
detection  forms  by  far  the  most  important  part  of  the 
discovery,  for  it  laid  the  foundation  of  chemical  science. 
He  found  that  it  was  a  permanently  elastic  fluid,  like 
air  in  some  of  its  mechanical  qualities,  those  of  being 
transparent  or  invisible,  and  incondensable,  but  differ- 
ing entirely  from  the  air  of  our  atmosphere  in  its 
chemical  properties.     It  was  separated  from  alkaline 
substances  by  heat,  and  by  the  application  of  acids, 
which,  having  a  stronger  elective  affinity  for  them, 
caused  it  to  be  precipitated,  or  to  escape  in  the  aeriform 
state  ;  it  was  heavier  than  common  air,  and  it  gave  a 
slight  acidulous  flavour  to  water  on  being  absorbed  by  it; 
hence  the  inference  that  it  was  an  acid  itself.     A  short 
time  afterwards  (in  1757)  he  discovered  that  this  peculiar 
air  is  the  same  with  that  produced  by  the  fermentation 
of  vegetable  substances.     This  he  ascertained  by  the 
simple  experiment  of  partially  emptying  in  a  brewer's 
vat,  where  the  fermenting  process  was  going  on,  the 
contents  of  a  phial  filled  with  lime-water.     On  shaking 
the  liquid  that  remained  with  the  air  that  had  entered, 
he   found   it   become   turbid,  from   the  lime  having 
entered  into  union  with  the  air,  and  become   chalk. 
The  same  day  he  discovered  by  an  experiment,  equally 
simple  and  equally  decisive,  that  the  air  which  comes 
from  burning  charcoal  is  of  the  same  kind.    He  fixed  a 
piece  of  charcoal  in  the  broad  end  of  a  bellows  nozzle, 
unscrewed ;  and  putting  that  in  the  fire,  he  inserted 


BLACK.  331 

the  other  end  in  a  vessel  filled  with  lime-water. 
The  air  that  was  driven  through  the  liquid  again  pre- 
cipitated the  lime  in  the  form  of  chalk.  Finally,  he 
ascertained  by  breathing  through  a  syphon  filled  with 
lime-water,  and  finding  the  lime  again  precipitated,  that 
animals,  by  breathing,  evolve  air  of  this  description. 

The  great  step  was  now  made,  therefore,  that  the 
air  of  the  atmosphere  is  not  the  only  permanently 
elastic  body,  but  that  others  exist,  having  perfectly 
different  qualities  from  the  atmospheric  air,  and  capa- 
ble of  losing  their  elasticity  by  entering  into  chemi- 
cal union  with  solid  or  with  liquid  substances,  from 
which  being  afterwards  separated,  they  regain  the 
elastic  or  aeriform  state.  He  gave  to  this  body  the 
name  of  fixed  air,  to  denote  only  that  it  was  found 
fixed  in  bodies,  as  well  as  elastic  and  separate.  He 
used  the  term  "  air"  only  to  denote  its  mechanical  re- 
semblance to  the  atmospheric  air,  and  not  at  all  to 
imply  that  it  was  of  the  same  nature.  No  one  ever 
could  confound  the  two  substances  together ;  and  ac- 
cordingly M.  Morveau,  in  explaining  some  years  after- 
wards the  reluctance  of  chemists  to  adopt  the  new 
theory  of  causticity,  gives  as  their  excuse,  that  although 
this  doctrine  "  admirably  tallies  with  all  the  pheno- 
mena, yet  it  ascribes  to  fixed  air  properties  which 
really  make  it  a  new  body  or  existence"  (" forment 
reellement  un  nouvel  etre").* 

In  order  to  estimate  the  importance  of  this  dis- 
covery, and  at  the  same  time  to  show  how  entirely  it 


*  Supplement  to  the  *  Encyclopedic,'  vol.  ii.  p.  274,  published 
in  1777. 


332  BLACK. 

altered  the  whole  face  of  chemical  science,  and  how 
completely  the  doctrine  was  original,  we  must  now 
examine  the  state  of  knowledge  which  philosophers 
had  previously  attained  upon  the  subject. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  no  great  discovery  was 
ever  made  at  once,  except  perhaps  that  of  logarithms ; 
all  have  been  preceded  by  steps  which  conducted  the  dis- 
coverer's predecessors  nearly,  though  not  quite,  to  the 
same  point.  Some  may  possibly  think  that  Black's  dis- 
covery of  fixed  air  affords  no  second  exception  to  this 
rule ;  for  it  is  said  that  Van  Helmont,  who  flourished 
at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  and  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  had  observed  its  evolution  during  fer- 
mentation, and  given  it  the  name  of  gas  silvestre,  spirit 
from  wood,  remarking  that  it  caused  the  phenomena 
of  the  Grotto  del  Cane,  near  Naples.  But  though  he 
as  well  as  others  had  observed  an  aeriform  substance 
to  be  evolved  in  fermentation  and  in  effervescence, 
there  is  no  reason  for  affirming  that  they  considered  it 
as  differing  from  atmospheric  air,  except  by  having 
absorbed,  or  become  mixed  with,  certain  impurities. 
Accordingly,  a  century  later  than  Van  Helmont,  Hales, 
who  made  more  experiments  on  air  than  any  other  of 
the  old  chemists,  adopts  the  commonly  received  opinion 
that  all  elastic  fluids  were  only  different  combinations 
of  the  atmospheric  air  with  various  exhalations  or 
impurities  ;*  and  this  was  the  universal  belief  upon 
the  subject,  both  of  philosophers  and  of  the  vulgar. 


*  It  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  Van  Helmont's  observation, 
which  lay  for  a  century  and  a  half  barren,  threw  no  light  of  any 
value  upon  the  subject.  No  one  questions  Newton's  title  to  the 
discovery  of  the  different  refrangibility  of  light,  and  the  true  theory 


BLACK.  333 

It  is  now  fit  that  we  see  in  what  manner  the  subject 
was  treated  by  scientific  men  at  the  period  immediately 
preceding  Black's  discoveries.    The  article  '  Air'  in  the 
French  'Encyclopedic'   was   published  in   1751,  and 
written  by  D'Alembert  himself.      It  is,  as  might  be 
expected,  able,  clear,  elaborate.     He  assumes  the  sub- 
stance of  the  atmosphere  to  be  alone  entitled  to  the 
name  of  air,  and  to  be  the  foundation  of  all  other  per- 
manently elastic  bodies :   "  L/air  elementaire,  ou  1'air 
proprement  dit,"  he  says.     He  describes  it  as   "  homo- 
gene/'  and  terms  it  "1'ingredient  fondamental  de  tout 
1'air   de   1'atmosphere,   et  qui  lui    donne   son    nom." 
Other  substances  or  exhalations  mix  with  it,  he  says, 
but  these  he  terms  "  passageres,"  passing  vapours,  and 
not  permanent :    the   air  alone    (that  is,  the  atmo- 
spheric air)  he   calls   "  permanent,"   or   permanently 
elastic  (vol.  i.  p.  225).     So  little  attention  had  the  ob- 
servation of  Van  Helmont  respecting  the  Grotto  del 


of  the  rainbow;  yet  at  the  beginning  of  the  17th  century,  Antonio  de 
Dominis,  Archbishop  of  Spalatro,  had  really  made  an  ingenious  and 
well-grounded  experiment  on  the  similarity  of  the  rainbow  colours 
with  those  formed  by  the  sun's  rays  refracted  twice  and  reflected  once 
in  a  globe  filled  with  water.  The  doctrine  of  universal  gravitation 
was  known  to  both  Kepler  and  Galileo  ;  arid  Boulland  (Astronomia 
Philolaica,  lib.  i.,  1645)  distinctly  stated  his  belief  or  conjecture 
that  it  acted  inversely  as  the  squares  of  the  distances.  The  famous 
proposition  of  equal  areas  in  equal  times  was  known  to  Kepler. 
The  nearest  approach  to  the  Fluxional  Calculus  had  been  made  by 
Harriott  and  Roberval  and  Fermat ;  and  to  take  but  one  other  ex- 
ample, the  electrical  explosion  of  the  Leyden  jar,  discovered  in  1747, 
obtained  the  name  of  the  coup-foudroyant,  and  was  by  Abbe  Nollet 
conjectured  to  be  identical  with  lightning,  Franklin's  celebrated 
experiment  being  only  made  in  1752. 


334  BLACK. 

Cane  excited,  that  we  find  a  conjecture  hazarded  in  the 
article  '  Grotte'  (vol.  vii.  p.  968),  which  appeared  in 
1756, — "peut-etre  respirent  ils  (les  chiens),  ail  lieu 
d'air,  des  vapeurs  minerales  ;"  but  this  was  some  time 
after  Black's  discovery  had  taught  us  to  distinguish  such 
permanently  elastic  vapours  from  atmospheric  air.  In 
the  article  '  Fermentation'  (vol.  vi.  p.  523)  we  find 
Van  Helmont's  doctrines  of  the  connexion  between 
fermentation  and  digestion  treated  with  ridicule,  and 
those  who  adopted  them  jocularly  called  the  "  fermen- 
tateurs." 

A  few  years  later,  however,  the  face  of  things 
changed.  In  the  '  Supplement,'  published  in  1776,  we 
find  an  article  on  '  Fixed  Air/  and  a  reference  to  Dr. 
Black's  discovery  ;  but  nothing  can  be  more  indistinct 
than  the  author,  M.  Morveau's,  ideas  respecting  it; 
for  he  leaves  us  in  doubt  whether  it  be  the  atmospheric 
air  or  a  separate  substance,  and  yet  he  states  that  the 
phenomena  of  fermentation  and  putrefaction  are  ex- 
plained by  the  evolution  or  absorption  of  this  air,  and 
that  mineral  waters  derive  from  its  presence  their  fla- 
vour. An  abstract  of  M.  Venel's  book  had  in  1765, 
under  the  head  of '  Mineral  Waters,'  given  this  explana- 
tion ;  but  instead  of  representing  the  air  combined  with 
the  water  as  a  different  substance,  he  calls  it  "  veritable 
air  et  meme  tres  pure."  We  have,  however,  seen  that, 
in  the  following  year  (1777),  M.  Morveau's  ideas  were 
perfectly  distinct  on  the  subject ;  for  he  treats  it  as  a 
new  substance,  wholly  different  from  atmospheric  air. 
The  slowness  with  which  Black's  doctrine  made  its 
way  in  France  may  be  presumed  from  Morveau's  re- 
mark on  causticity,  already  cited,  and  also  from  this, 


BLACK.  335 

that  the  article  on  'Magnesia,'  published  in  1765,  dog- 
matically asserts  Black  to  be  in  error  when  he  de- 
scribes Epsom  salts  as  yielding  that  earth,  "  because," 
says  the  author,  "  those  salts  are  purely  Seidlitian," 
"entierement  Seidlitiens"  (vol.  x.  p.  858).  In  fact,  Ep- 
som salts,  magnesia,  limestone,  and  sea-water  are  the 
great  sources  from  which  all  magnesia  is  obtained. 
The  first  of  these  substances  is  in  truth  only  a  com- 
bination of  magnesia  with  sulphuric  acid. 

The  other  discoveries  to  which  Black's  led  were  as 
slowly  disseminated  as  his  own.  Oxygen  gas  had  been 
discovered,  in  August,  1774,  by  Priestley,  and  soon 
after  by  Scheele  without  any  knowledge  of  Priestley's 
previous  discovery  ;  yet  in  1777  Morveau,  who  wrote  the 
chemical  articles  in  the  '  Supplement,'  never  mentions 
that  discovery,  nor  the  almost  equally  important  dis- 
covery of  Scheele,  chlorine,  made  in  1774,  nor  that  of 
azote,  discovered  .by  Rutherford  in  1772,  nor  hydro- 
gen gas,  the  properties  of  which  had  been  fully  inves- 
tigated by  Cavendish  as  early  as  1766.  Lavoisier's 
important  doctrine,  well  entitled  to  be  called  a  dis- 
covery, of  the  true  nature  of  combustion,  had  likewise 
been  published  in  1774  in  his  '  Opuscules,'  yet  Mor- 
veau doggedly  adheres  to  his  own  absurd  theory  of 
the  air  only  being  necessary  to  maintain  those  oscilla- 
tions in  which  he  holds  combustion  to  consist ;  and 
finding  that  the  increase  of  weight  is  always  the  result 
of  calcination  as  well  as  combustion,  he  satisfies  him- 
self with  making  a  gratuitous  addition  to  the  hypo- 
thesis of  phlogiston,  and  supposes  that  this  imaginary 
substance  is  endowed  with  positive  levity ;  nor  does  he 
allude  to  the  experiments  of  Lavoisier  on  gases,  on 


336  BLACK. 

combustion,  and  on  oxidation,  further  than  to  say  that 
he  had  for  a  considerable  time  been  engaged  in  these 
inquiries.  It  was  not  indeed  till  1 787  that  he  became 
a  convert  to  the  sound  and  rational  doctrine,  and 
abandoned  the  fanciful  hypothesis,  simple  and  inge- 
nious though  it  be,  of  Stahl.  Berthollet,  the  earliest 
convert,  had  come  over  to  the  truth  two  years  be- 
fore. Thus,  discoveries  had  been  made  which  laid  the 
foundation  of  a  new  science,  and  on  which  the  atten- 
tion of  all  philosophers  was  bent ;  yet  the  greatest 
scientific  work  of  the  age  made  no  more  mention 
of  them  than  if  Black,  Cavendish,  Priestley,  and 
Scheele  had  not  been.  The  conjecture  may  be  allowed 
to  us,  that  if  any  of  these  great  things  had  been  done 
in  France,  M.  Morveau  would  not  have  been  suffered 
to  preserve  the  same  unbroken  silence  respecting  them, 
even  if  his  invincible  prejudices  in  favour  of  the  doc- 
trine of  phlogiston  had  disposed  him  to  a  course  so 
unworthy  of  a  philosopher. 

The  detail  into  which  I  have  entered,  sufficiently 
proves  that  the  discovery  of  fixed  air  laid  at  once  the 
foundation  of  the  great  events  in  the  chemical  world 
to  which  reference  has  just  been  made,  because  the 
step  was  of  incalculable  importance  by  which  we  are 
led  to  the  fact  that  atmospheric  air  is  only  one  of  a 
class  of  permanently  elastic  fluids.  When  D'Alem- 
bert  wrote  the  article  '  Air,'  in  1751,  he  gave  the  doc- 
trine then  universally  received,  that  all  the  other  kinds 
of  air  were  only  impure  atmospheric  air,  and  that  this 
fluid  alone  was  permanently  elastic,  all  other  vapours 
being  only,  like  steam,  temporarily  aeriform.  Once 
the  truth  was  made  known  that  there  are  other  gases 


BLACK.  337 

in  nature,  only  careful  observation  was  required  to 
find  them  out.  Inflammable  air  was  the  next  which 
became  the  subject  of  examination,  because,  though  it 
had  long  been  known,  before  Black's  discovery  it  had 
been  supposed  only  to  be  common  air  mixed  with  unc- 
tuous particles.  His  discovery  at  once  showed  that  it 
was,  like  fixed  air,  a  separate  aeriform  fluid,  wholly 
distinct  from  the  air  of  the  atmosphere.  The  other 
gases  were  discovered  somewhat  later.  But  it  is  a  very 
great  mistake  to  suppose  that  none  of  these  were  known 
to  Black,  or  that  he  supposed  fixed  air  to  be  the  only 
gas  different  from  the  atmospheric.  The  nature  of 
hydrogen  gas  was  perfectly  known  to  him,  and  both 
its  qualities  of  being  inflammable  and  of  being  so  much 
lighter  than  atmospheric  air;  for  as  early  as  1766 
he  invented  the  air  balloon,  showing  a  party  of  his 
friends  the  ascent  of  a  bladder  filled  with  inflammable 
air.  Mr.  Cavendish  only  more  precisely  ascertained 
its  specific  gravity,  and  showed  what  Black  could  not 
have  been  ignorant  of,  that  it  is  the  same,  from  what- 
ever substance  it  is  obtained. 

But  great  as  was  the  discovery  of  fixed  air,  and 
important  as  were  its  consequences,  the  world  was 
indebted  to  its  illustrious  author  for  another  scarcely 
less  remarkable,  both  from  being  so  unexpected,  and 
from  producing  such  lasting  effects  upon  physical 
science.  About  the  year  1763  he  meditated  closely  upon 
the  fact,  that  on  the  melting  of  ice  more  heat  seems 
to  disappear  than  the  thermometer  indicates,  and  also 
that  on  the  condensation  of  steam  an  unexpected  pro- 
portion of  heat  becomes  perceptible.  An  observation 
of  Fahrenheit,  on  the  cooling  of  water  below  the  tern- 


338  BLACK. 

perature  of  ice  until  it  is  disturbed,  when  it  gives  out 
heat  and  freezes  at  once,  appears  also  to  have  attracted 
his  careful  consideration.  He  contrived  a  set  of  simple 
but  decisive  experiments  to  investigate  the  cause  of 
these  appearances,  and  was  led  to  the  discovery  of 
latent  heat,  or  the  absorption  of  heat  upon  bodies 
passing  from  the  solid  to  the  fluid  state,  and  from 
the  fluid  to  the  aeriform,  the  heat  having  no  effect  on 
surrounding  bodies,  and  being  therefore  insensible  to 
the  hand  or  to  the  thermometer,  and  only  by  its 
absorption  maintaining  the  body  in  the  state  which  it 
has  assumed,  and  which  it  retains  until,  the  absorbed 
heat  being  given  out,  and  becoming  again  sensible,  the 
state  of  the  body  is  changed  back  again  from  fluid 
to  solid,  from  aeriform  to  fluid.  He  never  published 
any  account  of  this  discovery,  but  he  explained  it  fully 
in  his  Lectures,  both  at  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh, 
and  he  referred  to  it  in  the  paper  already  mentioned, 
which  was  printed  in  the  <  Philosophical  Transactions  * 
for  1775.  Well,  then,  may  we  marvel  that  no  mention 
whatever  of  latent  heat  is  made  in  the  celebrated  *  Ency- 
clopedic,' which  owed  its  chemical  contributions  to  no 
less  a  writer  and  experimentalist  than  Morveau. 
The  doctrine  of  latent  heat,  however,  was  immediately 
applied  by  all  philosophers  to  the  production  of  the 
different  airs  which  were  successively  discovered.  They 
were  found  to  owe  their  permanently  elastic  state  to 
the  heat  absorbed  in  their  production  from  solid  or 
fluid  substances,  and  to  regain  their  fluid  or  solid  state 
by  combining  either  together  or  with  those  sub- 
stances, and  in  the  act  of  union  giving  out  in  a 
sensible  form  the  heat  which,  while  absorbed  and 


BLACK.  339 

latent,  had  kept  them  in  the  state  of  elastic  and  in- 
visible fluids.* 

The  third  great  discovery  of  Black  was  that  which 
has  since  been  called  the  doctrine  of  specific  heat,  but 
which  he  called  the  capacity  of  bodies  for  heat.  Dif- 
ferent bodies  contain  different  quantities  of  heat  in  the 
same  bulk  or  weight ;  and  different  quantities  of  heat 
are  required  to  raise  different  bodies  to  the  same  sen- 
sible temperature.  Thus,  by  Black's  experiment,  it 
was  found  that  a  pound  of  gold  being  heated  to  150°, 
and  added  to  a  pound  of  water  at  50°,  the  temperature 
of  both  became  not  100°,  the  mean  between  the  two, 
but  55°,  the  gold  losing  95°,  and  the  water  gaining  5°, 
because  the  capacity  of  water  for  heat  is  nineteen  times 
that  of  gold.  So  twice  as  much  heat  is  required  to 
raise  water  to  any  given  point  of  sensible  heat  as  to 
raise  mercury,  the  volumes  of  the  two  fluids  compared 
being  equal. 

The  true  doctrine  of  combustion,  calcination  of 
metals,  and  respiration  of  animals,  which  Lavoisier 
deduced  from  the  experiments  of  Priestley  and  Scheele 
upon  oxygen  gas,  and  of  Cavendish  on  hydrogen  gas, 
and  which  has  changed  the  whole  aspect  of  chemical 
science,  was  founded  mainly  upon  the  doctrines  of 
latent  and  specific  heat.  It  was  thus  the  singular 
felicity  of  Black  to  have  furnished  both  the  pillars 
upon  which  modern  chemistry  reposes,  and  to  have 

*  It  is  by  no  means  impossible  that  one  day  we  may  be  able  to 
reduce  the  phenomenon  of  light  within  the  theory  of  latent  heat.  It 
may  be  that  this  body  when  absorbed,  that  is,  fixed  in  substances, 
gives  out  heat ;  as,  while  passing  through  diaphanous  substances  and 
remaining  unfixed,  its  heat  is  not  sensible. 

z  2 


340  BLACK. 

furnished  them  so  long  before  any  one  attempted  to 
erect  the  superstructure,  that  no  doubt  could  by  any 
possibility  arise  respecting  the  source  of  our  increased 
knowledge,  the  quarter  to  which  our  gratitude  should 
be  directed.  Fixed  air  was  discovered  in  1752,  and 
fully  explained  to  the  world  in  1754  and  1755. 
Latent  heat  was  yearly,  from  1763,  explained  to  nu- 
merous classes  of  students,  before  whom  the  experi- 
ments that  prove  it  were  performed  by  the  author's 
own  hands.  Cavendish  made  his  experiments  on  in- 
flammable air  in  1766  ;  Priestley  began  his  in  1768, 
first  publishing  in  1 772  ;  and  he  discovered  oxygen  in 
1774,  in  which  year  the  nature  of  combustion  was  first 
explained  by  Lavoisier,  a  boy  at  school  when  fixed  air 
was  discovered,  and  having  made  no  experiments  nor 
written  any  one  line  upon  chemical  subjects  for  seven 
years  after  latent  heat  was  discovered. 

But  we  shall  form  a  more  striking  idea  to  ourselves 
of  the  revolution  which  Black  thus  effected  in  che- 
mistry, if  we  attend  a  little  to  the  state  of  that  science 
in  general  before  he  began  his  labours,  We  have 
already  seen  the  low  condition  of  the  knowledge  then 
possessed  respecting  aeriform  fluids  ;  the  general  con- 
dition of  the  science  was  in  the  same  proportion 
humble. 

The  celebrated  '  Preliminary  Discourse'  to  the  '  En- 
cyclopedic' makes  hardly  any  mention  of  chemistry 
among  the  sciences;  and  in  the  '  Arbre  Encyclopedique,' 
on  which  the  authors  (D'Alembert  and  Diderot)  plume 
themselves  much,  we  find  it  not  very  distinctly  repre- 
sented, or  in  very  good  company.  It  is  termed  the 
science  of  interior  and  occult  qualities  of  bodies,  its 


BLACK.  341 

objects  being  to  imitate  and  rival  nature,  by  decom- 
posing, reviving,  and  transferring  substances.  It  is 
represented  as  holding  among  the  sciences  the  place 
which  poetry  occupies  among  other  branches  of  litera- 
ture. Its  fruits  are  said  to  be  alchemy,  metallurgy, 
natural  magic,  and  chemistry  properly  so  called, 
which  is  stated  to  consist  of  pyrotechny  and  dyeing. 
Strange  to  tell,  pharmacy  is  not  given  as  one  of  its 
fruits,  being  referred  wholly  to  the  branch  of  medical 
science. 

But  the  state  of  chemistry  is  better  understood  by 
the  article  itself  in  the  '  Encyclopedic/  the  elaborate 
work  of  M.  Venel  of  Montpelier,  well  known  for  his 
researches  concerning  mineral  springs,  and  author  of 
most  of  the  chemical  articles  in  the  original  work, 
as  M.  Morveau  was  of  those  in  the  '  Supplement/ 
and  whose  mistakes  on  the  subject  of  magnesia,  aris- 
ing from  prejudice,  have  already  been  mentioned.  This 
article  begins  with  lamenting  the  lo\v  condition  of 
his  favourite  science  :  "  Elle  est  peu  cultivee  parmi  nous. 
Cette  science  n'est  que  tres  mediocrement  repandue, 
meme  parmi  les  savans,  malgre  la  pretention  a  1'uni- 
versalite  des  connaissances  qui  font  aujourd'hui  le  gout 
dominant.  Les  chimistes  forment  un  peuple  distinct, 
tres-peu  nombreux,  ayant  sa  langue,  ses  mysteres,  ses 
loix,  et  vivent  presque  isoles  au  milieu  d'un  grand 
peuple  peu  curieux  de  sa  connaissance,  n'entendant 
presque  rien  de  son  industrie."  He  then  goes  on  to 
show  that  this  "  incuriosite,  soit  reelle,  soit  simulee," 
is  yet  extremely  unphilosophical,  inasmuch  as  it  leads  to 
a  rash  condemnation ;  and  that  those  who  know  any 
subject  superficially  may  possibly  be  deceived  in  their 


342  BLACK. 

own  judgment  upon  it,  "  the  consequence  of  which  has 
been,"  he  adds,  "that  owing  to  the  prejudices  enter- 
tained against  the  nature  and  reach  of  the  science,  it 
becomes  a  matter  of  no  small  difficulty  or  slight  con- 
troversy to  say  clearly  and  precisely  what  chemistry  is. 
Some  make  no  distinction  between  the  chemist  and 
the  quack  who  seeks  after  the  philosopher's  stone 
(souffleur)  ;  others  think  any  one  a  chemist  who  has 
a  still  for  preparing  perfumes  or  colours.  Many  con- 
sider the  compounding  of  drugs  as  containing  the 
whole  of  the  art.  Even  men  of  science  know  scarcely 
any  thing  about  the  chemists." — "  What  natural  phi- 
losopher," he  asks,  "  so  much  as  ever  names  Becker  or 
Stahl?  Whereas  those  who,  having  other  scientific 
illustrations,  as  John  Bernouilli  and  Boerhaave,  have 
written  chemical  works,  or  rather  works  on  chemical 
subjects,  are  very  differently  thought  of;  so  that  the  for- 
mer's work  on '  Fermentation,'  and  the  latter's  on  'Fire,' 
are  known,  cited,  and  praised,  while  the  far  greater 
views  of  Stahl  on  the  same  subjects  only  exist  for  a  few 
chemists."  He  then  goes  on  to  cite  other  proofs  of  the 
low  estimate  formed  of  the  science,  and  even  the  pre- 
vailing impression  of  chemists  being  mere  workmen ; 
and  concludes,  that  "  the  revolution  which  should  raise 
chemistry  to  the  rank  it  merits,  and  place  it  on  a  level 
with  natural  philosophy,  can  only  be  accomplished  by 
a  great,  an  enthusiastic,  and  a  bold  genius."  While 
waiting  for  the  advent  of  this  new  Paracelsus,  he  says, 
it  must  be  his  task  to  present  chemistry  in  a  light 
which  may  show  it  worthy  the  notice  of  philosophers, 
and  capable  of  becoming  something  in  their  hands. 
If  we  go  back  to  an  earlier  period,  we  shall  find 


BLACK.  343 

that  Lord  Bacon,  although  he  quite  clearly  perceived 
that  chemistry  might  one  day  be  advanced  to  the  rank 
of  a  science  (De  Dig.  et  Aug.  iii.),  yet  always  treats  the 
chemistry  of  his  day  as  merely  empirical  (Nov.  Org. 
s.  Ixiv.  Ixxiii.*).  But  I  have  preferred  taking  the 
account  of  chemical  science  from  the  '  Encyclopedic/ 
first,  because  it  gives,  if  not  the  opinion  or  the  testi- 
mony of  the  learned  body  at  large  who  prepared  that 
work,  yet  certainly  an  opinion  and  a  testimony  which 
had  the  sanction  of  its  more  eminent  members ;  and, 
secondly,  because  its  date  is  at  the  eve  of  the  great 
revolution  in  natural  science  of  which  we  are  speaking. 

*  "  Itaque  talis  philosophia  (in  paucorum  experimentorum  ar- 
gutiis  et  obscuritate  fundata)  illis  qui  in  hujusmodi  experimentis 
quotidie  versantur  atque  ex  ipsis  phantasmatis  contaminarunt,  pro- 
babilis  videtur,  et  quasi  certa ;  caeteris  incredibilis  et  vana,  cujus 
exemplar  notabile  est  in  chemicis  eorumque  dogmatibus." 

It  must  be  added  that  beside  the  injustice  here  done  to  Van  Hel- 
mont,  he  goes  on  to  rank  Gilbert  in  the  same  empirical  class,  as  he 
elsewhere  does — a  most  incorrect  view  of  Gilbert's  induction,  the 
most  perfect  by  far  of  any  before  Lord  Bacon's  age,  and,  though 
mixed  with  some  hypothetical  reasoning,  hardly  in  strictness  ex- 
celled by  any  philosopher  of  after  times.  I  cannot  come  so  near 
the  remarkable  sixty-fifth  section  of  the  c  Novum  Organum'  without 
digressing  so  far  from  my  subject  as  to  cite  the  prophetic  warning 
given  to  some  zealots  without  knowledge  of  our  own  times  against 
the  "  apotheosis  errorum,"  the  "  pestis  intellectus,  si  vanis  accedat 
veneratio."  "  Huic  autem  vanitati  (adds  the  pious  and  truly  Chris- 
tian sage)  nonnulli  ex  modernis  summa  levitate  ita  indulserunt  ut  in 
primo  capitulo  Geneseos  et  in  libro  Job  et  aliis  scriptures  locis  phi- 
losophiam  naturalem  fundari  conati  sunt ;  inter  mortua  quserentes 
viva ;"  a  folly  the  more  to  be  deprecated,  he  says,  because  "  ex 
divinarum  et  humanarum  malesana  admistione  non  solum  educitur 
philosophia  phantastica,  sed  etiam  religio  haeretica."  His  practical 
conclusion,  therefore,  is  to  render  unto  faith  the  things  alone  which 
are  faith's  :  "  Admodum  salutare,  si  mente  sobria,  fidei  tantum  dentur 
quse  fidei  sunt." 


344  BLACK. 

The  last  passage  which  has  been  cited  from  that 
worK  strikingly  illustrates  the  low  ebb  at  which 
chemical  science  then  was. — It  is  certain  that  after 
the  discoveries  of  Black  had  opened  vast  and  new 
views  of  nature,  both  as  regards  the  operations  of 
heat,  the  most  powerful  and  universal  of  all  agents, 
and  as  regards  the  constitution  of  elastic  fluids,  the 
most  unknown  of  the  four  elements,  no  natural  philo- 
sopher would  have  had  the  hardihood  to  doubt  if  che- 
mistry was  an  important  branch  of  his  science,  and 
no  chemist  would  have  performed  the  superfluous  task 
of  vindicating  its  claim  to  the  title. 

We  have  now  gone  through  the  whole  of  this  in- 
teresting subject,  rather  occupied  in  contemplating  the 
foundations  of  a  new  science  than  in  tracing  the  exten- 
sion of  the  boundaries  which  confine  an  old  one.  The 
universal  operation  of  heat,  and  the  agency  which  it 
exerts  by  its  absorption  and  its  evolution  on  the  struc- 
ture of  all  bodies,  renders  the  discovery  of  its  nature 
and  action  in  these  respects,  next  to  that  of  gravitation, 
the  most  important  step  which  has  been  made  in  the 
progress  of  physical  science.  The  new  field  opened  to 
philosophical  inquiry  by  the  discovery  of  the  gaseous 
bodies  is  only  second  to  the  former  step  in  the  import- 
ance of  its  consequences.  It  is  as  objects  of  pure 
science,  the  mere  contemplation  of  scientific  truth, 
that  we  have  been  considering  these  great  discoveries ; 
yet  they  have  amply  contributed  also  to  the  advance- 
ment of  the  arts.  The  illustrious  improver  of  the  steam 
engine  was  too  young  to  have  joined  in  the  experiments 
on  fixed  air ;  but  in  the  course  of  those  by  which  latent 
heat  was  discovered,  he  had  a  constant  and  confidential 


BLACK.  345 

intercourse  with  Black,  one  of  his  earliest  patrons ; 
and  although  it  is  as  certain  that  he  did  not  owe  to  that 
philosopher's  suggestions  any  of  the  steps  by  which  his 
inventions  were  compassed,  as  it  is  that  he  had  him- 
self no  share  in  Black's  great  discovery,  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  the  knowledge  thus  acquired  of  the  true 
nature  of  heat,  of  steam,  of  evaporation,  and  of  con- 
densation, contributed  most  essentially  to  his  mighty 
improvements.  As  for  the  gases,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  name  the  branch  of  art  which  has  not  in  some 
manner  and  to  some  extent  gained  by  their  discovery. 
So  that  the  great  man  whose  history  we  are  contem- 
plating, had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  triumphs  of 
his  youth  bear  fruit  in  every  direction,  exalting  the 
power  and  increasing  the  comforts  of  mankind  as  well 
as  extending  the  bounds  of  their  knowledge  and  enlarg- 
ing the  range  of  their  industry.  He  was  but  twenty- 
four  years  old  when  he  made  his  first  discovery,  and 
thirty-four  when  his  second  was  added.  He  lived  to 
nearly  fourscore. 

It  remains  to  consider  him  as  a  teacher ;  and  cer- 
tainly nothing  could  be  more  admirable  than  the 
manner  in  which  for  forty  years  he  performed  this  use- 
ful and  dignified  office.  His  style  of  lecturing  was  as 
nearly  perfect  as  can  well  be  conceived ;  for  it  had  all 
the  simplicity  which  is  so  entirely  suited  to  scientific 
discourse,  while  it  partook  largely  of  the  elegance 
which  characterized  all  he  said  or  did.  The  publica- 
tion of  his  lectures  has  conveyed  an  accurate  idea  of  the 
purely  analytical  order  in  which  he  deemed  it  best  to 
handle  the  subject  with  a  view  to  instruction,  consider- 
ing this  as  most  likely  to  draw  and  to  fix  the  learner's 


346  BLACK. 

attention,  to  impress  his  memory,  and  to  show  him 
both  the  connexion  of  the  theory  with  the  facts,  and 
the  steps  by  which  the  principles  were  originally  ascer- 
tained.    The  scheme  of  the  lectures  may  thence  be  ap- 
prehended— the  execution  imperfectly  ;  for  the  diction 
was  evidently,  in  many  instances,  extemporaneous,  the 
notes  before  the  teacher  furnishing  him  with  little 
more  than  the  substance,  especially  of  those  portions 
which  were  connected  with  experiments.     But  still 
less  can  the  reader  rise  from  the  perusal  to  any  con- 
ception  of    the  manner.      Nothing   could   be    more 
suited  to   the   occasion ;  it  was  perfect  philosophical 
calmness ;  there  was  no  effort ;  it  was  an  easy  and  a 
graceful  conversation.     The  voice  was  low,  but  per- 
fectly distinct  and  audible  through  the  whole  of  a  large 
hall  crowded  in  every  part  with  mutely  attentive  lis- 
teners ;  it  was  never  forced  at  all  any  more  than  were  the 
motions  of  the  hands,  but  it  was  anything  rather  than 
monotonous.    Perfect  elegance  as  well  as  repose  was  the 
phrase  by  which  every  hearer  and  spectator  naturally,, 
and  as  if  by  common  consent,  described  the  whole  de- 
livery.      The    accidental   circumstance    of  the   great 
teacher's  aspect,  I  hope  I  may  be  pardoned  for  stopping 
to  note,  while  endeavouring  to  convey  the  idea  of  a  phi- 
losophic discoverer.  His  features  were  singularly  grace- 
ful, full  of  intelligence,  but  calm  as  suited  his  manner 
and  his  speech.     His  high  forehead  and  sharp  temples 
were  slightly  covered,  when  I  knew  him,  with  hair  of  a 
snow-white  hue,  and  his  mouth  gave  a  kindly  as  well 
as  most  intelligent  expression  to  his  whole  features.    In 
one  department  of  his  lecture  he  exceeded  any  I  have 
ever  known,  the  neatness  and  unvarying  success  with 


BLACK.  347 

which  all  the  manipulations  of  his  experiments  were 
performed.  His  correct  eye  and  steady  hand  contri- 
buted to  the  one ;  his  admirable  precautions,  foreseeing 
and  providing  for  every  emergency,  secured  the  other. 
I  have  seen  him  pour  boiling  water  or  boiling  acid 
from  a  vessel  that  had  no  spout  into  a  tube,  holding  it 
at  such  a  distance  as  made  the  stream's  diameter  small, 
and  so  vertical  that  not  a  drop  was  spilt.  While  he 
poured  he  would  mention  this  adaptation  of  the  height 
to  the  diameter  as  a  necessary  condition  of  success.  I 
have  seen  him  mix  two  substances  in  a  receiver  into 
which  a  gas,  as  chlorine,  had  been  introduced,  the  effect 
of  the  combustion  being  perhaps  to  produce  a  com- 
pound inflammable  in  its  nascent  state,  and  the  mixture 
being  effected  by  drawing  some  string  or  wire  working 
through  the  receiver's  sides  in  an  air-tight  socket.  The 
long  table  on  which  the  different  processes  had  been 
carried  on  was  as  clean  at  the  end  of  the  lecture  as  it 
had  been  before  the  apparatus  was  planted  upon  it. 
Not  a  drop  of  liquid,  not  a  grain  of  dust  remained. 

The  reader  who  has  known  the  pleasures  of  science 
will  forgive  me  if  at  the  distance  of  half  a  century  I 
love  to  linger  over  these  recollections,  and  to  dwell 
on  the  delight  which  I  well  remember  thrilled  me 
as  we  heard  this  illustrious  sage  detail,  after  the 
manner  I  have  feebly  attempted  to  pourtfay,  the  steps 
by  which  he  made  his  discoveries,  illustrating  them 
with  anecdotes  sometimes  recalled  to  his  mind  by 
the  passages  of  the  moment,  and  giving  their  de- 
monstration by  performing  before  us  the  many  expe- 
riments which  had  revealed  to  him  first  the  most 
important  secrets  of  nature.  Next  to  the  delight  of 


348  BLACK. 

having  actually  stood  by  him  when  his  victory  was 
gained,  we  found  the  exquisite  gratification  of  hear- 
ing him  simply,    most  gracefully,  in  the  most  calm 
spirit  of  philosophy,  with  the  most  perfect  modesty, 
recount  his  difficulties,  and  how  they  were  overcome ; 
open  to  us  the  steps  by  which  he  had  successfully  ad- 
vanced from  one  part  to  another  of  his  brilliant  course  ; 
go  over  the  same  ground,  as  it  were,  in  our  presence 
which  he  had  for  the  first  time  trod  so  many  long  years 
before ;  hold  up  perhaps  the  very  instruments  he  had 
then  used,  and  act  over  again  the  same  part  before  our 
eyes  which  had  laid  the  deep  and  broad  foundations  of 
his  imperishable  renown.     Not  a  little  of  this  extreme 
interest  certainly  belonged  to  the  accident  that  he  had 
so  long  survived  the  period  of  his  success — that  we 
knew  there  sat  in  our  presence  the  man  now  in  his  old 
age  reposing  under  the  laurels  won  in  his  early  youth. 
But  take  it  altogether,  the  effect  was  such  as  cannot 
well  be  conceived.     I  have  heard  the  greatest  under- 
standings of  the  age  giving  forth  their  efforts  in  its 
most  eloquent  tongues — have  heard  the  commanding 
periods  of  Pitt's  majestic  oratory — the  vehemence  of 
Fox's  burning  declamation — have  followed  the  close- 
compacted   chain    of  Grant's    pure   reasoning — been 
carried  away  by    the   mingled   fancy,   epigram,    and 
argumentation   of  Plunket;    but   I    should    without 
hesitation   prefer,  for   mere  intellectual   gratification 
(though  aware  how  much  of  it  is  derived  from  asso- 
ciation), to  be  once  more  allowed  the  privilege  which 
I  in  those  days  enjoyed  of  being  present  while  the  first 
philosopher  of  his  age  was  the  historian  of  his  own 
discoveries,  and  be  an  eye-witness  of  those  experiments 


BLACK.  349 

by  which  he  had  formerly  made  them,  once  more  per- 
formed with  his  own  hands. 

The  qualities  which  distinguished  him  as  an  inquirer 
and  as  a  teacher  followed  him  into  all  the  ordinary  affairs 
of  life.  He  was  a  person  whose  opinions  on  every 
subject  were  marked  by  calmness  and  sagacity,  wholly 
free  from  both  passion  and  prejudice,  while  affectation 
was  only  known  to  him  from  the  comedies  he  might 
have  read.  His  temper  in  all  the  circumstances  of  life 
was  unruffled.  This  was  perceived  in  his  lectures  when 
he  had  occasion  to  mention  any  narrow  prejudice  or  any 
unworthy  proceeding  of  other  philosophers.  One  ex- 
ception there  certainly  was,  possibly  the  only  one  in  his 
life ;  he  seemed  to  have  felt  hurt  at  the  objections 
urged  by  a  German  chemist  called  Meyer  to  his 
doctrine  of  causticity,  which  that  person  explained  by 
supposing  an  acid,  called  by  him  acidum  pingue,  to 
be  the  cause  of  alkaline  mildness.  The  unsparing 
severity  of  the  lecture  in  which  Black  exposed  the  ig- 
norance and  dogmatism  of  this  foolish  reasoner  cannot 
well  be  forgotten  by  his  hearers,  who  both  wondered 
that  so  ill-matched  an  antagonist  should  have  succeeded 
where  so  many  crosses  had  failed  in  discomposing  the 
sage,  and  observed  how  well  fitted  he  was,  should 
occasion  be  offered,  for  a  kind  of  exertion  exceedingly 
different  from  all  the  efforts  that  at  other  times  he  was 
wont  to  make. 

The  soundness  of  his  judgment  on  all  matters, 
whether  of  literature  or  of  a  more  ordinary  description, 
was  described  by  Adam  Smith,  who  said,  he  "had 
less  nonsense  in  his  head  than  any  man  living/*  The 
elegance  of  his  taste,  which  has  been  observed  upon  as 


350  BLACK. 

shown  in  his  lectures,  was  also  seen  in  the  efforts  of 
his  pencil,  which  Professor  Robison  compares  to  that 
of  Woollett.  The  neatness  of  his  manipulations  was 
not  confined  to  his  experiments  when  investigating  or 
when  lecturing.  I  have  heard  one  who  happened  to 
see  him  at  his  toilette  describe  the  operations  as  per- 
formed with  exquisite  neatness  by  a  number  of 
contrivances  happily  adapted  to  the  saving  of  trouble 
and  avoiding  uneasiness.  His  perfect  equanimity  has 
been  adverted  to,  and  it  did  not  proceed  from  coldness 
of  disposition,  for  he  was  affectionately  attached  to  his 
friends.  Having  no  family  of  his  own,  he  may  be  said 
to  have  fallen  into  those  precise  and  regular  habits 
which  sometimes  raise,  in  happier  individuals  a  smile, 
I  stop  not  to  inquire  whether  of  envy  or  contempt,  for 
the  single  state.  It  was  sometimes  said,  too,  that  his 
habits  were  penurious.  That  the  expenses  of  one  who 
had  no  love  of  pleasure  and  no  fancy  for  ostentation 
to  gratify,  must  have  been  moderate,  is  certain ;  but  he 
lived  in  the  style  and  manner  suited  t©  one  possessing 
an  ample  income.  The  ground  of  the  charge  was,  I 
believe,  that  he  was  said  to  have  a  scale  by  him  when 
he  received  the  fees  of  his  students.  I  can  answer  for 
the  truth  of  this  statement,  for  I  well  remember  the 
small  brass  instrument ;  but  I  also  recollect  that  he 
said  it  became  necessary  from  the  quantity  of  light 
gold  which  he  used  at  first  to  receive  unsuspected  from 
one  class,  particularly,  of  his  pupils.  There  was 
certainly  no  reason  why  he  should  pay  a  sum  of  forty  or 
fifty  pounds  yearly  out  of  his  income  on  this  account. 
Both  Professor  Ferguson  and  Professor  Robison  have 
positively  denied  the  charge  of  avarice,  and  have  given 


BLACK.  351 

ample  testimony  even  to  his  generous  nature.  While 
he  lived  at  Glasgow  he  lost  three-fourths  of  his  fortune 
by  the  failure  of  a  house  in  which  it  was  invested ;  and 
though  he  had  foreseen  the  catastrophe  for  two  years, 
he  neither  attempted  to  withdraw  his  funds,  nor 
altered  in  any  respect  his  kind  demeanour  towards  the 
head  of  the  firm,  whom  he  knew.  At  Edinburgh  he 
more  than  once  incurred  great  risks  to  help  friends  in 
business. 

The  gradual  decay  of  his  strength  brought  about  the 
extinction  of  life  without  pain  and  without  any  discom- 
posure. Professor  Robison  told  me  that  he  was  sure 
nothing  could  be  more  agreeable  to  his  illustrious 
friend's  wishes  than  this  end,  as  nothing  was  more 
likely  to  vex  and  annoy  him  than  the  unavoidable  ac- 
companiments of  a  protracted  illness  and  a  sick-bed.  He 
often  indeed  expressed  a  wish  that  he  might  be  spared 
this  suffering,  and  that  wish  was  fully  gratified.  It 
seemed,  said  the  Professor,  as  if  he  waited  calmly  until 
the  last  stroke  of  his  pulse  should  be  given.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  he  passed  from  this  life  so  quietly  as  not  to 
spill  a  cup  of  milk  and  water  (a  customary  dinner  with 
him)  which  he  at  the  moment  was  holding  in  his  hand, 
and  which  rested  on  his  knee.  His  attendants  saw  him 
in  this  posture,  and  left  the  room  supposing  him  still 
alive.  On  returning  soon  after  they  saw  him  exactly 
sitting  as  before,  and  found  that  he  had  expired. 


(   352  ) 


WATT. 


THE  intimacy  of  Mr.  Watt  with  Dr.  Black  from  his 
earliest  years  has  been  already  mentioned.  When  the 
latter  was  a  Professor  at  the  University  of  Glasgow, 
Watt,  then  a  young  man,  was  employed  as  mathe- 
matical instrument  maker  to  the  Natural  Philosophy 
class,  and  was  in  daily  communication  with  the  Pro- 
fessor while  his  experiments  on  heat,  evaporation,  and 
condensation  were  carried  on.  I  well  remember  him 
afterwards,  in  his  lectures  at  Edinburgh,  mentioning 
that  his  young  coadjutor  employed  himself  at  the  same 
time  in  researches  upon  the  nature  of  steam  ;  and  it  is 
certain  that  his  subsequent  inventions  were  greatly 
aided  by  the  discoveries  of  Black  respecting  heat.  To 
the  inquiries  out  of  which  these  inventions  arose,  he 
appears  to  have  been  led  by  the  accident  of  having  a 
model  of  an  engine  to  repair  for  the  Professor  of 
Natural  Philosophy.  But,  before  examining  the 
foundations  upon  which  his  great  and  well-earned  fame 
rests,  it  is  fit  that  we  should  first  consider  the  state  in 
which  he  found  the  engine,  which  he  almost  created 
anew.  This  is  following  the  same  course  which  has 
been  pursued  with  respect  to  the  discoveries  of  Dr. 
Black. 

The  power  of  steam  is  far  too  generally  perceived  in 
the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  to  have  wholly  escaped  the 


Jf'ANH&S    WATT 


/.,•//,/,'//,  />//>//..-///•,/  /'i    t'ii,irl,-.i  Ji/ii,i/iJ  i  C"  Ludgate  Strut 


it 
•*>sa 


WATT.  353 

observations  of  men  at  any  period.  The  ancients 
accordingly  were  so  far  acquainted  with  it  as  to  have 
constructed  an  instrument,  the  seolipile,  composed  of  a 
metallic  ball,  which,  having  some  water  in  its  bottom, 
was  placed  in  the  fire,  and  the  steam,  issuing  through  a 
small  orifice  or  tube  with  great  force,  could,  they  con- 
ceived, blow  a  fire  or  even  turn  the  vanes  of  a  mill.  No 
use,  however,  seems  ever  to  have  been  made  of  this  philo- 
sophical toy ;  nor  does  any  attention  appear  to  have  been 
paid  to  steam,  as  an  agent,  until  1615,  when  Salomon  de 
Caus,  a  French  engineer,  published  a  work  on '  Moving 
Forces/  in  which  he  describes  a  method  of  raising  water 
by  partially  heating  it,  that  is,  converting  a  portion  of  it 
into  steam,  and,  by  its  expansive  force,  driving  the  rest  of 
the  fluid  through  the  tube  connected  with  the  reser- 
voir or  chamber.*  In  1663  the  Marquis  of  Worcester 
(known  in  our  political  history  as  Earl  of  Glamorgan, 
and  as  having  been  employed  by  Charles  I.  in  1646  to 
negotiate  with  the  Irish  Catholics)  published  his 
'  Century  of  the  Names  and  Scantlings  of  Inventions/ 
of  which  Mr.  Hume,  in  his  '  History'  (vol.  vii.,  note  o), 
has  been  pleased  to  say  that  it  is  "a  ridiculous  com- 
pound of  lies,  chimeras,  and  impossibilities,  showing 
what  might  be  expected  from  such  a  man/'  The  better 

*  M.  Arago  is  not  entitled  to  complain  of  English  writers  for 
having  "  aimed  at  expunging  every  French  name  from  this  important 
chapter  in  the  history  of  science."  He  says  they  at  once  gave  up 
Lord  Worcester's  claims  on  discovering  that  Salomon  de  Caus  had 
preceded  him.  Now  both  Mr.  Farey  and  Mr.  Stuart  have  done 
ample  justice  to  Caus  in  their  works  on  the  steam  engine.  As  for 
Lord  Worcester,  Mr.  Stuart  (whose  history  is  far  from  accurate  on 
this  point)  has  both  attacked  and  defended  his  claims  in  his  several 
works. 

2  A 


354  WATT. 

opinion  seems  to  be,  that  the  historian  had  never  read 
the  book  he  thus  describes  ;  but  being  anxious  to 
relieve  Charles  I.  from  the  blame  of  his  Ambassador's 
negotiation,  which  proved  the  source  of  much  outcry 
against  the  King,  he  states  the  low  opinion  which  the 
latter  entertained  of  Worcester's  judgment  as  a  proof 
that  he  never  would  authorise  him  to  act  in  so  delicate  a 
matter  as  religious  concessions  without  the  privity  of  the 
Lord- Lieutenant,  and  he  is  very  ready  to  strengthen 
this  view  by  showing  that  the  opinion  was  well  founded. 
Be  this,  however,  as  it  may,  the  ignorance  and  error 
is  all  on  Hume's  side,  for  the  work  is  highly  creditable 
to  its  author's  learning  and  ingenuity,  and  it  un- 
doubtedly contains  a  proof  that  he  had  made  one  step 
in  advance  of  Caus  towards  the  use  of  steam-power. 
His  Sixty-eighth  Invention  is  entitled  "  an  admirable 
and  most  forcible  way  to  drive  up  water  by  fire."  He 
describes  his  having  made  a  "  constant  fountain  stream 
of  water,  raised  in  the  proportion  of  forty  times  the 
quantity  of  that  which  he  converted  into  steam ;"  and 
he  states  that  the  height  to  which  he  raised  it  was  forty 
feet,  clearly  showing  that  it  was  not  on  the  principle 
of  the  sucking-pump,  which  can  only  raise  water 
thirty-three  feet.  He  expressly  says  that,  while  the 
atmospheric  pressure  by  which  the  sucking-pump  acts 
is  limited  in  its  operation,  the  force  of  steam  which  he 
employed  "  hath  no  other  boundary  than  the  strength 
of  the  vessel  which  contains  it."  Finally,  he  seems 
to  have  used  a  cannon  as  his  boiler,  which  indicates  his 
having  tried  the  experiment  on  a  large  scale.  The 
great  doubt  expressed  by  M.  Arago  whether  or  not 
Lord  Worcester  ever  executed  the  design  more  or  less 


WATT.  355 

clearly  described  in  his  book  appears  to  me  to  have  no 
foundation.  The  inference  arising  from  the  descrip- 
tion seems  to  remove  that  doubt ;  but  we  have  external 
evidence  more  precise  and  satisfactory  still.*  The 
travels  in  England  of  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany, 
Cosmo  de'  Medicis,  were  written  by  his  Secretary, 
Magalotti,  a  man  of  some  scientific  eminence  ;  and  a 
translation  into  English  was  published  in  1821.  The 
visit  to  London  took  place  in  the  year  1 669 ;  and  it 
appears  that  the  Grand  Duke  "  went  to  see,  at  Vaux- 
hall,  an  engine  or  hydraulic  machine  invented  by  the 
Marquis  of  Worcester,"  and  the  account  which  he 
gives  of  it  tallies  with  Lord  Worcester's  description  of 
his  "  stupendous  water-commanding  engine." 

The  account  of  Lord  Worcester  is  far  from  being 
clear  and  distinct,  and  nothing  appears  to  have  resulted 
from  his  suggestions.  In  1690,  Papin,  an  eminent  and 
able  French  engineer,  settled  in  London,  and  author 
of  the  digester  which  goes  under  his  name,  pub- 
lished a  work  in  which  he  showed  that  he  had  made 
two  most  important  steps  in  the  use  of  steam.  Caus 
and  Worcester  had  applied  the  force  directly  to  the 
body  which  it  was  intended  to  move  ;  and  it  was 
evident  that,  while  that  was  a  condition  of  its  use, 
very  limited  bounds  must  confine  the  operation. 
But  Papin,  observing  the  use  of  the  piston  in  a  com- 
mon sucking-pump,  applied  this  to  the  steam  machine, 
making  it  work  in  the  cylinder,  and  be  the  medium  of 


*  See  also  the  Marchioness  of  Worcester's  correspondence  with 
her  Confessor,  communicated  by  the  Beaufort  family  to  Mr.  Par- 
tington  for  his  edition  of  the  <  Century/ 

2  A  2 


356  WATT. 

communicating  motion  to  other  apparatus.  Next,  he 
applied  steam  directly  as  the  agent,  to  raise  the  piston  ; 
and  making  a  vacuum  by  the  condensation  of  the 
steam,  he  thus  caused  the  atmosphere  to  press  down 
the  piston.  Guericke,  the  inventor  of  the  air-pump, 
had  half  a  century  earlier  used  the  vacuum,  made 
by  his  machine  in  the  same  manner,  as  a  mechanical 
power,  by  the  help  of  a  piston  and  rod  ;*  and  he 
invented  the  valve,  without  which  the  vacuum  could 
not  be  produced.  The  application  of  the  same 
principle  and  of  the  same  contrivance  to  steam  was 
Papin's ;  and  its  importance,  and  his  merit,  are  not 
diminished  by  considering  the  source  from  which  he 
borrowed  it.f  Indeed  the  action  of  the  air  in  the 
sucking-pump  is  another  form  of  the  same  experiment. 
It  must  be  added  that  to  Papin  also  we  owe  the  im- 
portant invention  of  the  safety-valve,  although  he  did 
not  apply  it  to  the  steam  engine.  He  introduced  it  as 
a  part  of  his  digester,  but  suggesting  that  it  was  appli- 
cable to  the  steam  engine. 

It  is,  however,  certain  that  the  most  rude  and  cum- 
brous part  of  the  former  invention  was  continued  by 
Papin.  The  fire  was  applied  to  the  water,  and  when  it 
had  filled  the  cylinder  with  steam,  the  condensation 
was  only  effected  by  withdrawing  or  extinguishing  the 
fire.  Savery  about  the  year  1 698  made  considerable 

*  See  the  distinct  figure  in  his  plate  xiv.,  p.  109,  of  l  Experi- 
menta  nova  Magdeburgica  de  Vacuo  Spatio.'  Amstelodami,  1672. 

|  Acta  Eruditorum,  1688.  The  paper  has  an  excellent  and 
clear  figure.  Nothing  can  be  more  groundless  than  Mr.  Stuart's 
statement  that  Baptista  Porta  had  anticipated  Papin  in  this  impor- 
tant step.  The  passage  refers  only  to  the  rise  of  water  in  a  vacuum. 
See  *  I  tre  Libri  dei  Spiritali,'  1606. 


WATT.  357 

improvements  on  the  apparatus ;  and  though  he  did  not 
use  the  vacuum  as  Papin  had  done,  but  only  as  it  is 
used  in  the  sucking-pump,  he  yet  produced  it  by  apply- 
ing cold  water  to  the  outside  of  the  cylinder.  The 
machines  made  by  him  were  so  manageable  that  they 
were  brought  into  use  for  raising  water  in  many 
country  houses.  D'Alesme  exhibited  a  machine  before 
1705  (as  appears  by  the  '  Histoire  de  1' Academic  des 
Sciences'  for  that  year,  p.  1 37),  in  which  water  was  made 
to  spout  to  a  great  height  by  the  force  of  steam  alone. 
It  is  extremely  doubtful  if  Papin  ever  erected  any 
steam  engine,  either  upon  his  own  or  upon  any  other 
principle.  It  is  certain  that  he  did  not  adhere  to  the 
two  great  propositions  which  he  had  brought  forward, 
the  operating  by  a  piston,  and  the  operating  by  the 
pressure  of  the  atmosphere  ;  he  recurred  to  the  old 
plan  of  making  the  steam  act  directly  upon  the  weight 
to  be  raised.  In  1711  Newcomen,  an  iron-master  of 
Dartmouth,  and  Galley,  or  Cawley,  a  glazier  of  the 
same  town,  constructed  an  engine  upon  Papin's  principle 
of  a  piston  and  a  condensing  process,  using,  however, 
Savery's  mode  of  creating  a  vacuum  by  cold  affusion, 
for  which  they  were  led  by  an  accident  to  substitute 
the  method  of  throwing  a  jet  or  stream  of  cold  water 
into  the  cylinder.  This  important  improvement  saved, 
in  a  considerable  degree,  the  waste  of  heat  occasioned 
by  Savery's  method  of  condensing.  Their  engine 
could  be  applied  with  advantage  to  raise  water  from 
mines,  which  Savery's  was  wholly  incapable  of  effect- 
ing, its  power  being  limited  to  that  of  the  sucking- 
pump.  Newcomen's  engine,  as  it  is  generally  called, 
made  no  use  at  all  of  the  direct  force  of  steam  ;  it 


358  WAIT. 

worked  entirely  by  means  of  the  vacuum ;  and  hence  it 
is  sometimes  and  justly  termed  the  atmospheric  engine, 
as  its  moving  force  is  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere. 
Desaguliers,  who  has  given  the  best  description 
of  Newcomen  and  Cawley's  engine,  about  the  year 
1717  or  1718  made  several  of  those  engines,  in  which 
he  executed  Papin's  suggestion  of  using  the  safety- 
valve.  In  the  same  year  Beighton  perfected  the  me- 
chanism whereby  the  engine  itself  shut  and  opened  the 
valves,  by  which  the  supply  of  steam  to  the  cylinder 
and  of  water  to  the  boiler  is  regulated ;  and  Smeaton 
subsequently  made  some  other  mechanical  improve- 
ments. With  these  exceptions  the  steam  engine  con- 
tinued exactly  in  the  same  state  from  the  time  of  New- 
comen to  that  of  Watt,  above  half  a  century  later. 

We  have  thus  seen  how  very  slowly  this  great 
invention  was  brought  to  the  state  in  which  Mr.  Watt 
found  it,  and  how  considerable  a  number  of  persons  con- 
tributed each  a  small  share  to  its  progress.  Let  us  enu- 
merate these  steps :  they  are  at  least  six  in  number.  S. 
de  Caus  made  steam  act  to  raise  water ;  Worcester  per- 
formed this  operation  in  a  more  regular  and  mechanical 
manner ;  Papin  used  the  condensation  of  steam,  and 
through  that  the  atmospheric  pressure,  as  well  as  the 
direct  expansive  force,  and  he  worked  the  engine  by  a 
piston ;  Savery  condensed  by  refrigeration  instead  of  the 
mere  absence  of  fire,  but  did  not  use  the  atmosphere ; 
Newcomen  used  the  jet  for  condensing  and  the  atmo- 
sphere for  pressure,  but  did  not  use  the  direct  force  of 
steam  ;  Desaguliers  introduced  the  safety-valve ;  Beigh- 
ton and  Smeaton  improved  the  mechanism  ;  D'Alesme 
needs  not  be  mentioned,  as  we  are  not  informed  what 


WATT.  359 

plan  he  executed,  but  he  certainly  made  no  step  himself. 
If  the   direct  force    of  steam,    as  well  as  atmospheric 
pressure,  had  been  both  employed,  with  the  jet  of  cold 
water,  the  safety-valve,  and  the  contrivance  for  regu- 
lating the  supply-valves,   a  far  better  engine  than  any 
ever  known  before  the  time  of  Watt  would  have  been 
produced,  and  yet  nothing  whatever  would  have  been 
added  to  the  former  inventions ;  they  would  only  have 
been  combined  together.     The  result  of  the  whole  is, 
that  one  of  the  greatest  theoretical  steps  was  made  by 
Papin,  who  was,  during  a  long  period,  little  commemo- 
rated; and  that  Savery  and  Newcomen,  who  have  been  by 
many  called  the  inventors,  were  the  first  of  all  the  inge- 
nious and  useful  persons  whose  successive  improvements 
we  have  now  recorded,  to  apply  the  steam-engine  to 
practical  purposes.    France  has  thus  produced  the  man 
who,  next  to  Watt,  must  be  regarded  as  the  author  of 
the  steam-engine :    of  all  Watt's  predecessors,  Papin 
stands  incontestably  at  the  head ;  but  it  is  almost  cer- 
tain that  he   never   actually  constructed  an   engine. 
Though  the  engine  of  Savery  was  of  considerable  use 
in  pumping  to  a  small  height,    and  indeed  has  not 
entirely  gone  out  of  use  even  in  our  own  times,  and 
though  Newcomen's  was  still  more  extensively  useful 
from  being  applicable   to    mines,     not   only  had  no 
means  ever  been  found  of  using  the  steam  power  for 
any  other  purpose  than  drawing  up  water,  but  even  in 
that  operation  it  was  exceedingly  imperfect  and  very 
expensive,  insomuch  that  a    water  power  was  often 
preferred  to  it,  and  even  a  horse  power  in  many  cases 
afforded  equal  advantages.     The  great  consumption  of 
fuel  which  it  required  was  its  cardinal  defect;  the 


360  WATT. 

other  imperfection  was  its  loss  of  all  direct  benefit  from 
the  expansive  force  of  the  steam  itself.  That  element 
was  only  used  in  creating  a  vacuum,  and  an  air-pump 
might  have  done  as  much  had  it  been  worked  by  water 
or  by  horses.  It  was,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the 
word,  an  air  and  not  a  steam  engine. 

When  Mr.  Watt  was  directed  to  repair  the  working 
model  for  the  Professor  at  Glasgow,  he  of  course  exa- 
mined it  attentively.  He  was  at  that  time,  1763,  in 
his  twenty-eighth  year,  having  been  born  in  1736  at 
Greenock,  where  his  father  was  a  magistrate,  and  had 
learnt  the  business  of  a  mathematical  instrument 
maker.  He  had  been  prevented  by  delicate  health 
from  benefiting  much  by  school  instruction  ;  but  he  had 
by  himself  studied  both  geometry  and  mechanics,  hav- 
ing from  his  childhood  shown  a  marked  taste  for  those 
pursuits,  in  which  his  grandfather  and  uncle,  teachers 
of  the  mathematics,  had  been  engaged.  It  is  related 
of  him  that  a  friend  of  his  father's  one  day  found  the 
child  stretched  on  the  floor  drawing  with  chalk  nume- 
rous lines  that  intersected  each  other.  He  advised  the 
sending  the  young  idler,  as  he  supposed  him,  to  school, 
but  the  father  said,  "  Perhaps  you  are  mistaken  ;  exa- 
mine first  what  he  is  about."  They  found  he  was  try- 
ing, at  six  years  old,  to  solve  a  problem  in  geometry. 
So  his  natural  turn  for  mechanics  was  not  long  in 
showing  itself;  and  his  father  indulging  it  by  putting 
tools  in  his  hands,  he  soon  constructed  a  small  elec- 
trical machine,  beside  making  many  childish  toys. 

He  occasionally  visited  his  mother's  relations  at 
Glasgow,  but  never  attended  any  lectures  there,  or 
elsewhere.  The  ardour  of  his  active  mind  was  su- 


WATT.  361 

perior  to  all  the  restraints  which  the  weakness  of 
his  bodily  frame  could  impose.  He  devoured  every 
kind  of  learning.  Not  content  with  chemistry 
and  natural  philosophy,  he  studied  anatomy,  and  was 
one  day  found  carrying  home  for  dissection  the 
head  of  a  child  that  had  died  of  some  hidden  dis- 
order. His  conversation,  too,  was  so  rich,  so  animated, 
that  we  find,  from  the  relation  of  Mrs.  Campbell,  a 
female  cousin  of  his,  the  complaints  made  by  a  lady  with 
whom  he  resided.  She  spoke  of  the  sleepless  nights 
which  he  made  her  pass  by  engaging  her  in  some  discus- 
sion or  some  detail  of  facts,  or  some  description  of  phe- 
nomena, till  the  night  was  far  advanced  towards  morn- 
ing, and  she  found  it  impossible  to  tear  herself  away 
from  his  talk,  or  to  sleep  after  he  had  thus  excited  her. 
In  1755  he  placed  himself  with  Mr.  Morgan, 
mathematical  and  nautical  instrument  maker,  of 
Cornhill,  and  resided  with  him  somewhat  less  than  a 
year,  during  which  he  was  chiefly  employed  in  the 
preparation  and  adjustment  of  sextants,  compasses, 
and  other  nautical  instruments.  But  the  same  fee- 
ble health  which  had  interrupted  his  studies  at 
Glasgow  again  oppressed  him ;  he  was  obliged  to 
leave  London,  and  return  to  Glasgow.  On  his 
arrival  there  he  had  the  intention  of  setting  up  as 
an  instrument  maker,  but  the  Glasgow  Body  of  Arts 
and  Trades,  one  of  the  sub- corporations  in  the  muni- 
cipal corporation  of  that  city,  opposed  him  as  not  free 
of  their  craft  or  guild,  and  therefore  not  entitled  to 
exercise  his  calling  within  the  limits  of  the  charter. 
Attempts  were  made  to  obtain  their  leave  for  a  very 
small  workshop,  on  the  humblest  scale,  but  this  was 


362  WAIT. 

peremptorily  refused.  The  University  therefore  came 
to  his  assistance,  granted  him  a  room  in  their 
own  building,  and  gave  him  the  appointment  of  their 
mathematical  instrument  maker.  There  remain  small 
instruments  then  made  by  him  in  this  workshop,  and 
executed  entirely  with  his  own  hands  ;  they  are  of 
exquisite  workmanship.  The  earliest  of  his  steam- 
engine  drawings  are  likewise  preserved,  and  those 
competent  judges  who  have  examined  them,  particularly 
M.  Arago,  describe  them  as  "  truly  remarkable  for  the 
neatness,  the  strength,  and  the  accuracy  of  their 
outline."  His  manual  dexterity  and  skill,  therefore, 
is  clear,  and  he  had  good  cause  to  plume  himself  as 
he  always  did  upon  it,  estimating  the  same  quality  in 
others  at  its  just  value. 

In  the  course  of  a  very  few  years,  beside  renewing  his 
intimacy  with  Mr.  Robison,  afterwards  Professor  there 
and  at  Edinburgh,  he  became  intimately  acquainted  with 
the  most  eminent  of  the  Glasgow  Professors,  Adam 
Smith,  Robert  Simson,  Robert  Dick,  and  above  all,  Dr. 
Black.  Of  these  all  but  Mr.  Dick  have  left  the  deep  im- 
press of  their  great  names  upon  the  scientific  history  of 
their  age ;  and  he  was  always  described  by  both  Mr. 
Watt  and  Professor  Robison  as  a  person  of  most  admira- 
ble capacity  and  great  attainments,  treating  natural 
philosophy,  too,  with  singular  ability  and  success, 
nor  prevented  from  acquiring  a  more  extensive  and 
lasting  reputation  by  anything  save  his  premature 
death. 

While  thus  occupied  and  thus  befriended  by  men  of 
great  names,  his  own  reputation  increased  daily  as  a 
successful  cultivator  of  natural  science.  His  work- 


WATT.  363 

shop  became  the  resort  of  all  zealous  students  and 
enlightened  inquirers  into  physical  science,  and  was 
particularly  resorted  to  by  the  pupils  of  the  University. 
Professor  Robison  tells  us  that  though  regarding 
himself  as  a  proficient  in  the  mixed  mathematics  and  in 
experimental  philosophy,  he  was  somewhat  mortified 
at  finding  Watt  so  greatly  his  superior  in  the  same 
favourite  departments  of  study.  In  truth,  it  was  the 
ordinary  practice  to  consult  him  as  the  oracle  upon  any 
difficulty  coming  in  the  way  of  either  students  or  in- 
quirers. His  fixed  resolution  to  be  deterred  by 
no  difficulties  was  constantly  apparent,  and  one 
example  is  given  by  the  Professor.  The  solution  of  a 
problem  which  occupied  Watt  and  his  friends,  seemed 
to  require  the  perusal  of  Leupold's  Theatre  of  Machines, 
and  as  it  was  written  in  German,  he  at  once  learnt  that 
language  in  order  to  consult  the  book.  Another 
instance  of  his  indomitable  perseverance  against  great 
difficulties  apparently  irremovable,  though  not  insuper- 
able, may  be  added.  He  had  no  ear  at  all  for  music  : 
not  only  was  he  through  life  wholly  insensible  to  its 
charms,  but  he  could  never  distinguish  one  note  from 
another;  yet  he  undertook  the  construction  of  an  organ ; 
and  the  instrument  which  he  made  not  only  had  every 
mechanical  merit  from  the  most  ingenious  contrivances 
for  conducting  and  regulating  the  blasts  and  the  move- 
ments of  the  machine,  but  produced  the  most  admirable 
harmonic  results,  so  as  to  delight  the  best  performers. 
He  overcame  the  difficulties  which  lay  in  his  way, 
partly  by  the  phenomenon  of  the  beats  of  imperfect 
consonances,  a  theory  then  little  understood,  and  only 
contained  in  a  work  at  once  very  profound  and  very 


364  WAIT. 

obscure,  Smith's  '  Harmonics.'  This  treatise,  of  which 
only  the  first  and  less  perfect  edition  was  then  pub- 
lished, must  have  been  read  and  understood  by  the 
young  engineer.  While  employed  by  Dr.  Roebuck  at 
his  W6rks,  he  made  a  guitar  for  his  daughter,  after- 
wards Mrs.  Stuart,  which  she  still  possesses,  and 
relates  the  sum  given  for  it  to  have  been  five  guineas. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  all  the  reading  and  all 
the  speculations  of  Watt  were  strictly  confined  to  hours 
which  did  not  interfere  with  his  profession  or  his  trade  of 
an  instrument  maker.  The  whole  of  the  day  was  devoted 
to  his  business,  only  subject  to  the  interruption  of  the 
discussions  raised  by  those  who  frequented  his  workshop 
in  search  of  assistance  and  information.  It  was  late 
in  the  evening,  or  rather  in  the  night,  that  he  prose- 
cuted with  zeal  and  close  attention  his  philosophical 
studies  ;  for  his  principle  through  life  was  steadily  kept 
in  view,  and  uniformly  acted  on,  never  to  let  anything 
whatever  interfere  with  business,  the  transaction  of 
which  he  regarded  as  a  primary  duty  to  be  performed, 
and  entitled,  as  such,  to  take  precedence  of  all  other 
pursuits. 

There  chanced  to  be  among  the  apparatus  of  the 
Natural  Philosophy  class  a  model  of  Newcomen's 
steam-engine,  which,  from  some  defect  in  the  construc- 
tion, never  could  be  got  to  work  well ;  and  Mr.  Watt 
was  desired  to  examine  and  report  to  the  Professor, 
Mr.  Anderson,  successor  of  Dr.  Dick,  and  better  known 
afterwards  as  having  founded  by  his  will  the  class  in 
which  Dr.  Birkbeck  taught  the  working  men,  and 
thus  gave  rise  to  Mechanics'  Institutes.  The  construc- 
tion of  this  working  model  was  found  to  be  exceedingly 


WAIT.  365 

imperfect,  but  Mr.  Watt  soon  remedied  all  its  defects. 
As  far  as  the  kind  of  engine  could  answer  its  purpose, 
the  apparatus  was  found  to  perform  its  functions  satis- 
factorily, being  annually  exhibited  to  the  class  with 
great  success.  He  had,  however,  been  taught  by  his 
examination  of  the  model  what  were  the  defects  of  the 
machine  itself,  and  which  no  care  in  repairing  or  ad- 
justing that  model  could  remove.  He  found  first  of 
all  that  the  boiler  was  much  too  small  in  proportion  to 
the  column  of  water  which  the  steam  had  to  raise,  and 
yet  it  was  larger  than  the  boiler  used  in  practice.  The 
cylinder  was  on  the  scale  of  two  inches  diameter,  the 
height  being  half  a  foot.  The  vacuum  being  imper- 
fect from  the  size  of  the  boiler,  he  diminished  the 
length  of  the  piston  rod.  He  found  that  the  brass  of 
which  the  cylinder  was  made  carried  off  a  great  deal 
of  heat,  and  that  too  large  a  surface  was  exposed  to  the 
steam.  These  observations  set  him  upon  making  a 
variety  of  experiments  upon  steam,  and  upon  the  mode 
of  applying  it  both  directly  and  to  produce  a  vacuum. 
He  had,  in  the  year  1759,  while  a  fellow-student  with 
Mr.  Robison,  received  from  that  gentleman  a  sugges- 
tion of  the  application  of  steam  to  wheel-carriages,  as  he 
tells  us  in  1803,  long  before  steam  travelling  was  dreamt 
of.*  They  had  together  made  experiments  on  Papin's 
digester,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  expansive  force  of 
steam  ;  but  these  speculations  had  for  several  years 


*  Mr.  Murdock,  in  1784,  made  a  working  model  of  a  steam- 
carriage,  which  moved  about  the  room.  It  was  constructed  upon 
the  principle  set  forth  in  Mr.  Watt's  specification  of  1769,  Art.  iv., 
and  this  is  the  very  method  used  at  the  present  day. 


366  WAIT. 

been  given  up.  In  1760  and  the  two  following  years 
Watt  had  been  in  familiar  intercourse  with  Professor 
Black,  had  witnessed  his  experiments  on  heat,  and 
had  learnt  from  him  the  true  cause  of  evaporation  and 
condensation.  When,  therefore,  he  began  to  experi- 
ment upon  the  mechanical  application  of  steam,  its 
expansion,  and  its  condensation,  he  enjoyed  that  ines- 
timable advantage  of  thoroughly  knowing  the  princi- 
ples on  which  its  changes  and  its  action  depended.  His 
own  experiments  now  put  him  in  possession  of  the 
causes  which  determine  the  rapidity  of  evaporation, 
the  proportion  which  it  bears  to  the  surface  exposed  to 
the  fire,  the  effects  of  pressure  upon  the  boiling-point, 
and  the  quantity  of  fuel  required  to  convert  a  given 
quantity  of  water  into  steam — circumstances  which 
had  hitherto  been  only  vaguely  and  generally  examined, 
but  which  he  now  reduced  to  mathematical  precision. 

The  first  discovery  which  he  made  upon  the  atmo- 
spheric engine  and  its  waste  of  fuel,  was  that  the  in- 
jection of  cold  water  which  condenses  the  steam  also 
cools  the  cylinder  to  a  degree  which  requires  a  great 
expenditure  of  fuel  again  to  give  it  the  necessary  heat 
for  keeping  the  steam  expanded  to  fill  it.  He  found 
that  three-fourths  of  the  fuel  employed  were  thus  con- 
sumed ;  in  other  words,  that  if  the  cylinder  could  be 
kept  at  the  temperature  which  it  has  before  the  jet  is 
thrown  in,  one-fourth  of  the  fuel  would  suffice  for  the 
operation. 

The  next  defect  of  the  process  was  scarcely  less  im- 
portant. The  water  injected,  coming  in  contact  with 
the  steam,  was  itself  heated  ;  the  evolution  of  the 
latent  heat,  which  Black's  discovery  showed  Watt 


WATT.  367 

necessarily  took  place  on  its  condensation,  had  the 
effect,  together  with  the  absorption  of  the  steam's 
sensible  heat,  of  converting  a  portion  of  the  injected 
water  itself  into  steam.  Hence  the  vacuum  was  very 
far  from  perfect ;  and  the  resistance  which  the  piston 
thus  met  with  in  its  descent  was  found  to  be  equal  to 
one-fourth  part  of  the  atmospheric  pressure,  that  is  to 
say,  the  working  power  of  the  machine  was  diminished 
one-fourth. 

From  the  distinct  view  thus  obtained  of  the  evil 
arose  the  suggestion  of  the  remedy.  The  whole  mis- 
chief proceeded  from  the  condensation  being  performed 
in  the  cylinder,  where  the  steam  was  thrown  and  the 
piston  worked.  It  occurred  to  Watt,  that  if  the  con- 
densation could  be  performed  in  a  separate  vessel,  com- 
municating with  the  cylinder,  the  latter  could  be  kept 
hot  while  the  former  was  cooled,  and  the  vapour  aris- 
ing from  the  injected  water  could  also  be  prevented 
from  impairing  the  vacuum.  The  communication 
could  easily  be  effected  by  a  tube,  and  the  water  could 
be  pumped  out.  This  is  thejirst  and  the  grand  inven- 
tion by  which  he  at  once  saved  three-fourths  of  the  fuel, 
and  increased  the  power  one-fourth,  thus  making  every 
pound  of  coal  consumed  produce  five  times  the  force 
formerly  obtained  from  it.  But  this  was  not  all.  He 
found  it  expedient  to  remove  the  air  from  the  upper 
part  of  the  cylinder,  as  it  tended  to  diminish  the  heat. 
In  effecting  this  he  was,  secondly,  led  to  open  a  com- 
munication with  the  boiler,  and  introduce  steam  above 
the  piston  while  it  descended,  thus  making  the  upper 
chamber  of  the  cylinder  air-tight.  The  steam  thus 
acted  in  aiding  the  descent  of  the  piston,  instead 


368  WATT. 

of  that  descent  being  accomplished  merely  by  the 
atmospheric  pressure.  Thirdly — the  counterpoise  at 
the  pump-rod  was  done  away,  as  a  mere  loss 
of  power,  and  the  piston  was  now  forced  up- 
wards by  the  steam  entering  to  fill  the  cylinder. 
These  two  great  additional  improvements  only  required 
a  communication  to  be  opened  by  tubes  with  the  con- 
denser as  well  as  the  boiler,  and  they  gave  to  the 
machinery  its  right  to  be  called  a  steam-engine  ;  for  it 
now  worked  more  by  steam  than  by  air.  The  upper 
chamber  was  kept  air-tight  by  making  the  piston-rod 
work  in  a  socket  of  tow  saturated  with  grease,  called 
the  stuffing-box,  which  also  diminished  greatly  the 
friction  of  the  rod. 

If  Mr.  Watt's  invention  had  gone  no  further  than 
this,  we  may  perceive  that  it  not  only  increased  the 
power  of  the  fuel  fivefold  directly,  but  obtained  from 
the  steam  as  much  additional  force  as  could  be  derived, 
the  limit  being  only  the  strength  of  the  materials, 
within  which  limit  the  safety-valve  of  Papin  always 
enabled  the  engineer  to  keep  his  power.  But  the  three 
particulars  which  have  been  described  were  not  the 
whole  of  this  great  engineer's  improvements  upon  the 
mechanism  of  his  predecessors.  The  smooth  working 
of  the  engine,  especially  if  it  be  applied  to  other  and 
finer  operations  than  those  of  the  miner,  depends 
essentially  on  the  accurate  position  of  the  piston  rod, 
with  whatever  velocity  moving,  and  against  whatever 
weight  contending.  Its  motion  must  be  steadily 
maintained  in  the  same  vertical  straight  line,  or 
in  the  same  horizontal  line,  or  in  the  same 
straight  line  whatever  be  its  direction,  without 


WATT.  369 

shaking  or  inclining  so  as  to  press  at  all  against  the 
sides  of  the  cylinder — any  such  lateral  pressure  occa- 
sioning a  loss  of  time,  a  jolting  motion,  a  general  de- 
rangement of  the  machinery.  The  motion  of  the  rod 
and  the  piston  must  be  perfectly  equable,  continuous, 
and  smooth :  it  must  work,  as  the  engineers  sometimes 
say,  sweetly,  at  every  instant,  in  order  that  the  engine 
may  well  perform  its  functions.  The  contrivance  for 
producing  this  motion  of  the  rod  so  that  it  shall 
be  always  in  one  line,  parallel  to  some  supposed  line 
whether  vertical,  as  in  a  mine,  or  horizontal,  or  in  any 
other  direction,  is  thence  called  the  "  Parallel  Motion" 
and  it  is  one  of  Mr.  Watt's  most  exquisite  discoveries, 
and  one  to  which  scientific  principle  has  the  most  con- 
duced. If  a  circle  or  other  curve  has  its  curvature  gra- 
dually changed,  until  from  being  concave  to  its  axis  it 
becomes  convex,  it  will  pass  through  every  possible 
position  or  variation  (whence  the  great  refinement 
upon  fluxions,  the  calculus  of  variations,  probably 
derived  its  name,  if  not  its  origin),  and  at  one  point 
it  will  be  a  straight  line,  or  will  coincide  with  a 
straight  line.  So  if  a  curve  have  two  branches,  one 
concave  to  the  axis,  the  other  convex,  as  a  cubic  para- 
bola for  example,  the  point  at  which  its  concavity  ends 
and  its  convexity  begins,  is  called  for  that  reason  a 
point  of  contrary  flexure.  The  contrivance  of  the 
parallel  motion  consists  in  making  the  contrary  circu- 
lar motions  of  arms  which  bear  on  the  rod  always  keep 
to  the  point  of  contrary  flexure  and  thus  give  a  recti- 
linear motion  to  the  rod,  the  tendencies  to  disturb  it 
correcting  each  other.  It  was  long  ago  shown  by  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  in  the  '  Principia,'  that  if  a  circle  moves 

2  B 


370  WATT. 

upon  another  of  twice  its  diameter,  each  point  describes 
a  straight  line.  This  is  precisely  the  principle  of  the 
parallel  motion.  Three  beams  are  made  to  revolve 
round  different  centres,  two  of  these  being  moveable  in 
the  arm  of  the  engine,  and  one  fixed  without  it.  These 
three  are  connected  together  and  with  the  piston-rods 
of  the  cylinder  and  the  pumps,  which  their  revolu- 
tions cause  to  describe  accurately  straight  lines. 

A  fifth  invention  is  the  Float,  which,  placed  on  the 
surface  of  the  water  in  the  boiler,  descends  until  the 
water  is  so  low  as  to  require  a  supply ;  it  then  opens  a 
valve  which  lets  in  the  quantity  wanted  ;  for,  as  soon  as 
it  rises  to  a  certain  height,  the  valve  is  shut  by  the  float. 

The  most  refined  contrivance  of  the  whole  may  now 
be  mentioned,  in  the  sixth  and  last  place,  the  adaptation 
of  the  Governor,  previously  used  in  wind  and  water 
mills.  It  is  evident  that  the  velocity  of  the  working 
may  be  increased  beyond  what  is  required  or  con- 
venient without  the  safety-valve  giving  any  indi- 
cation of  the  excess,  and  also  that  the  warning 
given  by  this  valve  does  little  more  than  point  out  the 
risk  without  providing  the  remedy  or  preventive. 
The  governor  is  a  far  more  subtle  invention.  Two 
balls  are  fixed  to  the  end  of  arms  which  are  connected 
with  the  engine  by  a  moveable  socket ;  this  can  play 
up  and  down  a  vertical  rod  revolving  by  a  band  on  the 
axis  or  spindle  of  the  fly-wheel,  and  it  revolves,  there- 
fore, with  the  velocity  of  that  spindle.  The  arms  are 
perfectly  moveable  on  their  centres,  which  are  fixed  in 
the  socket  and  on  opposite  sides  of  it.  Their  centrifu- 
gal force,  therefore,  makes  them  diverge,  more  or  less, 
in  proportion  as  the  rotatory  motion  of  the  spindle  and 


WATT.  371 

consequently  the  velocity  of  the  engine  increases ; 
their  divergence  pushes  the  collar  up  the  spindle,  its 
axis,  and  as  it  rises,  it  closes,  by  means  of  cranks,  a 
valve  called  the  "  throttle-valve,"  in  the  pipe  which 
conveys  the  steam  from  the  boiler  to  the  cylinder,  and 
this  lessens  the  supply  of  steam :  the  motion  of  the 
engine  is  thus  reduced,  the  centrifugal  force  is  abated, 
the  balls  approach  the  spindle  again,  the  collar  de- 
scends, the  throttle- valve  is  gradually  opened,  and  the 
supply  of  steam  again  slowly  increased,  but  never  be- 
yond the  quantity  required,  because  as  soon  as  that  is 
exceeded,  the  increase  of  centrifugal  force  causes 
the  balls  to  diverge,  the  collars  to  rise,  and  the  valve 
to  close.  Thus  the  engine  itself  provides  for  its  con- 
tinuing in  the  state  of  perfect  adjustment  required.  As 
long  as  its  motion  continues  uniform,  the  balls  revolve 
at  the  mean  distance  from  their  axis  without  either 
receding  or  approaching,  and  the  supply  of  steam  con- 
tinues the  same.  As  soon  as  the  motion  becomes  ex- 
cessive, they  diverge,  and  the  supply  of  steam  is  dimi- 
nished ;  as  soon  as  the  motion  becomes  defective,  they 
converge,  and  the  supply  of  steam  is  increased.  But 
further,  the  balls  themselves,  by  their  increased  motion, 
absorb  part  of  the  force,  independent  of  their  action  on 
the  throttle-valve,  and  so  contribute  to  the  adjustment. 
The  sagacious  inventor  soon  satisfied  himself  that 
he  had  almost  created  a  new  engine  of  incalculable 
power,  universal  application,  and  inestimable  value. 
But  he  had  not  the  funds  either  to  try  his  invention 
upon  an  adequate  scale  so  as  to  bring  it  into  use,  or  to 
secure  his  property  in  it  by  obtaining  a  patent.  After 
some  repulses,  he  happily  met  with  Dr.  Roebuck,  a 

2B  2 


372  WAIT. 

man  of  profound  scientific  knowledge,  and  of  daring 
spirit   as   a   speculator.      He   had  just   founded   the 
Carron  Iron  Works,  not  far  from    Glasgow,  and  was 
lessee,   under  the  Hamilton    family,  of  the    Kinneil 
Coal  Works.     He  was  the  grandfather  of  the  present 
Member  for  Bath,  who,  descended  from  him  on  the 
one  side,  and  from  the  Tickells*  on  the  other,  may  be 
said  to  unite  in  himself  rare  claims  to  hereditary  dis- 
tinction ;  but  who  is  probably  destined  to  exalt  the 
name  of  his  family  still  higher  by  his  own  virtues. 
Dr.  Roebuck,  like  too  many  ingenious  men,  founded 
these  Carron  and  Kinneil  Works  for  the  benefit  of 
others;  and  though  he  agreed  to  Mr.  Watt's  terms 
of  receiving  two  thirds  of  the  profit,  he  was  obliged  by 
pecuniary  embarrassments  to  retire  from  the  partner- 
ship after  a  patent  had  been  obtained  in  1769,  and  an 
engine  of  an  eighteen-inch  cylinder  had  been  erected 
at  Kinneil.     The  success  of  this  amply  proved    the 
solidity  of  the  invention,  but  the  inventor  was  obliged, 
for  some  years,  to  abandon  the  pursuit,  and  to  labour 
in  his  profession  of  what  is  now  termed  a  civil  engineer  ; 
but  the  extensive  operations  of  which  Scotland  soon 
became   the   scene,  gave   a   much    more  ample    scope 
to   his   talents.       He   was   actively   engaged    in   the 
surveys,  and  afterwards  in  the  works,  for  connecting 
by  a  canal  the  Monkland  coal-mines  with  Glasgow. 
He  was  afterwards  employed  in  preparing  the  canal 
since  completed  by  Mr.  Rennie,  across  the  Isthmus  of 


*  His  maternal  grandfather  was  the  author  of  '  Anticipation/ 
and  grandson  of  Addison's  friend,  the  poet. 


WATT.  373 

Crinan ;  in  the  difficult  and  laborious  investigations 
for  the  improvement  of  the  harbours  of  Ayr,  Greenock, 
and  Glasgow ;  in  improving  the  navigation  of  the 
Forth  and  the  Clyde ;  in  the  Campbelton  Canal,  and 
in  the  surveys  and  plans  preliminary  to  the  Grand 
Caledonian  Canal;  beside  several  bridges  of  great 
importance,  as  those  of  Hamilton  and  Rutherglen.  At 
Dr.  Roebuck's  Mr.  Watt  had  early  received  much 
kindness,  and  many  valuable  lessons  in  chemical 
science.  He  was  here,  too,  introduced  to  Dr.  Black. 

The  various  works  which  have  been  mentioned  occu- 
pied his  whole  time  from  the  disappointment  experienced 
in  1769  respecting  the  steam  engine,  of  which  during 
that  long  interval  he  never  despaired,  to  the  year  1774, 
when  he  acceded  to  the  proposal  of  Mr.  Boulton,  of 
Soho,  near  Birmingham,  that  he  shoul  be  taken  in  Dr. 
Roebuck's  place  as  partner  in  the  patent,  and  in  1775 
he  settled  there  in  this  new  business.  An  extension  of 
the  patent  for  twenty-five  years  from  this  time  was 
obtained  from  Parliament,  in  consequence  of  the 
national  importance  which  all  men  saw  belonged  to 
the  invention ;  and  the  partners  constructed  many 
engines  upon  the  terms  of  receiving  one  third  of  the 
fuel  saved  by  the  improvements.  It  is  a  convenient 
mode  of  illustrating  the  effect  of  the  invention  in 
saving  fuel,  to  observe  what  were  the  gains  of  the 
partners  under  this  stipulation.  On  one  mine,  that 
of  Chase  water,  in  Cornwall,  the  proprietors  com- 
pounded for  2400/.  a  year,  instead  of  paying  the  third 
of  the  fuel  saved.  That  saving  then  must  very  con- 
siderably have  exceeded  72001.  a  year.  But  there 
seemed  some  difficulty  in  carrying  bargains  of  this  kind 


374  WATT. 

into  effect ;  and  the  genius  of  Watt,  fertile  in  resources, 
immediately  invented  a  small  clock,  called  the  counter, 
to  be  moved  by  the  engine,  and  which  accurately  re- 
corded every  stroke  it  made.  Payment  being  in  propor- 
tion to  the  number  of  strokes,  the  clock  was  enclosed 
in  a  box  under  a  double  lock,  and  thus  the  working 
eould  be  easily  and  securely  ascertained.* 

The  first  consequence  of  this  grand  invention,  and 
the  great  saving  of  fuel  it  occasioned,  was  the  renewed 
working  of  mines  which  had  become  unprofitable 
under  the  old  plan.  The  next  was  the  opening  mines 
which  Newcomen's  engine  could  not  drain  at  all. 
The  steam-power,  too,  was  no  longer  confined  to 
draining  mines.  Various  contrivances,  for  which 
Watt  took  out  no  less  than  four  patents  between 
1781  and  1785,  enabled  him  to  communicate  a  rota- 
tory motion  from  the  piston,  so  that  the  engine  could 
now  work  any  machinery  whatever ;  could  spin  cotton, 
cut  4ron  and  brass,  stamp  cloth,  grind  corn,  print 
books,  coin  money,  in  short,  could  perform  on  any 
scale  any  kind  of  work  in  which  human  labour  was 
either  inefficient  or  expensive ;  and  while  it  was  seen 
in  one  place  pouring  out  rivers  from  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  with  the  arms  of  a  giant,  or  cleaving  rocks  of 
granite  formation,  or  clipping  huge  bars  of  stubborn 
iron  into  ribands,  it  was  elsewhere  to  be  found 


*  Such  an  engine  could  not  be  made  and  used  secretly,  and  thus 
piracy  was  prevented.  It  is  far  otherwise  with  small  pieces  of 
mechanism,  and  still  more  difficult  would  be  the  protection  of 
patent  rights  in  mere  methods,  though  to  these  the  protection  of  the 
law  should  be  extended. 


WATT.  375 

weaving  or  spinning  like  a  quiet  and  industrious  fe- 
male, or  turning  a  small  lathe,  or  forming  the  fine 
wheels  of  a  watch,  or  drawing  out  a  thread  too  fine 
for  sight ;  when  the  machine,  instead  of  sawing  the 
air  aloft,  and  making  the  ground  tremble  around  it, 
was  placed  quietly  on  a  table  like  a  candlestick  or  an 
inkstand.  The  latest  use  of  the  power,  and  the  most 
important,  is  steam  travelling  by  land  and  water. 
Watt  himself  early  perceived  this  application  of  his 
engine ;  and  in  1785  he  took  out  a  patent  for  moving 
carriages  by  steam,  but  he  does  not  appear  to  have 
practically  used  his  method.  The  attempts  had  been 
numerous,  and  from  very  early  times,  to  propel  vessels 
by  steam.  There  seems  reason  to  think  that  the 
paddle-wheel,  the  only  addition  to  the  steam-engine 
required  for  navigation,  was  known  in  ancient  Egypt : 
it  certainly  was  known  to  the  Romans.  In  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century  a  Spanish  engineer  exhibited 
a  steam-vessel  to  Charles  V.  The  Marquis  of  Wor- 
cester appears  to  have  turned  his  attention  to  the 
subject  from  some  parts  of  the  work  already  cited,  and 
so  superciliously  condemned  by  Hume ;  and  Jonathan 
Hulls,  in  1736,  took  out  a  patent  for  a  kind  of  steam- 
tug.  Various  similar  attempts  were  afterwards  made, 
but  with  no  success,  and  it  was  not  until  the  steam- 
engine  had  been  improved  and  had  become  generally 
used  for  all  other  purposes  that  it  was  applied  to  those 
of  locomotion. 

It  is  truly  painful  to  reflect,  that  among  the  rewards 
which  this  great  public  benefactor  was  destined  to 
reap  for  his  invaluable  services,  was  the  lot  of  having 
to  pass  many  years  of  his  life  in  the  unenviable  situa- 


376  WATT. 

tion  of  a  party  to  suits  at  law  and  in  equity,  so  numerous 
as  might  well  have  worn  out  the  patience  of  any  one  but 
him,  whose  unwearied  perseverance  had  already  toiled 
successfully  against  unnumbered  difficulties  of  another 
kind.  Such  was,  at  that  time,  the  patent  law  of  this 
country  ;  such,  in  some  degree,  it  still  is,  though  much 
improved.  Inventive  genius  is  placed  between  two 
dangers,  and  it  can  hardly  escape  the  one  without 
falling  into  the  other. — If  the  invention  is  such  that 
it  requires  some  new  demand  to  be  created,  or  some 
novel  taste  to  be  introduced,  before  it  can  be  much 
used,  the  period  of  the  monopoly  expires  before  any 
gain  can  be  reaped.  This  is  the  more  likely  to 
happen  if  it  comes  in  competition  with  things  already 
made,  and  of  which,  at  some  expense,  a  considerable 
stock  has  been  prepared,  because  a  formidable  interest 
is  combined  against  the  use  of  that  new  method  which 
must  displace  the  old,  and  render  valueless  this  col- 
lected stock.  I  remember  sitting  on  the  trial  of  a 
patent  for  a  new  and  admirable  pianoforte ;  the  only 
witness  to  its  excellence  being  a  sculptor  of  distinction 
who  had  once  made  such  instruments,  but  had  no 
longer  any  interest  in  crying  down  the  invention  : 
none  of  the  trade  could  be  trusted  to  give  their  opinion 
upon  oath ;  all  were,  of  course,  in  a  combination 
against  that  improvement,  which,  if  adopted,  would 
render  unsaleable  their  pianofortes  already  made, — If, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  superiority  of  the  invention  is 
quite  manifest,  if  the  demand  for  it  already  exists,  if  no 
combination  can  prevent  its  coming  into  general  use — 
for  example,  the  making  a  new  instrument  for  perform- 
ing a  known  and  necessary  operation,  or  a  new  substance 


WATT,  377 

for  supplying  a  general  want  already  existing — then 
the  inventor  has  to  prepare  himself  for  encountering 
piracy  in  all  its  forms;  capitalists,  who  would  be 
ashamed  to  violate  the  law  in  their  own  persons,  en- 
couraging men  of  no  substance  to  infringe  the  patent, 
and  omitting  to  pay  the  patentee's  costs  when  these 
tools  are  defeated.  My  learned  and  ingenious  kins- 
man, Dr.  Forsyth,  the  inventor  of  the  percussion 
lock,  passed  the  fourteen  years  of  his  patent  right  in 
courts  of  justice,  and  in  every  instance  prevailed  ;  but  he 
found  the  pirates  pennyless,  the  costs  were  to  be  paid, 
and  he  never  gained  one  shilling  by  an  invention 
which  is,  I  believe,  more  universally  used  all  over 
Europe  than  any  other,  except,  perhaps,  Argand's 
lamp.  That  invention  was  defeated  in  court,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  imperfect  state  of  the  law  in  those 
days,  and  of  the  absurd  leaning  of  the  Judges  against 
all  patentees  ;  their  Lordships  displaying  the  utmost 
ingenuity  in  discovering  flaws,  and  calling  into  action 
all  the  resources  of  legal  astuteness  in  grinding,  as 
they  went  on,  new  law  for  the  defeat  of  the  inventor. 
Of  this,  one  instance  only  needs  be  given.  If  a  speci- 
fication contained  ten  good  matters  or  processes,  and 
by  oversight  one  was  either  not  original,  or  did  not 
answer  the  description  given  in  any  other  respect,* 
the  courts  held  the  patent  wholly  void,  and  not  merely 
void  for  the  erroneously  described  part,  upon  the 
subtle  and  senseless  ground  that  the  Crown  had  been 
deceived  in  the  grant. 

*  Turner  v.  Winter,  6  T.  R. ;  Rex  v.  Fuller,  3  B.  and  A. 
My  Acts  of  1835  and  1840  have  in  great  part  remedied  these  sad 
defects  in  the  law  ;  others  still  remain. 


378  WAIT. 

Mr.  Watt  had  to  struggle  against  this  state  of  the 
law  as  well  as  against  the  shameless  frauds,  the 
conspiracies  of  dishonest,  unprincipled  men.  During 
seven  years  and  upwards  he  was  condemned  to  lead 
the  life  of  litigation ;  during  seven  years  his  genius 
was  withdrawn  from  his  own  pursuits  to  become 
what  he,  no  doubt,  had,  unfortunately  for  society, 
full  time  to  make  himself,  an  accomplished  and 
learned  lawyer;  and  it  was  not  till  five  and  thirty 
years  after  his  invention  had  been  made,  that  he  was 
finally  freed  by  a  decision  of  the  Court  of  King's 
Bench,  in  1799,  from  a  durance  which  lasted  all  the 
term  of  his  patent,  after  all  interest  in  the  subject  had 
expired  by  efflux  of  time.  It  was  proved  before  a 
committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  1834,  that 
had  his  statutory  term  in  the  patent  only  been  secured 
to  him,  he  would  have  been  a  great  loser  by  the  in- 
vention; and  that  for  some  years  after  the  Act  of 
Parliament  had  extended  the  time,  he  still  was  out  of 
pocket :  consequently  it  follows,  that  had  he  never 
taken  a  patent  at  all,  but  trusted  entirely  to  the  pre- 
ference which  his  being  the  inventor  would  have 
given  him  in  the  market,  as  a  maker  of  steam-ap- 
paratus, that  is,  had  he  taken  only  this  indirect 
benefit  instead  of  the  direct  gains  of  the  monopoly,  he 
would  have  been  better  off  in  a  pecuniary  point  of 
view  than  he  was  by  means  of  the  grant  of  the  patent 
and  its  Parliamentary  extension.  The  Act  which 
I  introduced  in  1835,  grounded  mainly  upon  that 
evidence,  has  removed  some  of  the  greatest  defects  in 
the  law  ;  and  it  has  enabled,  when  coupled  with  the 
subsequent  Act  of  last  Session,  an  inventor  to  obtain, 


WATT.  379 

at  a  very  inconsiderable  cost,  an  extension  for  any 
additional  period,  not  exceeding  the  duration  of  the 
original  patent.*  The  expenses  of  obtaining  patents, 
and  especially  the  grievous  burden  of  having  to  take 
out  one  for  each  of  the  three  kingdoms,  are  the 
principal  parts  of  the  grievance  which  remain  to  be 
redressed. 

Notwithstanding  the  serious  drawbacks  upon  his 
gains  which  Watt  thus  experienced,  he  was,  on  the 
whole,  successful  in  respect  of  profit,  realizing  an 
ample  fortune,  but  which  all  men  wished  had  been 
greater,  and  which,  under  a  more  just  law,  would  have 
been  thrice  as  great. 

We  have  been  contemplating  the  great  achievement 
of  Watt,  but  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
steam-engine  is  the  only  monument  of  his  scientific 
genius  or  his  inventive  skill.  He  was  the  author  of 
the  machine  in  general  use  for  copying  letters  ;  of  the 
method  extensively  used  for  heating  buildings  and 
hot-houses  by  steam ;  and  of  an  ingenious  mechanism 
for  multiplying  copies  of  busts  and  other  sculptures ; 
but  he  was  also,  without  any  doubt,  the  person  who 
first  discovered  the  composition  of  water.  At  this 


*  The  course  which  a  patentee  ought  to  pursue  if  there  be 
no  opposition  to  his  claim  of  extension,  is  to  employ  no  solicitor 
and  no  counsel,  but  to  appear  in  person  before  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee, as  my  gallant  and  truly  ingenious  friend  Lord  Dundonald 
(better  known  as  Lord  Cochrane)  lately  did.  Their  Lordships  will 
always  favour  such  a  course,  the  rather  as  they  thus  obtain  the 
advantage  of  hearing  the  explanations  required  from  the  person  best 
able  to  give  them.  In  opposed  cases  professional  aid  is  requisite. 


380  WATT. 

most  important  truth  he  arrived  by  a  profound  ex- 
amination of  all  the  experiments  which  had  been  made 
by  Warltire,  by  Macquer,  and  especially  by  Priest- 
ley, upon  the  combustion  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen 
gases,  then  called  inflammable,  and  vital  or  dephlo- 
gisticated  airs.  No  former  reasoner  had  come  even 
near  the  true  theory  of  the  phenomena  observed  in 
those  experiments.  All  had  assumed  that  water  was 
a  simple  or  elementary  body  ;  that  it  was  contained  in 
the  airs  burnt  together,  and  was  precipitated  by  their 
explosion.  He,  on  the  contrary,  showed  that  it  was 
formed  by  the  union  of  the  two  gases,  and  their 
parting  with  the  latent  heat  which  had  held  them  in 
the  elastic  or  gaseous  state,  but  which  being  with- 
drawn by  their  union,  left  them  in  a  state  of  liquid  or 
aqueous  fluidity. 

As  early  as  1782,  his  attention  had  been  closely 
directed  to  the  experiments  in  which  air  is  produced 
from  water,  and  especially  to  those  upon  the  com- 
bustion of  inflammable  air.  In  December  of  that  year 
he  had  matured  his  theory,  for  we  find  him  then  an- 
nouncing to  De  Luc  his  discovery,  that  "  one  element 
must  be  dismissed  from  the  list ;"  water  being,  ac- 
cording to  his  doctrine  (stated  more  explicitly  to  Dr. 
Black,  April  1783r)  "  composed  of  dephlogisticated  and 
inflammable  airs  deprived  of  a  portion  of  their  latent 
heat."  To  his  whole  correspondence  with  that  great 
philosopher,  with  Smeaton,  with  Priestley,  De  Luc,  and 
others,  I  have  had  access,  and  no  trace  is  to  be  found 
in  it  that  either  he  or  they  had  even  entertained  the 
least  suspicion  of  the  same  thing  having  before  occurred 


WATT. 

to  any  one  else.*  It  is  to  be  noted,  too,  that  in  1 784 
Mr.  Cavendish,  after  his  celebrated  experiment,  had 
not  attained  by  any  means  so  clear  a  notion  of  the 
true  doctrine  as  Mr.  Watt  explains  in  those  previous 
letters,  f  I  examined  minutely  the  whole  of  this 
subject  eight  years  ago,  at  the  request  of  my  dis- 
tinguished colleague  M.  Arago,  then  engaged  in 
preparing  his  *  Eloge'  of  Mr.  Watt,  who  had  also  been 
our  fellow-member  of  the  Institute.  The  reader  will 
find  my  statement  of  the  evidence  annexed  to  this 
account.  But  I  cannot  easily  suppose  that  M.  Arago 
ever  intended,  and  I  know  that  I  never  myself  intended, 
to  insinuate  in  the  slightest  degree  a  suspicion  of  Mr. 
Cavendish's  having  borrowed  from  Mr.  Watt.  He  had, 
in  all  probability,  been  led  to  the  same  conclusion  by  his 
own  researches,  ignorant  of  Mr.  Watt's  speculations, 
a  little  earlier  in  point  of  time,  just  as  Priestley  when 
claiming,  and  justly  claiming,  the  important  discovery 
of  oxygen  (called  by  him,  in  accordance  with  the 
doctrine  of  Stahl,  "  dephlogisticated  air"),  never  denied 
that  Scheele  also  made  the  same  discovery,  calling  it 
"  empyreal  air,"  without  being  aware  of  another  having 
preceded  him.  Priestley,  of  course,  treated  the  dis- 
creditable proceedings  of  Lavoisier  in  respect  to  this 
gas  very  differently,  and  so  must  all  impartial  men. 

It  must  on  no  account  be  supposed  that  Watt  cannot 
be  considered  as  having  discovered  the  composition  of 
water,  merely  because  he  made  no  new  experiments  of 
particular  moment,  like  Cavendish,  to  ascertain  that 


*   Letters   to   Gilbert   Hamilton  of  Glasgow,  Fry   of  Bristol, 
Smeaton,  De  Luc— all  dated  March  and  April,  1783. 

•f  See  Life  of  Cavendish  for  further  particulars  and  explanations. 


382  WATT. 

capital  point.  No  one  refuses  to  Newton  the  discovery 
of  gravitation  as  the  controlling  and  directing  power  of 
the  solar  system ;  and  yet  he  made  not  one  of  those 
observations  upon  which  his  theory  rests  ;  nay,  he 
threw  it  aside  for  sixteen  years  when  the  erroneous 
notion  of  a  degree  being  only  sixty  miles  appeared  by 
its  consequences  to  disprove  his  proposition,  and  instead 
of  making  any  further  experiments  himself,  waited 
until  Picard's  more  accurate  measurement  became 
known  to  him  accidentally  in  1682,  and  enabled  him 
to  demonstrate  his  doctrine.  In  like  manner,  Lavoi- 
sier, who  discovered  no  gas,  and  made  no  original 
experiments  of  the  least  value  in  pneumatic  chemistry, 
is  universally  admitted  to  have  discovered  the  true 
theory  of  combustion  and  calcination,  by  reasoning 
on  the  facts  which  others  had  ascertained.  Watt's 
happy  inference  from  the  facts  discovered  by  Warltire 
and  Priestley  was  just  as  much  entitled,  and  for  the 
same  reasons,  to  be  regarded  as  the  discovery  of  the 
composition  of  water. 

The  latter  years  of  Mr.  Watt's  useful  and  honour- 
able life  were  passed  in  the  bosom  of  his  family  and 
the  society  of  his  friends,  although  he  ever  gave  the 
due  attention  to  the  extensive  concerns  of  the  house  in 
which  he  was  the  principal  partner.  He  had  been 
married  as  early  as  1764  to  Miss  Miller,  his  cousin, 
and  had  by  her  a  daughter  who  predeceased  him,  leaving 
children,  and  a  son,  James,  who  still  survives,  inherit- 
ing the  scientific  tastes,  the  extensive  knowledge,  the 
masculine  understanding,  and  the  scrupulous  integrity 
of  his  father.  With  the  late  Mr.  Robinson  Boulton 
and  Mr.  Gregory  Watt,  he  was  admitted  into  the  part- 


WATT. 

nership,  the  concerns  of  which  he  extended,  and,  for 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  almost  exclusively 
conducted.  By  his  second  wife,  Miss  Macgregor, 
whom  he  married  in  1776,  he  had  one  son,  Gregory, 
who  unfortunately  died  in  October,  1804,  at  the  age 
of  twenty- seven,  after  giving  an  earnest  of  brilliant  ta- 
lents and  accomplishments.  This  loss  was,  no  doubt,  a 
severe  blow  to  his  family,  and  the  father  shared  fully 
in  their  sorrow.  But  he  bore  it  like  a  man :  and  I 
feel  great  satisfaction  in  correcting  an  error  into  which 
my  illustrious  friend  and  colleague  M.  Arago  has  fallen 
through  misinformation,  when  he  represents  Mr. 
Watt's  spirit  as  so  entirely  broken  by  the  misfortune 
that  he  "  preserved  an  almost  total  silence  during  the 
latter  years  of  his  life."  The  fact  is,  that  he  survived 
his  son's  death  between  fourteen  and  fifteen  years,  and 
never  was  more  cheerful  or  enjoyed  the  pleasures  of 
society  more  heartily  than  during  this  period.  I  can 
speak  on  the  point  with  absolute  certainty,  for  my  own 
acquaintance  with  him  commenced  after  my  friend 
Gregory's  decease.  A  few  months  after  that  event, 
he  calmly  and  with  his  wonted  acuteness  discussed 
with  me  the  composition  of  an  epitaph  to  be  inscribed 
on  his  son's  tomb.  That  autumn  and  winter  he  was  a 
constant  attendant  at  our  Friday  club,  and  in  all  our 
private  circles,  and  was  the  life  of  them  all.  He  has, 
moreover,  left  under  his  hand  an  account  of  the  effect 
which  the  recent  loss  had  produced  upon  his  spirits, 
and  a  flat  contradiction  to  the  notion  that  it  had  de- 
pressed them.  "  I  perhaps,"  he  observes,  "have  said  too 
much  to  you  and  Mr.  Campbell  on  the  state  of  my 
mind  :  I  therefore  think  it  necessary  to  say  that  I  am 


384  WATT, 

not  low-spirited,  and  were  you  here  you  would  find 
me  as  cheerful  in  the  company  of  my  friends  as  usual ; 
my  feelings  for  the  loss  of  poor  Gregory  are  not 
passion,  but  a  deep  regret  that  such  was  his  and  my 
lot."  He  then  expresses  his  pious  resignation  to  the 
will  of  "  the  Disposer  of  events."  It  is  true,  he  adds 
that  he  had  lost  one  stimulus  to  exertion,  and  with  it 
his  relish  for  his  usual  avocations,  but  he  looks  to 
time  for  a  remedy,  and  adds,  "  meanwhile,  I  do  not 
neglect  the  means  of  amusement  which  are  within  my 
power."  This  letter  was  written  in  January  1805,  only 
a  few  weeks  after  the  loss  of  his  son.  In  another  letter 
written  in  April  to  the  same  gentleman,  his  cousin,  Mr. 
Muirhead,  great  uncle  of  the  able  and  learned  translator 
of  M.  Arago's  ( Eloge,'  after  expressing  his  confident 
hopes  that  Gregory  had  changed  this  mortal  state  for 
a  far  happier  existence,  he  says,  as  if  anxious  to  avoid  all 
suspicion  of  his  giving  way  to  excessive  sorrow,  "  You 
are  not  to  conceive  that  we  give  way  to  grief :  on  the 
contrary,  you  will  find  us  as  cheerful  as  we  ought  to 
be,  and  as  much  disposed  to  enjoy  the  friends  we  have 
left  as  ever.  But  we  should  approach  to  brutes  if  we 
had  no  regrets."  In  this  letter  he  quotes  the  beautiful 
lines  of  Catullus,  "  Nunc  it  per  iter  tenebricosum,"  &c. 
To  this  evidence  at  the  period  of  his  son's  death 
let  me  add  the  testimony  of  Lord  Jeffrey,  who  knew 
him  well,  and  who  brings  down  the  account  to  the 
latest  years  of  his  life.  "  His  health,  which  was  deli- 
cate from  his  youth  upwards,  seemed  to  become  firmer 
as  he  advanced  in  years  ;  and  he  possessed,  up  almost 
to  the  last  moments  of  his  existence,  not  only  the  full 
command  of  his  extraordinary  intellect,  but  all  the 


WATT.  385 

alacrity  of  spirit  arid  the  social  gaiety  which  had  illu- 
mined his  happiest  days.  His  friends  in  this  part  of 
the  country  (Edinburgh)  never  saw  him  more  full  of 
intellectual  vigour  and  colloquial  animation,  never 
more  delightful  or  more  instructive,  than  in  his 
last  visit  in  autumn  1817."  It  was  after  this  period 
that  he  invented  the  machine  for  copying  sculpture. 
He  distributed  among  his  friends  some  specimens  of  its 
performances,  jocularly  calling  them  "  the  productions 
of  a  young  artist  just  entering  into  his  eighty-third 
year." 

In  the  summer  of  the  following  year,  1819, 1  saw  him 
for  the  last  time,  and  did  not  observe  any  change  in  his 
conversation  or  in  his  manner  ;  but  I  understand  that 
he  suffered  some  inconvenience  through  the  summer ; 
though,  until  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  he  was  not 
seriously  indisposed.  He  soon  became  aware  of  the  event 
which  was  approaching,  and  he  seemed  only  anxious  to 
impress  upon  his  sorrowing  family  the  circumstances  cal- 
culated to  minister  consolation  under  the  change  which 
must  soon  take  place.  He  expressed  his  sincere 
gratitude  to  Divine  Providence  for  the  blessings  which 
he  had  been  permitted  to  enjoy,  for  his  length  of  days, 
his  exemption  from  the  infirmities  of  age,  the  calm 
and  cheerful  evening  of  his  life  passed  after  the  useful 
labours  of  its  day  had  closed.  He  died  on  the  25th  of 
August,  1819,  in  his  eighty-fourth  year.  His  remains 
lie  buried  in  Handsworth  church,  near  his  residence  of 
Heath  field,  and  a  statue,  the  work  of  Chan  trey,  is  there 
erected  to  his  memory  by  his  son ;  and  the  same  filial 
piety  has  presented  a  statue  to  the  College  of  Glas- 
gow, in  grateful  recollection  of  early  patronage.  But 
a  truly  noble  monument  is  raised  to  him  in  West- 

2  c 


386  WATT. 

minster  Abbey,  by  the  genius  of  Chantrey,  at  the 
expense  of  the  Sovereign  and  of  many  Peers  and 
distinguished  Commoners,  who  held  a  meeting  in 
honour  of  this  illustrious  man  and  great  public  bene- 
factor. The  Ministers  of  the  Crown,  and  the  chiefs 
of  the  opposition  in  either  House  of  Parliament,  the 
most  eminent  men  of  science,  the  most  distinguished 
cultivators  of  the  arts,  assembled  with  this  view,  and 
the  account  of  their  proceedings  was  made  public  in  an 
authentic  form.  The  Prime  Minister,  Lord  Liver- 
pool, presided ;  and  it  was  none  of  the  least  remarkable 
passages  of  that  day,  that  his  successor,  the  present 
Premier,  was  anxious  to  declare  the  obligation  under 
which  he  lay  to  the  genius  of  him  they  were  comme- 
morating, the  fortunes  of  his  family  being  reared  by 
manufacturing  industry,  founded  upon  the  happy 
inventions  of  Arkwright  and  Watt.  It  has  ever 
been  reckoned  by  me  one  of  the  chief  honours  of  my 
life,  that  I  was  called  upon  to  pen  the  inscription  upon 
the  noble  monument  thus  nobly  reared. 

The  chisel  of  Chantrey,  whose  greatest  work  this 
certainly  is,  has  admirably  presented  the  features  of  the 
countenance  at  once  deeply  meditative  and  calmly 
placid,  but  betokening  power  rather  than  delicacy  and 
refinement.  The  civilized  world  is  filled  with  im- 
perishable records  of  his  genius,  and  the  grateful 
recollection  of  the  whole  species  embalms  his  memory. 
But  for  this,  the  author  of  the  epitaph  might  well  feel 
how  inadequately  his  feeble  pen  had  performed  its  office 
in  attempting  to  pourtray  such  excellence  :  how  much 
more  inadequately  when  its  lines  are  traced  in  most 
disadvantageous  contrast  with  the  signal  success  of  the 
sculptor !  He  who  has  ever  made  the  attempt  to  write 


WATT.  387 

with  a  chisel  in  our  language,  little  lapidary  as  it  cer- 
tainly is,  will  comprehend  the  extraordinary  difficulties 
of  the  task,  and  will  show  mercy  to  the  failure : — 

NOT  TO  PERPETUATE  A  NAME 
WHICH  MUST  ENDURE  WHILE  THE  PEACEFUL  ARTS  FLOURISH 

BUT  TO  SHEW 

THAT   MANKIND  HAVE  LEARNED  TO   HONOUR  THOSE 
WHO  BEST  DESERVE  THEIR  GRATITUDE 

THE  KING 

HIS   MINISTERS  AND   MANY  OF  THE  NOBLES 

AND   COMMONERS   OF  THE  REALM 

RAISED   THIS  MONUMENT  TO 

JAMES  WATT 

WHO   DIRECTING  THE  FORCE  OF  AN  ORIGINAL  GENIUS 

EARLY  EXERCISED  IN  PHILOSOPHIC  RESEARCH 

TO   THE  IMPROVEMENT   OF 

THE  STEAM  ENGINE 
ENLARGED   THE  RESOURCES  OF   HIS   COUNTRY 

INCREASED  THE  POWER  OF  MAN 
AND  ROSE  TO  AN  EMINENT  PLACE 

AMONG  THE  MOST  ILLUSTRIOUS  FOLLOWERS  OF  SCIENCE 
AND  THE  REAL  BENEFACTORS   OF   THE  WORLD 

BORN  AT  GREENOCK  MDCCXXXVI 
DIED   AT  HEATHFIELD  IN  STAFFORDSHIRE  MDCCCXIX. 

We  have  been  considering  this  eminent  person  as 
yet  only  in  his  public  capacity,  as  a  benefactor  of 
mankind  by  his  fertile  genius  and  indomitable  perse- 
verance ;  and  the  best  portraiture  of  his  intellectual 
character  was  to  be  found  in  the  description  of  his 
attainments.  It  is,  however,  proper  to  survey  him  also 
in  private  life.  He  was  unexceptionable  in  all  its 
relations  ;  and  as  his  activity  was  unmeasured,  and  his 
taste  anything  rather  than  fastidious,  he  both  was 
master  of  every  variety  of  knowledge,  and  was  tolerant 
of  discussion  on  subjects  of  very  subordinate  importance 
compared  with  those  on  which  he  most  excelled.  Not 

2c2 


388  WATT. 

only  all  the  sciences  from  the  mathematics  and  astro- 
nomy, down  to  botany,  received  his  diligent  attention, 
but  he   was  tolerably  read    in  the  lighter  kinds  of 
literature,  delighting  in  poetry  and  other  works  of 
fiction,  full  of  the  stores  of  ancient  literature,   and 
readily  giving  himself  up  to  the  critical  disquisitions 
of  commentators,  and  to  discussions  on  the  fancies  of 
etymology.     His  manners  were  most  attractive  from 
their  perfect  nature  and  simplicity.     His  conversation 
was  rich  in  the  measure  which  such  stores  and  such 
easy  taste  might  lead  us  to  expect,  and  it  astonished  all 
listeners  with  its  admirable  precision,  with  the  extra- 
ordinary memory  it  displayed,  with  the  distinctness  it 
seemed  to  have,  as  if  his  mind  had  separate  niches  for 
keeping  each  particular,  and  with  its  complete  rejection 
of  all  worthless  and  superfluous  matter,  as  if  the  same 
mind  had  some  fine  machine    for  acting  like  a  fan, 
casting  off  the  chaff  and  the  husk.     But  it  had  besides 
a  peculiar  charm  from  the  pleasure  he  took  in  convey- 
ing information  where  he  was  peculiarly  able  to  give 
it,    and   in  joining    with    entire    candour    whatever 
discussion  happened  to  arise.     Even  upon  matters  on 
which  he  was  entitled   to   pronounce  with  absolute 
authority,  he  never  laid  down  the  law,  but  spoke  like 
any  other  partaker  of  the  conversation.   You  might  ob- 
serve him,  however,  with  his  pencil  in  his  hand,  ready  to 
prove  what  might  require  explanation,  and  he  was  an 
adventurous  disputant  who  would  not  rather  see  his  in- 
tellect play  in  illustrations  than  descend  with  demon- 
strative force.     He  was  ever  in  pursuit  of  truth  or  the 
gratification  of  a  rational  curiosity,  and  this  attempered 
as  well  as  guided  his  talk.    If  he  seemed  occasionally  to 
be  moved  beyond  the  interest  thus  excited,  it  was  when 


WATT.  389 

lie  perceived  any  thing  uncandid  or  unfair,  or,  above 
all,  indirect  and  dishonest.     The  attempts  of  one  man 
to  appropriate  another's  inventive  merit  were  the  things 
that  most  roused  his  indignation ;  for,  regarding  dis- 
covery  and   invention   as    the   most   precious   of  all 
property,  he  could  not  bear  the  sight  of  its  violation, 
and  would  stop  minutely  and  curiously  to  ascertain  the 
relative  shares  of  different  individuals,  when  any  doubt 
was  raised  upon  the  distribution.      His  conversation 
was  withal  spirited  and  lively — it  was  easy  and  concise, 
and  without  the  least  of  a  lecturing  formality.     His 
voice  was  deep  and  low,  and  if  somewhat  monotonous, 
it  yet  seemed  in  harmony  with  the  weight  and  the 
beauty  of  his  discourse,  through  which  however  there 
also  ran  a  current  of  a  lighter  kind ;  for  he  was  mirth- 
ful, temperately  jocular,  nor  could  anything  to  more 
advantage   set  off  the  living  anecdotes  of  men  and 
things,  with  which  the  graver  texture  of  his  talk  was 
interwoven,  than  his  sly  and  quiet  humour,  both  of 
mind  and  of  look,  in  recounting  them.     No  one  who 
had  the  happiness  of  knowing  him,  no  member,  more 
especially,  of  the  club  in  Edinburgh  which  he  frequented 
as  often  as  he  visited  that  capital,  can  ever  forget  the 
zest  which  his  society  derived  from  the  mixture  of  such 
various  matters  as  those  to  which  I  have  referred ;  and 
one  of  its  most   distinguished  founders  *  has  justly 

*  Lord  Jeffrey.  The  club  was  called  from  the  day,  Friday,  on 
which  it  met  at  supper,  after  the  business  of  the  week  was  over,  and 
the  half-holiday  of  Saturday  only  lightly  hanging  over  the  heads  of 
the  lawyers,  who  chiefly  composed  it.  Mr.  Watt  was  an  honorary 
member.  He  had  for  his  colleagues  no  less  distinguished  men  than 
Professor  Playfair,  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Lord  Corehouse,  Mr.  Homer, 
Mr.  Elmsley,  Sir  W.  Drummond,  and  several  who  still  survive  and 
fill  exalted  places  in  the  State. 


390  WAIT. 

said,  that  in  no  other  person  was  there  ever  observed 
so  "  fine  an  expression  of  reposing  strength  and  unin- 
terrupted self-possession  as  marked  his  whole  manner." 


APPENDIX. 


HISTORICAL  NOTE  ON  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  THEORY  OF 
THE  COMPOSITION  OF  WATER. 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  whatever,  that  the  experiment  of  Mr. 
Warltire,  related  in  Dr.  Priestley's  fifth  volume,*  gave  rise  to 
this  inquiry,  at  least  in  England ;  Mr.  Cavendish  expressly 

*  Mr.  Warltire's  letter  is  dated  Birmingham,  18th  April,  1781, 
and  was  published  by  Dr.  Priestley  in  the  Appendix  to  the  seventh 
volume  of  his  '  Experiments  and  Observations  relating  to  various 
branches  of  Natural  Philosophy ;  with  a  continuation  of  the  Ob- 
servations on  Air,' — forming,  in  fact,  the  fifth  volume  of  his  '  Ex- 
periments and  Observations  on  different  kinds  of  Air ;'  printed  at 
Birmingham  in  1781. 

Mr.  Warltire's  first  experiments  were  made  in  a  copper  ball  or 
flask,  which  held  three  wine  pints,  the  weight  14  ounces ;  and  his  ob- 
ject was  to  determine  "  whether  heat  is  heavy  or  not."  After  stating 
his  mode  of  mixing  the  airs,  and  of  adjusting  the  balance,  he  says, 
he  "  always  accurately  balanced  the  flask  of  common  air,  then  found 
the  difference  of  weight  after  the  inflammable  air  was  introduced, 
that  he  might  be  certain  he  had  confined  the  proper  proportion  of 
each.  The  electric  spark  having  passed  through  them,  the  flask 
became  hot,  and  was  cooled  by  exposing  it  to  the  common  air  of  the 
room  :  it  was  then  hung  up  again  to  the  balance,  and  a  loss  of  weight 
was  always  found,  but  not  constantly  the  same ;  upon  an  average  it 
was  two  grains." 

He  goes  on  to  say,  u  I  have  fired  air  in  glass  vessels  since  I  saw 
you  (Dr.  Priestley)  venture  to  do  it,  and  I  have  observed,  as  you 
did,  that,  though  the  glass  was  clean  and  dry  before,  yet,  after  firing 
the  air,  it  became  dewy,  and  was  lined  with  a  sooty  substance." 

It 


WAIT.  391 

refers  to  it,  as  having  set  him  upon  making  his  experiments. — 
(Phil.  Trans.  1784,  p.  126.)  The  experiment  of  Mr.  Warltire 
consisted  in  firing,  by  electricity,  a  mixture  of  inflammable 
and  common  air  in  a  close  vessel,  and  two  things  were  said  to 
be  observed :  first,  a  sensible  loss  of  weight ;  second,  a  dewy 
deposit  on  the  sides  of  the  vessel. 

Mr.  Watt,  in  a  note  to  p.  332  of  his  paper,  Phil.  Trans. 
1784,  inadvertently  states,  that  the  dewy  deposit  was  first 
observed  by  Mr.  Cavendish;  but  Mr.  Cavendish  himself, 
p.  127,  expressly  states  Mr.  Warltire  to  have  observed  it,  and 
cites  Dr.  Priestley's  fifth  volume. 

Mr.  Cavendish  himself  could  find  no  loss  of  weight,  and  he 
says  that  Dr.  Priestley  had  also  tried  the  experiment,  and 
found  none.*  But  Mr.  Cavendish  found  there  was  always  a 
dewy  deposit,  without  any  sooty  matter.  The  result  of  many 
trials  was,  that  common  air  and  inflammable  air  being  burnt 
together,  in  the  proportion  of  1000  measures  of  the  former  to 
423  of  the  latter,  "  about  one-fifth  of  the  common  air,  and 
nearly  all  the  inflammable  air,  lose  their  elasticity,  and  are 
condensed  into  the  dew  which  lines  the  glass."  He  examined  the 
dew,  and  found  it  to  be  pure  water.  He  therefore  concludes, 
that  "  almost  all  the  inflammable  air,  and  about  one-sixth  of 
the  common  air,  are  turned  into  pure  water." 

Mr.  Cavendish  then  burned,  in  the  same  way,  dephlogisti- 
cated  and  inflammable  airs  (oxygen  and  hydrogen  gases), 
and  the  deposit  was  always  more  or  less  acidulous,  accord- 
ingly as  the  air  burnt  with  the  inflammable  air  was  more  or 
less  phlogisticated.  The  acid  was  found  to  be  nitrous.  Mr. 
Cavendish  states,  that  "  almost  the  whole  of  the  inflammable 
and  dephlogisticated  air  is  converted  into  pure  water ;"  and, 
again,  that  "  if  these  airs  could  be  obtained  perfectly  pure,  the 

It  seems  evident  that  neither  Mr.  Warltire  nor  Dr.  Priestley 
attributed  the  dew  to  anything  else  than  a  mechanical  deposit  of 
the  moisture  suspended  in  common  air. — [NOTE  BY  MR.  JAMES 
WATT.] 

*  Mr.  Cavendish's  note,  p.  127,  would  seem  to  imply  this;  but  I 
have  not  found  in  any  of  Dr.  Priestley's  papers  that  he  has  said  so. 
—[NOTE  BY  MR.  JAMES  WATT.] 


392  WATT. 

whole  would  be  condensed."  And  he  accounts  for  common 
air  and  inflammable  air,  when  burnt  together,  not  producing 
acid,  by  supposing  that  the  heat  produced  is  not  sufficient. 
He  then  says  that  these  experiments,  with  the  exception  of 
what  relates  to  the  acid,  were  made  in  the  summer  of  1781, 
and  mentioned  to  Dr.  Priestley ;  and  adds,  that  "  a  friend  of 
his  (Mr.  Cavendish's),  last  summer  (that  is,  1783),  gave  some 
account  of  them  to  M.  Lavoisier,  as  well  as  of  the  conclu- 
sion drawn  from  them,  that  dephlogisticated  air  is  only  water 
deprived  of  its  phlogiston ;  but,  at  that  time,  so  far  was  M. 
Lavoisier  from  thinking  any  such  opinion  warranted,  that  till 
he  was  prevailed  upon  to  repeat  the  experiment  himself,  he 
found  some  difficulty  in  believing  that  nearly  the  whole  of 
the  two  airs  could  be  converted  into  water."  The  friend  is 
known  to  have  been  Dr.,  afterwards  Sir  Charles  Blagden; 
and  it  is  a  remarkable  circumstance,  that  this  passage  of  Mr. 
Cavendish's  paper  appears  not  to  have  been  in  it  when  ori- 
ginally presented  to  the  Royal  Society  ;  for  the  paper  is  appa- 
rently in  Mr.  Cavendish's  hand,  and  the  paragraph,  p.  134, 
135,  is  not  found  in  it,  but  is  added  to  it,  and  directed  to  be 
inserted  in  that  place.  It  is,  moreover,  not  in  Mr.  Cavendish's 
hand,  but  in  Sir  Charles  Blagden's ;  and,  indeed,  the  latter 
must  have  given  him  the  information  as  to  M.  Lavoisier, 
with  whom  it  is  not  said  that  Mr.  Cavendish  had  any  corre- 
spondence. The  paper  itself  was  read  15th  January,  1784. 
The  volume  was  published  about  six  months  afterwards. 

M.  Lavoisier's  memoir  (in  the  Mem.  de  I'Academie  dcs 
Sciences  for  1781)  had  been  read  partly  in  November  and 
December  1783,  and  additions  were  afterwards  made  to  it.  It 
was  published  in  1784.  It  contained  M.  Lavoisier's  account 
of  his  experiments  in  June  1783,  at  which,  he  says,  Sir 
Charles  Blagden  was  present ;  and  it  states  that  he  told  M. 
Lavoisier  of  Mr.  Cavendish  having  "  already  burnt  inflamma- 
ble air  in  close  vessels,  and  obtained  a  very  sensible  quantity 
of  water."  But  he,  M,  Lavoisier,  says  nothing  of  Sir  Charles 
Blagden  having  also  mentioned  Mr.  Cavendish's  conclusion 
from  the  experiment.  He  expressly  states,  that  the  weight  of 
the  water  was  equal  to  that  of  the  two  airs  burnt,  unless  the 
heat  and  light  which  escape  are  ponderable,  w  hich  he  hold 


WATT.  393 

them  not  to  be.  His  account,  therefore,  is  not  reconcilable 
with  Sir  Charles  Blagden's,  and  the  latter  was  most  probably 
written  as  a  contradiction  of  it,  after  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper 
had  been  read,  and  when  the  Memoires  of  the  Academic  were 
received  in  this  country.  These  Memoires  were  published 
in  1784,  and  could  not,  certainly,  have  arrived  when  Mr. 
Cavendish's  paper  was  written,  nor  when  it  was  read  to  the 
Royal  Society. 

But  it  is  farther  to  be  remarked,  that  this  passage  of  Mr. 
Cavendish's  paper  in  Sir  Charles  Blagden's  handwriting,  only 
mentions  the  experiments  having  been  communicated  to  Dr. 
Priestley;  they  were  made,  says  the  passage,  in  1781,  and 
communicated  to  Dr.  Priestley ;  it  is  not  said  when,  nor  is  it 
said  that  "  the  conclusions  drawn  from  them,"  and  which  Sir 
Charles  Blagden  says  he  communicated  to  M.  Lavoisier  in 
summer  1783,  were  ever  communicated  to  Dr.  Priestley;  and 
Dr.  Priestley,  in  his  paper  (referred  to  in  Mr.  Cavendish's), 
which  was  read  June  1783,  and  written  before  April  of  that 
year,  says  nothing  of  Mr.  Cavendish's  theory,  though  he 
mentions  his  experiment. 

Several  propositions  then  are  proved  by  this  statement. 

first.  That  Mr.  Cavendish,  in  his  paper,  read  1 5th  January, 
1784,  relates  te  capital  experiment  of  burning  oxygen    and 
hydrogen  gases  in  a  close  vessel,  and  finding  pure  water  to  be 
the  produce  of  the  combustion. 

Secondly,  That,  in  the  same  paper,  he  drew  from  this  expe- 
riment the  conclusion  that  the  two  gases  were  converted  or 
turned  into  water. 

Thirdly,  That  Sir  Charles  Blagden  inserted  in  the  same 
paper,  with  Mr.  Cavendish's  consent,  a  statement  that  the 
experiment  had  first  been  made  by  Mr.  Cavendish  in  summer 
1781,  and  mentioned  to  Dr.  Priestley,  though  it  is  not  said 
when,  nor  is  it  said  that  any  conclusion  was  mentioned  to  Dr. 
Priestley,  nor  is  it  said  at  what  time  Mr.  Cavendish  first  drew 
that  conclusion.  A  most  material  omission. 

Fourthly,  That  in  that  addition  made  to  the  paper  by  Sir 
Charles  Blagden,  he  conclusion  of  Mr.  Cavendish  is  stated  to 
be,  that  oxygen  gas  is  water  deprived  of  phlogiston;  this 
addition  having  been  made  after  M.  Lavoisier's  memoir 
arrived  in  England. 


394  WAIT. 

It  may  further  be  "observed,  that  in  another  addition  to  the 
paper,  which  is  also  in  Sir  C.  Blagden's  handwriting,  and  which 
was  certainly  made  after  M.  Lavoisier's  memoir  had  arrived, 
Mr.  Cavendish  for  the  first  time  distinctly  states,  as  upon  M. 
Lavoisier's  hypothesis,  that  water  consisted  of  hydrogen  united 
to  oxygen  gas.  There  is  no  substantial  difference,  perhaps, 
between  this  and  the  conclusion  stated  to  have  been  drawn  by 
Mr.  Cavendish  himself,  that  oxygen  gas  is  water  deprived  of 
phlogiston,  supposing  phlogiston  to  be  synonymous  with  hy- 
drogen ;  but  the  former  proposition  is  certainly  the  more  dis- 
tinct and  unequivocal  of  the  two :  and  it  is  to  be  observed  that 
Mr.  Cavendish,  in  the  original  part  of  the  paper,  i.  e.  the  part 
read  January  1784,  before  the  arrival  of  Lavoisier's,  considers 
it  more  just  to  hold  inflammable  air  to  be  phlogisticated  Avater 
than  pure  phlogiston  (p.  140). 

We  are  now  to  see  what  Mr.  Watt  did ;  and  the  dates  here 
become  very  material.  It  appears  that  he  wrote  a  letter  to 
Dr.  Priestley  on  26th  April,  1783,  in  which  he  reasons  on  the 
experiment  of  burning  the  two  gases  in  a  close  vessel,  and 
draws  the  conclusion,  "  that  water  is  composed  of  dephlogisti- 
cated  air  and  phlogiston,  deprived  of  part  of  their  latent 
heat."*  The  letter  was  received  by  Dr.  Priestley  and  de- 
livered to  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  with  a  request  that  it  might  be 
read  to  the  Royal  Society ;  but  Mr.  Watt  afterwards  desired 
this  to  be  delayed,  in  order  that  he  might  examine  some  new- 
experiments  of  Dr.  Priestley,  so  that  it  was  not  read  until  the 
22d  April,  1784.  In  the  interval  between  the  delivery  of 


*  It  may  with  certainty  be  concluded  from  Mr.  Watt's  private 
and  unpublished  letters,  of  which  the  copies  taken  by  his  copying- 
machine,  then  recently  invented,  are  preserved,  that  his  theory  of 
the  composition  of  water  was  already  formed  in  December  1782, 
and  probably  much  earlier.  Dr.  Priestley,  in  his  paper  of  21st  April, 
1783,  p.  416,  states,  that  Mr.  Watt,  prior  to  his  (the  Doctor's)  ex- 
periments, had  entertained  the  idea  of  the  possibility  of  the  conver- 
sion of  water  or  steam  into  permanent  air.  And  Mr.  Watt  himself, 
in  his  paper,  Phil.  Trans.,  p.  335,  asserts,  that  for  many  years  he  had 
entertained  the  opinion  that  air  was  a  modification  of  water,  and  he 
enters  at  some  length  into  the  facts  and  reasoning  upon  which  that 
deduction  was  founded.— ["NOTE  BY  MR.  JAJYJES  WATT.] 


WATT. 

this  letter  to  Dr.  Priestley,  and  the  reading  of  it,  Mr.  Watt 
had  addressed  another  letter  to  M.  de  Luc,  dated  26th  No- 
vember, 1783,*  with  many  further  observations  and  reasonings, 
but  almost  the  whole  of  the  original  letter  is  preserved  in  this, 
and  is  distinguished  by  inverted  commas.  One  of  the  passages 
thus  marked  is  that  which  has  the  important  conclusion  above 
mentioned ;  and  that  letter  is  stated,  in  the  subsequent  one, 
to  have  been  communicated  to  several  members  of  the  Royal 
Society  at  the  time  of  its  reaching  Dr.  Priestley,  viz.  April, 
1783. 

In  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper  as  at  first  read,  no  allusion  is  to 
be  found  to  Mr.  Watt's  theory ;  but  in  an  addition  made  in 
Sir  C.  Blagden's  own  hand,  after  Mr.  Watt's  paper  had  been 


*  The  letter  was  addressed  to  M.  J.  A.  de  Luc,  the  well-known 
Genevese  philosopher,  then  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  and 
Reader  to  Queen  Charlotte.     He  was  the  friend  of  Mr.  Watt,  who 
did  not  then  belong  to  the  Society.     M.  de  Luc,  following  the 
motions  of  the  Court,  was  not  always  in  London,  and  seldom  at- 
tended the  meetings  of  the  Royal  Society.     He  was  not  present 
when  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper  of  15th  January,  1784,  was  read  ;  but, 
hearing  of  it  from  Dr.  Blagden,  he  obtained  a  loan  of  it  from  Mr. 
Cavendish,  and  writes  to  Mr.  Watt  on  the  1st  March  following,  to 
apprise  him  of  it,  adding  that  he  has  perused  it,  and  promising  an 
analysis.     In  the  postscript  he  states,  "  In  short,  they  expound  and 
prove  your  system,  word  for  word,  and  say  nothing  of  you."     The 
promised  analysis  is  given  in  another  letter  of  the  4th  of  the  same 
month.     Mr.  Watt  replies  on  the  6th,  with  all  the  feelings  which  a 
conviction  he  had  been  ill-treated  was  calculated  to  inspire,  and 
makes  use  of  those  vivid  expressions  which  M.  Arago  has  quoted ; 
he  states  his  intention  of  being  in  London  in  the  ensuing  week,  and 
his  opinion,  that  the  reading  of  his  letter  to  the  Royal  Society  will 
be  the  proper  step  to  be  taken.     He  accordingly  went  there,  waited 
upon  the  President  of  the  Royal  Society,  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  was  re- 
ceived with  all  the  courtesy  and  just  feeling  which  distinguished 
that  most  honourable  man  ;  and,  it  was  settled  that  both  the  letter 
to  Dr.  Priestley  of  26th  April,  1783,  and  that  to  M.  de  Luc  of  26th 
November,   1783,  should  be  successively  read.     The  farmer  was 
done  on  the  22d,  and  the  latter  on  the  29th  April,  178,4.— [NOTE 
BY  MB.  JAMES  WATT.] 


396  WATT. 

read,  there  is  a  reference  to  that  theory  (Phil.  Trans.  1784, 
p.  140),  and  Mr.  Cavendish's  reasons  are  given  for  not  en- 
cumbering his  theory  with  that  part  of  Mr.  Watt's  which 
regards  the  evolution  of  latent  heat.  It  is  thus  left  somewhat 
doubtful,  whether  Mr.  Cavendish  had  ever  seen  the  letter  of 
April  1783,  or  whether  he  had  seen  only  the  paper  (of  26th 
November,  1783)  of  which  that  letter  formed  a  part,  and 
which  was  read  29th  April,  1784.  That  the  first  letter  was 
for  some  time  (two  months,  as  appears  from  the  papers  of 
Mr.  Watt)  in  the  hands  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks  and  other 
members  of  the  Society,  during  the  preceding  spring,  is 
certain,  from  the  statements  in  the  note  to  p.  330 ;  and  that 
Sir  Charles  Blagden,  the  Secretary,  should  not  have  seen  it, 
seems  impossible  ;  for  Sir  Joseph  Banks  must  have  delivered 
it  to  him  at  the  time  when  it  was  intended  to  be  read  at  one 
of  the  Society's  meetings  (Phil.  Trans.,  p.  330,  Note),  and,  as 
the  letter  itself  remains  among  the  Society's  Records,  in  the 
same  volume  with  the  paper  into  which  the  greater  part  of  it 
was  introduced,  it  must  have  been  in  the  custody  of  Sir  C. 
Blagden.  It  is  equally  difficult  to  suppose,  that  the  person 
who  wrote  the  remarkable  passage  already  referred  to,  re- 
specting Mr.  Cavendish's  conclusions  having  been  communi- 
cated to  M.  Lavoisier  in  the  summer  of  1783  (that  is,  in 
June),  should  not  have  mentioned  to  Mr.  Cavendish  that 
Mr.  Watt  had  drawn  the  same  conclusion  in  the  spring  of 
1783  (that  is,  in  April  at  the  latest).  For  the  conclusions  are 
identical,  with  the  single  difference,  that  Mr.  Cavendish  calls 
dephlogisticated  air,  water  deprived  of  its  phlogiston,  and 
Mr.  Watt  says  that  water  is  composed  of  dephlogisticated  air 
and  phlogiston. 

We  may  remark,  there  is  the  same  uncertainty  or  vague- 
ness introduced  into  Mr.  Watt's  theory,  which  we  before  ob- 
served in  Mr.  Cavendish's,  by  the  use  of  the  term  Phlogiston, 
without  exactly  defining  it.  Mr.  Cavendish  leaves  it  uncer- 
tain, whether  or  not  he  meant  by  phlogiston  simply  inflamma- 
ble air,  and  he  inclines  rather  to  call  inflammable  air,  water 
united  to  phlogiston.  Mr.  Watt  says  expressly,  even  in  his 
later  paper  (of  November  1783),  and  in  a  passage  not  to  be 
found  in  the  letter  of  April  1783,  that  he  thinks  that  inflam- 


WATT.  397 

mable  air  contains  a  small  quantity  of  water,  and  much 
elementary  heat.  It  must  be  admitted  that  such  expressions 
as  these  on  the  part  of  both  of  those  great  men,  betoken  a 
certain  hesitation  respecting  the  theory  of  the  composition  of 
water.  If  they  had  ever  formed  to  themselves  the  idea,  that 
water  is  a  compound  of  the  two  gases  deprived  of  their  latent 
heat, — that  is,  of  the  two  gases, — with  the  same  distinctive- 
ness  which  marks  M.  Lavoisier's  statement  of  the  theory, 
such  obscurity  and  uncertainty  would  have  been  avoided. 

Several  further  propositions  may  now  be  stated,  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  facts  regarding  Mr.  Watt. 

First,  That  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  person  having  re- 
duced the  theory  of  composition  to  writing,  in  a  shape  which 
now  remains,  so  early  as  Mr.  Watt. 

Secondly,  That  he  states  the  theory,  both  in  April  and  No- 
vember 1783,  in  language  somewhat  more  distinctly  referring 
to  composition  than  Mr.  Cavendish  does  in  1784,  and  that  his 
reference  to  the  evolution  of  latent  heat  renders  it  more  dis- 
tinct than  Mr.  Cavendish's. 

Thirdly,  That  there  is  no  proof,  nor  even  any  assertion,  of 
Mr.  Cavendish's  theory  (what  Sir  C.  Blagden  calls  his  con- 
clusion) having  been  communicated  to  Dr.  Priestley  before 
Mr.  Watt  stated  his  theory  in  1783,  still  less  of  Mr.  Watt 
having  heard  of  it,  while  his  whole  letter  shows  that  he  never 
had  been  aware  of  it,  either  from  Dr.  Priestley,  or  from  any 
other  quarter. 

Fourthly,  That  Mr.  Watt's  theory  was  well  known  among 
the  members  of  the  Society,  some  months  before  Mr.  Caven- 
dish's statement  appears  to  have  been  reduced  into  writing, 
and  eight  months  before  it  was  presented  to  the  Society.  We 
may,  indeed,  go  further,  and  affirm,  as  another  deduction  from 
the  facts  and  dates,  that  as  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  there  is 
proof  of  Mr.  Watt  having  first  drawn  the  conclusion,  at  least 
that  no  proof  exists  of  any  one  having  drawn  it  so  early  as 
he  is  proved  to  have  done. 

Lastly,  That  a  reluctance  to  give  up  the  doctrine  of  phlo- 
giston, a  kind  of  timidity  on  the  score  of  that  long-established 
and  deeply  rooted  opinion,  prevented  both  Mr.  Watt  and  Mr. 
Cavendish  from  doing  full  justice  to  their  own  theory ;  while 


398  WATT. 

M.  Lavoisier,  who  had  entirely  shaken  off  these  trammels, 
first  presented  the  new  doctrine  in  its  entire  perfection  and 
consistency. 

All  three  may  have  made  the  important  step  nearly  at  the 
same  time,  and  unknown  to  each  other ;  the  step,  namely,  of 
concluding  from  the  experiment,  that  the  two  gases  entered 
into  combination,  and  that  water  was  the  result ;  for  this,  with 
more  or  less  of  distinctness,  is  the  inference  which  all  three 
drew. 

But  there  is  the  statement  of  Sir  Charles  Blagden,  to  show 
that  M.  Lavoisier  had  heard  of  Mr.  Cavendish's  drawing  this 
inference  before  his  (M.  Lavoisier's)  capital  experiment  was 
made ;  and  it  appears  that  M.  Lavoisier,  after  Sir  C.  Blagden's 
statement  had  been  embodied  in  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper  and 
made  public,  never  gave  any  contradiction  to  it  in  any  of 
his  subsequent  memoirs  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  Me- 
moires  de  1' Academic,  though  his  own  account  of  that  ex- 
periment, and  of  what  then  passed,  is  inconsistent  with  Sir 
Charles  Blagden's  statement. 

But  there  is  not  any  assertion  at  all,  even  from  Sir  C.  Blag- 
den,  zealous  for  Mr.  Cavendish's  priority  as  he  was,  that  Mr. 
Watt  had  ever  heard  of  Mr.  Cavendish's  theory  before  he 
formed  his  own. 

Whether  or  not  Mr.  Cavendish  had  heard  of  Mr.  Watt's 
theory  previous  to  drawing  his  conclusions,  appears  more 
doubtful.  The  supposition  that  he  had  so  heard,  rests  on  the 
improbability  of  his  (Sir  Charles  Blagden's)  and  many  others 
knowing  what  Mr.  Watt  had  done,  and  not  communicat- 
ing it  to  Mr.  Cavendish,  and  on  the  omission  of  any  assertion 
in  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper,  even  in  the  part  written  by  Sir  C. 
Blagden  with  the  view  of  claiming  priority  as  against  M. 
Lavoisier,  that  Mr.  Cavendish  had  drawn  his  conclusion  before 
April  1783,  although  in  one  of  the  additions  to  that  paper 
reference  is  made  to  Mr.  Watt's  theory. 

As  great  obscurity  hangs  over  the  material  question  at  what 
time  Mr.  Cavendish  first  drew  the  conclusion  from  his  experi- 
ment, it  may  be  as  well  to  examine  what  that  great  man's 
habit  was  in  communicating  his  discoveries  to  the  Koyal 
Society. 


WATT.  399 

A  Committee  of  the  Royal  Society,  with.  Mr.  Gilpin  the 
clerk,  made  a  series  of  experiments  on  the  formation  of  nitrous 
acid,  under  Mr.  Cavendish's  direction,  and  to  satisfy  those 
who  had  doubted  his  theory  of  its  composition,  first  given 
accidentally  in  the  paper  of  January  1784,  and  afterwards 
more  fully  in  another  paper,  June  1785.  Those  experiments 
occupied  from  the  6th  December,  1787,  to  19th  March,  1788, 
and  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper  upon  them  was  read  17th  April, 
1788.  It  was,  therefore,  written  and  printed  within  a  month 
of  the  experiments  being  concluded. 

Mr.  Kirwan  answered  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper  (of  15th 
January,  1784)  on  water,  in  one  which  was  read  5th  February, 
1784,  and  Mr.  Cavendish  replied  in  a  paper  read  4th  March, 
1784. 

Mr.  Cavendish's  experiments  on  the  density  of  the  earth 
were  made  from  the  5th  August,  1797,  to  the  27th  May, 
1798.  The  paper  upon  that  subject  was  read  27th  June,  1798. 

The  account  of  the  eudiometer  was  communicated  at 
apparently  a  greater  interval ;  at  least  the  only  time  men- 
tioned in  the  account  of  the  experiments  is  the  latter  half  of 
1781,  and  the  paper  was  read  January  1783.  It  is,  however, 
probable,  from  the  nature  of  the  subject,  that  he  made  further 
trials  during  the  year  1782. 

That  Mr.  Watt  formed  his  theory  during  the  few  months 
or  weeks  immediately  preceding  April  1783,  seems  probable.* 
It  is  certain  that  he  considered  the  theory  as  his  own,  and 
makes  no  reference  to  any  previous  communication  from  any 
one  upon  the  subject,  nor  of  having  ever  heard  of  Mr. 
Cavendish  drawing  the  same  conclusion. 

The  improbability  must  also  be  admitted  to  be  extreme,  of 
Sir  Charles  Blagden  ever  having  heard  of  Mr.  Cavendish's 
theory  prior  to  the  date  of  Mr.  Watt's  letter,  and  not  mention- 
ing that  circumstance  in  the  insertion  which  he  made  in  Mr. 
Cavendish's  paper. 

*  That  the  idea  existed  in  his  mind  previously,  is  proved  by  his 
declarations  to  Dr.  Priestley,  cited  by  the  latter ;  by  his  own  asser- 
tions, p.  335  of  his  paper ;  and  by  the  existing  copies  of  his  letters 
in  December  1782.-—  [NOTE  BY  MB.  JAMES  WATT.] 


400  WATT. 

It  deserves  to  be  farther  mentioned,  that  Mr.  "Watt  left  the 
correction  of  the  press,  and  every  thing  relating  to  the 
publishing  of  his  paper,  to  Sir  Charles  Blagden.  A  letter 
remains  from  him  to  that  effect,  written  to  Sir  Charles  Blag- 
den,  and  Mr.  Watt  never  saw  the  paper  until  it  was  printed. 


Since  M.  Arago's  learned  Eloge  was  published,  with  this 
paper  as  an  Appendix,  the  Eev.  W.  Vernon  Harcourt  has 
entered  into  controversy  with  us  both,  or,  I  should  rather  say, 
with  M.  Arago,  for  he  has  kindly  spared  me ;  and  while  I  ex- 
press my  obligations  for  this  courtesy  of  my  reverend,  learned, 
and  valued  friend,  I  must  express  my  unqualified  admiration  of 
his  boldness  in  singling  out  for  his  antagonist  my  illustrious 
colleague,  rather  than  the  far  weaker  combatant  against  whom 
he  might  so  much  more  safely  have  done  battle.  Whatever 
might  have  been  his  fate  had  he  taken  the  more  prudent 
course,  I  must  fairly  say  (even  without  waiting  until  my  fellow 
champion  seal  our  adversary's  doom),  that  I  have  seldom  seen 
any  two  parties  more  unequally  matched,  or  any  disputation  in 
which  the  victory  was  so  complete.  The  attack  on  M.  Arago 
might  have  passed  well  enough  at  a  popular  meeting  at  Bir- 
mingham, before  which  it  was  spoken;  but  as  a  scientific  inquirer, 
it  would  be  a  flattery  running  the  risk  of  seeming  ironical  to 
weigh  the  reverend  author  against  the  most  eminent  philo- 
sopher of  the  day,  although  upon  a  question  of  evidence 
(which  this  really  is,  as  well  as  a  scientific  discussion)  I  might 
be  content  to  succumb  before  him.  As  a  strange  notion,  how- 
ever, seems  to  pervade  this  paper,  that  everything  depends 
on  the  character  of  Mr.  Cavendish,  it  may  be  as  well  to  repeat 
the  disclaimer  already  very  distinctly  made  of  all  intention  to 
cast  the  slightest  doubt  upon  that  great  man's  perfect  good 
faith  in  the  whole  affair ;  I  never  having  supposed  that 
he  borrowed  from  Mr.  Watt,  though  M.  Arago,  Professor 
Robison,*  and  Sir  H.  Davy,  as  well  as  myself,  have  always 

*  Encyc.  Brit.,  vol.  xviii.,  p.  808.  This  able  and  learned  article 
enters  at  length  into  the  proofs  of  Mr.  Watt's  claims,  and  it  was 
published  in  1797,  thirteen  years  before  Mr.  Cavendish's  death. 


WAIT.  401 

been  convinced  that  Mr.  Watt  had,  unknown  to  him,  antici- 
pated his  great  discovery.  It  is  also  said  by  Mr.  Harcourt 
that  the  late  Dr.  Henry  having  examined  Mr.  Watt's  manu- 
scripts decided  against  his  priority.  I  have  Dr.  H.'s  letter 
before  me  of  June,  1820,  stating  most  clearly,  most  fully,  and 
most  directly,  the  reverse,  and  deciding  in  Mr.  Watt's  favour. 
I  must  add,  having  read  the  full  publication  with  fac-similes, 
Mr.  Harcourt  has  now  clearly  proved  one  thing,  and  it  is 
really  of  some  importance.  He  has  made  it  appear  that  in  all 
Mr.  Cavendish's  diaries  and  notes  of  his  experiments,  not  an 
intimation  occurs  of  the  composition  of  water  having  been  in- 
ferred by  him  from  those  experiments  earlier  than  Mr.  Watt's 
paper  of  spring,  1783. 


2  D 


(  402  ) 


PRIESTLEY. 


MENTION  has  already  been  more  than  once  made  of 
Dr.  Priestley  ;  and  certainly  history  would  imperfectly 
perform  its  office  of  recording  the  progress  of  natural 
knowledge  should  it  pass  over  his  important  discoveries 
without  the  large  share  of  attention  and  of  praise  which 
they  are  well  entitled  to  claim.  In  turning,  however, 
to  recount  the  events  of  his  life,  we  make  a  somewhat 
painful  transition  from  contemplating  in  its  perfection 
the  philosophic  character,  to  follow  the  course  of  one 
who  united  in  his  own  person  the  part  of  the  experi- 
mental inquirer  after  physical  truth  with  that  of  the 
angry  polemic  and  the  fiery  politician,  leading  some- 
times the  life  of  a  sage,  though  never  perhaps  free  from 
rooted  and  perverted  prejudice — sometimes  that  of  a 
zealot  against  received  creeds  and  established  in- 
stitutions, and  in  consequence  of  his  intemperance, 
alternately  the  exciter  and  the  victim  of  persecution. 
Nevertheless,  the  services  which  he  rendered  in  the 
former  and  better  capacity,  ought  to  be  held  in  grate- 
ful remembrance  by  the  cultivators  of  physical  science. 
Nor  are  we  to  suppose  that  even  in  his  polemical  ca- 
pacity he  was  not  in  pursuit  of  truth.  He  may  have 
had  a  tendency  to  oppose  established  opinions ;  a 
disposition  which  led  him,  as  he  says  himself,  at  the 


by  W.  Soil. 


efo 


Q^?;/5^^/G>^;;^^^^^^^^^//  f    '^•w/sSr. 


PRIESTLEY.  403 

age  of  twenty  "to  embrace  what  is  generally  called  the 
heterodox  side  of  every  question,"*  just  as  he  had  a 
disposition  pertinaciously  to  keep  by  the  received  and 
erroneous  chemical  theory  ;  but  if  he  thought  for  him- 
self, and  followed  the  bent  of  his  convictions,  we  have 
no  right  to  doubt  his  conscientious  motives,  the  more 
especially  as  his  heterodox  dogmas,  always  manfully 
avowed,  never  brought  him  anything  but  vexation  and 
positive  injury  in  his  temporal  concerns.  The  perti- 
nacity with  which  he  defended  to  the  end  of  his  days 
the  chemical  doctrine  of  Phlogiston,  and  the  equal 
zeal  with  which  he  attacked  the  theological  tenets  of 
original  sin  and  the  atonement,  alike  proceeded  from 
sincere  conviction,  and  no  one  has  a  right  to  blame 
him  for  either  of  these  opinions,  even  if  it  be  quite 
clear  that  he  was  wrong  in  both. 

Joseph  Priestley  was  the  son  of  a  cloth- dresser  at 
Birstal-Fieldhead,  near  Leeds,  and  was  born  there 
loth  of  March  (old  style),  1733.  His  family  appear  to 
have  been  in  humble  circumstances ;  and  he  was  taken 
off  their  hands  after  the  death  of  his  mother  by  his 
paternal  aunt,  with  whom  he  went  to  live  when  nine 
years  old,  ai)d  who  sent  him  to  a  free  school  at  Batley, 
in  the  neighbourhood.  There  he  learnt  something  of 
Greek  and  J^atin,  and  a  dissenting  minister  taught 
him  a  little  Hebrew  in  the  vacation  of  the  grammar- 
school.  To  this  he  adcled  some  knowledge  of  other  East- 
ern languages  connected  with  Biblical  literature ;  he 
made  a  considerable  progress  in  Syriac  and  Chaldean, 
and  began  to  learn  Arabic  ;  he  also  had  a  little  instruc- 
tion in  the  mathematics  from  a  teacher  who  had  been 

*  Works.— Memoirs,  vol.  i.  part  i.  p.  25. 

2D  2 


404  PRIESTLEY. 

educated  under  Maclaurin,  at  Edinburgh.  But  in  this 
science  he  made  very  little  proficiency.*  Indeed  his  whole 
education  was  exceedingly  imperfect,  and  excepting  in 
Hebrew  and  in  Greek  he  never  afterwards  improved 
it  by  any  systematic  course  of  study  ;  but  in  both  these 
languages  he  became  well  versed,  and  especially  used 
always  to  read  the  Scriptures  in  the  original  tongues. 
Even  in  chemistry,  which  of  the  sciences  he  best  knew 
and  in  which  he  made  so  important  a  figure,  he  was 
only  half  taught ;  and  he  himself  acknowledged,  after 
having  failed  to  obtain  a  chemical  lectureship,  that  he 
"  never  could  have  acquitted  himself  properly  in  it, 
never  having  given  much  attention  to  the  common 
routine  of  the  science,  and  knowing  but  little  of  the 
common  processes." — ' '  When  I  began  my  experiments," 
he  says,  "  I  knew  very  little  of  chemistry,  and  had  in 
a  manner  no  idea  of  the  subject  before  I  attended  a 
course  of  lectures  at  an  academy  where  I  taught."  So 
that  he  was  not  well-informed,  and  had  never  studied 
either  the  theoretical  or  the  practical  parts  of  it,  but 
just  got  possession  of  such  portions  of  the  subject  as 
occasionally  came  within  the  scope  of  the  experiments 
he  was  making,  and  the  doctrines  he  was  discussing  at 
the  time.  His  whole  writings,  which  are  numberless, 
and  without  method,  or  system,  or  closeness,  or  indeed 
clearness,  bear  ample  testimony  to  what  we  might  ex- 
pect would  be  the  result  of  so  very  imperfect  a  found  - 


*  This  is  manifest  from  several  parts  of  his  writings,  although 
he  in  one  passage  of  his  correspondence  speaks  of  having  once  been 
very  fond  of  the  study ;  for  in  th.e  same  paper  he  speaks  of  Baron 
Maseres'  work  ('  Scriptores  Logarithm] ci')  as  if  he  had  been  the 
author,  instead  of  the  collector. — Mem.  i.  part  ii.  p.  490. 


PRIESTLEY.  405 

ation  as  his  scanty  and  rambling  education  had  laid. 
That  education,  however,  far  from  redounding  to  his 
discredit,  very  greatly  enhances  the  merit  of  the  man. 
He  presents  one  of  the  memorable  examples  of  know- 
ledge pursued,  science  cultivated,  and  even  its  bounds 
extended,  by  those  whose  circumstances  made  their  ex- 
ertions a  continued  struggle  against  difficulties  which 
only  virtue  and  genius  like  theirs  could  have  overcome. 
He  went  to  study  for  some  years  at  the  dissenting 
academy  founded  by  Mr.  Coward,  at  Daventry,  and 
since  transferred  to  London,  where  it  is  in  a  kind 
of  union,  mutually  beneficial,  with  the  University  Col- 
lege. Mr.  Ash  worth  had  succeeded  the  learned  and 
pious  Dr.  Doddridge  as  its  principal  teacher,  and 
under  him  Priestley  remained  till  1755.  During  the 
three  years  that  he  studied  here,  he  and  his  intimate 
friends  used  to  make  a  point  of  reading,  daily,  ten  pages 
of  Greek,  and  every  week  one  Greek  play,  a  practice 
which  they  continued  after  they  left  the  school,  corre- 
sponding with  each  other  on  the  subject  of  their  studies. 
On  quitting  Daventry,  having  taken  orders,  he  was 
appointed  minister  of  a  congregation  at  Needham  Mar- 
ket, in  Suffolk.  He  had  been  brought  up  by  his  father 
and  aunt  in  the  strictest  Calvinistic  principles,  most 
of  which  he  very  soon  from  conviction  abandoned ; 
and  so  early  did  his  spirit  of  free  inquiry  show  itself, 
that  having  before  he  left  his  aunt's  house  desired  to 
be  admitted  as  a  communicant  at  the  chapel  which  she 
attended,  he  was  rejected  by  the  minister  on  his  prepa- 
ratory examination,  in  consequence  of  doubts  expressed 
respecting  original  sin,  and  eternal  damnation  as  its 
punishment.  He  describes  the  deep  distress  into  which 


406  PRIESTLEY. 

he  was  thrown  by  feeling  that  he  was  unable  to  ex- 
perience due  contrition  and  repentance  for  Adam's 
fault ;  and  the  rigid  divine  who  tested  the  state  of  his 
mind  on  this  point,  withheld  the  sacred  ordinances  in 
consequence.  At  Needham  his  salary  did  not  exceed 
thirty  pounds,  indeed  it  seldom  amounted  to  so  much, 
and  he  could  only  subsist  by  the  aid  which  certain  dis- 
senting charities  afforded  to  augment  this  poor  stipend. 
His  predecessor,  Dr.  Doddridge,  had  never  received 
above  thirty-five  pounds  a-year,  and  his  board  then 
(1723)  only  cost  him  ten  pounds.  Priestley's  opinions 
proved  distasteful  to  the  congregation,  who  probably 
regarded  the  eternity  of  hell-torments  as  a  peculiar  pri- 
vilege rudely  invaded  by  him ;  and  he  removed  in  1758 
to  Nantwich,  in  Cheshire,  where  he  obtained  some  thirty 
pupils,  beside  a  few  young  ladies  and  a  private  tutorship 
in  an  attorney's  family.  This  increased  his  income, 
and  enabled  him,  by  means  of  the  strictest  frugality,  to 
purchase  a  scanty  apparatus ;  for  he  had  now  added  a 
little  natural  philosophy  to  his  favourite  theological 
studies,  the  fruit  of  which  had  been  already  two  works, 
one  of  them  against  the  atonement.  I  say  a  little  natural 
philosophy  ;  for  he  confesses  that  when  nine  years  later 
he  began  to  write  his  '  History  of  Electricity,'  he  was 
but  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  subject.  It  is  a 
careless  and  superficial  work,  hastily  written,  as  is 
his  '  History  of  Vision  ;'  and  the  original  experiments 
afforded  no  new  information  of  any  value.  In  1761 
he  removed  to  Warrington  Academy,  in  which  he 
succeeded  Dr.  Aikin  as  tutor  in  the  belles  lettres. 
On  settling  at  Warrington  he  married  the  daughter  of 
Mr.  Wilkinson,  a  respectable  iron  master  in  Wales. 


PRIESTLEY.  407 

She  was  an  amiable  woman,  and  endowed  with  great 
strength  of  mind,  which  was  destined  afterwards  to  be 
severely  tried.  By  her  he  had  several  children,  one  of 
whom  survived  them  both. 

He  appears  to  have  chiefly  devoted  himself  to  theo- 
logical studies,  and  hence  the  great  disproportion  which 
his  Hebrew  and  Greek  learning  bears  to  his  other  ac- 
quirements. Metaphysical  speculations,  next  to  these, 
engaged  his  attention ;  and  the  influence  produced  in 
his  mind,  and  even  his  conduct,  by  Dr.  Hartley's  cele- 
brated work  ('Observations  on  Man'),  has  been  re- 
corded by  himself.  "  I  hardly  know,"  he  says, 
"  whether  it  more  enlightens  the  understanding  or 
improves  the  heart."  He  says  he  also  had  studied  com- 
position, and  mainly  by  the  help  of  writing  poetry,  of  no 
merit,  but  according  to  him  the  best  means  of  learning 
to  write  good  prose.  That  his  taste,  however,  was  some- 
what deficient  in  this  respect  we  may  fairly  affirm, 
when  we  find  him  pronouncing,  many  years  after,  a 
decided  opinion  that  Belsham's  '  History'  is  written 
in  a  better  style  than  Robertson's  or  Hume's.*  The 
universality  of  his  attempts  may  be  judged  from  his 
delivering  at  Warrington  a  course  of  lectures  on  ana- 
tomy. He  sought  relaxation  from  music,  and  learnt 
to  play  on  the  flute.  He  strongly  recommends  this  to 
students,  especially,  he  says  with  some  naivete,  such 
as  have  no  fine  ear,  "  for  they  will  be  the  less  annoyed 
by  bad  music." 

As  early  as  during  his  education  at  Daventry  he 
had  written  a  work  which,  however,  was  not  published 
till  twenty  years  later ;  it  was  the  '  Institutes  of 

*  Mem.  and  Cor.  1796,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  358. 


408  PRIESTLEY. 

Natural  and  Revealed  Religion/  But  having  once 
begun  to  publish  in  1761,  his  appeals  to  the  press  were 
incessant,  and  on  almost  every  subject.  A  '  Theory 
of  Language,'  books  on  '  Oratory  and  Criticism/  on 
'  History  and  General  Policy/  on  the  '  Constitution  and 
Laws  of  England,'  on  '  Education,'  a  '  Chart  of  Bio- 
graphy,' a  '  Chart  of  History ;'  these  and  others  were 
all  written  while  he  resided  at  Warrington,  from  1761 
to  1769.  How  well  he  was  qualified  to  write  on 
oratory  and  on  English  law,  we  may  easily  conjecture, 
from  the  circumstance  that  he  could  never  have  heard 
any  speaking  save  in  the  pulpits  of  meeting-houses,  and 
in  all  probability  had  never  seen  a  cause  tried  ;  but  even 
if  he  had  been  present  at  debates  and  trials,  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  anything  more  adventurous  than  the  tutor 
of  an  academy,  afflicted  with  an  incurable  stutter,  and 
who  devoted  his  time  to  teaching  and  to  theology,  pro- 
mulgating rules  of  eloquence  and  of  jurisprudence  to 
the  senators  and  lawyers  of  his  country.  That  we  may 
come  without  interruption  to  his  really  useful  studies, 
it  may  be  well  here  to  take  notice  of  his  other  contro- 
versial writings.  In  consequence  of  a  disagreement  with 
the  Warrington  trustees  in  1767  he  removed  to  Leeds, 
where  he  became  minister  of  the  Mill-Hill  chapel, 
and  wrote  many  controversial  books  and  pamphlets 
In  after  times  he  wrote  'Letters  to  a  Philosophical 
Institution;'  '  An  Answer  to  Gibbon;'  'Disquisitions 
on  Matter  and  Spirit ;'  '  Corruptions  of  Christianity  ;' 
'  Early  Opinions  on  Christ ;'  '  Familiar  Letters  to  the 
Inhabitants  of  Birmingham ;'  '  Two  Different  Histo- 
ries of  the  Christian  Church  ;'  '  On  Education  ;'  '  Com- 
parison of  Heathen  and  Christian  Philosophy  ;'  '  Doc- 


PRIESTLEY.  409 

trine  of  Necessity ;'  *  On  the  Roman  Catholic  Claims ;' 
*  On  the  French  Revolution ;'  '  On  the  American 
War ;'  beside  twenty  volumes  of  tracts  in  favour  of 
the  Dissenters  and  their  rights.  His  general  works 
fill  twenty-five  volumes,*  of  which  only  five  or  six  are 
on  scientific  subjects :  his  publications  being  in  all  one 
hundred  and  forty-one  (in  one  year  ten),  of  which 
only  seventeen  are  on  scientific  matters.  He  is  one  of 
the  most  voluminous  writers  of  any  age  or  country, 
and  probably  he  is  of  all  voluminous  writers  the  one 
who  has  the  fewest  readers.  This  arises  from  the  circum- 
stance that,  though  his  political  opinions  are  shared 
by  many,  the  bulk  of  his  works  are  theological  and 
metaphysical,  but  especially  theological ;  and  his  re- 
ligious opinions  were  confined  to  an  extremely  small 
class  of  persons.  Indeed  it  may  be  questioned  if  he  was 
not  in  several  respects  the  only  person  who  held  his 
peculiar  faith  upon  all  points. 

It  happened,  fortunately,  that  when  he  went  to 
reside  at  Leeds  in  care  of  the  Mill-Hill  Chapel, 
his  house  immediately  adjoined  a  common  brewery, 
and  this  led  him  to  make  experiments  upon  the  fixed 
air  copiously  produced  during  the  process  of  ferment- 
ation. It  must  be  observed,  that  long  before  this  time 
the  great  step  had  been  made  by  Black,  of  ascertaining 
that  there  are  other  permanently  elastic  fluids  than  our 
atmosphere,  and  which  have  properties  wholly  different 
from  it.  Cavendish,  too,  had  very  recently  subjected 
both  fixed  and  inflammable  airs  (carbonic  acid  and 


*  Edited  by  the  affectionate  care  of  an  able  and  worthy  man,  Mr. 
Towell  Rutt. 


410  PllIESTLEY. 

hydrogen  gases)  to  accurate  experiments,  showing 
their  relative  specific  gravities,  and  proving  that  they 
were  of  the  same  nature  from  what  bodies  soever 
they  were  obtained.  The  probability  was,  that  other 
gaseous  fluids  existed  in  nature  as  well  as  those  two 
and  common  air.  The  experimenter  had,  therefore, 
thenceforth,  his  attention  directed  to  meeting  with 
these:  and  an  examination  of  all  the  products  of 
mixture  and  of  heat,  by  precipitation  or  evaporation, 
was  now  the  natural  course  of  experimental  inquiry. 
At  first,  Priestley  only  tried  in  what  way  fixed  air 
could  be  most  easily  combined  with  water ;  he  pub- 
lished in  1772  a  pamphlet  upon  the  means  of 
effecting  this  union,  and  the  condensing  process  which 
he  employed  is  used  to  this  day.  He  soon  after  gave 
to  the  Royal  Society  his  observations  on  different  kinds 
of  air,  which  ascertained  the  important  fact,  that  at- 
mospheric air,  after  having  been  corrupted  by  the  re- 
spiration of  animals  or  by  the  burning  of  inflammable 
bodies,  is  restored  to  salubrity  by  the  vegetation  of 
plants ;  and  that  if  the  air  is  exposed  to  a  mixture  of 
sulphur  and  iron  filings,  as  in  one  of  Hales's  experi- 
ments, its  bulk  is  diminished  between  a  fourth  and 
u  fifth,  and  the  residue  is  both  lighter  than  common 
air  and  unfit  to  support  life.  This  residue  he  called 
1  Phlogistic  air ;'  afterwards  it  was  called  '  Azotic  '  or 
'  Nitrogen  gas ;'  and  Dr.  Rutherford,  of  Edinburgh, 
as  well  as  Priestley,  though  unknown  to  each  other, 
discovered  it  about  the  same  time.  For  these  experi- 
ments the  Copley  Medal  was,  in  1773,  justly  awarded 
to  him  by  the  Royal  Society. 

The  following  year  was  destined  to  be  the  period 


PRIESTLEY.  411 

of  a  discovery  most  important  for  science,  and  truly 
glorious  for  its  author.  Having  exposed  red-lead,  or 
minium,  in  a  close  vessel  to  the  sun's  rays  concentrated 
by  a  burning-glass,  he  found  that  an  aeriform  body, 
permanently  elastic,  was  evolved,  and  that  this  air  had 
the  peculiar  property  of  increasing  exceedingly  the 
intensity  of  flame.  This  gas  he  called  '  dephlogisticated 
air/  upon  the  principle  that  the  matter  of  heat  and 
light,  the  phlogiston  of  Stahl,  being  abstracted  from  it 
by  the  return  of  the  calx  to  its  metallic  state,  which 
phlogiston  was  supposed  by  that  theory  to  effect, 
the  air  had  great  avidity  for  phlogiston,  and  seized  it 
from  the  inflammable  bodies  it  came  in  contact  with. 
This  most  important  discovery,  which  he  thus  con- 
nected with  an  erroneous  theory,  was  made  on  the  1st 
of  August,  1774.  He  afterwards  discovered  that  its 
absorption  by  the  lungs  in  the  process  of  respiration 
gives  its  red  colour  to  arterial  blood,  as  it  was  proved 
to  act  through  the  substance  of  thin  bladder ;  and  he 
found  that  when  plants  grow  in  close  vessels,  and 
restore  the  purity  of  the  air  in  which  a  candle  has 
burnt  or  an  animal  breathed,  they  do  so  by  evolving 
this  pure  air.  The  new  nomenclature  gave  it  the 
name  of  c  oxygen  gas/  from  the  belief  then  generally 
entertained  that  it  was  the  acidifying  principle.  Later 
experiments  have  proved  that  there  is  at  least  one  great 
exception  to  this  in  chlorine,  formerly  called  'oxy- 
genated muriatic  acid  ;'  but  now  found  to  be  wholly 
without  oxygen,  and  yet  to  have  all  the  properties 
of  an  acid.  But,  indeed,  water  itself,  and  the  atmo- 
spheric air,  having  neither  of  them  the  nature  of  acids, 
are  both  contrary  to  the  theory  ;  and  the  fixed  alkalis 


412  PRIESTLEY. 

are  found  to  owe  their  alkaline  state  and  lose  their 
metallic,  like  other  oxides,  by  uniting  with  oxygen. 

Priestley  is  the  undoubted  discoverer  of  oxygen.  He 
was  the  first  who  communicated  a  knowledge  of  it  to 
Lavoisier,  at  Paris,  soon  after  he  had  made  the  dis- 
covery ;  nor  can  anything  be  more  disingenuous  than 
that  celebrated  person's  afterwards  affirming  that  he, 
Priestley,  and  Scheele,  had  all  discovered  it  "  about 
the  same  time."  He  never  discovered  it  until  Priestley 
discovered  it  to  him.  Bergmann's  suppressing  in  his 
book  all  knowledge  of  the  experiments  of  Black  and 
Cavendish,  the  former  published  twenty  and  the  latter 
eight  years  before,  was  bad  enough,  but  not  equal  to 
Lavoisier's  positive  assertion  contrary  to  what  must 
have  been  his  positive  knowledge. 

This  great  discovery  was  far  from  being  the  last 
of  its  justly  celebrated  author.  He  discovered  the 
gases  of  muriatic,  of  sulphuric,  and  of  fluoric  acids, 
ammonial  gas,  and  nitrous  oxide  gas.  He  also  dis- 
covered the  combination  which  nitrous  gas  forms 
suddenly  with  oxygen;  diminishing  the  volume  of 
both  in  proportion  to  that  combination ;  and  he  thus 
invented  the  method  of  eudiometry,  or  the  ascertain- 
ment of  the  relative  purity  of  different  kinds  of  atmo- 
spheric air. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  in  considering  the  great 
merits  of  Priestley  as  an  experimentalist,  that  he  had 
almost  to  create  the  apparatus  by  which  his  processes 
were  to  be  performed.  He,  for  the  most  part,  had  to 
construct  his  instruments  with  his  own  hands,  or  if 
he  employed  others,  he  had  to  make  unskilful  work- 
men form  them  under  his  own  immediate  direction. 


PRIESTLEY.  413 

His  apparatus,  however,  and  his  contrivances  for  col- 
lecting, keeping,  transferring  gaseous  bodies,  and  for 
exposing  substances  to  their  action,  were  simple  and 
effectual,  and  they  continue  to  be  still  used  by  chemical 
philosophers  without  any  material  improvement.  It 
was  fortunate  in  this  respect  that  he  began  his  pneu- 
matic inquiries  with  seeking  for  the  means  of  im- 
pregnating water  with  carbonic  acid ;  this  inquiry 
naturally  turned  his  attention  to  the  contrivance  of 
apparatus  and  generally  of  manipulations,  serviceable  in 
the  examination  of  bodies  whose  invisible  form  and 
elastic  state  renders  inapplicable  to  them  the  machi- 
nery of  the  old  laboratory,  calculated  only  for  solids 
and  liquids. 

The  pertinacity  with  which  Priestley  clung  to  the 
phlogistic  theory  is  marvellous.  It  might  have  been 
expected,  that  the  fact  of  a  combustion  leaving  the 
residue,  whether  of  two  gases,  or  of  a  gas  and  an  in- 
flammable body,  exactly  equal  in  weight  to  the  sum  of 
the  weights  of  the  bodies  burnt  and  which  had  disap- 
peared in  the  process,  would  have  been  accepted  as  a 
proof  that  these  two  bodies  had  entered  into  an  union, 
giving  out  the  latent  heat  which  had  previously  held 
the  gaseous  body  or  bodies  in  a  state  of  aeriform 
fluidity.  It  might,  in  like  manner,  have  been  ex- 
pected, that  when  a  metal,  by  absorbing  oxygen  gas, 
becomes  calcined,  and  gains  in  weight  precisely  the 
weight  of  the  gas  which  has  disappeared,  the  calcination 
should  be  ascribed  to  the  gas,  and  that  the  reproduction 
of  the  gas  by  heat,  or  by  its  abstraction  by  electric 
affinity  for  some  other  body,  should  be  allowed  to 
restore  the  metallic  state  by  simply  severing  that 


414  PRIESTLEY. 

union  of  the  gas  and  the  metal  which  had  changed 
it.  But  nothing  could  overcome  Priestley's  repugnance 
to  give  up  phlogiston  :  he  adhered  to  it  while  he  lived ; 
he  never  would  believe  that  water  was  formed  of  the 
two  gaseous  bodies  whose  combustion  and  disappear- 
ance leaves  a  weight  of  liquid  equal  to  their  joint 
weights ;  he  always  imagined  that  water  was  held  in 
suspense  by  these  gases  and  precipitated  on  their 
disappearing.  He  never  would  believe  that  metals 
owe  their  malleability  and  lustre  to  any  cause  other 
than  phlogiston,  or  lose  their  properties  except  by 
combining  with  oxygen,  which  takes  the  phlogiston 
from  them.  He  never  would  believe  that  combustion 
is  anything  but  the  phlogiston  leaving  the  inflammable 
body  and  joining  the  oxygen ;  or  that  when  an  acid 
is  formed  by  the  burning,  that  acid  contains  the 
oxygen  and  the  combustible  base.  That  his  obstinate 
unbelief  was  perfectly  disinterested  no  one  can  doubt. 
The  discoverer  of  oxygen,  and  of  the  true  cause  of  re- 
spiration, had,  of  all  men,  the  strongest  interest  in 
assenting  to  a  theory  which  was  wholly  founded  upon 
his  own  discovery,  and  which  made  him  the  imme- 
diate, as  Black  was  the  more  remote,  author  of  modern 
chemical  science — made  him  the  philosopher  who  had 
raised  the  superstructure  upon  the  foundation  which 
his  predecessor  had  laid. 

The  merit  of  Dr.  Priestley,  as  a  cultivator  of  science, 
was  the  activity  with  which  he  made  experiments — the 
watchful  attention  with  which  he  observed  every 
phenomenon,  following  the  minutest  circumstances  of 
each  process — the  versatility  with  which  he  prosecuted 
each  new  idea  that  arose  from  his  trials — his  diligence 


PRIESTLEY.  415 

in  recording  all  the  particulars,  as  if  well  aware  how 
much  depends  in  every  branch  of  inductive  philosophy 
upon  allowing  no  fact  to  escape,  when  we  are  con- 
fessedly in  search  of  light,  and  can  never  tell  how  any 
given  fact  may  bear  on  the  unknown  conclusion  to 
which  our  analytical  process  is  leading  us.  As  a 
reasoner  his  powers  were  far  less  considerable.  He 
possessed  not  the  sound  judgment,  the  large  circum- 
spection, which  enables  men  to  weigh  the  relative  value 
of  either  reasons  or  facts.  He  was  cautious  enough  and 
drew  little  from  his  imagination  in  feigning  hypotheses, 
if  it  be  not  the  reasons  which  he  invented  from  time 
to  time  for  the  purpose  of  sustaining  the  desperate 
fortunes  of  the  phlogistic  theory,  and  making  the 
facts  bend  to  it  as  they  successively  arose  with  a  force 
capable  of  shivering  it  in  pieces.  But  he  was  also 
deficient  in  the  happy  sagacity  which  pierces  through 
apparent  dissimilarity,  and  ranges  things  apparently 
unlike  under  the  same  class — he  had  not  that  chas- 
tened imagination  which  can  see  beyond  the  fact  present 
to  the  senses — in  a  word,  he  was  much  greater  as  a 
collector  of  new  facts  than  a  reasoner  upon  them — and 
his  inductive  capacity  was  inferior  to  his  power  of  ex* 
perimenting  and  of  contriving  the  means  of  observation. 
Perhaps  his  want  of  general  scientific  acquirements, 
and  his  confined  knowledge  of  chemistry,  itself  contri- 
buted to  the  activity  and  the  boldness  with  which  he 
performed  novel  experiments,  while  the  same  defect 
impaired  his  capacity  as  an  inductive  philosopher.  It 
is  extremely  probable  that  the  strict  attention  to  prin- 
ciple, the  methodical  systematic  spirit  which  prevailed 
over  the  inquiries  of  Black  and  of  Cavendish — the 


416  PRIESTLEY. 

scientific  views  which  directed  the  contrivance  of  all 
their  processes,  never  leading  them  to  make  any  trial 
without  some  definite  object  in  view.,  prevented  them 
from  performing  many  experiments, — from  stooping,  as 
it  were,  to  try  things  which  Priestley  did  not  disdain 
to  try  from  his  more  empirical  turn  of  mind — what 
Mr.  Watt,  in  a  letter,  calls  "his  random  haphazarding." 

In  1779,  when  Captain  Cook  was  preparing  to  sail 
upon  his  second  voyage,  Mr.  Banks,  who  took  a  great 
interest  in  it  from  having  been  engaged  in  the  first, 
invited  Dr.  Priestley  to  accompany  the  Captain  as  as- 
tronomer to  the  expedition.  Advantageous  terms  were 
proposed,  including  a  provision  for  his  family.  He 
entertained  the  proposal,  and  then  agreed  to  it ;  but 
objections  were  taken  by  the  clerical  members  of  the 
Board  of  Longitude,  not  to  his  ignorance  of  astronomy 
and  of  natural  history,  but  to  his  Socinian  principles  in 
religion,  which  one  might  have  supposed  could  exer- 
cise but  a  limited  influence  upon  his  observations  of 
the  stars  and  of  plants.  I  know  not  if  the  same 
scientific  authorities  objected,  on  like  grounds,  in  the 
council  of  the  Royal  Society,  to  receiving  papers  upon 
his  chemical  discoveries.  It  is  certain  that  a  like  in- 
fluence prevented  Professor  Playfair  from  afterwards 
proceeding  to  India,  where  he  had  designed  to  prosecute 
his  inquiries  into  the  science  of  the  Hindoos.  Such 
passages  stamp  the  history  of  a  great  nation  with 
indelible  infamy  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  world. 

In  1773,  when  his  fame  had  been  established  by  his 
first  discoveries,  and  the  Royal  Society  had  crowned  his 
paper  with  their  medal,  Priestley  accepted  an  invita- 
tion from  Lord  Shelburne,  afterwards  first  Marquis  of 


PRIESTLEY.  417 

Lansdowne,  to  fill  the  place  of  librarian  and  philoso- 
phic companion,  with  a  salary  of  250/.,  reducible  to 
150/.  for  life  should  he  quit  the  employment.  An 
additional  allowance  of  40 /.  a-year  was  given  by  this 
truly  munificent  patron  for  the  expense  of  apparatus 
and  experiments  ;  homes  were  provided  for  his  family 
in  the  neighbourhood  both  of  Lord  Shelburne's  town 
and  country  residence  ;  nor  can  anything  be  easily 
conceired  more  truly  gratifying  to  a  man  of  right 
feelings,  and  of  a  noble  ambition,  than  the  reflection 
must  have  been,  that  the  discovery  of  oxygen  was  made 
under  his  roof,  and  with  the  funds  which  his  disin- 
terested liberality  had  provided  for  his  philosophic 
guest.  With  whatever  difference  of  sentiments  states- 
men may  at  any  time  view  Lansdowne  House,  the 
lovers  of  science  to  the  latest  ages  will  gaze  with 
veneration  on  that  magnificent  pile,  careless  of  its 
architectural  beauties,  but  grateful  for  the  light  which 
its  illustrious  founder  caused  to  beam  from  thence  over 
the  whole  range  of  natural  knowledge ;  and  after  the 
structure  shall  have  yielded  to  the  fate  of  all  human 
works,  the  ground  on  which  it  once  stood,  consecrated 
to  far  other  recollections  than  those  of  conquest  or  of 
power,  will  be  visited  by  the  pilgrim  of  philosophy  with 
a  deeper  fervour  than  any  that  fills  the  bosom  near  the 
forum  or  the  capitol  of  ancient  Rome. 

In  1780  Priestley  settled  at  Birmingham,  where  he 
was  chosen  minister  of  the  principal  Dissenting  con- 
gregation. He  had  left  Lansdowne  House  without 
any  difference  to  interrupt  the  friendship  of  its  inmates  ; 
and  some  years  afterwards  an  offer  to  return,  made  on 
the  death  of  Lord  Lansdowne's  friends,  Dunning  and 

2  E 


418  PRIESTLEY. 

Lee,  was  declined.*  A  subscription  among  his  friends 
furnished  the  means  of  prosecuting  his  experimental 
researches ;  and  he  declined  an  offer  to  obtain  for  him 
a  pension  from  the  Government.  A  shade  is  cast  upon 
this  passage  of  his  history  by  the  circumstance  of  the 
pecuniary  aid  which  he  thus  received  being  only  in  a 
small  part  rendered  necessary  for  his  experimental  pur- 
suits. Mr.  Parker,  the  eminent  optician,  furnished  him 
for  nothing  all  the  instruments  made  by  him,  as  did  Mr. 
Wedgwood  all  his  earthenware  utensils.  Yet  we  find  in 
his  correspondence  a  painful  thankfulness  expressed,  in 
any  thing  rather  than  the  language  of  a  philosopher,  to 
Mrs.  Rayner  and  Mr.  Lee,  for  "  seasonable  benefactions." 
The  "apology"  which  he  evidently  feels  required  for 
this  kind  of  dependence  is  not  at  all  confined  to  the  "  ex- 
pense of  his  philosophical  and  theological  studies ;"  he 
refers  also  to  the  education  of  his  children,  and  to  the 
expenses  of  housekeeping  occasioned  by  his  reputation. f 
It  is  not  invidious  to  observe  that,  be  a  man's  celebrity 
ever  so  great,  he  is  not  bound  to  incur  any  expenses  in 
keeping  hospitality,  if  these,  "  exceeding  twice  his  own 
income"  (and  that,  with  the  pension  of  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  not  an  inconsiderable  one),  can  only  be  met  by 
the  large  "  benefactions"  of  his  friends.  He  names 
fifteen  who  gave  him  by  subscription  a  yearly  allow- 
ance, all  the  while  he  chose  to  decline  an  offer  made  to 

*  This  offer,  and  Lord  Lansdowne's  frank  declaration  that  he  never 
had  any  fault  to  find  with  his  guest,  entitles  us  to  state  that  no 
quarrel,  nor  anything  like  it,  had  occurred.  Nevertheless  Priest- 
ley's offer  to  visit  his  Lordship  when  he  occasionally  came  to  London 
was  politely  declined.  Political  reasons  apparently  caused  this 
refusal. 

f  Memoirs,  vol.  L,  part  i.,  page  217. 


PRIESTLEY.  419 

procure  a  pension  from  the  Government,  "  wishing  to 
preserve  himself  independent  of  every  thing  connected 
with  the  Court."  We  must  on  this  be  content  to 
remark,  that  different  men  entertain  different  notions 
of  independence. 

Settled  at  Birmingham,  he  continued,  however,  his 
controversial  writings,  and  engaged  eagerly  in  conflict 
with  Gibbon  upon  his  celebrated  chapters  respecting 
the  Early  History  of  Christianity,  and  with  Bishop 
Horsley  upon  the  Socinian  doctrines.  In  the  latter 
controversy  the  Episcopal  and  the  Sectarian  tempe- 
rature, both  high,  were  not  very  unequal ;  but  in  the 
former  the  minister  of  the  Gospel  had  all  the  heat  to 
himself — at  least  in  the  layman  it  was  latent,  if  it 
existed  at  all.  He  was  desirous  of  drawing  his 
adversary  into  a  controversy,  and,  failing  in  this,  lost 
his  temper,  and  had  the  vulgar  recourse  to  calling 
names  and  imputing  motives.  Mr.  Gibbon  may  have 
shown  some  superciliousness  in  his  treatment  of  this 
angry  polemic  ;  but  he  certainly  had  a  good  right  to 
marvel  at  the  intolerance  of  one  whose  heterodoxy  was 
so  universal  as  to  "condemn  by  circumscribing  the 
inspiration  of  the  Evangelists,  and  to  condemn  the  reli- 
gion of  every  Christian  nation  as  a  fable  less  innocent, 
not  less  absurd,  than  Mahomet's  journey  to  the  third 
heaven."  How  fortunate  it  was  that  Priestley  lived  in 
an  age  when  the  use  of  actual  fire  is  withheld  from 
theological  disputants,  as  a  mode  of  argumentation, 
must  appear  from  the  wonder  he  expresses  at  David 
Hume's  monument  having  been  so  long  suffered  to 
offend  the  pious  eyes  of  the  Edinburgh  people — an  ex- 
pression which  might  seem  to  convey  a  hint  that  he 

2  E  2 


420  PRIESTLEY. 

would  have  taken  care  to  avoid,  after  lie  had  himself 
felt  the  weight  of  the  popular  hand  when  called  in  to 
settle  theological  disputes. 

Having  taken,  as  was  his  wont,  an  active  but  not  a 
very  temperate  part  in  the  controversy  to  which  the 
French  Revolution  gave  rise,  and  having  published  a 
'  Reply'  to  Mr.  Burke' s  famous  pamphlet,  he  was  early 
in  1791  made  a  citizen  of  the  French  Republic.  An 
ironical  and  somewhat  bitter  pamphlet  against  the 
high  church  party  still  further  excited  the  feelings  of 
the  people  against  him ;  and  a  dinner  being  given  on 
the  14th  of  July  to  celebrate  the  anniversary  of 
the  attack  upon  the  Bastille,  the  mob  attacked  the 
tavern  where  the  party  were  assembled,  Dr .  Priestley 
was  not  present,  but  his  chapel  and  house  were 
immediately  after  assailed.  His  library,  manuscripts, 
and  apparatus  were  destroyed ;  his  person  and  his 
family  escaped.  The  compensation  which  he  ob- 
tained, by  an  action  against  the  hundred,  fell  short, 
according  to  his  own  account,  by  2000/.  of  his  loss. 
As,  however,  an  ample  subscription  was  made  for 
him,  and  as  his  brother-in-law  generously  gave  him 
10,000/.,  with  an  annuity  of  200/.  for  life,  he  could  not 
be  other  than  a  large  gainer  by  the  execrable  violence 
of  which  he  had  been  the  victim ;  and  as  he  never 
allowed  any  of  his  writings  to  remain  unpublished  for 
even  the  shortest  time  after  they  were  finished,  it  is  not 
likely  that  any  loss  of  an  irreparable  kind  was  incurred 
by  the  burning  of  his  papers.  He  found,  however, 
that  he  could  no  longer  reside  with  comfort  in  the 
scene  of  such  outrageous  proceedings,  and  among  a 
community  which  had  so  shamefully  countenanced 


PRIESTLEY.  421 

them.  He  removed  to  London,  and  succeeded  his 
friend,  Dr.  Price,  as  Principal  of  the  Hackney 
Academy.  Late  in  the  month  of  September,  1792, 
he  was  elected  by  the  department  of  the  Orne  a 
member  of  the  National  Convention,  about  to  assemble 
after  the  subversion  of  the  French  monarchy.  This 
singular  honour  bestowed  on  him,  as  well  for  his 
philosophical  fame  as  for  his  political  services  and  the 
persecutions  to  which  they  had  exposed  him,  he  re- 
spectfully declined,  giving  as  his  reason  that  he  was 
not  familiar  with  the  French  language,  and  had  not 
devoted  his  time  sufficiently  to  legislative  duties.  But 
this  moderation  disarmed  not  his  enemies — he  was  pur- 
sued by  the  intolerant  spirit  of  the  times.  He  found 
himself  shunned  by  his  former  associates  in  science. 
Even  the  Royal  Society  did  not  afford  an  exception 
to  this  persecuting  loyalty,  or  a  shelter  from  its  effects  ; 
and  in  the  spring  of  1794  he  withdrew  to  America. 
Here  he  again  suffered  considerable  disappointment. 
His  religion  was  too  much  for  those  who  had  ceased  to 
care  for  sacred  things,  and  far  too  scanty  for  those  who 
still  were  Christians,  while  his  republican  opinions 
were  exceedingly  distasteful  because  they  were  tinged 
with  a  decided  admiration  of  France.  He  continued, 
however,  to  inhabit  the  country,  and  to  prosecute  his 
studies,  chiefly  theological.  He  received  contributions 
regularly  from  his  benefactors  in  England,  Mrs.  Rayner 
and  the  Duke  of  Grafton  ;  but  these,  though  acknow- 
ledged by  him  in  the  same  unpleasant  style  as  eleemo- 
synary ("  very  acceptable  benevolences"),  were  for  the 
most  part  on  a  different  footing  from  the  English 


422  PRIESTLEY. 

charities ;  they  appear  generally  to  have  been  required 
for  the  propagation  of  their  Unitarian  opinions,  to 
which  the  parties  were  all  so  zealously  attached. 

He  settled  at  Northumberland,  in  an  uncleared  dis- 
trict, where  he  purchased  three  hundred  acres  of  land  ; 
and  his  youngest  son,  Henry,  then  a  very  fine  young  man 
of  eighteen,  devoted  himself  to  the  clearing  and  culti- 
vating this  woodland  spot,  working  with  his  labourers 
and  sharing  their  toils.  The  father  himself  partook 
of  this  labour  for  two  or  three  hours  daily.  On  Sun- 
days he  frequently  preached,  and  when  he  visited 
Philadelphia  he  always  did  so.  He  devoted  the  rest 
of  his  time  to  his  works,  particularly  his  '  Church 
History ;'  and  he  wrote  answers  to  Paine  and  Volney. 
He  was  much  obstructed  in  his  philosophical  pursuits 
by  the  want  of  proper  accommodation  for  his  apparatus, 
and  he  only  wrote  three  tracts  on  chemical  subjects 
during  the  ten  years  of  his  residence  in  America  ;  two 
of  which  were  merely  arguments  on  phlogiston,  and  the 
third  alone  had  any  experiments,  written  eight  years 
before  his  death. 

At  the  end  of  1795  he  suffered  a  heavy  affliction  in 
the  death  of  his  son  Henry,  after  a  few  days'  illness  ; 
and  in  ten  months  more  he  also  lost  his  wife.  These 
blows,  though  he  felt  their  weight,  did  not  at  all 
crush  him ;  his  resignation  was  exemplary ;  and  his 
steady,  enthusiastic  faith  in  Revelation  gave  him  a  cer- 
tain hope  of  meeting  before  many  years  should  elapse 
with  those  whom  he  had  lost.  Indeed,  his  letters 
clearly  show  that  he  regarded  the  sundering  of  these 
ties  far  less  attentively  than  their  restoration.  A  few 


PEIESTLEY.  423 

days  after  his  son's  death  he  writes  to  his  most  inti- 
mate friend  and  constant  correspondent,  Theophilus 
Lindsay,  recounting  the  particulars  of  his  loss,  and  he 
adds  that  he  is  composing  three  discourses  on  Revela- 
tion against  modern  unbelievers.  The  letter  next  year 
announcing  his  wife's  death,  begins  with  saying  to  the 
same  friend  how  much  he  stands  in  need  of  his  sym- 
pathy, and  goes  on  to  add,  "  This  day  I  bury  my  wife ; 
she  died  on  Saturday  after  an  illness  of  a  fortnight." 
He  adds  some  remarks  on  his  literary  occupations,  and 
concludes  with  mentioning  a  plan  he  has  of  travelling 
to  distract  his  mind.*  No  one  who  reads  his  letters 
and  memoirs  by  himself  can  doubt  that  this  stoical 
firmness  is  not  the  result  of  a  callous  disposition,  but 
the  signal  triumph  of  a  heartfelt  belief  in  the  promises 
of  Religion  over  the  weakness  of  our  nature. 

It  is,  indeed,  quite  manifest  that  Religion  was  as 
much  an  active  principle  in  him  as  in  any  one  who 
ever  lived.  Not  only  is  it  always  uppermost  in  his 
thoughts,  but  he  even  regards  temporal  concerns  of  a 
public  nature  always  in  connexion  with  the  Divine 
superintendence,  and  even  with  the  prophecies  of 
Scripture.  His  letters  are  full  of  references  to  those 
prophecies  as  bearing  on  passing  events,  and  he 
plainly  says  that  since  his  removal  to  America  he 
should  care  little  for  European  events  but  for  their 
connexion  with  the  Old  Testament.  He  also  looked 
for  an  actual  and  material  second  coming  of  Christ 
upon  earth. 

It  is  not  true  to  affirm  that  he  was  little  of  a  poli- 


.,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  328,  354. 


424  PRIESTLEY. 

tician,  though  in  declining  the  seat  in  the  National 
Convention  he  says*  his  studies  had  been  little  directed 
towards  legislation  compared  with  theology  and  philo- 
sophy; and  denies  in  a  letter  to  William  Smith  that 
he  ever  taught  or  even  mentioned  politics  to  his  pupils, 
as  he  had  been  charged  with  doing,  among  the  innu- 
merable falsehoods  of  which  he  was  the  subject.  Nor 
is  the  circumstance  of  his  not  attending  political  meet- 
ings at  all  decisive  of  his  being  little  of  a  political  agi- 
tator, because  his  incurable  stutter  prevented  him  from 
taking  a  part  in  such  proceedings.  But  he  wrote  in 
1774,  at  Franklin's  request,  an  address  to  the  people 
on  the  American  disputes,  previous  to  the  general 
election.  He  answered  Mr.  Burke's  *  Reflections  on 
the  French  Revolution.'  He  mixed  in  the  question 
of  the  Catholic  claims  ;  and  he  published  in  all  no  less 
than  eleven  political  works,  almost  every  one  upon  the 
topics  of  the  day.  It  is  equally  true,  however,  that 
theological  controversy  occupied  him  far  more  con- 
stantly and  engaged  his  mind  far  more  deeply  than 
political  matters ;  that  he  was  regularly  a  theologian 
and  incidentally  a  partisan. 

The  cast  of  his  political  opinions  was  originally 
little  more  tending  to  democracy  than  those  of  Whigs 
usually  are  who  have  read  and  discussed  more  than 
they  have  reflected  and  seen.  He  used,  indeed,  to 
say  that  in  politics  he  was  a  Trinitarian,  though  a 
Unitarian  in  religion.  It  must,  however,  be  confessed 
that  he  went  very  much  further  in  the  same  direction 
after  the  French  Revolution  had  set  fire  to  the  four 

*  Mem.,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  190—198. 


PRIESTLEY.  425 

quarters  of  the  political  world,  and  his  admiration  of 
republican  principles  might  be  measured  by  his  zeal  for 
the  innovators  of  France,  with  the  success  of  whose 
arms  he  deemed  the  safety  of  freedom  to  be  bound  up- 
When  we  read  his  answer  to  the  offer  of  a  seat  in  1792, 
and  reflect  that  it  was  penned  about  three  weeks  after 
the  horrible  massacres  of  September,  the  worst  of  the 
atrocities  which  disfigured  the  Revolution,  it  moves 
our  wonder  to  find  a  Christian  minister  accompanying 
his  acknowledgment  of  the  honour  proposed,  that  of 
being  enrolled  among  the  authors  of  the  tragedy  so 
recently  enacted,  with  no  protest  against  the  bloody 
course  then  pursuing,  no  exception  to  the  unquali- 
fied admiration  expressed  of  the  youthful  republic. 

In  America  we  find  his  leanings  are  all  against  the 
Federal  party,  and  his  censures  of  the  great  Chief  of 
the  Union  little  concealed.  He  felt  for  the  demo- 
cratic party,  the  French  alliance,  the  enemies  of  Eng- 
lish partialities,  and  he  regarded  Washington  as  un- 
grateful because  he  would  not,  from  a  recollection  of 
the  services  of  France  twenty  years  before  to  American 
independence,  consent  to  make  America  dependent 
upon  France.  The  indifferent  reception  which  he  met 
with  in  society  was  probably  owing  to  this  party  vio- 
lence full  as  much  as  to  the  dislike  of  his  Unitarian 
opinions.  But  it  must  be  added,  that  his  temper  was 
so  mild,  and  his  manners  so  gentle,  as  to  disarm  his 
most  prejudiced  adversaries  whensoever  they  came  into 
his  society.  Many  instances  of  this  are  given  in  his 
correspondence,  of  which  one  may  be  cited.  Pie  hap- 
pened to  visit  a  friend  whose  wife  received  him  in  her 
husband's  absence,  but  feared  to  name  him  before  a  Cal- 


426  PRIESTLEY. 

vinistic  divine  present.  By  accident  his  name  was  men- 
tioned, and  the  lady  then  introduced  him.  But  he  of 
the  Genevan  school  drew  back,  saying,  "  Dr.  Joseph 
Priestley  ?"  and  then  added  in  the  American  tongue, 
*'  I  cannot  be  cordial."  Whereupon  the  Doctor,  with 
his  usual  placid  demeanour,  said  that  he  and  the  lady 
might  be  allowed  to  converse  until  their  host  should 
return.  By  degrees  the  conversation  became  general ; 
the  repudiator  was  won  over  by  curiosity  first,  then  by 
gratification;  he  remained  till  a  late  hour  hanging 
upon  Priestley's  lips ;  he  took  his  departure  at  length, 
and  told  the  host  as  he  quitted  the  house,  that  never 
had  he  passed  so  delightful  an  evening,  though  he  ad- 
mitted that  he  had  begun  it  "  by  behaving  like  a  fool 
and  a  brute."  One  such  anecdote  (and  there  are  many 
current)  is  of  more  force  to  describe  its  subject  than  a 
hundred  laboured  panegyrics. 

After  the  loss  of  his  wife  and  his  younger  and 
favourite  son,  he  continued  with  unabated  zeal  to 
pursue  his  theological  studies,  and  published  several 
works,  both  controversial  and  historical,  beside 
leaving  some  which  have  been  given  to  the  world 
since  his  decease.  He  endeavoured,  too,  as  far  as  he 
could,  to  propagate  the  tenets  of  Unitarianism,  and  to 
collect  and  extend  a  congregation  at  Philadelphia 
attached  to  that  doctrine.  At  one  time,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1797,  entertaining  hopes  of  peace  in  Europe, 
he  had  resolved  to  visit  France,  where  he  might 
communicate  personally  with  his  English  friends ;  and 
he  even  thought  of  making  a  purchase  in  that  country 
on  which  he  might  reside  during  a  part  of  each  year. 
So  nearly  did  he  contemplate  this  removal,  that  we 


PRIESTLEY.  427 

find  him  desiring  the  answers  to  letters  he  was 
writing  might  be  sent  to  the  care  of  Messrs.  Perregaux 
at  Paris.  The  revolution  of  Fructidor,  however  (4th 
September,  1797),  put  an  end  to  all  prospects  of  peace, 
and  the  war  soon  raged  in  every  quarter  with  re- 
doubled fury.  He  seems  now  to  have  derived  his  chief 
comfort  from  tracing  the  fancied  resemblance  between 
the  events  passing  before  him  and  the  prophecies  in 
Scripture ;  though  occasionally  he  felt  much  puzzled, 
and  the  book  of  Daniel,  especially,  appears  to  have 
given  him  trouble  and  perplexity.  When  the  peace 
came  at  last,  his  health  was  too  much  broken  to 
permit  any  plans  to  be  executed  such  as  he  had  four 
years  before  contemplated. 

In  1802  he  became  a  confirmed  invalid,  suffer- 
ing from  internal,  and  apparently  organic,  derange- 
ment. His  illness  was  long  and  lingering,  and  he 
suffered  great  pain  with  perfect  patience  for  two 
years.  The  prospect  of  death  which  he  had  before 
him  did  not  relax  his  application  to  literary  labour, 
his  faculties  remaining  entire  to  the  last.  Neither  did 
that  awful  certainty,  ever  present  to  his  mind,  affect 
him  with  sorrow  or  dismay.  The  same  unshaken 
belief  in  a  future  state,  the  same  confident  hope  of 
immortal  life  which  had  supported  him  under  his 
affliction  for  the  death  of  others,  cheered  him  while 
contemplating  the  approach  of  his  own.  In  this 
happy  frame  of  mind  he  gently  expired  on  the  6th  of 
February,  1804,  in  the  seventy-second  year  of  his  age. 

His  character  is  a  matter  of  no  doubt,  and  it  is  of  a 
high  order.  That  he  was  a  most  able,  most  indus- 
trious, most  successful  student  of  nature,  is  clear ;  and 


428  PRIESTLEY. 

that  his  name  will  for  ever  be  held  in  grateful  remem- 
brance by  all  who  cultivate  physical  science,  and 
placed  among  its  most  eminent  masters,  is  unques- 
tionable. That  he  was  a  perfectly  conscientious  man 
in  all  the  opinions  which  he  embraced,  and  sincere 
in  all  he  published  respecting  other  subjects,  appears 
equally  beyond  dispute.  He  was,  also,  upright  and 
honourable  in  all  his  dealings,  and  justly  beloved  by 
his  family  and  friends  as  a  man  spotless  in  all  the 
relations  of  life.  That  he  was  governed  in  his  public 
conduct  by  a  temper  too  hot  and  irritable  to  be  con- 
sistent either  with  his  own  dignity,  or  with  an  amiable 
deportment,  may  be  freely  admitted  ;  and  his  want  of 
self-command,  and  want  of  judgment  in  the  practical 
affairs  of  life,  was  manifest  above  all  in  his  controversial 
history ;  for  he  can  be  charged  with  no  want  of  pru- 
dence in  the  management  of  his  private  concerns.  His 
violence  and  irritability,  too,  seems  equally  to  have 
been  confined  to  his  public  life,  for  in  private  all 
have  allowed  him  the  praise  of  a  mild  and  attractive 
demeanour;  and  we  have  just  seen  its  great  power 
in  disarming  the  prejudices  of  his  adversaries. 


(    429   ) 


CAVENDISH. 


A  GREATER  contrast  between  two  men  of  science,  both 
eminent   benefactors  to   the   same  branch  of  know- 
ledge, can  hardly  be  imagined  than  Cavendish  offers 
to    Priestley.     He   was   thoroughly   educated   in   all 
branches  of  the  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy  ; 
he  studied  each  systematically ;  he  lived  retired  from 
the  world  among  his  books  and  his  instruments,  never 
meddling  with  the  affairs  of  active  life ;  he  passed  his 
whole  time  in  storing  his  mind  with  the  knowledge  im- 
parted by  former  inquirers  and  in  extending  its  bounds. 
Cultivating  science  for  its  own  sake,  he  was  slow  to 
appear  before  the  world  as  an  author  ;  had  reached  the 
middle  age  of  life  before  he  gave  any  work  to  the 
press  ;    and   though   he   reached   the   term   of  four- 
score, never  published  a  hundred  pages.     His  methods 
of    investigation    were    nearly    as    opposite    as     this 
diversity   might  lead  us  to   expect ;    and   in   all  the 
accidental    circumstances    of    rank    and    wealth    the 
same  contrast  is  to  be  remarked.     He  was  a  duke's 
grandson  ;  he  possessed  a  princely  fortune ;  his  whole 
expenditure  was  on  philosophical  pursuits ;  his  whole 
existence  was  in  his  laboratory  or  his  library.    If  such 
a  life  presents  little  variety  and  few  incidents  to  the 
vulgar  observer,  it  is  a  matter  of  most  interesting  con- 
templation  to  all  who    set   its  just  value  upon   the 
cultivation  of  science,  who  reckon  its  successful  pur- 


430  CAVENDISH. 

suit  as  the  greatest  privilege,  the  brightest  glory  of 
our  nature. 

Henry  Cavendish  was  born  at  Nice,  whither  his 
mother's  health  had  carried  her,  the  10th  of  October, 
1731.  He  was  the  son  of  Lord  Charles  Cavendish, 
the  last  Duke  of  Devonshire's  great  uncle,  by  the 
daughter  of  Henry  Grey,  Duke  of  Kent.  His 
family,  aware  of  the  talents  which  he  early  showed, 
were  anxious  that  he  should  take  the  part  in  public 
life  which  men  of  his  rank  are  wont  to  do,  and  were 
much  displeased  with  his  steady  refusal  to  quit  the 
studies  which  he  loved.  An  uncle,  disapproving  of 
the  course  pursued  towards  him,  made  him  his  heir  ; 
and  so  ample  a  fortune  came  into  his  possession  that  he 
left  at  his  death  a  million  and  a  quarter  of  money.* 
The  Mathematics,  and  the  various  branches  of  Natural 
Philosophy,  were  the  chief  subjects  of  his  study,  and 
of  all  these  sciences  he  was  a  consummate  master. 

The  discoveries  of  Black  on  carbonic  acid  and 
latent  heat,  appear  to  have  drawn  his  attention  to  the 
cultivation  of  pneumatic  chemistry ;  and  in  1766  he 
communicated  to  the  Royal  Society  his  experiments 
for  ascertaining  the  properties  of  carbonic  acid  and 
hydrogen  gas.f  He  carried  his  mathematical  habits 
into  the  laboratory ;  and  not  satisfied  with  showing 
the  other  qualities  which  make  it  clear  that  these  two 

*  M.  Biot's  article  in  the  Biog.  Univ.  makes  him  the  son  of  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  and  states  his  yearly  income  at  300,000/. 
sterling-,  and  yet  gives  the  property  he  left  at  only  1,200,000/. — so 
that  he  must  have  spent  300,000/.  a  year,  and  also  dissipated  five 
millions.  Such  errors  seem  incredible. 

f  Three  papers  containing  experiments  on  factitious  air.  Phil. 
Trans.,  1766,  p.  141. 


CAVENDISH.  431 

aeriform  substances  are  each  sui  generis,  and  the 
same  from  whatever  substances,  by  whatever  pro- 
cesses, they  are  obtained  ;  nor  satisfied  with  the  mere 
fact  that  one  of  them  is  heavier,  and  the  other  much 
lighter,  than  atmospheric  air, — he  inquired  into  the 
precise  numerical  relation  of  their  specific  gravities 
with  one  another  and  with  common  air,  and  first 
showed  an  example  of  weighing  permanently  elastic 
fluids :  unless,  indeed,  Torricelli  may  be  said  before 
him  to  have  shown  the  relative  weight  of  a  column  of 
air  and  a  column  of  mercury :  or  the  common  pump 
to  have  long  ago  compared  in  this  respect  air  with 
water.  It  is,  however,  sufficiently  clear,  that  neither 
of  these  experiments  gave  the  relative  measure  of  one 
air  with  another :  nor,  indeed,  could  they  be  said  to 
compare  common  air  with  either  mercury  or  water, 
although  they  certainly  showed  the  relative  specific 
gravities  of  the  two  bodies,  taking  air  for  the  middle 
term  or  common  measure  of  their  weights. 

The  common  accounts  in  chemical  and  in  biogra- 
phical works  are  materially  incorrect  respecting  the 
manner  in  which  Mr.  Cavendish  was  led  to  make  his 
great  experiment  upon  the  composition  of  water  in 
1781  and  the  following  years.  It  is  said,  that  while 
making  his  experiments  on  air  in  1765  and  1766,  he 
had  observed  for  the  first  time,  that  moisture  is  pro- 
duced by  the  combustion  of  inflammable  air,  and  that 
this  led  him,  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  later,  "  to  com- 
plete the  synthetical  formula  of  water,  and  to  find 
that  the  moisture  that  he  had  before  observed  was 
simple  water."*  Nothing  can  be  more  erroneous  than 

*  Penny  Cyclopaedia,  vol.  vi.  p.  392.     This  and  other  similar 


432  CAVENDISH. 

this  whole  statement.  In  Mr.  Cavendish's  paper,  of 
1766,  upon  fixed  and  inflammable  airs,  there  is  not 
one  word  said  of  the  moisture  formed  by  the  com- 
bustion ;  and  respecting  inflammable  air,  the  experi- 
ments are  confined  entirely  to  its  burning  or  exploding, 
to  its  specific  gravity,  and  to  its  production.  The  paper 
of  1784  is,  in  fact,  entitled  '  Experiments  upon  Air,'  and 
it  commences  with  stating,  not  that  those  experiments 
were  undertaken  with  any  view  to  the  water  formed 
by  burning  inflammable  air,  but  that  they  were  made 
"  with  a  view  to  find  out  the  cause  of  the  diminution 
which  common  air  is  well  known  to  suffer  by  all  the 
various  ways  in  which  it  is  phlogisticated,  and  to 
discover  what  becomes  of  the  air  thus  lost  or  con- 
sumed ;"  and  the  author  adds,  that  besides  "  determining 
this  fact,  they  also  threw  light  on  the  constitution 
and  means  of  production  of  dephlogisticated  air."  In- 
stead of  referring  to  any  former  observation  of  his  own 
either  in  1766,  or  subsequently,  on  the  moisture  left 
by  burning  inflammable  air,  he  expressly  refers  to 
Mr.  Warltire's  observation  of  this  moisture,  as  related 
by  Dr.  Priestley  :  and  both  Mr.  Warltire's  observation 
and  Dr.  Priestley's  publication  were  made  in  1781. 
Upon  this  observation  Mr.  Cavendish  proceeded  to 
further  experiments,  with  the  view  of  ascertaining 
"  what  becomes  of  the  air  lost  by  phlogistication." 


accounts  are  plainly  given  by  some  persons  who  never  read  Mr. 
Cavendish's  writings.  But  a  still  greater  error  occurs  in  them : 
they  represent  him  as  having  first  shown  that  fixed  and  inflammable 
airs  are  separate  bodies  from  common  air ;  whereas  Dr.  Black,  in  his 
Lectures  from  1755  downwards,  showed  this  distinctly  by  his  experi- 
ments, proving  clearly  that  these  gases  have  nothing  in  common 
with  the  atmospheric  air  (vol.  ii.,  p.  87,  88). 


CAVENDISH.  433 

For  this  purpose,  he  introduced  a  portion  of  hydrogen 
gas  into  a  globe  or  balloon  of  glass,  sufficiently  strong 
to  resist  the  expansive  force  of  the  combustion  which 
had  often  been  observed  in  mines,  and  also  in  experi- 
ments upon  a  smaller  scale,  to  produce  an  explosion. 
He  adapted  to  the  globe  two  wires  of  metal,  fixing 
them  in  air-tight  sockets,  and  bringing  their  points 
within  a  short  distance  of  each  other  in  the  inside 
of  the  globe  ;  so  that,  by  an  electrical  machine,  he 
could  send  the  spark  or  the  shock  from  the  one  point 
to  the  other,  through  the  gases  mixed  together  in  the 
globe.  He  found  that  the  whole  of  the  hydrogen  gas 
disappeared  by  the  combustion  thus  occasioned,  and  a 
considerable  portion  also  of  the  common  air.  Water 
was,  as  usual,  found  in  small  quantity,  and  an  acid  was 
also  formed.  He  then  weighed  accurately  the  air  of 
both  kinds  which  he  exposed  to  the  stream  of  elec- 
tricity, and  he  afterwards  weighed  the  liquid  formed  by 
the  combustion ;  he  found  that  the  two  weights  cor- 
responded with  great  accuracy.  It  was  difficult  to 
resist  the  inference  that  the  union  of  the  two  airs  had 
taken  place  ;  and  it  might  further  have  been  inferred 
that  the  latent  heat  which  held  them  in  an  elastic 
state  had  been  given  out,  forming  the  flame  which 
was  produced ;  and  that  water  was  formed  by  the 
union  of  the  two  airs,  having,  of  course,  less  latent 
heat  than  was  required  to  keep  them  in  a  gaseous 
state ;  but  Mr.  Cavendish  did  not  approve  of  this 
manner  of  stating  the  conclusion  which  Mr.  Watt 
had  adopted,  because  of  doubts  which  he  had  respect- 
ing the  nature  of  heat.*  The  residue  of  the  com- 

*  Page  140. 

2  F 


434  CAVENDISH. 

bustion,  however,  was  two-fold:  there  was  an  aeriform 
body  left  in  the  glass  vessel,  as  well  as  liquid  in  the 
bottom.  This  was  much  smaller  in  volume  than  the 
air  which  had  filled  the  globe  before  the  combustion, 
because  the  hydrogen  gas  and  part  of  the  common 
air  had  disappeared.  This  aeriform  residue  was  also 
of  a  different  nature  from  common  air ;  it  was  found 
to  be  the  phlogistic  air  of  Priestley  ;  the  azotic  air 
of  Rutherford  :  and  the  air  consumed  in  burning 
the  hydrogen  gas  must,  therefore,  be  the  vital  air 
or  oxygen  gas  of  the  atmosphere.  By  another  ex- 
periment he  more  fully  ascertained  this :  for,  burning 
oxygen  gas  with  hydrogen  gas,  nearly  the  whole 
aeriform  contents  of  the  globe  disappeared,  and  water, 
equal  in  weight  to  the  two  gases  taken  together, 
remained  as  the  produce  of  the  combustion  ;  but 
still  an  acid  was  formed,  unless  in  some  cases,  when 
very  pure  oxygen  gas  was  used. 

Thus  was  effected  the  important  discovery  of  the  com- 
position of  water,  which  Watt  had  inferred  some  time 
before  from  a  careful  examination  of  the  similar  facts 
collected  by  former  experimentalists  ;  one  of  whom, 
Warltire,  had  even  burned  the  gases  in  a  close  vessel, 
and  by  means  of  electricity.  The  conclusion  arrived  at 
by  Mr.  Cavendish  from  his  capital  experiment  was,  in 
his  own  words,  that  "  dephlogisticated  air  is  in  reality 
nothing  but  dephlogisticated  water,  or  water  deprived  of 
its  phlogiston,  or  in  other  words,  that  water  consists  of 
dephlogisticated  air  united  to  phlogiston,  and  that 
inflammable  air  is  either  pure  phlogiston,  or  else  water 
united  to  phlogiston  ;"  and  he  then  gives  his  reasons  in 
favour  of  the  second  inference,  namely,  that  inflammable 
air  is  water  united  to  phlogiston  ;  but  he  repeatedly 


CAVENDISH.  435 

dwells  on  the  preference  due  to  this  inference  over 
the  conclusion  that  inflammable  air  is  pure  phlogiston.* 
This  statement  of  the  theory  is  somewhat  less  distinct 
than  Mr.  Watt's,  who  considered  water  to  be  dephlo- 
gisticated  air  united  to  inflammable  air  or  pure  phlo- 
giston, and  both  deprived  of  their  latent  heat.  But  he, 
as  well  as  Mr.  Cavendish,  expresses  himself  with  some 
hesitation,  and  even,  like  him,  in  some  passages  enter- 
tains the  idea  of  water  as  united  in  a  small  proportion 
with  inflammable  air.  The  theory,  though  nearly 
completed  by  those  great  chemists,  was  perhaps  first 
stated  with  perfect  certainty  and  distinctness  by  La- 
voisier, f 

In  the  combustion  of  hydrogen  gas  with  common 
air,  and  even  with  impure  oxygen  gas,  Cavendish  had 
observed  that  the  water  was  slightly  tinged  with 
acid,  though  not  always  when  pure  oxygen  gas 
was  used  for  the  operation.  He  therefore  devised 
an  experiment  which  should  ascertain  the  nature 
of  this  acid,  and  in  what  manner  it  was  formed.  He 
passed  the  electric  spark  through  common  air  with- 
out any  hydrogen  gas  being  present ;  the  air  was 
in  a  receiver  over  mercury,  and  the  operation  was  of 
long  continuance,  on  account  of  the  slowness  with 
which  the  combination  is  formed  of  th^  two  gases 
whereof  the  atmosphere  is  composed.  He  had  not 
supposed  that  the  hydrogen  had  any  share  m  forming 
the  acid :  his  theory  being  that  water,  and  not  acid,  is 
the  produce  of  that  gas's  combustion.  He  naturally 

*  Philosophical  Transactions,  1784,  p.  137,  140. 
t  See  Appendix  to  the  Life  of  Watt. 

2  F  2 


436  CAVENDISH. 

suspected  the  acid  to  be  the  produce  of  some  union 
between  the  azote  and  the  oxygen  of  the  atmosphere, 
He  left  the  process  in  the  hands  of  a  committee  of  his 
scientific  friends,  fellow-members  of  the  Royal  Society ; 
and  after  some  weeks  of  constantly  passing  the  electric 
fluid  through  a  limited  portion  of  air,  a  small  quan- 
tity of  liquid  was  formed,  which  readily  combined 
with  a  solution  of  potash  in  water  sent  up  through 
the  mercury.  This  union  was  found  to  be  common 
nitre,  having  all  the  qualities  of  that  well-known  sub- 
stance. It  detonated  with  charcoal ;  it  sparkled  when 
paper  impregnated  with  it  was  burnt;  it  gave  out 
nitrous  fumes  when  sulphuric  acid  was  poured  on  it. 
There  could,  therefore,  no  doubt  whatever  now  exist 
that  nitrous  acid  is  composed  of  the  two  airs  deprived 
of  latent  heat,  which  form  our  atmosphere;  that  it  is 
a  true  oxide  of  azote. 

The  undivided  merit  of  this  important  discovery  has 
never  been  denied  to  Mr.  Cavendish.  Even  Lavoisier 
could  not  intrude ;  but  his  avidity  to  claim  a  share  in 
all  discoveries  had  been  exerted  respecting  the  composi- 
tion of  water,  which  he  asserts  in  his  '  Elements  of 
Chemistry'  to  have  been  discovered  by  himself  and  Mr. 
Cavendish  about  the  same  time.  I  have  shown  clearly 
in  the  Appendix  to  the  Life  of  Mr.  Watt,  that  the  dis- 
covery had  been  previously  communicated  to  the  French 
philosopher ;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  consider  the  ex- 
periment upon  which  he  grounded  his  claim  ;  and 
that  experiment,  when  examined,  is  found  wholly 
insufficient  to  prove  the  position,  even  if  it  had  been 
contrived  and  performed  before  the  communication  of 
Watt's  and  Cavendish's  discovery.  Of  that  discovery 


CAVENDISH.  437 

it  was  plainly  a  corollary — by  that  discovery  it  was 
manifestly  suggested. 

The  former  experiments,  both  those  of  Cavendish 
and  those  on  which  Watt  reasoned,  were  all  syn- 
thetical and  decisive — that  of  Lavoisier  was  analytical 
and  radically  defective.  It  proved  nothing  conclusively : 
it  was  well  enough  after  the  experimentum  crucls  had 
demonstrated  the  proposition ;  to  that  proposition  it  was 
a  corollary — it  was  nothing  like  a  critical  experiment. 
He  placed  water  in  a  retort  exposed  to  heat ;  the  vapour 
of  the  retort,  when  the  water  boiled,,  was  passed  through 
a  tube  (a  gun  barrel  with  the  breech-pin  knocked  out 
was  generally  used)  ;  the  tube,  if  made  of  earthenware, 
had  iron  filings  placed  in  its  course  ;  it  was  placed 
in  a  fire ;  its  further  extremity  was  connected  with  a 
receiver,  in  which  cold  water  or  mercury  rose  to  fill  it 
entirely.  As  the  water  slowly  boiled  there  came 
through  the  tube,  and  into  the  glass  receiver,  a  current 
of  gas,  which,  upon  examination,  was  found  ta  be  hy- 
drogen gas,  while  the  iron  filings  were  converted  into 
calx  or  oxide.  The  weight  of  the  gas  produced,  added 
to  the  weight  acquired  by  the  gun  barrel  or  by  the 
filings  during  the  process,  was  found  to  be  nearly  equal 
to  the  weight  lost  by  the  water  in  the  retort.  Hence 
the  inference  was,  that  the  lost  portion  of  water  had 
been  decomposed  into  its  two  elements,  the  oxygen  gas 
forming  the  calx  of  the  iron  and  the  hydrogen  gas  being 
received  in  the  glass  vessel.  But  the  adversaries  of  the 
new  doctrine  had  an  answer  to  this  inference  far  more 
formidable  than  any  that  they  could  urge  against  the 
conclusion  drawn  from  the  synthetical  experiment.  The 
analytical  experiment  was  liable  to  all  the  uncertainty 


438  CAVENDISH. 

of  the  process  called  the  destructive  distillation.  The 
substances  found  might  have  been  the  product,  and  not 
merely  the  educt  of  the  process.  It  is  known  that  if  coal 
or  oleaginous  bodies  be  distilled  in  close  vessels  there  are 
obtained  gases  and  water  and  acids  which  never  existed 
in  the  matters  subjected  to  the  action  of  the  fire.  The 
component  parts  of  these  matters  enter  into  new  com- 
binations with  one  another  under  the  action  of  heat,  just 
as  a  tallow  candle  or  an  oil  lamp  gives  lamp-black  and 
water  in  burning,  though  no  water,  but  only  hydrogen, 
nor  of  course  any  lamp-black,  exists  in  the  tallow  and  the 
oil.  So,  in  Lavoisier's  experiment,  the  water  might 
contain  only  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  and  the  action  of 
the  hot  iron  might  have  separated  them  from  each  other, 
But  it  was  also  quite  possible  that  the  iron  gave  out 
hydrogen,  and  that  the  hot  water  was  partly  kept  in 
solution  by  this  gas,  partly  combined  with  the  iron,  for 
on  that  supposition  the  combined  weight  of  the  calcined 
iron  and  the  hydrogen  gas  would  be  exactly  equal 
to  the  united  weight  of  the  water  evaporated,  and  of 
the  iron  before  calcination.  The  previous  discovery  of 
Watt  and  Cavendish  is  liable  to  no  such  ambiguity ; 
and  it  has  the  merit  of  also  removing  all  ambiguity 
from  the  experiment  of  Lavoisier,  which  it  manifestly 
suggested. 

These  great  discoveries  placed  Cavendish  in  the 
highest  rank  of  philosophers.  No  one  doubted  of 
nitrous  acid  ;  that  he  was  the  undisputed  discoverer  of 
the  composition  of  water,  before  Mr.  Watt's  claim,  is 
.equally  certain ;  nor,  even  now,  is  it  necessary  for 
the  defenders  of  Watt's  priority  to  deny  that  Cavendish 
made  the  great  step  without  any  previous  knowledge 


CAVENDISH,  439 

of  Watt's  reasoning,  while  all  admit  that  his  expe-> 
rimentum  crucis  was  of  the  greatest  value  in  com- 
pleting the  foundation  on  which  Watt's  happy  infer- 
ence had  been  built.  Lavoisier's  attempt  to  intrude 
himself  was  wholly  unsuccessful ;  it  had  no  effect 
whatever  except  to  tarnish  his  reputation,  already 
injured  sufficiently  by  his  similar  attempt  to  share  in  the 
discovery  of  oxygen.  All  men  held  Cavendish's  name 
as  enrolled  among  the  greatest  discoverers  of  any  age, 
and  only  lamented  that  he  did  not  pursue  his  brilliant 
career  with  more  activity,  so  as  to  augment  still  farther 
the  debt  of  gratitude  under  which  he  had  laid  the 
scientific  world. 

The  reader,  especially  the  French  reader,  must  not 
suppose  that  any  prejudice  respecting  Lavoisier  has 
dictated  the  remarks  occasionally  made  in  the  course  of 
this  work  upon  his  pretensions  as  a  discoverer.  It  is 
scarcely  possible  to  estimate  too  highly  the  services 
which  he  rendered  to  chemical  science  by  his  labours. 
The  truly  philosophic  spirit  which  guided  his  researches 
had  not  been  found  to  prevail  much  before  his  time  in 
the  speculations  of  chemists.  He  had  a  most  happy 
facility  in  reducing  the  knowledge  of  scattered  and 
isolated  facts  to  a  system.  His  talent  for  generalization 
has  not  often  been  surpassed ;  and  it  led  him,  together 
with  his  admirable  freedom  from  preconceived  preju- 
dice, and  his  resolute  boldness  of  investigation  in 
unfrequented  paths,  to  make  some  of  the  most  felicitous 
inductions,  well  deserving  the  title  of  discoveries,  that 
have  ever  been  made,  although  the  materials  of  his  , 
inferences  were  obtained  from  the  experiments  and' 
observations  of  his  predecessors,  and  his  own  experi- 


440  CAVENDISH. 

ments,  except  on  the  nature  of  the  diamond,  led  to  no 
material  extension  of  our  chemical  knowledge.     Stript 
of  the  plumes  in  which  he  sought  to  array  himself,  re- 
pulsed from  the  avenues  by  which  he  would  fain  have 
intruded  himself  among  those  whose  experiments  led 
at  once  to  great  discoveries,  he  is  now,  on  all  hands, 
allowed  to  have  never  made  us  acquainted  with  a  single 
new  gas,  or  a  new  substance  of  any  kind,  or,  except 
as  to  carbon,  with  a  single  new  combination  of  the 
old.     He  did  not,  like  Black,  discover  carbonic  acid 
or  latent  heat — he   did  not,   like  Priestley,  discover 
oxygen — he  did  not,  like   Scheele,  discover  chlorine 
— he  did  not,  like  Davy,  discover  the  alkaline  metals — 
or  like  Cavendish,  by  direct  experiment,  show  how 
water  and  nitrous  acid  are  constituted — or,  like  Ber- 
thollet,  explain  of  what  ammonia  consists.     But  it  is 
equally  confessed  that,  by  sound  and  happy  reasoning 
on  the  experiments  of  others,  he   showed   how  the 
process  of  combustion  and  of  calcination  takes  place, 
and  to  him  and  his  individual  researches  we  owe  the 
important  discovery  that  fixed  air,  however  generated, 
whether  by  respiration  or  by  combustion  or  by  fermen- 
tation (its  three  great  sources,  as  proved  by  Black),  is  the 
combination  of  oxygen  and  carbon.   Nor  is  it  any  deroga- 
tion from  his  claims  to  the  title  of  a  discoverer  of  physical 
truths  that  his  generalization  pushed  too  far  made  him 
regard  oxygen  as  necessary  to  all  combustion  and  all 
acidification,  whereas  it  has  been  found  that  heat  and 
light  are  abundantly  evolved  both  by  the  combustion  of 
metals  and  sulphur  in  close  vessels — by  the  combustion 
of  hydrogen  and  azotic  gas — and  by  the  combination  of 
metals  with  chlorine ;  and  also  that  chlorine,  an  acid 


CAVENDISH.  441 

of  the  strongest  kind,  contains  no  oxygen  at  all,  while 
the  alkalis  themselves  are  oxides.  The  doctrine  of 
latent  heat  was  happily  applied  by  him  to  the  union  of 
gases  with  bodies,  and  if  he  had  only  followed  that 
doctrine  more  closely  he  would  have  avoided  the  error 
into  which  he  fell,  and  perceived  that  other  gases  as 
well  as  oxygen  may  support  flame,  and  that  all,  on 
becoming  liquid  or  solid,  must  part  with  heat.  Against 
his  error  respecting  the  constitution  of  acids  may  justly 
be  set  the  great  merit  of  his  conjecture,  that  the  fixed 
alkalis  are  oxides  of  metals ;  for  this  has  been  since 
proved,  and  the  conjecture  is  a  sufficient  evidence  that 
he  did  not  doggedly  adhere  to  his  theory  of  the  acidi- 
fying principle. 

It  does  not  appear  that  Mr.  Cavendish  ever  after 
1785,  when  he  discovered  the  nature  of  nitrous  acid, 
prosecuted  his  chemical  inquiries  so  as  to  make 
new  discoveries ;  but  beside  making  numberless  use- 
ful chemical  experiments,  about  ten  years  later  he 
engaged  in  some  important  experiments  upon  the 
force  of  attraction.  It  occurred  to  him  that  he  could 
measure  that  force,  and  thereby  ascertain  the  density 
of  the  earth  by  accurately  observing  the  action  of 
bodies  suddenly  exhibited  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a 
horizontal  lever  nicely  balanced,  loaded  with  equal 
leaden  balls  of  a  small  size  at  its  two  ends,  and  pro- 
tected from  all  aerial  currents  by  being  inclosed  in  a 
box.  In  that  box  a  telescope  and  lamp  were  placed, 
that  the  motions  of  the  lever  might  be  carefully  ob- 
served. On  approaching  the  external  leaden  balls  made 
use  of,  whose  diameter  was  eight  inches,  to  the  small 
ones  inclosed,  and  near  the  lever,  it  was  found  that  a 


442  CAVENDISH. 

horizontal  oscillation  took  place.  This  was  measured ; 
and  the  oscillation  caused  by  the  earth  on  a  pendulum 
being  known,  as  well  as  the  relative  specific  gravities 
of  lead  and  water,  it  was  found,  upon  the  medium  of 
his  observations,  that  the  earth's  density  is  to  that  of 
water  as  eleven  to  two,  or  five-and-a-half  times  greater. 
Dr.  Hutton,  who  repeated  his  calculations,  made  the 
result  five  three-tenths,  or  as  fifty-three  to  ten.  Maske- 
lyne's  experiments  at  Schehallion  made  the  proportion 
as  five  to  one.  Zach's  experiment  on  a  smaller  hill  near 
Marseilles  did  not  give  a  result  materially  different. 

A  paper  on  the  civil  year  of  the  Hindus,  connected, 
like  Newton's  chronological  works,  with  astronomical 
researches,  an  account  of  a  new  eudiometer,  and  some 
papers  on  electricity,  form  the  rest  of  this  great  philo- 
sopher's works ;  and  altogether  they  shrink  into  a  very 
inconsiderable  bulk  compared  with  the  voluminous 
works  of  inferior  men.  In  this,  as  in  other  respects, 
we  trace  his  resemblance  to  Black.  Indeed  the  admi- 
rable contrivance  of  their  experiments — their  circum- 
spect preparation  of  the  ground  by  previous  discussion 
of  principles — the  cautious  following  of  facts,  and  yet 
the  resolute  adoption  of  legitimate  consequences  in  their 
generalizations — the  elegance  of  their  processes,  and  the 
conciseness  of  their  descriptions  and  remarks,  with  an 
unsparing  rejection  of  every  thing  superfluous — >formsthe 
characteristic  of  both  those  illustrious  students  of  nature. 
While,  as  regards  Cavendish's  writings,  it  has  been,  and 
as  regards  Black's  it  might  have  been,  justly  said  by  one 
that  every  sentence  will  bear  the  microscope ;  another 
writer,  the  most  eminentof  his  successors,  has,  with  equal 
truth,  described  his  processes  as  of  so  finished  a  nature, 


CAVENDISH,  443 

so  perfected  by  the  hand  of  a  master,  as  to  require  no 
correction ;  and,  though  contrived  in  the  infancy  of  the 
science,  yet  to  remain  unsurpassed,  perhaps  unequalled, 
for  accuracy  and  beauty  at  the  present  day. 

The  world,  even  the  scientific  world,  dazzled  by  the 
brilliancy  of  those  discoveries  which  we  have  described, 
is  wont  to  regard  Cavendish  as  a  chemist  merely.  But 
it  was  not  only  in  chemical  science  and  in  a  few  depart- 
ments of  natural  philosophy  that  this  great  man  had 
thoroughly  exercised  himself ;  he  was  profoundly  versed 
in  every  branch  of  physics,  and  was  a  most  complete  and 
accomplished  mathematician.  I  have  had  access  to  the 
manuscripts  which  he  left  behind  him  ;  and  it  would 
be  difficult  to  name  any  subject  which  had  not  engaged 
his  close  attention :  all  had  been  made  the  subject  not 
only  of  his  study,  but  of  his  original  investigations. 
The  two  papers  on  Electricity  which  he  published  in 
the  '  Philosophical  Transactions '  contain,  the  one  of 
1776,  the  first  distinct  statement  of  the  difference  be- 
tween animal  and  common  electricity  ;  the  other,  in 
1771,  twenty-seven  propositions  upon  the  action  of  the 
electric  fluid,  treated  mathematically.  They  are 
grounded  upon  the  general  hypothesis  that  the  par- 
ticles of  the  fluid  repel  one  another,  and  attract  those 
of  other  matter  with  a  force  inversely  as  some  lesser 
power  than  the  cube  of  the  distance  ;  and  with  this 
theory  the  experiments  which  he  examines  are  found 
to  tally  perfectly.  But  his  voluminous  unpublished 
papers  show  how  constantly  his  life  was  devoted  to 
experimental  inquiries,  and  analytical  or  geometrical 
investigations.  Beside  ranging  over  the  whole  of  che- 
mical science,  they  relate  to  various  branches  of  optics, 


444  CAVENDISH. 

of  physical  and  of  practical  astronomy — of  the  theory  of 
mathematical  and  astronomical  instruments — of  me- 
chanical and  dynamical  sciences,  both  theoretical  and 
practical — of  pure  mathematics  in  all  its  branches,  geo- 
metry, the  integral  and  differential  calculus,  the  doctrine 
of  chances  and  annuities.  He  seems  in  his  application 
of  mathematics  to  physics  to  have  disregarded  elegance, 
and  even  simplicity,  and  to  have  chosen  always  the 
shortest  and  most  certain  path  to  his  object.  Accordingly 
this  somewhat  surprises  the  mathematical  reader ;  as 

when  we  find  him  using  ^7        (or  rather  ~r>  for  he 

always  employs  the  Newtonian  notation)  for  the  sub- 
normal, having  taken  x  for  some  other  quantity  than 
the  abscissa,  and  using  three  letters,  as  a,  2,  and  a%  to 
denote  segments  of  the  same  line,  when  perhaps  a  is 
the  whole  line,  and  a  —  x  is  equal  to  z.  But  that 
he  had  the  most  familiar  and  masterly  knowledge  of 
the  calculus  is  plain  throughout  all  his  investigations, 
as  it  is  that  his  trust  in  its  powers  induced  him  to 
throw  himself  willingly  and  habitually  upon  them. 
In  this  respect  he  stands  not  only  at  the  head  of 
chemical  philosophers,  but  alone  among  them,  with 
perhaps  one  or  two  exceptions  in  the  French  school. 

In  giving  the  history  of  his  labours,  and  the  cha- 
racter of  his  intellectual  capacity,  we  have  written  the 
life  of  Cavendish.  His  personal  history  cannot  be 
expected  to  have  any  striking  interest ;  yet  they  who 
have  been  dwelling  on  his  scientific  eminence  will  not 
be  displeased  to  know  somewhat  of  his  ordinary  life. 
He  was  of  a  most  reserved  disposition,  and  peculiarly 
shy  habits.  This  led  to  some  singularity  of  manner, 


CAVENDISH.  445 

which  was  further  increased  by  a  hesitation  or  difficulty 
of  speech,  and  a  thin  shrill  voice.  He  entered  diffi- 
dently into  any  conversation,  and  seemed  to  dislike 
being  spoken  to.  He  would  often  leave  the  place 
where  he  was  addressed,  and  leave  it  abruptly,  with  a 
kind  of  cry  or  ejaculation,  as  if  scared  and  disturbed. 
He  lived  in  a  house  on  Clapham  Common,  and  his 
library,  vast  in  extent,  was  at  another  place,  because  he 
made  it  accessible  to  all,  and  did  not  wish  to  be  trou- 
bled by  those  who  resorted  to  it.  He  allowed  friends 
to  take  books  from  it,  and  he  himself  never  took  one 
without  giving  a  receipt  for  it.  On  the  death  of  his 
librarian  he  began  the  practice  of  himself  attending  one 
day  in  the  week  to  give  out  and  take  in  books.  His  large 
income  was  allowed  to  accumulate  ;  and  when  his  bank- 
ers, after  finding  that  a  very  considerable  balance  was 
always  left  in  their  hands,  mentioned  the  circumstance, 
suggesting  that  it  might  be  invested  to  some  profit,  he 
answered  with  much  simplicity,  that  if  the  balance  was 
an  inconvenience  to  them  he  could  go  to  another  banker. 
Himself  a  man  of  no  expense,  his  habits  never  varied, 
nor  did  his  style  of  living  at  all  suffer  a  change  on  suc- 
ceeding to  his  uncle's  large  fortune.  His  purse  was 
ever  accessible  to  the  claims  of  charity,  as  well  as  to  pro- 
posals for  the  promotion  of  scientific  pursuits.  Having 
formed  a  high  opinion  of  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir  Charles) 
Blagden's  capacity  for  science,  he  settled  a  consider- 
able annuity  on  him,  upon  condition  that  he  should 
give  up  his  profession  and  devote  himself  to  philosophy ; 
with  the  former  portion  of  which  condition  the  Doctor 
complied,  devoting  himself  to  the  hopeless  pursuit  of 
a  larger  income  in  the  person  of  Lavoisier's  widow,  who 


446  CAVENDISH. 

preferred  marrying  Count  Rumford.*  Mr.  Cavendish 
received  no  one  at  his  residence  ;  he  ordered  his  dinner 
daily  by  a  note  which  he  left  at  a  certain  hour  on  the 
hall  table,  where  the  housekeeper  was  to  take  it,  for  he 
held  no  communication  with  his  female  domestics,  from 
his  morbid  shyness.  It  followed,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
that  his  servants  thought  him  strange,  and  his  neigh- 
bours deemed  him  out  of  his  mind.  He  hardly  ever 
went  into  society.  The  only  exceptions  I  am  aware  of 
are  an  occasional  christening  at  Devonshire  or  Burling- 
ton House,  the  meetings  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  Sir 
Joseph  Banks'  weekly  conversaziones.  At  both  the 
latter  places  I  have  met  him,  and  recollect  the  shrill 
cry  he  uttered  as  he  shuffled  quickly  from  room  to  room, 
seeming  to  be  annoyed  if  looked  at,  but  sometimes 
approaching  to  hear  what  was  passing  among  others. 
His  face  was  intelligent  and  mild,  though,  from  the 
nervous  irritation  which  he  seemed  to  feel,  the  expres- 
sion could  hardly  be  called  calm.  It  is  not  likely  that 
he  ever  should  have  been  induced  to  sit  for  his  picture ; 
the  result  therefore  of  any  such  experiment  is  want- 
ing. His  dress  was  of  the  oldest  fashion,  a  greyish 
green  coat  and  waistcoat,  with  flaps,  a  small  cocked 
hat,  and  his  hair  dressed  like  a  wig  (which  possibly  it 
was)  with  a  thick  clubbed  tail.  His  walk  was  quick 
and  uneasy ;  of  course  he  never  appeared  in  London 
unless  lying  back  in  the  corner  of  his  carriage.  He 
probably  uttered  fewer  words  in  the  course  of  his  life 
than  any  man  who  ever  lived  to  fourscore  years,  not 
at  all  excepting  the  monks  of  La  Trappe. 

*  He  left  Sir  Charles  a  legacy  of  15,000/. ;  which  was  generally 
understood  to  have  fallen  much  short  of  his  ample  expectations. 


CAVENDISH.  447 

Mr.  Cavendish  died  on  the  10th  of  March,  1810, 
after  a  short  illness,  probably  the  first  as  well  as  the 
last  under  which  he  ever  suffered.  His  habit  of  curious 
observation  continued  to  the  end.  He  was  desirous  of 
marking  the  progress  of  disease,  and  the  gradual  ex- 
tinction of  the  vital  powers.  With  this  view,  that  he 
might  not  be  disturbed  he  desired  to  be  left  alone. 
His  servant  returning  sooner  than  he  had  wished  was 
ordered  again  to  leave  the  chamber  of  death,  and 
when  he  came  back  a  second  time  he  found  his  master 
had  expired. 


(  448 


DAVY. 


SIR  HUMPHRY  DAVY  being  now  removed  beyond  the 
reach  of  such  feelings,  as  he  ought  always  to  have 
been  above  their  influence,  that  may  be  said  without 
offence  of  which  he  so  disliked  the  mention :  he  had 
the  honour  of  raising  himself  to  the  highest  place 
among  the  chemical  philosophers  of  the  age ;  emerging 
by  his  merit  alone  from  an  obscure  condition.  His 
father  was  a  carver  in  wood  at  Penzance,  in  Corn- 
wall ;  a  man  of  some  ingenuity  in  his  craft.  He  pos- 
sessed a  small  landed  property  in  the  village  of  Varfell, 
near  Penzance,  and  Davy  was  born  there  in  1778. 
He  received  the  rudiments  of  his  education  at  a  school 
in  Truro,  but  was  very  early  apprenticed  to  an  apo- 
thecary at  Penzance,  where,  disliking  the  profession  to 
which  he  had  been  destined,  he  occupied  himself  with 
chemical  experiments,  ingeniously  contriving  to  make 
the  utensils  of  the  shop  and  the  kitchen  serve  for  ap- 
paratus ;  and  it  is  remembered  of  him  that  he  fre- 
quently alarmed  the  household  by  his  explosions. 
The  result  of  his  dislike  to  the  shop  was  a  disagree- 
ment with  his  master,  and  he  went  to  another  in  the 
same  place  ;  but  here  he  continued  in  the  same  course. 
Pursuing  a  plan  of  study  which  he  had  laid  down  for 


JEitararai 


•//        //<f    —     f//rf/  -Sf'fY 


DAVY.  449 

himself,  he  became  thoroughly  acquainted  with  che- 
mistry, and  well  versed  in  other  branches  of  natural 
philosophy,  beside  making  some  proficiency  in  geo- 
metry ;  but  he  never  cultivated  the  mathematical 
sciences,  except  that  I  recollect  his  telling  me  once, 
late  in  life,  of  his  intention  to  resume  the  study  of 
them,  as  he  had  begun  to  make  progress  in  crystallo- 
graphy. He  does  not  appear  to  have  given  any  early 
indications  of  superior  genius,  or  even  of  unusual 
quickness  ;  but  he  showed  all  along,  in  following  the 
bent  of  his  intellectual  taste,  the  perseverance,  the 
firm  purpose,  which  is  inseparable  from  a  capacity  of 
the  higher  order,  and  is  an  indispensable  condition,  as 
it  is  a  sure  pledge,  of  success  in  every  pursuit. 

It  must  be  observed  of  the  biographers  both  of  Davy 
and  Scheele,  that  they  seem  to  have  made  too  much 
of  the  difficulties  interposed  in  the  path  of  their  early 
studies  by  the  want  of  apparatus,  to  which  want,  and 
to  their  ingenious  contrivances  for  finding  substitutes, 
a  good  deal  of  their  experimental  skill  has  been  ascribed. 
It  should  be  recollected  that  an  apothecary 's  shop  is 
not  by  any  means  so  destitute  of  helps,  especially  for 
the  study  of  chemistry,  as  a  workshop  of  almost  any 
other  description,  Crucibles,  phials,  mortars,  galli- 
pots, scales  and  weights,  liquid  measures,  acids,  al- 
kalis, and  neutral  salts,  are  all  to  be  found  there,  even 
if  a  furnace  and  still  be  not  a  necessary  appendage. 
It  may  be  allowed  that  nothing  like  an  air-pump 
might  be  there  expected,  unless  cupping  chanced  to  be 
performed  by  the  druggist.  Accordingly  Davy  was 
glad  to  obtain,  in  a  case  of  surgical  instruments  from 
a  practitioner  on  board  a  French  vessel  wrecked  on 


450  DAVY. 

the  Cornish  coast,  to  whom  he  had  done  some  kind 
service,  the  means  of  making  some  approximation  to 
an  exhausting  engine. 

It  happened,  fortunately  for  him,  that  Gregory 
Watt,  youngest  son  of  the  great  engineer,  and  whom, 
having  had  the  happiness  of  knowing  him,  I  have  already 
mentioned,  came  to  reside  in  the  house  of  Davy's 
mother  at  Penzance,  where  he  was  ordered  to  pass 
the  winter  for  the  benefit  of  his  health.  Being  five 
years  older  than  the  young  chemist,  and  eminently 
accomplished  both  in  science  and  in  letters,  his  con- 
versation and  advice  was  a  great  advantage,  of  which 
Davy  gladly  availed  himself.  Another  accident  threw 
him  in  the  way  of  Mr.  Davies  Giddy,  a  cultivator  of 
natural  as  well  as  mathematical  science,  and  he,  find- 
ing that  Davy  had  been  devoting  himself  to  chemistry, 
gave  him  the  use  of  an  excellent  library,  and  intro- 
duced him  to  Dr.  Beddoes,  who  was  then  engaged  in 
forming  an  establishment  called  by  him  the  Pneumatic 
Institution,  for  the  medical  use  of  gases,  as  well  as  for 
further  investigating  their  properties.  At  the  head  of 
this  he  placed  his  new  friend,  who  was  thus  at  once 
enabled  to  pursue  his  scientific  vocation  as  a  profession, 
and  did  not  long  delay  giving  to  the  world  a  proof 
of  his  ingenuity,  by  the  publication  of  a  theory  of 
'  Light  and  Heat,'  fanciful  no  doubt,  and  ill-digested, 
containing  much  groundless  and  imaginary,  and  even 
absurd  speculation,  but  disclosing  great  information 
arid  no  inconsiderable  cleverness.  It  was  published  in 
a  periodical  work  edited  by  Dr.  Beddoeg,  called  '  Con- 
tributions to  Medical  and  Physical  Science  ;'  and  to  the 
same  work  he  soon  after  gave  a  paper  upon  the '  Nitrous 


DAVY.  451 

Oxide/  on  the  respiration  of  which  he  had  made  some 
very  curious  experiments.  The  singular  circumstances 
which  he  thus  ascertained,  gave  him  considerable  re- 
putation as  an  experimentalist,  and  he  was  soon  after 
(180*2)  chosen  first  Assistant  Lecturer  in  Chemistry,  by 
the  Royal  Institution  of  London,  and  the  year  follow- 
ing, sole  Chemical  Professor.  Nor  must  the  boldness 
which  he  had  shown  in  conducting  his  experiments  be 
passed  over.  He  had  exposed  himself  to  serious  hazard 
in  breathing  some  most  deleterious  gases,  and  both  in 
his  trials  of  gaseous  mixtures,  and  in  his  galvanic  pro- 
cesses, he  had  made  many  narrow  escapes  from  the 
danger  of  violent  explosions. 

It  is  a  singular  fact  that,  although  his  attention  had 
never  been  confined  to  his  favourite  science,  for  he  had 
studied  literature,  and  especially  poetry  to  the  extent 
of  writing  tolerable  verses,  yet  he  was  of  so  uncouth  an 
exterior  and  manners,  notwithstanding  an  exceedingly 
handsome  and  expressive  countenance,  that  Count 
Rumford,  a  leading  director  of  the  Institution,  on  see- 
ing him  for  the  first  time,  expressed  no  little  disap- 
pointment, even  regretting  the  part  he  had  taken  in 
promoting  the  engagement.  But  these  feelings  were 
of  short  duration.  Davy  was  soon  sufficiently  human- 
ized, and  even  refined,  to  appear  before  a  London  and  a 
fashionable  audience  of  both  sexes  with  great  advan- 
tage, and  his  first  course  of  lectures  had  unbounded 
and  unparalleled  success.  This  he  owed,  certainly, 
to  the  more  superficial  accomplishments  of  good  and 
lively  language,  an  agreeable  delivery,  and,  above  all, 
an  ingenuous  enthusiasm  for  his  subject  which  in- 
formed and  quickened  his  whole  discourse.  But  the 


452  DAVY. 

fame  which  he  thus  acquired  would  have  been  of 
limited  extent  and  of  short  duration,  had  his  reliance 
only  been  upon  the  fickle  multitude  whom  such  quali- 
ties can  please.  The  first  consequences  of  his  success 
in  the  line  of  mere  exhibition  were  unfavourable,  and 
threatened  to  be  fatal ;  for  he  was  led  away  by  the 
plaudits  of  fashion,  and  must  needs  join  in  its  frothy, 
feeble  current.  For  a  while  he  is  remarked  to  have 
shown  the  incongruous  combination  of  science  and 
fashion,  which  form  a  most  imperfect  union,  and  pro- 
duce a  compound  of  no  valuable  qualities,  somewhat 
resembling  the  nitrous  gas  on  which  he  experimented 
earlier  in  life,  having  an  intoxicating  effect  on  the 
party  tasting  it,  and  a  ludicrous  one  on  all  beholders. 
They  who  have  recorded  this  transformation,  while 
they  lament  the  substitution  of  anything  for  "  the 
natural  candour  and  warmth  of  feeling  which  had 
singularly  won  upon  the  acquaintance  of  his  early  life," 
add  most  justly  that  the  weakness  which  they  describe 
never  "  cooled  his  regard  for  his  family  and  former 
friends."  I  can  vouch  for  the  change,  which  was 
merely  superficial,  being  of  very  short  duration ;  and 
it  is  pleasing  to  add  that,  even  while  it  lasted,  there 
was  none  of  that  most  offensive  of  all  the  effects  pro- 
duced by  such  a  transition  state  to  be  found  in  his  con- 
versation ;  he  never  for  a  moment  appeared  to  be 
ashamed  of  his  great  vocation,  nor  to  shun  the  fullest 
discussion  of  the  subject  on  which  he  was  at  home, 
in  order  to  deal  with  topics  to  which  he  was  of  neces- 
sity a  stranger.  I  am  speaking,  too,  of  his  habits  long 
before  his  great  discoveries  ;  there  would  have  been 
little  ground  for  praise,  any  more  than  for  wonder, 


BAVY.  453 

that  the  discoverer  of  the  alkaline  metals  should 
be  willing  to  have  the  conversation  roll  upon  che- 
mistry and  galvanism  ;  but  the  time  to  which  I 
have  been  referring  was  when  his  fame  rested  chiefly 
upon  the  success  of  his  lectures  to  mixed  companies  in 
Albemarle  Street,  and  to  lovers  of  agriculture  in 
Sackville  Street,  where  the  Board  had  chosen  him 
their  Chemical  Professor. 

If  his  situation  at  the  Royal  Institution  had  exposed 
him  to  the  risk  which  we  have  seen  he  escaped,  it  had 
put  him  in  possession  of  invaluable  helps  to  his  pur- 
suits. He  had  now  an  ample  command  of  books ;  he 
had  assistants  under  him  ;  above  all,  he  had  an  un- 
limited power  of  collecting  and  of  making  apparatus ; 
his  income  was  secure ;  and  his  time  was  at  his  own 
disposal.  He  failed  not  to  avail  himself  diligently  of 
these  great  advantages  ;  and  although  he  lived  a  good 
deal  in  society,  where  he  was  always  a  welcome  guest, 
his  principal  relaxations  during  the  rest  of  his  life  con- 
sisted in  shooting,  and  especially  in  fishing,  of  which 
he  was  from  his  earliest  years  passionately  fond.  The 
intercourse  he  had  held  with  Southey  and  with  Cole- 
ridge had  given  him  not  only  his  taste  for  poetry,  but 
an  extraordinary  love  of  rural  walks,  in  the  peaceful 
solitude  of  which  I  have  heard  him  say,  answering  the 
ordinary  and  obvious  objections  of  those  who  are  not 
smitten  with  the  love  of  the  "  Angle,"  the  gratifica- 
tions of  that  propensity  very  mainly  consist. 

In  1801  he  made  his  first  important  discovery,  that 
by  which  he  ascertained  the  true  nature  of  galvanic 
action.  That  this  was  connected  with  electric  or  che- 
mical affinity  had  been  generally  suspected,  though  de- 


L>*  TIAVT. 

nied  ty  Voita,  the  a«thor  of  the  pik,  and  indeed  of  the 
science  which,  like  the  continent  of  America,  has  borne 


of  a  liqmoi  copahk  of  decomposing  one  or  other  of  the 
both  supposed  to  be  equally  necessary  to  the 

of  the  electric  stream. 

which  were  numerous  and  admirably  devised 
laboriously  conducted,  now  showed  that  the 
of  two  metals  was  not  required  to  pr 
the  electricity.  One  metal,,  and  one  other  substance 
•paiated  firom  M^  with  a  fluid  acting  upon  either  the 
metal  or  the  substance;  or  a  metal  separating  two  fluids, 

1  C7 

oar  of  which  acts  upon  k ;  nay,  one  metal  exposed  to 
the  sMne  ftud,  but  acted  upon  differently  on  its  diffe- 
ioot  sides  or  Jiifatm  by  the  fluid's  strength  differing 
on  the  diflmnt  sides  ;  or  one  and  the  same  metal 
in  difi»g»t  pieces  plunged  into  the  same  fluid,  at 
an  interval  of  time — were  all  found  to  be  combina- 
tion which  gave  the  galvanic  (or  voltaic)  shock,  the 
•one  in  kind,  though  varying  in  _ih.  In  all 

these  cases,  and  m  every  production  of  electricity 
W  the  roltaic  process,  the  chemical  action  of  a  fluid 

oonco- 


Durin«:  tike  fiwe  following  years  Davy  continued  his 
i;  and  in  the  autumn  of  1806  he  coinniu- 
to  the  Boyal  Society  his  discovery  of  the  con- 
ends  of  the  electric  circle 


VY. 

and  the  different  component  parts  of  bodies  submitted 
to  the  action  of  the  fluid.  Nothing  could  be  more 
singular  and  unexpected  than  the  laws  which  he  now 
found  to  regulate  this  operation,  nor  anything  which 
promised  more  clearly  a  rich  harvest  of  new  discoveries 
The  effect  of  the  current,  whether  of  common  or  gal- 
vanic electricity,  in  decomposing  substances  through 
which  it  passed,  had  been  before  known.  Thus  water 
had  been  resolved  into  its  two  elements  by  the  passing 
of  the  fluid  through  wires  whose  points  were  opposite 
to  each  other  at  a  small  distance.  Nicholson  had  first 
made  this  happy  application  of  the  voltaic  pile;  but 
he  and  others  had  been  much  disturbed  by  finding 
other  substances  produced  as  well  as  oxygen  and  hy- 
drogen gases.  This  perplexing  circumstance  was  care- 
fully investigated  by  Davy  ;  and  he  showed  by  a  mas- 
terly course  of  experiments,  that  these  substances  owed 
their  origin  entirely  to  impurities  in  the  water. 
When  it  was  quite  pure,  they  wholly  disappeared. 
But  he  now  proceeded  farther,  and  found  that  when 
the  electric  current  is  thus  passed,  there  is  always  a 
separation  operated  differently  at  the  negative  and  at 
the  positive  part  of  the  current.  The  oxygen  of  the 
water,  for  example,  was  accumulated  round  the  positive 
wire  ;  its  hydrogen  round  the  negative.  So  when  a 
neutral  salt  was  subjected  to  the  process,  its  acid  was 
evolved  round  the  positive ;  its  alkaline  base  round  the 
negative  wire.  The  same  thing  happened  when  a  me- 
tallic oxide  was  operated  upon ;  its  oxygen  went  to  the 
positive,  its  metallic  base  to  the  negative  side.  The 
oxygen,  or  the  acid  with  the  oxygen,  went  to  the  for- 
mer ;  the  particles  of  the  base  were  transferred  to  the 


456  DAVY. 

latter,  along  with  the  hydrogen  of  the  water  in  which 
the  solution  was  made.  But  a  still  more  extraordinary 
phenomenon  was  observed.  If  there  was  a  liquid  in- 
terposed between  the  two  poles  and  the  body  to  be  de- 
composed, the  acid,  or  the  oxygen,  was  found  to  pass 
through  that  interposed  liquid  to  the  positive  pole,  the 
hydrogen  and  the  matter  of  the  base  to  the  negative 
pole,  and  without  acting  upon  the  substance  of  the  in- 
terposed liquid.  Thus  suppose  a  vegetable  colour 
tinging  the  water  in  an  intermediate  cup,  acid  will 
pass  through  it  without  reddening  it,  and  alkali  with- 
out making  it  green.  Nay,  an  acid  will  pass  through 
an  alkaline  solution,  or  an  alkali  through  an  acid, 
without  uniting  in  either  case  to  form  a  neutral  salt, 
unless  the  neutral  compound  is  insoluble,  for  in  that 
case  it  falls  to  the  bottom.  But  muriatic  acid  will 
pass  through  a  solution  of  potash,  having  been  carried 
over  from  a  solution  of  common  sea  salt  by  the  electrical 
current,  or  soda  will  pass  through  muriatic  acid  in  the 
same  circumstances,  without  forming  in  the  former 
case  nitrate  of  potash,  or  in  the  latter  nitrate  of  soda. 
It  was  also  found  that  the  exception  in  the  case  of  in- 
soluble compounds  arises  from  the  mechanical  effect  of 
their  insolubility,  their  falling  to  the  bottom ;  for  if 
supported,  as  it  were,  on  threads  of  any  convenient 
substance  passing  through  the  intermediate  liquid  in  the 
line  of  the  electric  current,  the  acid  or  alkali  will  pass 
through  that  liquid.  Thus  films  of  asbestos  conduct- 
ing the  electric  stream,  enabled  magnesia  or  lime  to 
pass ;  and  so  were  the  particles  of  metal  carried  over 
when  separated  by  the  operation  from  nitrate  of 
silver. 


DAVY.  457 

It  thus  appeared  certain  that  an  indissoluble  con- 
nexion exists  between  chemical  and  electric  action,  if 
indeed  it  was  not  even  proved  that  chemical  affinity 
and  electricity  are  identical.  The  science  of  Electro- 
chemistry, at  all  events,  now  arose  out  of  Davy's  dis- 
coveries, and  he  is  entitled  to  be  regarded  as  its 
founder. 

It  may  easily  be  conceived  that  these  important 
truths  excited  generally  the  anxious  attention  of  philo- 
sophers. The  French  National  Institute,  greatly  to 
their  honour,  though  the  war  between  the  two  coun- 
tries never  raged  more  fiercely  than  now,  and  France 
never  reached  a  higher  pitch  of  military  glory,  crowned 
Davy  with  the  first  honour  founded  by  Napoleon  for 
scientific  desert.  But  it  was  even  more  honourable  to 
the  philosopher,  that  great  as  his  discoveries  had  been, 
expectation  was  high  of  the  still  more  important  results 
which  must  soon  come  from  the  discovery  of  so  new  a 
law  of  electrical  and  chemical  action.  I  can  well  re- 
member that  we  used  in  discussing  the  subject  to  look 
forward  with  perfect  confidence  to  the  analysis  of  the 
bodies  which  had  hitherto  proved  the  most  stubborn, 
and  expected  soon  to  find  the  fixed  alkalis,  and  even 
the  alkaline  earths,  shown  to  be  oxides,  as  by  some 
very  imperfect  experiments  they  had  at  one  time  been 
supposed  to  be  proved,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the 
metallic  buttons  found  at  the  bottom  of  the  crucible  in 
which  their  reduction  had  been  attempted  by  carbon- 
aceous or  phosphoric  re-agents,  had  come  from  the 
black  lead  in  the  pot.  Nor  must  we  omit  to  mention 
the  truly  candid  and  magnanimous  proceeding  of  Davy, 
so  worthy  of  a  philosopher,  in  making  public,  with  the 
fullest  details,  his  proceedings,  by  which  it  was  mani- 


458  DAVY. 

fest  he  intended  still  to  persevere  till  he  should  make 
other  discoveries.  Any  one  possessed  of  a  strong  bat- 
tery, deeply  reflecting  on  the  paper  of  autumn  1806, 
and  perceiving  that  the  positive  wire  had  such  a 
strong  attraction  for  oxygen  as  to  take  it  from  metallic 
oxides,  reducing  them  to  their  reguline  state,  might 
well  have  bethought  him  of  subjecting  the  alkalis  to 
his  machine ;  and  he  would  then  have  had  the  fame, 
though,  in  truth,  Davy  would  have  had  the  merit,  of 
the  grand  discovery. 

That  discovery  was  not  long  delayed.  About  a  year 
after  the  former,  that  is  in  October  1807,  after  in  vain 
endeavouring  to  decompose  the  alkalis  when  mixed 
with  water,  for  he  then  only  could  decompose  that 
fluid,  he  exposed  them  in  the  dry  state ;  that  is,  made 
liquid  by  fusion,  without  any  other  substance  but  heat 
to  dissolve  them — and,  to  his  great  delight,  he  found, 
as  he  had  a  right  to  expect,  that  the  process  of  deoxi- 
dation  proceeded  by  the  positive  wire  attracting  the 
oxygen,  while  globules  of  a  metallic  substance  were 
found  at  the  negative  wire.  The  great  attraction  of  this 
metal  for  oxygen  made  it  impossible  to  keep  it  either 
in  the  air  or  in  water.  It  burnt  spontaneously  in  the 
air  and  became  alkali — it  decomposed  water  in  like 
manner,  and  formed  an  alkaline  solution.  The  two 
fixed  alkalis  both  yielded  in  this  process  metallic  bases  ; 
but  that  of  potash  had  alone  the  quality  of  combustion 
at  the  temperature  of  150°,  and  it  was,  though  a  metal, 
lighter  than  water  in  the  proportion  of  97  to  100. 
When  thrown  into  water  in  the  air,  it  detonates  and 
burns  with  violence,  forming  a  solution  of  potash. 
The  metal  from  soda  is  still  lighter,  being  to  water  as 
86  to  100 ;  but  it  does  not  so  easily  unite  with  oxygen, 


DAVY.  459 

though  it  decomposes  water  with  a  hissing  noise,  and 
makes  with  it  a  solution  of  soda.  To  these  metals  the 
discoverer  gave  the  name  of  potassium  and  sodium.  The 
glory  of  having  now  made  the  greatest  discovery  of  the 
age  was  plainly  Davy's ;  and  it  was  not  the  result  of 
happy  accident,  but  of  laborious  investigation,  conducted 
with  a  skill  and  a  patience  equally  admirable,  and 
according  to  the  strict  rules  of  the  soundest  philo- 
sophy. He  had  indeed  begun  by  discovering  the  laws 
of  electrical  action,  and  had  thus  formed  the  means  of 
his  new  discovery,  which  was  the  fruit  of  the  science 
he  had  founded,  as  Newton's  theory  of  dynamics  and 
of  astronomy  was  the  fruit  of  the  calculus  which  he 
had  so  marvellously  discovered  when  hardly  arrived  at 
man's  estate. 

The  wonder  excited  by  the  strange  bodies  with 
which  philosophers  were  thus  brought  acquainted,  was 
of  course  in  part  owing  to  their  novel  and  singular 
properties,  which  formed  no  part  of  the  discoverer's 
merits,  yet  might  be  reckoned  as  the  perquisites  of  his 
genius.  His  praise  would  have  been  the  same  if  in- 
stead of  at  once  discovering  the  alkalis  to  be  oxides, 
and  the  metal  forming  the  base  to  be  one  lighter  than 
water,  or  bees'-wax  or  box-wood,  and  the  other  to  burn 
unheated  in  the  open  air,  he  had  only  shown  those 
salts  to  be  oxides  of  well-known  metals.  Yet,  as  his 
investigation  had  been  crowned  with  the  discovery  of 
strange  substances,  metallic,  and  yet  like  no  other 
metals,  we  justly  admire  the  more,  and  the  more 
thank  him  for  his  double  service  rendered  to  science. 

The  long  labour  thus  ending  in  so  mighty  a  result, 
and  the  excitement  naturally  enough  produced  in  an 
irritable  habit,  threw  him  into  an  illness  of  a  most 


460  DAVY. 

serious  complexion.  For  many  days  he  lay  between 
life  and  death  in  a  low  nervous  fever,  and  it  was  not  till 
the  following  March  that  he  could  resume  his  inquiries 
into  the  composition  of  the  alkaline  earths:  It  is  to 
the  credit  of  chemists  that  no  one  deemed  himself  at 
liberty  to  interfere  with  him,  as  any  one  might  now 
by  only  following  his  footsteps  have  done,  and  thus 
analysed  these  earthy  bodies.  He  himself,  early  in 
the  summer  following  his  illness,  had  reduced  lime, 
magnesia,  strontites,  and  barytes.  In  these  experiments 
he  was  greatly  assisted  by  the  ingenious  contrivances 
which  Gay-Lussac  and  Thenard  had  recently  used 
for  the  reduction  of  the  alkaline  oxides.  The  metals 
thus  discovered  were  not  any  wise  light  or  fusible  like 
potassium  and  sodium ;  but  they  burnt  with  a  bright 
light  on  being  exposed  to  considerable  degrees  of  heat, 
and  they  decomposed  water ;  and  either  by  their  com- 
bustion, or  their  exhibition  to  water,  they  reproduced 
the  alkaline  earths. 

A  number  of  other  experimental  researches  led 
Davy  to  new  and  curious  observations  on  the  constitu- 
tion and  habits  of  different  substances.  But  we  need 
only  mention  the  most  important  of  these,  for  it  was  a 
discovery  very  unexpected  both  by  himself  and  the 
chemical  world  at  large.  The  acid  hitherto  called  oxy- 
genated muriatic,  or  oxymuriatic,  on  account  of  its 
powerful  acid  qualities,  had  been  always  from  thence 
supposed  to  contain  an  excess  of  oxygen,  believed  to  be 
the  acidifying  principle.  At  last  Gay-Lussac  and 
Thenard,  in  1809,  concluded  from  some  experimental 
researches,  or  rather  they  suspected,  that  it  might  be  a 
simple  and  elementary  substance  ;  but  they  on  the  whole 
still  inclined  to  think  it  contained  oxygen  according  to 


DAVY.  461 

the  old  and  received  opinion.  Davy  now  found,  by  a 
course  of  satisfactory  experiments  which  have  fixed  the 
opinions  of  all  philosophers  on  the  subject,  that  the 
suspicion  of  those  eminent  men  was  well  founded ;  that 
the  oxymuriatic  acid  is  a  simple  substance,  containing 
no  oxygen ;  that  it  unites  with  oxygen  to  form  an 
acid,  which  forms  with  alkalis  the  detonating  salts 
hitherto  called  oxymuriates,  as  being  supposed  to 
contain  oxymuriatic  acid  combined  with  alkaline  bases  ; 
and  finally,  that  with  hydrogen  it  forms  the  acid  long 
and  well  known  as  the  muriatic  or  marine.  To  the 
oxymuriatic  acid  he  gave  the  name  of  chlorine  from 
its  green  colour,  and  to  common  muriatic  acid  that  of 
hydrochlorine.  The  union  of  chlorine  and  oxygen  he 
calls  chlorine  acid,  and  its  compounds,  of  course, 
chlorates.  This  is  justly  reckoned  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  Davy's  many  brilliant  discoveries. 

It  remains  to  make  mention  of  the  valuable  present 
which  this  great  philosopher  offered  to  humanity — his 
safety-lamp.  The  dreadful  ravages  made  on  human 
life  by  the  fire-damp  explosions — that  is,  the  burning 
of  hydrogen  gas  in  mines — had  often  attracted  the 
notice  of  both  the  mine-owner  and  the  philanthropist. 
Various  inventions  had  been  fallen  upon  to  give  light 
in  those  recesses  of  the  earth  with  so  low  a  degree  of 
heat  as  should  be  insufficient  to  explode  the  gas.  One 
of  them  was  a  series  of  flints  playing  by  machinery 
against  each  other  so  as  to  give  a  dim  light ;  but  this 
had  very  little  success  ;  it  was  clumsy,  and  it  was  not  ef- 
fectual so  as  to  cause  its  use  by  miners.  The  ventilation 
of  the  galleries  by  furnaces  and  even  by  air-pumps  was 
chiefly  relied  on  as  a  preventive ;  but  gas  would  collect 


462  DAVY. 

in  spite  of  all  preventives,  and  the  destruction  of  a 
hundred  or  more  lives  was  not  an  unusual  calamity. 
Davy  about  the  year  1815  turned  his  attention  to  the 
subject,  and  after  fully  ascertaining  that  carburetted 
hydrogen  is  the  cause  of  the  fire-damp,  and  finding  in 
what  proportions  it  must  be  mixed  with  air  in  order  to 
explode  (between  six  and  fourteen  times  its  bulk),  he 
was  surprised  to  observe,  in  the  course  of  his  experi- 
ments made  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  how  the 
inflammation  takes  place,  that  the  flames  will  not  pass 
through  tubes  of  a  certain  length  or  smallness  of  bore. 
He  then  found  that  if  the  length  be  diminished,  and  the 
bore  also  reduced,  the  flames  will  not  pass ;  and  he  fur- 
ther found  that  by  multiplying  the  number  of  the  tubes, 
their  length  may  safely  be  diminished  to  hardly  any- 
thing, provided  their  bore  be  proportionally  lessened. 
Hence  it  appeared  that  gauze  of  wire,  whose  meshes  were 
only  one  twenty-second  of  an  inch  diameter,  stopped 
the  flame,  and  prevented  the  explosion.  The  candle 
or  lamp  being  wrapt  in  such  gauze,  and  all  access  to 
the  external  air  prevented  except  through  the  meshes, 
it  is  found  that  the  lamp  may  be  safely  introduced  into 
a  gallery  filled  with  fire-damp ;  a  feeble  blue  flame  will 
take  place  inside  the  gauze,  but  no  explosion,  even  if 
the  wire  be  heated  nearly  red. 

The  theory  is,  but  it  seems  very  questionable,  that  the 
conducting  power  of  the  wire  carrying  off  the  heat  pre- 
vents a  sufficient  quantity  reaching  the  explosive  com- 
pound. Subsequent  inquiries  seem  to  prove  that 
although  in  a  still  atmosphere  of  explosive  gas  the  lamp 
is  a  perfect  protection,  yet  it  does  not  prevent  a  cur- 
rent of  gas  from  penetrating  to  the  flame  and  exploding. 


DAVY.  463 

It  is  attempted  to  guard  against  this  by  interposing  a 
tin  shield  or  screen  ;  but  a  current  very  often  in  mining 
operations  arises  before  any  notice  can  be  given.  Had 
Davy's  life  and  health  been  prolonged,  he  might  have 
further  improved  his  invention  so  as  to  meet  this  ob- 
jection. He  certainly  never  was  fully  convinced  of  its 
force,  as  I  know  from  having  discussed  the  subject 
with  him  ;  and  no  doubt  the  testimony  of  so  great  an 
engineer  as  the  late  Mr.  Buddie,  given  before  a  Par- 
liamentary Committee  to  whom  the  examination  of 
this  important  subject  was  referred,  deserves  great 
attention.  He  positively  affirmed  that  "  having  seen 
1000,  and  sometimes  1500  safety-lamps  in  daily  use, 
and  in  all  possible  varieties  of  explosive  mixtures,  he 
had  never  known  one  solitary  instance  of  an  explosion." 
As  for  the  lamentable  accidents  which  continue  to 
happen,  we  can  scarcely  doubt  that  they  originate  in 
the  dreadful  carelessness  of  their  own  and  of  other 
men's  lives,  which  seems  to  be  engendered  in  those 
who  are  habitually  exposed  to  great  danger.  That 
they  themselves  are  the  first  to  suffer  for  it,  can  only 
suppress  the  outward  expression  of  the  feelings  which 
recklessness  like  this  is  fitted  to  produce. 

It  redounds  to  the  credit  of  the  north  country  mine- 
owners  that  in  1817  they  invited  the  inventor  of  the 
Lamp  to  a  public  entertainment,  and  presented  him 
with  a  service  of  plate  of  two  thousand  pounds  value. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  he  had  generously  given 
to  the  public  the  whole  benefit  of  his  invention,  and  thus 
sacrificed  the  ample  profit  which  a  patent  must  have 
enabled  him  to  acquire  for  himself. 

Davy  had  as  early  as  1806  been  chosen  a  foreign 
associate  of  the  French  Institute.  In  1812  he  received 


464  DAVY. 

from  the  Regent  the  honour  of  knighthood.  About 
the  same  time  he  married  Mrs.  Apreece,  a  lady  whose 
ample  fortune  was  by  far  the  least  valuable  part  of  her 
accomplishments — a  person  of  great  virtue,  admirable 
talents,  and  extensive  information.  Of  this  marriage 
there  has  been  no  issue.  In  October,  1813,  he  published 
his  '  Elements  of  Chemical  Philosophy,' — a  hasty  and 
even  somewhat  crude  work,  but  abounding,  as  what- 
ever he  wrote  was  sure  to  abound,  in  important  and 
ingenious  observations.  The  following  year  appeared 
his  'Elements  of  Agricultural  Chemistry,'  of  which 
the  same  general  character  may  be  given.  In  1816 
he  was  created  a  baronet. 

Napoleon  had,  during  the  war,  given  him  permis- 
sion to  visit  the  extinguished  volcanoes  in  Dauvergne, 
and  to  pass  through  France  towards  Naples,  Vesuvius 
being  then  in  a  state  of  eruption.  His  reception  at 
Paris  was  very  warm,  hut  unfortunately  he  failed  to 
retain  the  affection  of  his  colleagues  in  the  Institute. 
Their  complaint  against  him  for  having  interfered,  as 
they  termed  it,  with  their  recent  discovery  of  iodine, 
on  which,  having  obtained  a  specimen,  he  chose, 
naturally  enough,  to  make  experiments,  appears  incom- 
parably absurd.  He  had  never  complained  of  their  in- 
terference, during  his  illness  in  1807,  with  the  process 
of  deoxygenation  by  means  of  galvanic  action  ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  had  availed  himself  thankfully  of  the 
lights  shed  by  their  ingenuity  on  his  process,  and  had 
immediately  after  made  new  discoveries,  at  which  they 
had  failed  to  arrive.  It  may  be  more  true  that  his 
manners  were  unpleasing ;  and,  as  ever  happens  when 
a  great  man  is  also  a  shy  one,  he  was  charged  with 
being  supercilious  and  cold.  They  who  knew  him 


DAVY.  465 

will  at  once  acquit  him  of  any  such  charge ;  but  he 
was  painfully  timid  by  nature  when  mixing  with  so- 
ciety ;  and  hence  the  mistake  of  our  neighbours,  who, 
though  great  critics  in  manner,  are  far  from  being 
infallible,  and  are  exceedingly  susceptible — fully  as  sus- 
ceptible as  he  was  shy.  Possibly  they  looked  down 
upon  him  in  consequence  of  a  peculiarity  which  he  no 
doubt  had.  He  was  fond  of  poetry,  and  an  ardent  ad- 
mirer of  beauty  in  natural  scenery.  But  of  beauty  in 
the  arts  he  was  nearly  insensible.  They  used  to  say 
in  Paris  that  on  seeing  the  Louvre,  he  exclaimed  that 
one  of  its  statues  was  "  a  beautiful  stalactite ;"  and  it 
is  possible  that  this  callousness,  or  this  jest,  which- 
ever it  might  be,  excited  the  scorn  or  the  humour  of 
men  not  more  sincere  lovers  of  sculpture  than  himself, 
or  more  able  judges  of  its  merits,  but  better  disposed  to 
conceal  their  want  of  taste  or  want  of  skill. 

When  Sir  Joseph  Banks  terminated  his  long  and 
respectable  course  in  1820,  Davy  was  unanimously 
chosen  to  succeed  him  as  President  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety, and  continued  to  fill  that  distinguished  office  un- 
til, his  health  having  failed,  he  resigned  it  in  1827,  and 
was  succeeded  by  his  early  patron  Davies  Giddy.  To- 
wards the  end  of  1825  he  had  an  apoplectic  seizure, 
which,  though  slight  (if  any  such  attack  can  be  so 
called),  left  a  paralytic  weakness  behind,  and  he  was 
ordered  to  go  abroad  in  search  of  a  milder  and  dryer 
climate.  He  returned  home  in  the  following  autumn, 
not  very  ill,  but  not  much  restored  in  strength,  and 
unable  to  continue  his  scientific  labours.  The  work 
on  fly-fishing  called  '  Salmoriia '  was  the  amusement 
of  those  hours  in  which,  comparatively  feeble,  his  mind 

2  H 


466  DAVY. 

yet  exerted  what  energy  remained  to  it,  on  the  favourite 
pursuit  of  his  leisure.  It  contains  both  curious  in- 
formation on  natural  history,  and  many  passages  of 
lively  and  even  poetical  description.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  many  things  in  his  latest  work,  '  Last  Days 
of  a  Philosopher,'  which  he  wrote  in  the  year  after, 
when  he  again  went  to  the  continent  in  search  of 
health.  He  wintered  at  Rome,  and  in  May  1829,  on 
his  arrival  at  Geneva,  after  passing  the  day  in  excel- 
lent spirits,  and  dining  heartily  on  fish,  he  had  a  fatal 
apoplectic  attack  in  the  night,  and  died  early  in  the 
next  morning,  29th  May,  without  a  struggle. 

There  needs  no  further  remark,  no  general  charac- 
ter, to  present  a  portrait  of  this  eminent  individual. 
Whoever  has  perused  the  history  of  his  great  exploits 
in  science,  with  a  due  knowledge  of  the  subject,  has 
already  discerned  his  place,  highest  among  all  the 
great  discoverers  of  his  time.  Even  he  who  has  little 
acquaintance  with  the  subjects  of  his  labours  may  easily 
perceive  how  brilliant  a  reputation  he  must  have  en- 
joyed, and  how  justly ;  while  he  who  can  draw  no 
such  inference  from  the  facts  would  fail  to  obtain  any 
knowledge  of  Davy's  excellence  from  all  the  panegyrics 
with  which  general  description  could  encircle  his  name.* 

*  It  may  not  be  impertinent  to  relate  here  a  singular  proof  of 
the  admiration  in  which  his  name  was  held  by  his  countrymen,  and 
how  well  it  became  known  even  among  the  common  people.  Re- 
tiring home  one  evening  he  observed  an  ordinary  man  showing  the 
moon  and  a  planet  through  a  telescope  placed  upon  the  pavement. 
He  went  up  and  paid  his  pence  for  a  look.  But  no  such  thing  would 
they  permit.  "  That's  Sir  Humphry,"  ran  among  the  people  ;  and 
the  exhibitor,  returning  his  money,  said,  with  an  important  air  which 
exceedingly  delighted  him,  that  he  could  not  think  of  taking  any- 
thing from  a  brother  philosopher. 


(467) 


S    I   M    S    0    N. 


THE  wonderful  progress  that  has  been  made  in  the 
pure  mathematics  since  the  application  of  algebra  to 
geometry,  begun  by  Vieta  in  the  sixteenth,  completed 
by  Des  Cartes  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  espe- 
cially the  still  more  marvellous  extension  of  analytical 
science  by  Newton  and  his  followers,  since  the  inven- 
tion of  the  Calculus,  has,  for  the  last  hundred  years  and 
more,  cast  into  the  shade  the  methods  of  investiga- 
tion which  preceded  those  now  in  such  general  use, 
and  so  well  adapted  to  afford  facilities  unknown  while 
mathematicians  only  possessed  a  less  perfect  instrument 
of  investigation.  It  is  nevertheless  to  be  observed 
that  the  older  method  possessed  qualities  of  extra- 
ordinary value.  It  enabled  us  to  investigate  some 
kinds  of  propositions  to  which  algebraic  reasoning  is 
little  applicable  ;  it  always  had  an  elegance  peculiarly 
its  own ;  it  exhibited  at  each  step  the  course  which 
the  reasoning  followed,  instead  of  concealing  that 
course  till  the  result  came  out ;  it  exercised  the  facul- 
ties more  severely,  because  it  was  less  mechanical  than 
the  operations  of  the  analyst.  That  it  afforded  evi- 
dence of  a  higher  character,  more  rigorous  in  its  na- 
ture than  that  on  which  algebraic  reasoning  rests, 

•2  H2 


468  SIMSON. 

cannot  with  any  correctness  be  affirmed ;  both  are 
equally  strict ;  indeed  if  each  be  mathematical  in  its 
nature,  and  consist  of  a  series  of  identical  propositions 
arising  one  out  of  another,  neither  can  be  less  perfect 
than  the  other,  for  of  certainty  there  can  be  no  de- 
grees. Nevertheless  it  must  be  a  matter  of  regret— 
and  here  the  great  master  and  author  of  modern  mathe- 
matics has  joined  in  expressing  it — that  so  much  less 
attention  is  now  paid  to  the  Ancient  Geometry  than  its 
beauty  and  clearness  deserve ;  and  if  he  could  justly 
make  this  complaint  a  century  and  a  half  ago, 
when  the  old  method  had  but  recently,  and  only  in 
part,  fallen  into  neglect  and  disuse,  how  much  more 
are  such  regrets  natural  in  our  day,  when  the  very 
name  of  the  Ancient  Analysis  has  almost  ceased  to  be 
known,  and  the  beauties  of  the  Greek  Geometry  are 
entirely  veiled  from  the  mathematician's  eyes !  It  be- 
comes, for  this  reason,  necessary  that  the  life  of  Sim- 
son,  the  great  restorer  of  that  geometry,  should  be 
prefaced  by  some  remarks  upon  the  nature  of  the  sci- 
ence, in  order  that,  in  giving  an  account  of  his  works, 
we  may  say  his  discoveries,  it  may  not  appear  that  we 
are  recording  the  services  of  a  great  man  to  some  sci- 
ence different  from  the  mathematical. 

The  analysis  of  the  Greek  geometers  was  a  method 
of  investigation  of  peculiar  elegance,  and  of  no  incon- 
siderable power.  It  consisted  in  supposing  the  thing 
as  already  done,  the  problem  solved,  or  the  truth  of 
the  theorem  established  ;  and  from  thence  it  reasoned 
until  something  was  found,  some  point  reached,  by 
pursuing  steps  each  one  of  which  led  to  the  next,  and 
by  only  assuming  things  which  were  already  known 


S1MSON.  469 

being  ascertained  by  former  discoveries.  The  thing 
thus  found,  the  point  reached,  was  the  discovery  of 
something  which  could  by  known  methods  be  per- 
formed, or  of  something  which,  if  not  self-evident,  was 
already  by  former  discovery  proved  to  be  true ;  and  in 
the  one  case  a  construction  was  thus  found  by  which 
the  problem  was  solved,  in  the  other  a  proof  was  ob- 
tained that  the  theorem  was  true,  because  in  both  cases 
the  ultimate  point  had  been  reached  by  strictly  legiti- 
mate reasoning,  from  the  assumption  that  the  problem 
had  been  solved,  or  the  assumption  that  the  theorem 
was  true.  Thus,  if  it  were  required  from  a  given  point 
in  a  straight  line  given  by  position,  to  draw  a  straight 
line  which  should  be  cut  by  a  given  circle  in  segments, 
whose  rectangle  was  equal  to  that  of  the  segments  of 
the  diameter  perpendicular  to  the  given  line — the  thing 
is  supposed  to  be  done  ;  and  the  equality  of  the  rect- 
angles gives  a  proportion  between  the  segments  of  the 
two  lines,  such  that,  joining  the  point  supposed  to  be 
found,  but  not  found,  with  the  extremity  of  the  dia- 
meter, the  angle  of  that  line  with  the  line  sought  but 
not  found,  is  shown  by  similar  triangles  to  be  a  right 
angle,  i.  e.,  the  angle  in  a  semicircle.  Therefore  the 
point  through  which  the  line  must  be  drawn  is  the 
point  at  which  the  perpendicular  cuts  the  given  circle. 
Then,  suppose  the  point  given  through  which  the  line 
is  to  be  drawn,  if  we  find  that  the  curve  in  which  the 
other  points  are  situate  is  a  circle,  we  have  a  local 
theorem,  affirming  that,  if  lines  be  drawn  through  any 
point  to  a  line  perpendicular  to  the  diameter,  the  rect- 
angle made  by  the  segments  of  all  the  lines  cutting  the 
perpendicular  is  constant ;  and  this  theorem  would  be 


470  SIMSON. 

demonstrated  by  supposing  the  thing  true,  and  thus 
reasoning  till  we  find  that  the  angle  in  a  semicircle  is 
a  right  angle,  a  known  truth.  Lastly,  suppose  we 
change  the  hypothesis,  and  leave  out  the  position  of 
the  point  as  given,  and  inquire  after  the  point  in  the 
given  straight  line  from  which  a  line  being  drawn 
through  a  point  to  be  found  in  the  circle,  the  seg- 
ments will  contain  a  rectangle  equal  to  the  rect- 
angle under  the  perpendicular  segments — we  find  that 
one  point  answers  this  condition,  but  also  that  the 
problem  becomes  indeterminate  ;  for  every  line  drawn 
through  that  point  to  every  point  in  the  given  straight 
line  has  segments,  whose  rectangle  is  equal  to  that 
under  the  segments  of  the  perpendicular.  The  enun- 
ciation of  this  truth,  of  this  possibility  of  finding  such 
a  point  in  the  circle,  is  a  Porism.  The  Greek  geo- 
meters of  the  more  modern  school,  or  lower  age,  defined 
a  Porism  to  be  a  proposition  differing  from  a  local 
theorem  by  a  defect  or  defalcation  in  the  hypothesis ;  and 
accordingly  we  find  that  this  porism  is  derived  from  the 
local  theorem  formerly  given,  by  leaving  out  part  of 
the  hypothesis.  But  we  shall  afterwards  have  occa- 
sion to  observe  that  this  is  an  illogical  and  imperfect 
definition,  not  coextensive  with  the  thing  defined  ;  the 
above  proposition,  however,  answers  every  definition  of 
a  Porism. 

The  demonstration  of  the  theorem  or  of  the  construc- 
tion obtained  by  investigation  in  this  manner  of  pro- 
ceeding, is  called  synthesis,  or  composition,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  analysis,  or  the  process  of  investigation ; 
and  it  is  frequently  said  that  Plato  imported  the  whole 
system  in  the  visits  which  he  made,  like  Thales  of 
Miletus  and  Pythagoras,  to  study  under  the  Egyptian 


SIMSON.  471 

geometers,  and  afterwards  to  converse  with  Theodoras 
at  Gyrene,  and  the  Pythagorean  School  in  Italy.  But 
it  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  all  the  preceding  geo- 
meters had  worked  their  problems  and  theorems  at 
random ;  that  Thales  and  Pythagoras  with  their  dis- 
ciples, a  century  and  a  half  before  Plato,  and  Hip- 
pocrates, half  a  century  before  his  time,  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  analytical  method,  and  pursued  no 
systematic  plan  in  their  researches,  devoted  as  their 
age  was  to  geometrical  studies.  Plato  may  have  im- 
proved and  further  systematized  the  method,  as  he  was 
no  doubt  deeply  impressed  with  the  paramount  im- 
portance of  geometry,  and  even  inscribed  upon  the  gates 
of  the  Lyceum  a  prohibition  against  any  one  entering 
who  was  ignorant  of  it.  The  same  spirit  of  exaggera- 
tion which  ascribes  to  him  the  analytical  method,  has 
also  given  rise  to  the  notion  that  he  was  the  discoverer 
of  the  Conic  Sections ;  a  notion-  which  is  without  any 
truth  and  without  the  least  probability. 

Of  the  works  written  by  the  Greek  geometers  some 
have  come  down  to  us ;  some  of  the  most  valuable,  as 
the  '  Elements'  and  '  Data'  of  Euclid,  and  the  '  Conies' 
of  Apollonius.  Others  are  lost ;  but,  happily,  Pappus, 
a  mathematician  of  some  merit,  who  flourished  in  the 
Alexandrian  school  about  the  end  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, has  left  a  valuable  account  of  the  geometrical 
writings  of  the  elder  Greeks.  His  work  is  of  a  mis- 
cellaneous nature,  as  its  name,  'Mathematical  Col- 
lections,' implies  ;  and  excepting  a  few  passages,  it  has 
never  been  published  in  the  original  Greek.  Com- 
mandini,  of  Urbino,  made  a  translation  of  the  whole 
six  books  then  discovered;  the  first  has  never  been 


472  SIMSON. 

found,  but  half  the  second  being  in  the  Savilian  library 
at  Oxford,  was  translated  by  Wallis  a  century  later. 
Commandini's  translation,  with  his  learned  commen- 
tary, was  not  printed  before  his  death,  but  the  Duke  of 
Urbino  (Francesco  Maria)  caused  it  to  be  published 
in  1588,  at  Pisa,  and  a  second  edition  was  published 
at  Venice  the  next  year  :  a  fact  most  honourable  to 
that  learned  and  accomplished  age,  when  we  recollect 
how  many  years  Newton's  immortal  work  was  pub- 
lished before  it  reached  a  second  edition,  and  that  in 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries; 

The  two  first  books  of  Pappus  appear  to  have  been 
purely  arithmetical,  so  that  their  loss  is  little  to  be 
lamented.  The  eighth  is  on  mechanics,  and  the  other 
five  are  geometrical.  The  most  interesting  portion  is 
the  seventh ;  the  introduction  of  which,  addressed  to 
his  son  as  a  guide  of  his  geometrical  studies,  contains 
a  full  enumeration  of  the  works  written  by  the  Greek 
geometers,  and  an  account  of  the  particular  subjects 
which  each  treated,  in  some  instances  giving  a  summary 
of  the  propositions  themselves  with  more  or  less  ob- 
scurity, but  always  with  great  brevity.  Among  them 
was  a  work  which  excited  great  interest,  and  for  a 
long  time  baffled  the  conjectures  of  mathematicians, 
Euclid's  three  books  of  '  Porisms :'  of  these  we  shall 
afterwards  have  occasion  to  speak  more  fully.  His 
'Loci  ad  Superficiem,'  apparently  treating  of  curves 
of  double  curvature,  is  another,  the  loss  of  which  was 
greatly  lamented,  the  more  because  Pappus  has  given 
no  account  of  its  contents.  This  he  had  done  in  the 
case  of  the  '  Loci  Plani'  of  Apollonius.  Euclid's  four 
books  on  conic  sections  are  also  lost:  but  of  Apol- 


SIMSON.  473 

lonius's  eight  books  on  the  same  subject,  the  most 
important  of  the  whole  series,  the  '  Elements'  excepted, 
four  were  preserved,  and  three  more  were  discovered 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  His  Inclinations,  his 
Tactions  or  Tangencies,  his  sections  of  Space  and  of 
Ratio,  and  his  Determinate  section,  however  curious, 
are  of  less  importance  ;  all  of  them  are  lost. 

For  many  years  Commandini's  publication  of  the 
*  Collections'  and  his  commentary  did  not  lead  to  any 
attempt  at  restoring  the  lost  works  from  the  general 
account  given  by  Pappus.  Albert  Girard,  in  1634, 
informs  us  in  a  note  to  an  edition  of  Stevinus,  that  he 
had  restored  Euclid's  *  Porisms/  a  thing  eminently 
unlikely,  as  he  never  published  any  part  of  his  resto- 
ration, and  it  was  not  found  after  his  decease.  In 
1637,  Fermat  restored  the  '  Loci  Plani'  of  Apollonius, 
but  in  a  manner  so  little  according  to  the  ancient 
analysis,  that  we  cannot  be  said  to  approach  by  means 
of  his  labours  the  lost  book  on  this  subject.  In  1615, 
De  la  Hire,  a  lover  and  a  successful  cultivator  of  the 
ancient  method,  published  his  Conic  Sections,  but 
synthetically  treated ;  he  added  afterwards  other  works 
on  epicycloids  and  conchoids,  treated  on  the  analytical 
plan.  L'Hopital,  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
published  an  excellent  treatise  on  Conies,  but  purely 
algebraical.  At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, Viviani  and  Grandi  applied  themselves  to  the 
ancient  geometry ;  and  the  former  gave  a  conjectural 
restoration  (Divinatio)  of  Aristseus's  *  Loci  Solidi,'  the 
curves  of  the  second  or  Conic  order.  But  all  these 
attempts  were  exceedingly  unsuccessful,  and  the  world 
was  left  in  the  dark,  for  the  most  part,  on  the 


474  SIMSON. 

highly  interesting  subject  of  the  Greek  geometry.  We 
shall  presently  see  that  both  Fermat  and  Halley,  its 
most  successful  students,  had  made  but  an  incon- 
siderable progress  in  the  most  difficult  branches. 

How  entirely  the  academicians  of  France  were 
either  careless  of  those  matters,  or  ignorant,  or  both, 
appears  by  the  '  Encyclopedic ;  '  the  mathematical 
department  of  which  was  under  no  less  a  geometrician 
than  d'Alembert.  The  definition  there  given  of  ana- 
lysis makes  it  synonymous  with  algebra :  and  yet 
mention  is  made  of  the  ancient  writers  on  analysis, 
and  of  the  introduction  to  the  seventh  book  of  Pappus, 
with  only  this  remark,  that  those  authors  differ 
much  from  the  modern  analysts.  But  the  article 
'  Arithmetic'  (vol.  i.,  p.  677)  demonstrates  this 
ignorance  completely ;  and  that  Pappus's  celebrated 
introduction  had  been  referred  to  by  one  who  never 
read  it.  We  there  find  it  said,  that  Plato  is  sup- 
posed to  have  invented  the  ancient  analysis ;  that 
Euclid,  Apollonius,  and  others,  including  Pappus 
himself,  studied  it,  but  that  we  are  quite  ignorant 
of  what  it  was :  only  that  it  is  by  some  conceived  to 
have  resembled  our  algebra,  as  else  Archimedes  could 
never  have  made  his  great  geometrical  discoveries.  It 
is,  certainly,  quite  incredible  that  such  a  name  as 
d'Alembert's  should  be  found  affixed  to  this  statement, 
which  the  mere  reading  of  any  one  page  of  Pappus's 
books  must  have  shown  to  be  wholly  erroneous ;  and 
our  wonder  is  the  greater,  inasmuch  as  Simson's  ad- 
mirable restoration  of  Apollonius's  '  Loci  Plani'  had 
been  published  five  years  before  the  *  Encyclopedic ' 
appeared. 


SIMSON.  475 

Again,  in  the  '  Encyclopedic,'  the  word  Analysis, 
as  meaning  the  Greek  method,  and  not  algebra,  is  not 
even  to  be  found.  Nor  do  the  words  synthesis,  or 
composition,  inclinations,  tactions  or  tangencies  occur 
at  all  ;  and  though  Porisms  are  mentioned,  it  is 
only  to  show  the  same  ignorance  of  the  subject :  for 
that  word  is  said  to  be  synonymous  with  '  lemma/ 
because  it  is  sometimes  used  by  Pappus  in  the  sense 
of  subsidiary  proposition.  When  Clairault  wrote 
his  inestimable  work  on  curves  of  double  curvature, 
he  made  no  reference  whatever  to  Euclid's  '  Loci  ad 
Superficiem,'  much  less  did  he  handle  the  subject 
after  the  same  manner ;  he  deals,  indeed,  with  matters 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  Greek  geometry. 

Such  was  the  state  of  this  science  when  Robert 
Simson  first  applied  to  it  his  genius,  equally  vigorous 
and  undaunted,  with  the  taste  which  he  had  early 
imbibed  for  the  beauty,  the  simplicity,  and  the  close- 
ness of  the  ancient  analysis. 


ROBERT  SIMSON  was  born  on  the  14th  October  (O.S.), 
1687,  at  Kirton  Hill,  in  the  parish  of  Wester  Kilbride, 
in  Ayrshire.  His  father,  John  Simson,  was  a  mer- 
chant in  Glasgow :  his  grandfather,  Patrick,  was  mini- 
ster of  Renfrew,  and  Dean  of  the  Faculties  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Glasgow.  Having  been  deprived  at  the  Re- 
storation, on  being  reinstated  at  the  Revolution,  he 
accompanied  Principal  Carstairs  and  a  deputation  as  one 
of  the  Commissioners  from  the  Kirk  of  Scotland  to  ad- 
dress the  Sovereigns.  Being  a  man  of  fine  presence, 
it  is  related  that  the  Queen  and  her  maids  of  honour 
mistook  him  for  the  Principal,  till  the  King  set  them 


476  SIMSON. 

right  by  presenting  Carstairs  to  them.  The  grandson, 
Robert,  is  said  to  have  been  the  eldest  of  seventeen 
children;  and  the  estate  of  Kirton  Hill,  which  had 
been  in  the  family  for  several  generations,  being  incon- 
siderable, it  was  necessary  for  him,  as  well  as  his 
brothers,  to  be  placed  in  some  profession.  The  asser- 
tion is  made  in  one  account,  written  by  a  son  of 
Professor  Millar,  and  is  likely  to  be  correct,  that 
he  was  intended  for  the  medical  profession,  and 
being  sent  to  Leyden  studied  under  Boerhaave.  He 
appears  to  have  been  at  first  intended  for  the  Church, 
and  to  have  changed  his  plan.  Dr.  Traill,  however, 
says,  that  he  was  always  intended  for  the  Church,  and 
that  when  the  University  of  St.  Andrew's  in  1746 
wished  to  confer  on  him  a  degree,  they  made  him  a 
Doctor  of  Medicine,  because  he  had  studied  botany  in 
his  youth.  Nothing  can  be  more  improbable  than 
this  story ;  for  to  give  him  a  degree  they  had  only  to 
make  him  Doctor  of  Laws,  instead  of  taking  a  step 
which  for  ever  threw  discredit  upon  their  medical 
honours.  Mr.  Millar  must  have  heard  the  truth  from 
his  father  and  the  other  professors,  who  had  the 
honour  of  knowing  Dr.  Simson  personally,  and  never 
could  have  imagined  or  invented  the  circumstance  of 
his  studying  under  Boerhaave.* 

Of  his  early  years  we  know  little ;  but  that  he  was 
always  extremely  fond  of  reading  is  certain ;  and  he 


*  The  account  which  I  have  seen  was  in  the  late  Earl  of  Buchan's 
possession,  and  was  extended  by  matters  collected  when  he  himself 
studied  at  Glasgow.  It  seems  by  the  mathematical  appearance  of  it 
to  have  come  from  James  Millar,  himself  one  of  the  Professors. 


SIMSON.  477 

must  have  had  a  considerable  turn  for  mechanical  pur- 
suits if  the  tradition  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Kirton 
Hill  be  well  founded,  which  ascribes  to  him  the  mak- 
ing, or  at  least  designing  and  placing  a  dial  of  a  curious 
form  (which  I  have  seen)  on  a  neatly  ornamented  pe- 
destal in  the  garden  of  his  father's  house.  At  the  usual 
early  age  of  matriculation  in  Scotland,  he  was  sent  to 
the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  he  had  there  made  con- 
siderable progress  in  his  studies  before  the  love  of  mathe- 
matical pursuits  appeared  to  possess  him.  His  atten- 
tion was  directed  to  theology,  to  logic,  to  Oriental 
learning  ;  and  in  the  latter  he  had  made  such  progress, 
that  a  relation  who  taught  the  class  having  fallen  ill, 
Sim  son  easily  supplied  his  place  for  part  of  a  session, 
the  Scottish  academical  year.  It  was  while  engaged 
in  theological  studies  that  the  mathematics  first  seized 
hold  of  his  mind.  He  used  in  after  life  to  relate  how, 
wearied  with  the  controversies  to  which  his  clerical 
studies  led  him,  he  would  refresh  himself  with  philo- 
sophical reading ;  and  not  seldom  finding  himself 
there  also  tossed  about  by  conflicting  dogmas,  he 
retired  for  peace  and  shelter  to  the  certain  science  of 
necessary  truth ;  "  and  then,"  said  he,  "  I  always 
found  myself  refreshed  with  rest." 

It  happened  that  no  lecture  or  teaching  of  any  kind 
was  given  by  the  professor  who  filled  the  mathematical 
chair,  receiving  its  emoluments,  and  neglecting  its 
duties,  when  Simson  went  to  the  University.  But 
curiosity,  a  propensity  ever  strong  in  his  nature  through 
his  whole  life,  made  him  wish  to  see  what  the  science 
was,  and  he  borrowed  from  a  friend  a  copy  of  Euclid, 
the  work  which  he  was  destined  afterwards  to  give 


478  SIMSON. 

forth  in  a  perfection  that  has  made  all  other  editions 
of  that  great  classic  be  forgotten.  Over  the  elements 
of  the  science  he  pored  assiduously  and  alone,  with 
only  the  aid  of  suggestions  occasionally  given  by  a 
student  some  years  older  than  himself;  and  the  study 
falling  in  with  his  genius  and  his  taste,  he  soon  made 
himself  master  of  the  first  six  books,  comprising  plain 
geometry,  and  the  eleventh  and  twelfth,  treating  of 
solids,  those  at  least  which  are  bounded  by  planes  or 
by  circular  arches.  But  he  did  not  neglect  the  other 
branches  of  science  taught  at  the  College ;  and  he 
also  gave  his  attention  to  the  literary  parts  of  educa- 
tion, so  well  mastering  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages 
as  to  become  a  learned  and  accurate  scholar.  It  was 
in  the  mathematics,  however,  that  he  chiefly  excelled ; 
and  his  accomplishments  in  that  science  becoming 
known  to  the  professorial  body  (the  Senatus  Academi- 
cus),  in  whom  is  vested  the  patronage  of  the  mathe- 
matical chair,  and  an  early  vacancy  being  foreseen, 
they  offered  him  the  succession  in  that  event.  Being 
then  in  his  twenty-second  year,  he  modestly  declined 
to  undertake  so  important  a  charge,  but  requested  a 
year's  delay,  during  which  he  might  repair  to  London, 
and  become  more  familiar  with  the  science  and  its  cul- 
tivators. We  may  hence  perceive  that  there  could  then 
have  been  no  one  at  all  versed  in  the  mathematics  at 
Glasgow ;  and  the  allowing  so  important  a  branch  of 
science  to  remain  for  so  many  years  untaught  because 
the  teacher  who  received  the  ample  emoluments  of  the 
chair  either  could  not  or  would  not  perform  its  duties, 
affords  a  sufficient  commentary  upon  the  great  abuse 
likely  to  flow  from  vesting  the  patronage  of  a  profes- 


SIMSON.  479 

sorship  in  the  colleagues  of  the  teacher.  I  have 
known  a  professor's  son  appointed  to  the  same  chair, 
with  few  or  no  mathematical  acquirements,  because  his 
father  was  much  and  justly  respected  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  academical  body.  The  same  thing  could 
not  happen  in  Edinburgh,  where  the  Crown  or  the 
magistrates  have  the  patronage  of  all  the  professorships 
excepting  one,  and  that  is  in  the  representative  of  the 
founder.* 

Simson  repaired  accordingly  to  London,  where  he  be- 
came intimately  acquainted,  among  others,  with  Jones 
the  optician,  with  Henry  Ditton  of  Christ's  Hospital, 
under  whose  tuition  he  placed  himself,  with  Carswell, 
above  all,  with  Edmund  Halley,  then  a  captain  in  the 
Navy,  afterwards  so  celebrated  as  Dr.  Halley ;  of 
whom  he  used  to  assert  that  "  he  had  never  known 
any  other  man  of  so  acute  and  penetrating  an  under- 
standing, and  of  so  pure  a  taste."  From  him  he  re- 
ceived much  personal  kindness,  and  what  he  had 
reason  to  value  still  more,  the  advice  to  prosecute  his 
study  of  the  Ancient  Geometry,  and  attempt  restoring 
its  lost  books.  Halley  made  him  a  present  of  his 
copy  of  Pappus,  with  notes  in  his  own  hand.  But 
though  these  accidental  circumstances  tended  to  direct 
his  attention  towards  the  scrupulous  rigour  as  well  as 
surpassing  elegance  of  the  Greek  methods,  it  is  a  great 
mistake  to  suppose  that  he  objected  to  the  strictness  of 
the  modern  analysis  as  inadequate.  That  he  deemed 
its  beauty  inferior,  and  that  he  was  right  in  so  deem- 
ing, is  certain ;  but  that  he  questioned  the  solidity  of 

*  Agriculture,  in  the  Pulteney  Family. 


480  SIMSON. 

its  foundations  is  wholly  untrue.  Not  only  did  he  always 
explain  its  principles  to  his  pupils,  though  in  a  manner 
peculiar  to  himself,  but  he  has  left  behind  him  a  trea- 
tise demonstrating  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  cal- 
culus, and  we  now  possess  it  in  a  printed  form.  Equally 
groundless  is  the  notion  that  he  questioned  the  sound- 
ness of  the  Newtonian  Philosophy.  He  was  not  ena- 
bled to  make  Sir  Isaac's  acquaintance  during  his  resi- 
dence in  London ;  but  among  those  he  lived  with  he 
constantly  had  seen  him  viewed  with  a  peculiar  ob- 
servance, and  Halley  in  particular  regarded  him  as 
hardly  human,  and  his  attainments  in  science  as  exalt- 
ing our  species,  while  they  ennobled  himself,  its  rarest 
individual.  Simson's  copy  of  the  '  Principia '  is  fully 
noted  in  the  margin  with  illustrations,  showing  that 
he  entirely  assented  to  the  results  of  the  investigations 
in  the  several  propositions,  and  only  wished  to  substi- 
tute certain  steps  in  the  demonstrations.  Professor 
Robison  has  also  related  (Art.  Simson,  Encyc.  Brit. 
xvii.  505)  his  constant  remark,  that  the  celebrated 
proposition  in  the  '  Principia '  on  inverse  centripetal 
forces  "  was  the  most  important  ever  delivered  to  man- 
kind in  the  mixed  mathematics." 

While  he  remained  in  London  the  expected  vacancy 
occurred  in  the  chair  at  Glasgow,  and  he  returned 
thither.  The  professors  appear  to  have  thought  it 
right  that  their  former  neglect  of  duty  should  be  com- 
pensated by  a  very  superfluous  show  of  more  than  need- 
ful attention  to  it  on  this  occasion  ;  for  they  required 
Mr.  Simson  to  give  proof  of  his  fitness  to  succeed  the 
sinecure  incumbent,  by  solving  a  geometrical  problem, 
of  which  it  is  all  but  absolutely  certain  that  they  could 


SIMSON.  481 

have  no  knowledge,  unless  the  question  was  so  simple  as 
to  afford  no  test  of  the  candidate's  capacity.  He  pro- 
duced, however,  what  they  might  better  understand, 
testimonials  from  known  mathematicians  in  London, 
a  farther  proof  of  there  being  no  cultivators  of  the 
science  then  resident  in  the  metropolis  of  Scottish 
manufactures. 

He  was  thus  appointed  professor  in  1711,  and  im- 
mediately began  the  regular  course  of  instruction, 
which  he  continued  for  half  a  century.  He  taught 
two  classes  five  days  a  week  for  seven  months  every 
year.  Though  geometry  was  his  own  favourite  study, 
he  was  a  thorough  algebraist  also,  and  so  well  versed 
in  mathematical  science  at  large,  that  he  gave  lectures 
on  its  general  history.  With  astronomy,  and  the  other 
branches  of  the  mixed  mathematics,  he  was  no  less 
conversant ;  and  in  various  departments  of  physics  he 
had  made  great  progress.  In  botany  he  was  parti- 
cularly expert;  it  formed  his  chosen  amusement  dur- 
ing the  walks  in  which  he  relaxed  from  his  severer 
studies.  His  curiosity  led  him  into  other  paths  of 
science.  To  logic,  that  of  the  schools,  he  had  given 
so  much  attention,  that  of  a  tract,  composed  by  him 
upon  its  principles,  some  portion  remains  among  his 
papers  ;  it  is  said  to  possess  great  merit ;  and  doubtless 
this  study  was  congenial  to  the  one  which  he  mainly 
pursued,  nor  could  it  fail  to  aid  his  strict  and  luminous 
method  of  both  defining,  demonstrating,  and  explain- 
ing the  truths  of  geometry. 

Among  his  colleagues,  after  he  had  been  professor 
a  few  years,  were  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  of 
that,  or  indeed  of  any  age.  Moore,  professor  of  Greek, 
and  author  of  the  admirable  and  elegant  'Grammar;' 


482  SIMSON. 

Hutcheson,  and  Adam  Smith,  successively  teachers  of 
moral  philosophy ;  Cullen,  the  celebrated  physician ; 
Black,  the  great  founder  of  modern  chemistry — all 
taught  while  Simson  flourished  ;  Millar  only  became 
professor  of  law  at  the  close  of  the  brilliant  period 
now  referred  to,  and  Robison  succeeded  Black  in  1761, 
soon  after  Simson's  resignation. 

But  a  teacher's  influence  is  nothing  in  surrounding 
himself  with  illustrious  colleagues:    of  great  pupils 
he  may  more  easily  obtain  a  following.      Of  these, 
Dr.  Simson  had  some  whose  names  are  still  honoured 
among  mathematicians.     Williamson,  afterwards  his 
assistant  in  the  class,  a  man  of  great  promise,  whose 
early  death  at  the  Factory  of  Lisbon,  to  which  he  was 
chaplain,  alone   prevented  him  from  following  with 
distinction  his  master's  footsteps  ;  Scott,  preceptor  to 
George  III.  when  Prince  of  Wales,  afterwards  a  Com- 
missioner of  Excise   in   London,    perhaps   the   most 
accomplished    of    all    amateur  mathematicians   who 
never   gave  their  works  to  the  world ;  Traill,  author 
of  the  excellent  elementary  treatise  of  algebra,  of  a 
very  learned  and  exceedingly  ill-written,  indeed,  hardly 
readable,  life  of  his  friend  and  teacher,  but  a  man  of 
great  capacity  for  science,  entirely  extinguished,  to- 
gether with  his  taste  for  its  pursuits  (as  Professor 
Playfair  used  to  lament),  by  the  sinecure  emoluments 
of  the  Irish  Church  ;  but  above  all,  Matthew  Stewart, 
Simson's  favourite  pupil,  and  whose  suggestions,  and 
indeed  contributions,   he  records  in  his   works  with 
appropriate  eulogy,  as  he  does  on  one  occasion  an  in- 
genious theorem  of  Traill — these   were    among    his 
scholars,   and    were,   with   Robison,    the    most   dis- 
tinguished of  their  number.     His  method  of  lecturing 


SIMSON.  483 

is,  by  both  of  the  pupils  who  have  written  his  history, 
Professor  Robison  and  Dr.  Traill,  described  as  singu- 
larly attractive.  His  explanations  were  perfectly  clear, 
and  were  delivered  with  great  spirit,  as  well  as  with 
the  pure  taste  which  presided  over  all  his  mathe- 
matical processes.  His  elocution  was  distinct  and 
natural,  his  whole  manner  at  once  easy  and  impres- 
sive. He  did  not  confine  his  tuition  to  the  chair,  but 
encouraged  his  pupils  to  propound  their  difficulties  in 
private,  and  was  always  accessible  to  their  demands  of 
assistance  and  advice.  Hence  the  affectionate  zeal  with 
which  they  followed  his  teaching  and  ever  cherished 
his  memory. 

Successful,  however,  as  he  proved  in  the  chair,  his 
genius  was  bent  to  the  diligent  investigation  of  truth 
in  the  science  of  which  he  was  so  great  a  master. 
The  ancient  geometry,  that  of  the  Greeks  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  early  fixed  his  attention  and  occupied  his 
mind  by  its  extraordinary  elegance,  by  the  lucid  clear- 
ness with  which  its  investigations  are  conducted,  by 
the  exercise  which  it  affords  to  the  reasoning  faculties, 
and  above  all,  by  the  absolute  rigour  of  its  demon- 
strations. He  never  undervalued  modern  analysis  ;  it 
is  a  great  mistake  to  represent  him  as  either  disliking 
its  process,  or  insensible  to  its  vast  importance  for  the 
solution  of  questions  which  the  Greek  analysis  is 
wholly  incapable  of  reaching.  But  he  considered  it 
as  only  to  be  used  in  its  proper  sphere:  and  that 
sphere  he  held  to  exclude  whatever  of  geometrical 
investigation  can  be,  with  convenience  and  elegance, 
carried  on  by  purely  geometrical  methods.  The  appli- 
cation of  algebra  to  geometry,  it  would  be  ridiculous 

2  i  2 


484  SIMSOX. 

to  suppose  that  either  he  or  his  celebrated  pupil 
Stewart  disliked  or  undervalued.  That  application 
forms  the  most  valuable  service  which  modern  analysis 
has  rendered  to  science.  But  they  did  object,  and 
most  reasonably  and  consistently,  to  the  introduction 
of  algebraic  reasoning  wherever  the  investigation 
could,  though  less  easily,  yet  far  more  satisfactorily, 
be  performed  geometrically.  They  saw,  too,  that  in 
many  instances  the  algebraic  solution  leads  to  con- 
structions of  the  most  complex,  clumsy,  unmanage- 
able kind,  and  therefore  must  be,  in  all  these  instances, 
reckoned  more  difficult,  and  even  more  prolix  than 
the  geometrical,  from  the  former  being  confined  to  the 
expression  of  all  the  relations  of  space  and  position, 
by  magnitudes,  by  quantity  and  number,  (even  after 
the  arithmetic  of  sines  had  been  introduced,)  while 
the  latter  could  avail  itself  of  circles  and  angles 
directly.  They  would  have  equally  objected  to  car- 
rying geometrical  reasoning  into  the  fields  peculiarly 
appropriate  to  modern  analysis ;  and  if  one  of  them, 
Stewart,  did  endeavour  to  investigate  by  the  ancient 
geometry  physical  problems  supposed  to  be  placed 
beyond  its  reach — as  the  sun's  distance,  in  which  he 
failed,  and  Kepler's  problem,  in  which  he  marvel- 
lously succeeded,  that  of  dividing  the  elliptical  area  in 
a  given  ratio  by  a  straight  line  drawn  from  one  focus — 
this  is  to  be  taken  only  as  an  homage  to  the  undervalued 
potency  of  the  Greek  analysis,  or  at  most,  as  a  feat  of 
geometrical  force,  and  by  no  means  as  an  indication  of 
any  wish  to  substitute  so  imperfect,  however  beautiful, 
an  instrument,  for  the  more  powerful,  though  more 
ordinary  one  of  the  calculus  which  "  alone  can  work 


SIMSON.  485 

great  marvels."  At  the  same  time,  and  with  all  the 
necessary  confession  of  the  merits  of  the  modern 
method,  it  is  certain  that  those  geometricians  would 
have  regarded  the  course  taken  hy  some  of  its  votaries 
in  more  recent  times  as  exceptionable,  whether  with  a 
view  to  clearness  or  to  good  taste :  a  course  to  the  full 
as  objectionable  as  would  be  the  banishing  of  alge- 
braical and  substituting  of  geometrical  symbols  in  the 
investigations  of  the  higher  geometry.  La  Place's  great 
work,  the  '  Mecanique  Celeste,'  and  La  Grange's  '  Meca- 
nique Analytique,'  have  treated  of  the  whole  science  of 
dynamics  and  of  physical  astronomy,  comprehending 
all  the  doctrine  of  trajectories,  dealing  with  geome- 
trical ideas  throughout,  and  ideas  so  purely  geometrical 
that  the  algebraic  symbols,  as  far  as  their  works  are 
concerned,  have  no  possible  meaning  apart  from  lines, 
angles,  surfaces  ;  and  yet  in  their  whole  compass  they 
have  not  one  single  diagram  of  any  kind.  Surely, 


we  may  ask   if   4-v  doc-  +dy2 ,      7  0  -,  /  du \  can  pos- 
*  dii  J        dx°d  ( -?-  \ 

\d*) 

sibly  bear  any  other  meaning  than  the  tangent 
and  the  radius  of  curvature  of  a  curve  line  :  that 
is,  a  straight  line  touching  a  curve,  and  a  circle 
whose  curvature  is  that  of  another  curve  where 
they  meet ;  any  meaning,  at  least,  which  can  make 
it  material  that  they  should  ever  be  seen  on  the 
page  of  the  analyst.  These  expressions  are  utterly 
without  sense,  except  in  reference  to  geometrical  con- 


O 


486  SIMSON. 

siderations ;  for  although  x  and  y  are  so  general  that 
they  express  any  numbers,  any  lines,  nay,  any  ideas, 
any  rewards  or  punishments,  any  thoughts  of  the  mind, 
it  is  manifest  that  the  square  of  the  differential  of  a 
thought,  or  the  differential  of  the  differential  of  a  reward 
or  punishment,  has  no  meaning ;  and  so  of  every  thing 
else  but  of  the  very  tangent  or  osculating  circle's  radius  : 
consequently  the  generality  of  the  symbols  is  wholly 
useless  ;  the  particular  case  of  two  lines  being  the  only 
thing  to  which  the  expressions  can  possibly  be  meant 
to  apply.  Why,  then,  all  geometrical  symbols  should 
be  so  carefully  avoided  when  we  are  really  treating  of 
geometrical  examples  and  geometrical  ideas,  and  of 
these  alone,  seems  hard  to  understand. 

As  the  exclusive  lovers  of  modern  analysis  have 
frequently  and  very  erroneously  suspected  the  ancients 
of  possessing  some  such  instrument,  and  concealing 
the  use  of  it  by  giving  their  demonstrations  synthe- 
tically after  reaching  their  conclusions  analytically,  so 
some  lovers  of  ancient  analysis  have  supposed  that  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  obtained  his  solutions  by  algebraic 
investigations,  and  then  covered  them  with  a  synthetic 
dress :  among  others,  Dr.  Simson  leant  to  this 
opinion  respecting  the  '  Principia.'  He  used  to  say 
that  he  knew  this  from  Halley,  by  whose  urgent  advice 
Sir  Isaac  was  induced  to  adopt  the  synthetic  form  of 
demonstration,  after  having  discovered  the  truths  ana- 
lytically. Machin  is  known  to  have  held  the  same 
language  ;  he  said  that  the  '  Principia'  was  algebra  in 
disguise.  Assuredly,  the  probability  of  this  is  far 
greater  than  that  of  the  ancients  having  possessed  and 
kept  secret  the  analytical  process  of  modern  times.  In 
the  preface  to  his  '  Loci  Plani,'  Dr.  Simson  fully  refutes 


SIMSON.  487 

this  notion  respecting  the  ancients :  a  notion  which, 
among  others,  no  less  a  writer  than  Wallis  had 
strongly  maintained.* 

Dr.  Simson  is  by  some  supposed  to  have  had  at  one 
time  the  intention  of  discussing  at  large  the  proper 
limits  of  the  ancient  and  the  modern  analysis  in  the 
investigation  of  mathematical  truths.  This  no  doubt 
appears  to  be  the  meaning  of  a  passage  in  his  preface  to 
the  Conic  Sections  :  "  In  quantum^ autem  differat  ana- 
lysis geometrica  ab  ea  quse  calculo  instituitur  algebraico, 
atque  ubl  hcec  aut  ilia  sit  usurpanda,  alias  disseren- 
dum?  Professor  Robison  thought  he  had  seen  a  por- 
tion of  the  work ;  but  he  must  have  been  mistaken ; 
for  in  answer  to  Mr.  Scott's  letter  urging  him  to  pub- 
lish this,  and  referring  to  the  preface  in  the  words  just 
cited,  he  expressly  says,  that  though  this  passage  might 
well  mislead,  he  never  meant,  except  by  "  blundering 
in  the  expression,  anything  of  the  kind,  had  no  paper, 
and  never  wrote  anything  about  the  matter :"  and  this 
was  written  in  1764,  four  years  before  his  death,  and 
eleven  or  twelve  years  after  Professor  Robison  attended 
his  class.  Nothing  can  be  more  clear  than  that  between 
1764  and  his  death,  in  1768,  he  never  attempted  any 
work  of  moment ;  much  more  any  work  such  as  the  one  in 

*  Algebra  Prsef.  "  Hanc  Graecos  olim  habuisse  non  est  quod 
dubitemus ;  sed  studio  celatam,  nee  temere  propalandam.  Ejus 
effectus  (utut  clam  celatae)  satis  conspicui  apud  Archimedem, 
Apollonium,  aliosque."  It  is  strange  that  any  one  of  ordinary 
reflection  should  have  overlooked  the  utter  impossibility  of  all  the 
geometricians  in  ancient  times  keeping  the  secret  of  an  art  which 
must,  if  it  existed,  have  been  universally  known  in  the  mathematical 
schools,  and  at  a  time  when  every  man  of  the  least  learning  or  even 
of  the  most  ordinary  education  was  taught  geometry. 


488  SIMSON. 

question,  which  we  thus  have  his  own  authority  for  say- 
ing he  never  had  previously  entertained  any  intention  of 
composing.  It  is  much  to  be  lamented  that  he  never 
did  give  such  a  work  to  the  world.  His  thoughts  had 
often  been  very  profoundly  directed  to  the  subject ; 
and  no  one  was  so  well  fitted  to  handle  it  with  the 
learning  and  with  the  judgment  wrhich  its  execution 
required. 

That  he  did  not  undervalue  algebra  and  the  calculus 
to  which  it  has  given  rise,  appears  from  many  circum- 
stances— among  others,  from  what  has  already  been 
stated ;  it  appears  also  from  this,  that  in  many  of  his 
manuscripts  there  are  found  algebraical  formulas  for 
propositions  which  he  had  investigated  geometrically. 
Maclaurin  consulted  him  on  the  preparation  of  his 
admirable  work,  the  '  Fluxions/  and  received  from  him 
copious  suggestions  and  assistance.  Indeed,  he  adopted 
from  him  the  celebrated  demonstration  of  the  fluxion  (or 
differential)  of  a  rectangle.*  But  Simson's  whole  mind, 
when  left  to  its  natural  bent,  was  given  to  the  beauties 
of  the  Greek  geometry ;  and  he  had  not  been  many 
months  settled  in  his  academical  situation  when  he 
began  to  follow  the  advice  which  Halley  had  given 
him,  as  both  calculated,  he  said,  to  promote  his 
own  reputation,  and  to  confer  a  lasting  benefit  upon 
the  science  cultivated  by  them  both  with  an  equal  de- 
votion. It  is  even  certain  that  the  obscure  and  most 
difficult  subject  of  Porisms  very  early  occupied  his 
thoughts,  and  was  the  field  of  his  researches,  though  to 
the  end  of  his  life  he  never  had  made  such  progress  in 

*  Book  i.  ch.  ii.  prop.  3. 


SIMSON.  489 

the  investigation  as  satisfied  himself.  Before  1715, 
three  years  after  he  began  his  course  of  teaching,  he 
was  deeply  engaged  in  this  inquiry ;  but  he  only  re- 
garded it  as  one  branch  of  the  great  and  dark  subject 
which  Halley  had  recommended  to  his  care.  After  he 
had  completely  examined,  corrected,  and  published, 
with  most  important  additions,  the  Conies  of  Apollo- 
nius,  which  happily  remain  entire,  but  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  been  most  inelegantly  and  indeed  alge- 
braically given  by  De  la  Hire,  L'Hopital,  and  others,  to 
restore  the  lost  books  was  his  great  desire,  and  formed 
the  grand  achievement  which  he  set  before  his  eyes. 

We  have  already  shown  how  scanty  the  light  was 
by  which  his  steps  in  this  path  must  be  guided.  The 
introduction  to  the  seventh  book  of  Pappus  contained 
the  whole  that  had  reached  our  times  to  let  us  know 
the  contents  of  the  lost  works.  Some  of  the  sum- 
maries which  that  valuable  discourse  contains  are  suffi- 
ciently explicit,  as  those  of  the  Loci  Plani  and  the 
Determinate  Section.  Accordingly,  former  geometri- 
cians had  succeeded  in  restoring  the  Loci  Plani,  or 
those  propositions  which  treat  of  loci  to  the  circle 
and  rectilinear  figures.  They  had,  indeed,  proceeded 
in  a  very  unsatisfactory  manner ;  Schooten,  a  Dutch 
mathematician  of  great  industry  and  no  taste,  had 
given  purely  algebraic  solutions  and  demonstrations. 
Fermat,  one  of  the  greatest  mathematicians  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  had  proceeded  more  according  to 
the  geometrical  rules  of  the  ancients  ;  but  he  had  kept 
to  general  solutions,  and  neither  he  nor  Schooten  had 
given  the  different  cases,  according  as  the  data  in  each 
proposition  were  varied,  so  that  their  works  were  nearly 


490  SIMSON. 

useless  in  the  solution  of  problems,  the  great  purpose 
of  Apollonius,  as  of  all  the  authors  of  the  TOTTO? 
avaXvojmevov — the  thirty-three  ancient  books.  As  for 
the  analysis,  it  was  given  by  neither,  unless,  indeed, 
Schooten's  algebra  is  to  be  so  termed :  Fermat's  de- 
monstrations were  all  synthetical.  His  treatise,  though 
written  as  early  as  1629,  was  only  published  among 
his  collected  works  in  1670.  Schooten's  was  published 
among  his  '  Exercitationes  Mathematicse'  in  1657.  Of 
the  field  thus  left  open  Dr.  Simson  took  possession, 
and  he  most  successfully  cultivated  every  corner 
of  it.  Nothing  is  left  without  the  most  full  discus- 
sion ;  all  the  cases  of  each  proposition  are  thoroughly 
investigated.  Many  new  truths  of  great  importance 
are  added  to  those  which  had  been  unfolded  by  the 
Greek  philosopher.  The  whole  is  given  with  the  per- 
fect precision  and  the  pure  elegance  of  the  ancient 
analysis ;  and  the  universal  assent  of  the  scientific 
world  has  even  confessed  that  there  is  every  reason  to 
consider  the  restored  work  as  greatly  superior  to  the 
lost  original. 

The  history  of  this  excellent  treatise  shows  in  a 
striking  manner  the  cautious  and  modest  nature  of  its 
author.  He  had  completed  it  in  1738  ;  but,  unsatisfied 
with  it,  he  kept  it  by  him  for  eight  years.  He  could 
not  bring  himself  to  think  that  he  had  given  the 
"ipsissimse  propositiones  of  Apollonius  in  the  very 
order  and  spirit  of  the  original  work."  He  was  then 
persuaded  to  let  the  book  appear,  and  it  was  published 
in  1746.  His  former  scruples  and  alarms  recurred ; 
he  stopped  the  publication ;  he  bought  up  the  copies 
that  had  been  sold ;  he  kept  them  three  years  longer 


SIMSON.  491 

by  him ;  and  it  was  only  in  1749  that  the  work  really 
appeared.  Thus  had  a  geometrician  complied  with 
the  rule  prescribed  by  Horace  for  those  whose  writings 
have  no  standard  by  which  to  estimate  their  merits 
with  exactness. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  extended  his  researches  into 
other  parts  of  the  subject.  Among  the  rest  he  had 
restored  and  greatly  extended  the  work  on  Determi- 
nate Section,  or  the  various  propositions  respecting 
the  properties  of  the  squares  and  rectangles  of  seg- 
ments of  lines  passing  through  given  points.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  the  prolixity,  however  elegant,  with 
which  the  ancients  treated  this  subject,  is  somewhat 
out  of  proportion  to  its  importance ;  and  as  it  is  pecu- 
liarly adapted  to  the  algebraical  method,  presenting, 
indeed,  little  difficulty  to  the  analyst,  the  loss  of  the 
Pergsean  treatise  is  the  less  to  be  deplored,  and  its  re- 
storation was  the  less  to  be  desired.  Apollonius  had 
even  thought  it  expedient  to  give  a  double  set  of  solu- 
tions ;  one  by  straight  lines,  the  other  by  semicircles. 
Dr.  Simson's  restoration  is  most  full,  certainly,  and 
contains  many  and  large  additions  of  his  own.  It  fills 
above  three  hundred  quarto  pages.  His  predecessors 
had  been  Snellius,  whose  attempt,  published  in  1608, 
was  universally  allowed  to  be  a  failure ;  and  Anderson, 
a  professor  of  Aberdeen,  whose  work,  in  1612,  was 
much  better,  but  confined  to  a  small  part  only  of  the 
subject. 

About  the  time  that  Dr.  Simson  finally  published 
the  Loci  Plani,  he  began  his  great  labour  of  giving  a 
correct  and  full  edition  of  the  Elements.  The  manner 
in  which  this  has  been  accomplished  by  him  is  well 


492  SIMSON. 

known.  The  utmost  care  was  bestowed  on  the  revi- 
sion of  the  text;  no  pains  were  spared  in  collating 
editions ;  all  commentaries  were  consulted ;  and  the 
elegance  and  perfect  method  of  the  original  has  been 
so  admirably  preserved,  that  no  rival  has  ever  yet  risen 
up  to  dispute  with  Simson's  Euclid  the  possession  of 
the  schools.  The  time  bestowed  on  this  useful  work 
was  no  less  than  nine  years.  It  only  was  published  in 
1758.  To  the  second  edition,  in  1762,  he  added  a 
similarly  correct  edition  of  the  Data,  comprising 
several  very  valuable  original  propositions  of  his  own, 
of  Mr.  Stewart,  and  of  Lord  Stanhope,  together  with 
two  excellent  problems  to  illustrate  the  use  of  the 
Data  in  solutions. 

We  thus  find  Dr.  Simson  employed  in  these  various 
works  which  he  successively  gave  to  the  world,  elaborated 
with  infinite  care,  and  of  which  the  fame  and  the  use 
will  remain  as  long  as  the  mathematics  are  cultivated, 
some  of  them  delighting  students  who  pursue  the 
science  for  the  mere  speculative  love  of  contemplating 
abstract  truths,  and  the  gratification  of  following  the 
rigorous  proofs  peculiar  to  that  science  ;  some  for  the 
instruction  of  men  in  the  elements,  which  are  to 
form  the  foundation  of  their  practical  applications  of 
geometry.  But  all  the  while  his  mind  never  could  be 
wholly  severed  from  the  speculation  which  had  in  his 
earliest  days  riveted  his  attention  by  its  curious  and 
singular  nature,  and  fired  his  youthful  ambition  by 
its  difficulty,  and  vanquished  all  his  predecessors  in 
their  efforts  to  master  it.  We  have  seen  that  as  early 
as  1715  at  the  latest,  probably  much  earlier,  the  obscure 
subject  of  Porisms  had  engaged  his  thoughts  ;  and  soon 


SIMSOX.  493 

after,  his  mind  was  so  entirely  absorbed  by  it  that  he 
could  apply  to  no  other  investigation.  The  extreme 
imperfection  of  the  text  of  Pappus,  the  dubious  nature 
of  his  description,  his  rejection  of  the  definition  which 
appeared  intelligible,  his  substituting  nothing  in  its 
place  except  an  account  so  general  that  it  really  con- 
veyed no  precise  information,  the  hiatus  in  the  account 
he  subjoins  of  Euclid's  three  books,  so  that  even  with 
the  help  of  the  lemmas  related  to  these  propositions  of 
the  lost  work,  no  clear  or  steady  light  could  be  de- 
scjied  to  guide  the  inquirer — for  the  first  porism  of 
the  first  book  alone  remained  entire,  the  general 
porism  being  given  wholly  truncated  (mancum  et  im- 
perfectum) — all  seemed  to  present  obstacles  wholly 
insurmountable,  and  after  various  attempts  for  years 
he  was  fain  to  conclude  with  Halley  that  the  mystery 
belonged  to  the  number  of  those  which  can  never  be 
penetrated.  He  lost  his  rest  in  the  anxiety  of  this 
inquiry ;  sleep  forsook  his  couch ;  his  appetite  was 
gone  ;  his  health  was  wholly  shaken ;  he  was  com- 
pelled to  give  over  the  pursuit ;  he  was  "  obliged,"  he 
says,  "  to  resolve  steadily  that  he  never  more  should 
touch  the  subject,-  and  as  often  as  it  came  upon  him  he 
drove  it  away  from  his  thoughts."* 

It  happened,  however,  about  the  month  of  April, 
1722,  that  while  walking  on  the  banks  of  the  Clyde 
with  some  friends,  he  had  fallen  behind  the  company ; 
and  musing  alone,  the  rejected  topic  found  access  to 


*  "  Firmiter  animum  induxi  hsec  nunquam  in  posterum  investi- 
gare.  Unde  quoties  menti  occurrebant,  f  oties  eas  arcebam." — (Op. 
Eel.  320.  Prsef.  ad  Porismata.) 


494  SIMSON. 

his  thoughts.  After  some  time  a  sudden  light  broke 
in  upon  him  ;  it  seemed  at  length  as  if  he  could  descry 
something  of  a  path,  slippery,  tangled,  interrupted,  but 
still  practicable,  and  leading  at  least  in  the  direction 
towards  the  object  of  his  research.  He  eagerly  drew 
a  figure  on  the  stump  of  a  neighbouring  tree  with  a 
piece  of  chalk  ;  he  felt  -  assured  that  he  had  now  the 
means  of  solving  the  great  problem ;  and  although  he 
afterwards  tells  us  that  he  then  had  not  a  sufficiently 
clear  notion  of  the  subject  (eo  tempore  Porismatum 
naturam  non  satis  compertamhabebam),*  yet  he  accom- 
plished enough  to  make  him  communicate  a  paper 
upon  the  discovery  to  the  Royal  Society,  the  first 
work  he  ever  published  (Phil.  Trans,  for  1723).  He 
was  wont  in  after  life  to  show  the  spot  on  which  the 
tree,  long  since  decayed,  had  stood.  If  peradventure 
it  had  been  preserved,  the  frequent  lover  of  Greek 
geometry  would  have  been  seen  making  his  pilgrimage 
to  a  spot  consecrated  by  such  touching  recollections. 
The  graphic  pen  of  Montucla,  which  gave  such  interest 
to  the  story  of  the  first  observation  of  the  transit  of 
Venus  by  Horrox  in  Lancashire,  and  to  the  Torricellian 
experiment, f  is  alone  wanting  to  clothe  this  passage 
in  colours  as  vivid  and  as  unfading. 

This  great  geometrician  continued  at  all  the  inter- 
vals of  his  other  labours  intently  to  investigate  the 
subject  on  which  he  thus  first  threw  a  steady  light. 

His  first  care  upon  having  made  this  discovery  was  to 
extend  the  particular  propositions  until  he  had  obtained 


Op.  Rel.  320.  |  Hist,  de  Math.  vol.  i. 


SIMSON.  495 

the  general  one.     A  note  among  his  memoranda  ap- 
pears to  have  been  made,  as  was  his  custom,  of  the 
date  at  which  he  succeeded  in  any  of  his  investiga- 
tions.*— "  Hodie  hsec  de  porismatis  inveni,  R.  S.,  23 
April  1722."     Another  note,  27th  April,  1722,  shows 
that  he  had  then  obtained  the  general  proposition ;  he 
afterwards  communicated  this  to  Maclaurin  when  he 
passed  through  Glasgow  on  his  way  to  France ;  and 
on  his  return  he  communicated  to  Dr.  Simson  with- 
out demonstration   a   proposition   concerning   conies 
derived  from  it,  which  led  his  friend  to  insert  some 
important  investigations  in  his  Conic  Sections.      In 
1723  the  publication  of  his  paper  took  place  in  the 
Philosophical  Transactions ;  it  is  extremely  short,  and 
does  not  appear  to  contain  all  that  the  author  had 
communicated ;   for   we   find   this   sentence   inserted 
before  the  last  portion  of  the  paper : — "  His  adjecit 
clarissimus  professor  propositiones  duas  sequentes  libri 
primi  Porismatum  Euclidis,  a  se  quoque  restitutas." 
The  paper  contains  the  first  general  proposition  and 
its  ten  cases,  and  then  the  second  with  its  cases.     No 
general  description  or  definition  is  given  of  Porisms ; 
and  it  is  plain  that  his  mind  was  not  then  finally  made 
up  on  this  obscure  subject,  although  he  had  obtained  a 
clear  view  of  it  generally. 

*  In  one  there  is  this  note  upon  the  solution  of  a  problem  of 
tactions, — "  Feb.  9,  1734  : — Post  horam  primam  ante  meridiem ;" 
and  much  later  in  life  we  find  the  same  particularity  in  marking 
the  time  of  discovery.  His  birthday  was  October  14,  and  having 
solved  a  problem  on  that  day,  1764,  he  says — 

HOctobr.  1764. 
Deo  Opt.  Max.  benignissimo  Servaton  14  Octobr.  1687. 

Laus  et  gloria.  77  (sell  AnnojEtatis.) 


496  SIMSON. 

At  what  time  his  knowledge  of  the  whole  became 
matured  we  are  not  informed  ;  but  we  know  that  his 
own  nature  was  nice  and  difficult  on  the  subject  of  his 
own  works  ;  that  he  never  was  satisfied  with  what  he 
had  accomplished ;  and  he  probably  went  on  making 
constant  additions  and  improvements  to  his  work. 
Often  urged  to  publish,  he  as  constantly  refused  ;  in- 
deed he  would  say  that  he  had  done  nothing,  or  next 
to  nothing,  which  was  in  a  state  to  appear  before  the 
world  ;  and  moreover,  he  very  early  began  to  appre- 
hend a  decay  of  his  faculties,  from  observing  his  recol- 
lection of  recent  things  to  fail,  as  is  very  usual  with 
all  men ;  for  as  early  as  1751,  we  find  him  giving  this 
as  a  reason  for  declining  to  undertake  a  work  on  Lord 
Stanhope's  recommendation,  when  he  was  only  in  his 
sixty-fifth  year.  Thus,  though  he  at  first  used  to  say 
he  had  nothing  ready  for  publication,  he  afterwards 
added,  that  he  was  too  old  to  complete  his  work  satis- 
factorily. In  his  earlier  days  he  used  occasionally  to 
affect  a  kind  of  odd  mystery  on  the  subject,  and  when 
one  of  his  pupils  (Dr.  Traill)  submitted  to  him  some 
propositions,  which  he  regarded  as  porisms,  Dr.  Sim- 
son  would  neither  admit  nor  deny  that  they  were  such, 
but  said  with  some  pleasantry,  "  They  are  propositions." 
One  of  them,  however,  he  has  given  in  his  work  as  a 
porism,  and  with  a  complimentary  reference  to  its 
ingenious  and  learned  author. 

Thus  his  life  wore  away  without  completing  this 
great  work,  at  least  without  putting  it  in  such  a  con- 
dition as  satisfied  himself.  It  was  left  among  his  MSS., 
and  by  the  judicious  munificence  of  a  noble  geometri- 
cian, the  liberal  friend  of  scientific  men,  as  well  as  the 


SIMSON.  497 

successful  cultivator  of  science,  Earl  Stanhope,*  it 
was,  after  his  death,  published,  with  his  restoration  of 
Apollonius'  treatise  De  Sectione  determinata,  a  short 
paper  on  Logarithms,  and  another  on  the  Method  of 
Limits  geometrically  demonstrated,  the  whole  forming 
a  very  handsome  quarto  volume;  of  which  the 
Porisms  occupies  nearly  one-half,  or  277  pages. 

This  work  is  certainly  the  master-piece  of  its  distin- 
guished author.  The  extreme  difficulty  of  the  subject 
was  increased  by  the  corruptions  of  the  text  that  re- 
mains in  the  only  passage  of  the  Greek  geometers  which 
has  reached  us,  the  only  few  sentences  in  which  any 
mention  whatever  is  made  of  porisms.  This  passage  is 
contained  in  the  preface  or  introduction  to  the  seventh 
book  of  Pappus,  which  we  have  already  had  occasion 
to  cite.  But  this  was  by  far  the  least  of  the  difficul- 
ties which  met  the  inquirer  after  the  hidden  treasure, 
the  restorer  of  lost  science,  though  Albert  Girard 
thought  or  said,  in  1635,  that  he  had  restored  the  Po- 
risms of  Euclid.  As  we  have  seen,  no  trace  of  his 
labours  is  left ;  and  it  seems  extremely  unlikely  that 
he  should  have  really  performed  such  a  feat  and  given 
no  proofs  of  it.  H  alley,  the  most  learned  and  able  of 
Dr.  Simson's  predecessors,  had  tried  the  subject,  and 
tried  it  in  vain.  He  thus  records  his  failure :  —  "  Hac- 
tenus  Porismatum  descriptio  nee  mihi  mtellecta  nee 
lectori  profutura."  These  are  his  words,  in  a  preface 
to  a  translation  which  he  published  of  Pappus's 
seventh  book,  much  superior  in  execution  to  that  of 
Commandini.  But  this  eminent  geometrician  was 

*  Grandfather  of  the  present  Earl. 

2   K 


498  SIMSON. 

much  more  honest  than  some,  and  much  more  safe 
and  free  from  mistake  than  others  who  touched  upon 
the  subject  which  occupied  all  students  of  the  ancient 
analysis.  He  was  far  from  pretending,  like  Girardus, 
to  have  discovered  that  of  which  all  were  in  quest.  But 
neither  did  he  blunder  like  Pemberton,  whom  we  find, 
the  very  year  of  Simson's  first  publication,  actually 
saying  in  his  paper  on  the  Rainbow  —  "For  the 
greater  brevity  I  shall  deliver  them  (his  propositions) 
in  the  form  of  porisms,  as,  in  my  opinion,  the  ancients 
called  all  propositions  treated  by  analysis  only"  (Philo- 
sophical Transactions,  1723,  p.  148) ;  and,  truth  to 
say,  his  investigation  is  not  very  like  ancient  analysis 
either.  The  notion  of  D'Alembert,  somewhat  later, 
has  been  alluded  to  already  ;  he  imagined  porisms  to  be 
synonymous  with  lemma,  misled  by  an  equivocal  use 
of  the  word  in  some  passages  of  ancient  authors,  if 
indeed  he  had  ever  studied  any  of  the  writers  on  the 
Greek  geometry,  which,  from  what  I  have  stated  be- 
fore, seems  exceedingly  doubtful.  But  the  most  extra- 
ordinary, and  indeed  inexcusable  ignorance  of  the  sub- 
ject is  to  be  seen  in  some  who,  long  after  Simson's 
paper  had  been  published,  were  still  in  the  dark  ;  and 
though  that  paper  did  not  fully  explain  the  matter,  it 
yet  ought  to  have  prevented  such  errors  as  these  fell 
into.  Thus  Castillon,  in  1761,  showed  that  he  con- 
ceived porisms  to  be  merely  the  constructions  of  Eu- 
clid's Data.  If  this  were  so,  there  might  have  been 
some  truth  in  his  boast  of  having  solved  all  the  Porisms 
of  Euclid ;  and  he  might  have  been  able  to  perform 
his  promise  of  soon  publishing  a  restoration  of  those  lost 
books. 


SIMSON.  499 

It  is  remarkable  enough  that  before  Halley's  at- 
tempts and  their  failure,  candidly  acknowledged  by 
himself,  Fermat  had  made  a  far  nearer  approach  to  a 
solution  of  the  difficulty  than  any  other  of  Simson's 
predecessors.  That  great  geometrician,  after  fully 
admitting  the  difficulty  of  the  subject,  and  asserting* 
that,  in  modern  times,  porisms  were  known  hardly 
even  by  name,  announces  somewhat  too  confidently, 
if  not  somewhat  vaingloriously,  that  the  light  had  at 
length  dawned  upon  him,')'  and  that  he  should  soon 
give  a  full  restoration  of  the  whole  three  lost  books  of 
Euclid.  Now  the  light  had  but  broke  in  by  a  small 
chink,  as  a  mere  faint  glimmering,  and  this  restora- 
tion was  quite  impossible,  inasmuch  as  there  remained 
no  account  of  what  those  books  contained,  except- 
ing a  very  small  portion  obscurely  mentioned  in 
the  preface  of  Pappus,  and  the  lemmas  given  in  the 
course  of  the  seventh  book,  and  given  as  subservient 
to  the  resolution  of  porismatic  questions.  Never- 
theless Fermat  gave  a  demonstration  of  five  propo- 
sitions, "  in  order,"  he  says,  "  to  show  what  a  porism 
is,  and  to  what  purposes  it  is  subservient."  These 
propositions  are,  indeed,  porisms,  though  their  several 
enumerations  are  not  given  in  the  true  porismatic 
form.  Thus,  in  the  most  remarkable  of  them,  the 
fifth,  he  gives  the  construction  as  part  of  the  enuncia- 

*  "  Intentata  ac  velut  disperata  Porismatum  Euclideea  doctrina. — 
Geometric!  (sevi  recentioris)  nee  vel  de  nomine  cognovertmt,  aut 
quod  esset  solummodo  sunt  suspicati." — (Var.  Opera,  p.  166.) 

f  "  Nobis  in  tenebris  dudum  csecutientibus,  tandem  se  (Natura 
Porismatum)  clara  ad  videndum  obtulit,  et  pura  per  noctem  luce 
refulsit.'1 — (Epist.  ib.) 

2K2 


500  SIMSON. 

tion.  So  far,  however,  a  considerable  step  was  made  ; 
but  when  he  comes  to  show  in  what  manner  he  dis- 
covered the  nature  of  his  porisms,  and  how  he  defines 
them,  it  is  plain  that  he  is  entirely  misled  by  the 
erroneous  definition  justly  censured  in  the  passage  of 
Pappus  already  referred  to.  He  tells  us  that  his  pro- 
positions answer  the  definition ;  he  adds  that  it  reveals 
the  whole  nature  of  porisms  ;  he  says  that  by  no  other 
account  but  the  one  contained  in  the  definition,  could 
we  ever  have  arrived  at  a  knowledge  of  the  hidden 
value;*  and  he  shows  how,  in  his  fifth  proposition, 
the  porism  flows  from  a  locus,  or  rather  he  confounds 
porisms  with  loci,  saying  porisms  generally  are  loci, 
and  so  he  treats  his  own  fifth  proposition  as  a  locus,  and 
yet  the  locus  to  a  circle  which  he  states  as  that  from 
which  his  proposition  flows  has  no  connexion  with  it, 
according  to  Dr.  Simson's  just  remark  ('  Opera  Reliqua,' 
p.  345).  That  the  definition  on  which  he  relies  is 
truly  imperfect,  appears  from  this  :  there  could  be 
no  algebraical  porism,  were  every  porism  connected 
with  a  local  theorem.  But  an  abundant  variety  of 
geometrical  porisms  can  be  referred  to,  which  have  no 
possible  connexion  with  loci.  Thus,  it  has  never  been 
denied  that  most  of  the  Propositions  in  the  Higher 
Geometry,  which  I  investigated  in  1797,  were  porisms, 
yet  many  of  them  were  wholly  unconnected  with  loci ; 
as  that  affirming  the  possibility  of  describing  an  hyper- 
bola which  should  cut  in  a  given  ratio  all  the  areas 
of  the  parabolas  lying  between  given  straight  lines. f 

*  Var.  Op.,  p.  118. 
|  Phil.  Trans.,  1798,  p.  111. 


SIMSON.  501 

Here  the  locus  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  solution, 
as  if  the  proposition  were  a  kind  of  a  local  theorem  : 
it  is  only  the  line  dividing  the  curvilineal  areas,  and  it 
divides  innumerable  such  areas.  Professor  Playfair, 
who  had  thoroughly  investigated  the  whole  subject, 
never  in  considering  this  proposition  doubted  for  a 
moment  its  being  most  strictly  a  porism. 

Therefore,  although  Fermat  must  be  allowed  to 
have  made  a  considerable  step,  he  was  unacquainted 
with  the  true  nature  of  the  porism  ;  and  instead  of 
making  good  his  boast  that  he  could  restore  the  lost 
books,  he  never  even  attempted  to  restore  the  investi- 
gation of  the  first  proposition,  the  only  one  that  re- 
mains entire.  A  better  proof  can  hardly  be  given  of 
the  difficulty  of  the  whole  subject.* 

Indeed  it  must  be  confessed  that  Pappus's  account  of 
it,  our  only  source  of  knowledge,  is  exceedingly  obscure, 
all  but  the  panegyrics  which,  in  a  somewhat  tanta- 
lizing manner,  he  pronounces  upon  it.  "  Collectio," 
says  he,  "  curiosissima  multarum  rerum  spectantium  ad 
resolutionem  difficiliorum  et  generaliorurn  problema- 
tum"  (lib.  vii.,  Proem).  His  definition  already  cited 
is,  as  he  himself  admits,  very  inaccurate ;  because  the 


*  The  respect  due  to  the  great  name  of  Fermat,  a  venerable 
magistrate  and  most  able  geometrician,  is  not  to  be  questioned.  He 
was,  indeed,  one  of  the  first  mathematicians  of  the  age  in  which  he 
flourished,  along  with  the  Robervals,  the  Harriots,  the  Descartes. 
How  near  he  approached  the  differential  calculus  is  well  known. 
His  correspondence  with  Roberval,  Gassendi,  Pascal,  and  others, 
occupies  ninety  folio  pages  of  his  posthumous  works,  and  contains 
many  most  ingenious,  original,  and  profound  observations  on  va- 
rious branches  of  science. 


502  SIMSON. 

connexion  with  a  locus  is  not  necessary  to  the  poris- 
matic  nature,  although  it  will  very  often  exist,  inas- 
much as  each  point  in  the  curve  having  the  same  re- 
lation to  certain  lines,  its  description  will,  in  most 
cases,  furnish  the  solution  of  a  problem,  whence  a 
porism  may  be  deduced.  Nor  does  Pappus,  while  ad- 
mitting the  inaccuracy  of  the  definition,  give  us  one  of 
his  own.  Perhaps  we  may  accurately  enough  define 
a  porism  to  be  the  enunciation  of  the  possibility  of 
finding  that  case  in  which  a  determinate  problem  be- 
comes indeterminate,  and  admits  of  an  infinity  of 
solutions,  all  of  which  are  given  by  the  statement  of 
the  case. 

For  it  appears  essential  to  the  nature  of  a  porism 
that  it  should  have  some  connexion  with  an  indetermi- 
nate problem  and  its  solution.  I  apprehend  that  the 
poristic  case  is  always  one  in  which  the  data  become 
such  that  a  transition  is  made  from  the  determinate  to 
the  indeterminate,  from  the  problem  being  capable  of 
one  or  two  solutions,  to  its  being  capable  of  an  infinite 
number.  Thus  it  would  be  no  porism  to  affirm  that 
an  ellipse  being  given,  two  lines  may  be  found  at  right 
angles  to  each  other,  cutting  the  curve,  and  being  in  a 
proportion  to  each  other  which  may  be  found  :  the  two 
lines  are  the  perpendiculars  at  the  centre,  and  are  of 
course  the  two  axes  of  the  ellipse ;  and  though  this 
enunciation  is  in  the  outward  form  of  a  porism,  the 
proposition  is  no  more  a  porism  than  any  ordinary  pro- 
blem ;  as  that  a  circle  being  given  a  point  may  be  found 
from  whence  all  the  lines  drawn  to  the  circumference 
are  equal,  which  is  merely  the  finding  of  the  centre. 
But  suppose  there  be  given  the  problem  to  inflect  two 


SIMSON.  503 

lines  from  two  given  points  to  the  circumference  of  an 
ellipse,  the  sum  of  which  lines  shall  be  equal  to  a 
given  line,  the  solution  will  give  four  lines,  two  on  each 
side  of  the  transverse  axis.  But  in  one  case  there  will  be 
innumerable  lines  which  answer  the  conditions,  namely, 
when  the  two  points  are  in  the  axis,  and  so  situated 
that  the  distance  of  each  of  them  from  the  farthest  ex- 
tremity of  the  axis  is  equal  to  the  given  line,  the  points 
being  the  foci  of  the  ellipse.  It  is,  then,  a  porism  to 
affirm  that  an  ellipse  being  given,  two  points  may  be 
found  such  that  if  from  them  be  inflected  lines  to  any 
point  whatever  of  the  curve,  their  sum  shall  be  equal 
to  a  straight  line  which  may  be  found ;  and  so  of  the 
Cassinian  curve,  in  which  the  rectangle  under  the  in- 
flected lines  is  given.  In  like  manner  if  it  be  sought  in 
the  cubic  hyperbola  (y  x°~=oc  —  a)  to  inflect  from  two 
given  points  in  a  given  straight  line,  two  lines  to  a 
point  in  the  curve,  so  that  the  tangent  to  that  point 
shall,  with  the  two  points  and  the  ordinate,  cut  the 
given  line  in  harmonical  ratio  ;  this,  which  is  only 
capable  of  one  solution  in  ordinary  cases,  becomes 
capable  of  an  infinite  number  when  the  two  points 
are  in  the  axis,  one  of  them  the  curve's  apex,  and  the 
other  at  the  distance  equal  to  the  given  line  a  from 
the  apex ;  for  in  that  case  every  tangent  that  can  be 
drawn,  and  every  ordinate,  cut  the  given  line  har- 
monically with  the  curve  itself  and  the  given  point.* 


This  curve  has  many  curious  and  elegant  properties :  for  ex- 
ample— All  the  lines  which  can  be  drawn  in  every  direction  from 
any  point  out  of  the  curve  are  cut  harmonically  by  the  tangent, 
the  ordinate,  and  the  lines  joining  the  two  given  points.  This 


504  SIMSON. 

Dr.   Simson's   definition  is  such  that   it  connects 

itself  with  an  indeterminate    case    of  some  problem 

solved,  but  it  is  defective,  in  appearance  rather  than 

in  reality,  from  seeming  to  confine  itself  to  one  class 

of  porisms.     This  appearance  arises  from  using  the 

word  "given"  (data  or  datum)  in  two  different  senses, 

both  as  describing  the  hypothesis  and  as  affirming  the 

possibility  of  finding  the  construction  so  as  to  answer 

the  conditions.     This  double  use  of  the  word,  indeed, 

runs  through  the  book,  and  though  purely  classical, 

is  yet  very  inconvenient ;  for  it  would  be  much  more 

distinct  to  make  one  class  of  things  those  which  are 

assuredly  data,  and  the  other,  things  which  may  be 

found.     Nevertheless,  as  his  definition  makes  all  the 

innumerable  things  not  given  have  the  same  relation 

to  those  which  are  given,  this   should  seem  to  be  a 

limitation  of  the  definition  not  necessary  to  the  poristic 

nature.     Pappus's  definition,  or  rather  that  which  he 

says  the  ancients  gave,  and  which  is  not  exposed  to 

the  objection    taken  by  him  to  the  modern   one,    is 

really  no  definition  at  all ;  it  is  only  that  a  porism  is 

something  between  a  theorem  and  a  problem,  and  in 

which,  instead  of  anything  being  proposed  to  be  done,  or 

to  be  proved,  something  is  proposed  to  be  investigated. 


might  be  called  the  Harmonical  Curve,  did  not  another  of  the  12th 
order  rather  merit  that  name,  which  has  its  axis  divided  harmoni- 
cally by  the  tangent,  the  normal,  the  ordinate,  and  a  given  point  in 

the  axis.     Its  differential  equation  is  2  d  y*+d  x*=— — - — -' 

oc 

which  is  reducible,  and  its  integral  is  an  equation  of  the  12th  order. 
There  is  another  Harmonical  Curve,  also,  a  transcendental  one,  in 
which  chords  vibrate  isochronously. 


SIMSON.  505 

This  is  erroneous,  and  contrary  to  the  rules  of  logic 
from  its  generality ;  it  is,  as  the  lawyers  say,  void  for 
uncertainty.  The  modern  one  objected  to  by  Pappus 
is  not  uncertain ;  it  is  quite  accurate  as  far  as  it  goes  ; 
but  it  is  too  confined,  and  errs  against  the  rules  of 
logic  by  not  being  coextensive  with  the  thing  proposed 
to  be  defined. 

The  difficulty  of  the  subject  has  been  sufficiently 
shown  from  the  extreme  conciseness  and  the  many 
omissions,  the  almost  studied  obscurity,  of  the  only 
account  of  it  which  remains,  and  to  this  must  cer- 
tainly be  added  the  corruption  of  the  Greek  text. 
The  success  which  attended  Dr.  Simson's  labours  in 
restoring  the  lost  work,  as  far  as  that  was  possible,  and, 
at  any  rate,  in  giving  a  full  elucidation  of  the  nature  of 
porisms,  now,  for  the  first  time,  disclosed  to  mathe- 
maticians, is,  on  account  of  those  great  difficulties  by 
which  his  predecessors  had  been  baffled,  the  more  to 
be  admired.  But  there  is  one  thing  yet  more  justly 
a  matter  of  wonder,  when  we  contrast  his  proceedings 
with  theirs.  The  greater  part  of  his  life,  a  life  ex- 
clusively devoted  to  mathematical  study,  had  been 
passed  in  these  researches.  He  had  very  early  become 
possessed  of  the  whole  mystery,  from  other  eyes  so 
long  concealed.  He  had  obtained  a  number  of  the 
most  curious  solutions  of  problems  connected  with 
porisms,  and  was  constantly  adding  to  his  store  of 
porisms  and  of  lemmas  subservient  to  their  investi- 
gation. For  many  years  before  his  death,  his  work 
had  attained,  certainly  the  form,  if  not  the  size,  in 
which  we  now  possess  it.  Yet  he  never  could  so  far 
satisfy  himself  with  what  has  abundantly  satisfied 
every  one  else,  as  to  make  it  public,  and  he  left  it  un- 


506  SIMSON. 

published  among  his  papers  when  he  died.  Nothing 
can  be  more  unlike  those  who  freely  boasted  of  having 
discovered  the  secret,  and  promised  to  restore  the 
whole  of  Euclid's  lost  books.  It  is  as  certain  that 
the  secret  was  never  revealed  to  them  as  it  is  that 
neither  they  nor  any  man  could  restore  the  books. 
But  how  speedily  would  the  Castillons,  the  Alberts, 
even  the  Fermats,  have  given  their  works  to  the 
world  had  they  become  possessed  of  such  a  treasure  as 
Dr.  Simson  had  found  !  Yet  though  ready  for  the 
press,  and  with  its  preface  composed,  and  its  title 
given  in  minute  particularity,  he  never  could  think 
that  he  had  so  far  elaborated  and  finished  it  as  to 
warrant  him  in  finally  resolving  on  its  publication. 

There  needs  no  panegyric  of  this  most  admirable 
performance.  Its  great  merit  is  best  estimated  by  the 
view  which  has  been  taken  of  the  extraordinary 
difficulties  overcome  by  it.  The  difficulty  of  some 
investigations — the  singular  beauty  of  the  propositions, 
a  beauty  peculiar  to  the  porism  from  the  wonderfully 
general  relations  which  it  discloses — the  simplicity  of 
the  combinations — the  perfect  elegance  of  the  demon- 
strations— render  this  a  treatise  in  which  the  lovers  of 
geometrical  science  must  ever  find  the  purest  delight. 

Beside  the  general  discussions  in  the  preface,  and 
in  a  long  and  valuable  scholium  after  the  sixth  propo- 
sition, and  an  example  of  algebraical  porisms,  Dr.  Sim- 
son  has  given  in  all  ninety-one  propositions.  Of 
these  four  are  problems,  ten  are  loci,  forty- three  are 
theorems,  and  the  remaining  thirty-four  are  porisms, 
including  four  suggested  by  Matthew  Stewart,  and 
the  five  of  Fermat  improved  and  generalized ;  there 
are,  besides,  four  lemmas  and  one  porism  suggested 


SIMSON.  507 

by  Dr.  Traill,  when  studying  under  the  Professor. 
There  may  thus  be  said  to  be  in  all  ninety-eight  pro- 
positions. The  four  lemmas  are  propositions  ancillary 
to  the  author's  own  investigations  ;  for  many  of  his 
theorems  are  the  lemmas  preserved  by  Pappus  as  an- 
cillary to  the  porisms  of  Euclid. 

In  all  these  investigations  the  strictness  of  the 
Greek  geometry  is  preserved  almost  to  an  excess  ;  and 
there  cannot  well  be  given  a  more  remarkable  illus- 
tration of  its  extreme  rigour  than  the  very  outset  of 
this  great  work  presents.  The  porism  is,  that  a  point 
may  be  found  in  any  given  circle  through  which  all 
the  lines  drawn  cutting  its  circumference  and  meeting 
a  given  straight  line  shall  have  their  segments  within 
and  without  the  circle  in  the  same  ratio.  This, 
though  a  beautiful  proposition,  is  one  very  easily 
demonstrated,  and  is,  indeed,  a  corollary  to  some  of 
those  in  the  '  Elements/  But  Dr.  Simson  prefixes  a 
lemma  :  that  the  line  drawn  to  the  right  angle  of  a 
triangle  from  the  middle  point  of  the  hypotenuse,  is 
equal  to  half  that  hypotenuse.  Now  this  follows, 
if  the  segment  containing  the  right  angle  be  a  semi- 
circle, and  it  might  be  thought  that  this  should  be 
assumed  only  as  a  manifest  corollary  from  the  pro- 
position, or  as  the  plain  converse  of  the  proposition, 
that  the  angle  in  a  semicircle  is  a  right  angle,  but 
rather  as  identical  with  that  proposition ;  for  if  we 
say  the  semicircle  is  a  right-angled  segment,  we  also 
say  that  the  right-angled  segment  is  a  semicircle. 
But  then  it  might  be  supposed  that  two  semicircles 
could  stand  on  one  base  :  or,  which  is  the  same  thing, 
that  two  perpendiculars  could  be  drawn  from  one 


508  SIMSON. 

point  to  the  same  line  ;  and  as  these  propositions  had 
not  been  in  the  elements,  (though  the  one  follows 
from  the  definition  of  the  circle,  and  the  other  from 
the  theorem  that  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  are 
equal  to  two  right  angles,)  and  as  it  might  be  supposed 
that  two  or  more  circles,  like  two  or  more  ellipses, 
might  be  drawn  on  the  same  axis,  therefore  the  lem- 
ma is  demonstrated  by  a  construction  into  which  the 
centre  does  not  enter.  Again,  in  applying  this  lemma 
to  the  porism  (the  proportion  of  the  segments  given 
by  similar  triangles),  a  right  angle  is  drawn  at  the 
point  of  the  circumference,  to  which  a  line  is  drawn 
from  the  extremity  of  a  perpendicular  to  the  given 
line ;  and  this,  though  it  proves  that  perpendicular  to 
pass  through  the  centre,  unless  two  semicircles  could 
stand  on  the  same  diameter,  is  not  held  sufficient ;  but 
the  analysis  is  continued  by  help  of  the  lemma  to  show 
that  the  perpendicular  to  the  given  line  passes  through 
the  centre  of  the  given  circle,  and  that  therefore  the 
point  is  found.  It  is  probable  that  the  author  began 
his  work  with  a  simple  case  and  gave  it  a  peculiarly 
rigorous  investigation  in  order  to  explain,  as  he  im- 
mediately after  does  clearly  in  the  scholium  already 
referred  to,  the  nature  of  the  porism,  and  to  illustrate 
the  erroneous  definitions  of  later  times  (veoreptKoi)  of 
which  Pappus  complains  as  illogical. 

Of  porisms,  examples  have  been  now  given  both  in 
plain  geometry,  in  solid,  and  in  the  higher :  that  is, 
in  their  connexion  both  with  straight  lines  and 
circles,  with  conic  sections,  and  with  curves  of  the 
third  and  higher  orders.  Of  an  algebraical  porism  it 
is  easy  to  give  examples  from  problems  becoming  inde- 


SIMSON.  509 

terminate ;  but  these  propositions  may  likewise  arise 
from  a  change  in  the  conditions  of  determinate  pro- 
blems. Thus,  if  we  seek  for  a  number,  such  that  its 
multiple  by  the  sum  of  two  quantities  shall  be  equal 
to  its  multiple  by  the  difference  of  these  quantities, 
together  with  twice  its  multiple  by  a  third  given 
quantity,  we  have  the  equation  («  +  6)  x=(a  —  &)  x+ 
2co?  and  2b^=2ca: ;  in  which  it  is  evident,  that  if 
c=bt  any  number  whatever  will  answer  the  conditions, 
and  thus  we  have  this  porism  :  Two  numbers  being 
given  a  third  may  be  found,  such  that  the  multiple 
of  any  number  whatever  by  the  sum  of  the  given 
numbers,  shall  be  equal  to  its  multiple  by  their 
differences,  together  with  half  its  multiple  by  the  num- 
ber to  be  found.  That  number  is  in  the  ratio  of  4  :  3 
to  the  lesser  given  number. 

There  are  many  porisms  also  in  dynamics.  One 
relates  to  the  centre  of  gravity  which  is  the  poris- 
matic  case  of  a  problem.  The  porism  may  be  thus 
enunciated ; — Any  number  of  points  being  given,  a 
point  may  be  found  such,  that  if  any  straight  line 
whatever  be  drawn  through  it,  the  sum  of  the  per- 
pendiculars to  it  from  the  points  on  one  side  will 
be  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  perpendiculars  from  the 
points  on  the  other  side.  That  point  is  consequently 
the  centre  of  gravity :  for  the  system  is  in  equilibrium 
by  the  proposition.  Another  is  famous  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  mixed  mathematics.  Sir  Isaac  Newton, 
by  a  train  of  most  profound  and  ingenious  investi- 
gation, reduced  the  problem  of  finding  a  comet's  place 
from  three  observations  (a  problem  of  such  difficulty, 
that  he  says  of  it,  "  hocce  problema  longe  difficilimum 


510  SIMSON. 

omnimodo  aggressus,"*)  to  the  drawing  a  straight  line 
through  four  lines  given  by  position,  and  which  shall 
be  cut  by  them  in  three  segments  having  given  ratios 
to  each  other.  Now  his  solution  of  this  problem,  the 
corollary  to  the  twenty-seventh  lemma  of  the  first 
book,  has  a  porismatic  case,  that  is,  a  case  in  which 
any  line  that  can  be  drawn  through  the  given  lines 
will  be  cut  by  them  in  the  same  proportions,  like  the 
lines  drawn  through  three  harmonicals  in  the  porism 
already  given  of  the  harmonical  curve.  To  this  Newton 
had  not  adverted,  nor  to  the  unfortunate  circumstance 
that  the  case  of  comets  is  actually  the  case  in  which 
the  problem  thus  becomes  capable  of  an  infinite  number 
of  solutions.  The  error  was  only  discovered  after 
1739,  when  it  was  found  that  the  comet  of  that  year 
was  thrown  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  sun  by  the 
Newtonian  method.  This  enormous  discrepancy  of 
the  theory  with  observation,  led  to  a  full  consideration 
of  the  subject,  and  to  a  discovery  of  the  porismatic  case. 
When  the  studies  of  a  philosopher,  and  especially 
of  a  mathematician,  have  been  described,  his  discoveries 
recorded,  and  his  writings  considered,  his  history 
has  been  written.  His  private  life  is  generally  un- 
varied, filled  with  speculative  inquiry,  amused  by  scien- 
tific reading,  variegated  only  by  philosophic  conversa- 
tion, unless  when  its  repose  is  broken  by  controversy, 
an  incident  scarcely  possible  in  the  story  of  mathe- 
maticians. Dr.  Simson  loved  to  amuse  his  leisure 
hours,  and  unbend  his  mind  in  the  relaxation  of  so- 
ciety ;  and  from  the  simplicity  of  his  manners  and  the 

*  Principia,  lib.  iii.  prop.  xli. 


SIMSON.  511 

kindliness  of  his  disposition,  as  well  as  from  his  very 
universal  information,  he  was  ever  a  most  welcome 
member  of  the  circles  which  he  frequented.  He  lived 
in  his  college  chambers  to  the  last,  but  received  his 
friends  occasionally  at  a  neighbouring  tavern,  where  a 
room  was  always  kept  at  his  disposal.  He  attended  a 
club  near  the  college,  and  in  good  weather  its  mem- 
bers dined  every  Saturday  at  Anderston,  a  suburb  of 
Glasgow.  In  these  meetings  his  chair  was  always 
reserved  for  him,  being  left  vacant  when  he  happened 
to  be  absent.  It  is  also  said  to  have  been  his  habit  to 
sit  covered.  He  was  fond  of  playing  for  an  hour  or 
two  in  the  evening  at  whist,  and  of  calculating  chances, 
at  which  he  generally  failed ;  but  he  was  on  the  whole 
a  good  player,  though  he  was  not  very  patient  of  his 
partner's  blunders,  nor  always  bore  a  bad  hand  of  such 
partner  with  philosophic  meekness.  He  was  fond  of 
music,  and  sometimes  would  sing  a  Greek  ode  to  a 
modern  air.  Professor  Robison  says  he  twice  heard 
him  sing  in  this  manner  "  a  Latin  hymn  to  the  Divine 
Geometer,"  and  adds,  that  the  tears  stood  in  his  eyes 
as  he  gave  it  with  devotional  rapture.  His  voice  was 
fine,  says  the  Professor,  and  his  ear  most  accurate. 
That  he  did  not  always  interrupt  his  geometrical 
meditations  in  the  hours  of  relaxation  is  very  plain,  not 
only  from  the  singular  anecdote  already  related  of  his 
discovery  of  porisms,  but  from  the  date  of  "  Ander- 
ston "  attached  to  some  of  his  solutions,  indicating  that 
they  had  occurred  to  him  while  attending  the  Saturday 
meetings  of  the  club  in  that  suburb.  In  all  his  habits 
he  was  punctual  and  regular,  even  measuring  the 
exercise  which  he  took  by  the  number  of  paces  he 


512  SIMSON. 

walked.  Anecdotes  are  related  of  him  when  inter- 
rupted by  some  one  on  his  accustomed  walk,  and  after 
hearing  what  was  said,  continuing  at  the  number  he 
had  just  before  marked,  and  surprising  his  acquaint- 
ance by  speaking  the  next  number  aloud.  He  was 
exceedingly  absent ;  and  the  younger  part  of  the  uni- 
versity pupils  were  wont  to  play  upon  this  peculiarity. 
It  is  related  that  one  of  the  college  porters  being 
dressed  up  for  the  purpose,  came  to  ask  charity,  and  in 
answer  to  the  Professor's  questions,  gave  an  account 
of  himself  closely  resembling  his  own  history.  When 
he  found  so  great  a  resemblance,  adds  the  story,  he 
cried  out,  "  What's  your  name  ?"  and  on  the  answer 
being  given,  "  Robert  Simson,"  he  exclaimed  with  great 
animation,  "  Why,  it  must  be  myself!" — when  he  awoke 
from  his  trance.  Notwithstanding  his  absent  habits, 
he  was  an  exceedingly  good  man  of  business ;  he  filled 
the  office  of  Clerk  of  the  Faculty  in  the  University  for 
thirty  years,  and  managed  its  financial  and  other 
concerns  with  great  regularity  and  success.  Like  all 
minds  of  a  higher  order,  his  not  only  had  no  contempt 
for  details,  but  a  love  of  them;  and  while  clerk  he 
made  a  transcript  with  his  own  hand  of  the  University 
records,  for  which  he  received  a  vote  of  thanks  from 
the  Senatus  Academicus. 

In  1758,  being  turned  of  threescore  and  ten,  he 
found  it  necessary  to  employ  an  assistant ;  when  one  of 
his  favourite  pupils,  Dr.  Williamson,  was  appointed  his 
helper  and  successor.  The  University  passed  a  resolu- 
tion stating  his  merits  fully,  recording  in  detail  his 
services  to  the  college  and  to  science  at  large,  and  pro- 
nouncing a  warm  but  just  panegyric  upon  him.  He 


SIMSON.  513 

continued  for  ten  years  in  the  pursuit  of  his  favourite 
studies,  and  the  enjoyment  of  the  same  social  intercourse 
as  before.  His  health,  which  through  his  long  life  had 
been  unbroken,  remained  entire  till  within  a  few  weeks 
of  its  close,  and  he  died  on  the  1  st  of  October,  1 768, 
having  almost  completed  his  eighty-first  year. 

He  is  represented  to  have  been  of  a  calm  and  pleas- 
ing presence,  of  a  portly  figure,  of  easy  and  not  un- 
graceful manners.  A  portrait  of  him  in  the  college 
library  remains,  and  is  said  to  do  him  justice.  His  pupil, 
Dr.  Moore,  the  Greek  professor,  and  author  of  the  cele- 
brated Grammar,  also  an  excellent  mathematician  and 
great  admirer  of  the  ancient  geometry,  wrote  the  in- 
scription which  appears  under  it,  marking  its  author's 
own  taste  in  more  ways  than  one : — 

"  Geometriam  sub  tyranno  barbaro,  saeva  servitute,  diu  lan- 
guentem,  vindicavit  unus." 

His  character  was  lofty  and  pure :  nothing  could  ex- 
ceed his  love  of  justice,  and  dislike  of  anything  sordid  or 
low ;  nor  could  he  ever  bear  to  hear  men  reviling  one 
another,  and,  least  of  all,  speaking  evil  of  the  absent  or 
the  dead.  In  this  he  closely  resembled  his  celebrated 
pupil  Mr.  Watt.  His  religious  as  well  as  moral  feel- 
ings were  strong,  and  they  were  habitual.  No  one  in  his 
presence  ever  ventured  on  the  least  irreverent  or  inde- 
corous allusion  ;  and  we  find  the  periods  of  his  geome- 
trical discoveries  mentioned  with  the  date  and  the  place, 
and  generally  an  addition  of  "  Deo"  or  "  Christo  laus," 
an  example  of  which  we  have  above  presented. 

He  never  was  married.  Of  his  brothers,  one, 
Thomas,  was  Professor  of  Medicine  at  St.  Andrew's, 
and  author  of  an  ingenious  and  original  work  on  the 
Brain  ;  his  son  succeeded  him  as  professor.  Another 

2  L 


514  SIMSON. 

brother  was  a  dissenting  minister  at  Coventry ;  and  a 
third,  also  settled  there,  had  a  son,  Robert,  first  in  the 
army,  afterwards  in  the  English  Church — -Mr. 
Pitt,  probably  from  his  love  of  the  mathematics, 
having  presented  him  to  a  living  in  the  north  of  Eng- 
land. He  was  Dr.  Simson's  heir-at-law,  and  to  him 
the  estates  were  left.  He  sold  them  in  1789,  as  well 
Kirton  Hill  as  Knock  Ewart,  which  had  been  pur- 
chased by  the  Professor's  father  in  1713.  A  niece  of 
Dr.  Simson  was  married  to  Dr.  Moore,  the  well-known 
novelist,  and  was  mother  of  the  General.  That 
illustrious  warrior  was  therefore  great  nephew  of  the 
mathematician.  Mrs.  Moore  survived  to  a  recent 
period,  and  died  in  extreme  old  age. 

He  bequeathed  his  mathematical  library  and  manu- 
scripts to  the  University  of  Glasgow,  with  special  direc- 
tions touching  their  disposition,  custody,  and  use. 
They  form,  it  is  believed,  the  most  complete  collection 
of  books  and  papers  in  that  department  of  science  any- 
where to  be  seen. 

The  extraordinary  genius  of  Dr.  Simson  for  mathe- 
matical pursuits  has  been  fully  described  in  recording  his 
achievements  in  that  difficult  branch  of  science.  That 
he  greatly  furthered  the  progress  of  mathematical 
knowledge  by  his  excellent  publications  of  the  ele- 
mentary works  of  Euclid  and  Apollonius  cannot  be 
denied ;  nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  to  him  AVC  owe  a 
revival  of  the  taste  for  the  ancient  analysis,  the  pure 
geometry,  and  the  means  now  afforded  of  gratifying  it. 
At  the  same  time  there  is  some  room  for  lamenting 
that  his  great  powers  of  mind  and  his  patient  industry 
of  research  were  not  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of  more 
useful  objects  ;  and  there  is  good  reason  to  agree  in  the 


SIMSON.  515 

opinion  expressed  by  one  of  his  most  eminent  pupils, 
Professor  Robison,  that  he  might  have  better  suc- 
ceeded in  his  favourite  object  of  recovering  the  purely 
geometrical  methods  of  investigation,  had  he  relaxed 
a  little  more  from  their  rigour  in  applying  them  to  the 
present  state  of  science,  and  shown  the  ancient  analy- 
tical investigation  dismembered  of  its  prolixity,  relieved 
from  its  extreme  scrupulousness,  and  subservient  to  the 
investigations  of  the  problems  now  become  the  main  sub- 
jects of  mathematical  inquiry.  This  has  in  a  great 
measure  been  performed  by  the  most  celebrated  of  his 
school,  Matthew  Stewart,  who  actually  has  solved 
Kepler's  problem,  and  treated  almost  the  whole  doc- 
trine of  central  forces  by  means  of  the  ancient  method.* 
At  the  same  time  we  have  only  to  cast  our  eye  upon 
his  diagrams  to  be  convinced  that  though  he  has  solved 
the  problems  and  demonstrated  the  theorems  with  a 
most  wonderful  skill,  by  means  purely  geometrical,  yet 
he  never  could  have  obtained  either  the  solutions  or 
the  demonstrations  had  not  Newton  preceded  him, 
"  his  own  analysis  carrying  the  torch  before."f  The 
most  celebrated  proposition  in  all  the  '  Principia,'  the 
general  solution  of  the  inverse  problem  of  central 
forces J,  (lib.  i.  prop,  xli.)  is  closely  followed  by  Stewart, 
and  the  diagrams  are  nearly  the  same. 

*  His  paper  on  the  sun's  distance,  in  which  he  also  employs  the 
ancient  analysis,  has  been  long  since  proved  erroneous  by  my  friend 
Mr.  Dawson  of  Sedbergh,  who  wrote  anonymously  a  demonstration 
of  the  error  in  1772. 

•f  "  Sua  mathesi  facem  praeferente." — H ALLEY. 

J  I  am  aware  of  Professor  Robison's  statement,  already  cited,  of 
Dr.  Simson's  opinion  that  the  thirty-ninth  proposition  is  the  greatest 
of  all,  but  I  cannot  help  suspecting  the  forty-first  to  be  intended. 


516  SIMSON. 

This,  however,  is  not  the  only  ground  of  regret ; 
for  had  it  been  so,  the  teacher's  defect  has  been  thus 
supplied  by  the  scholar.  But  good  cause  remains 
to  lament  that  both  of  those  great  masters  did  not  abate 
somewhat  of  their  devotion  to  the  Greek  Geometry, 
and  instead  of  being  captivated  only  with  the  view  of  its 
incomparable  beauty,  did  not  help  forward  by  their 
discoveries  those  branches  of  the  science  which,  though 
they  may  have  far  less  grace,  have  yet  a  far  wider  range 
and  far  greater  usefulness.  Surely  it  is  deeply  to  be 
lamented  that  such  extraordinary  powers  of  original 
investigation  as  both  these  great  men  possessed  should, 
especially  in  the  case  of  Stewart,  have  been  wasted  upon 
what  Professor  Robison's  learned  wit  terms  "  a  super- 
stitious paleeology,"  and  in  the  overcoming  of  difficulties 
raised  by  themselves — of  reaching  the  point  in  view  by 
a  devious  and  hard  ascent,  when  a  short  and  an  easy 
path  lay  open  before  them — of  doing,  and  not  very  well 
doing,  by  an  imperfect  though  elegant  tool,  and  with 
no  help  from  machinery,  the  same  work  which  might 
with  far  better  success  and  greater  facility  have  been 
performed  by  the  most  perfect  instrument  that  ever  man 
invented ;  like  the  laborious,  patient,  and  ignorant 
Hindu,  who  with  a  knife  will  carve  the  most  beautiful 
ivory  trinket,  on  which  he  spends  a  lifetime  that  might 
have  been  employed  in  the  most  important  works  by  the 
aid  of  fit  implements — nay,  who  might  have  turned  by  a 
simple  lathe  myriads  of  the  same  kind  of  toy, 

THE  END. 

London;  Printed  by  WILLIAM  CLOWES  &  SONS,  Stamford  Street. 


ERRATA. 

In  page  3,  line  13  from  foot,  after  and  insert  it. 

„       9,  ,,     7  from  foot,/or  guide's  read  arrondis. 

„     17,  „     7,  for  1769,  read  1762. 

,,     18,  ,,     9  from  foot,  for  sixty  read  a  hundred. 

,,     23,  ,,    11  from  foot,  for  regne  dans  1*  read  commande  en. 

,,     39,  ,,     3  from  foot,  for  ses  read  son. 

„     46,  ,,    13  from  foot,  for  pardonnez  read  pardonne. 

»     50>    u     9, /or  of  the  read  of  this. 

,,     60,    ,,    19,  after  consequence  insert  and  one. 

,,  128,    ,,     9,  for  avons  tort  read  nous  trompons. 

,,  163,  ,,      3  from  foot,  for  fonder  read  fondre. 

,,  172,    ,,     4  from  foot,/or  ont  read  sont. 

„  290,    „    18,  for  Henry  VIII.  read  Henry  VII. 

„  296,  lines  1,  27,  and  34,  for  Irvine  read  Irving. 

,,  316,  line  21,  for  him  read  to  him. 

,,355,    ,,    1 8,  for  settled  read  living. 

„  360,    ,,    11,  after  and  insert  he. 

„  378,    „    15,/or  1834  read  1829. 

,,381,    ,,    17,  before  a  little  insert  which  were. 

„  383,    ,,      1,  after  he  insert  has. 

M     __ t    n     4}  for  he  read  Mr.  Watt. 


I  have  been  favoured  with  the  following  Memorandum  from  the 
Foreign  Office.  The  correspondence  of  1763  and  1765  I  examined, 
and  have  alluded  to  at  p.  225. 

"  A  search  has  Jbeen  made  in  the  offices  of  the  Secretaries  of 
State  and  in  the  State  Paper  Office  for  the  correspondence  of  Mr. 
David  Hume  when  Under-Secretary  of  State  with  Marshal  Conway ; 
but  although  letters  have  been  found  addressed  to  Mr.  Hume  in 
1767-8,  no  letter  signed  by  Mr.  Hume  can  be  found  in  any  of  the 
entry  books  of  the  period  during  which  Mr.  Hume  was  Under- 
secretary of  State  ;  nor  can  any  such  letter  be  found  in  the  books 
of  the  same  period  in  the  State  Paper  Office. 

"  It  would  appear  from  the  postscript  of  a  letter  from  Mr.  Carroll, 
dated  at  Dresden,  April  13,  1768,  that  Mr.  Hume's  retirement 
had  then  been  spoken  of. 

"  There  are  some  letters  in  the  State  Paper  Office  in  Mr.  Hume's 
handwriting  while  Secretary  to  the  Earl  of  Hertford,  at  Paris  in 
1763 ;  and  also  his  own  letters  when  left  as  Charge  d' Affaires  in 
France,  from  the  28th  of  July  to  the  13th  of  November,  1765. 

"FOREIGN  OFFICE,  April  8,  1845." 


^J 


c 


C 


c 
<S 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED! 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY—TEL.  NO.  642-3405 
This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


UCLA 
INTERLIBRARY 


ONE 


MAR  13  197C 
<- AM  DIEGO 

. 


MAY  3  01992 


BEC.WR. 


LD21A-60m-6/69 
(J9096slO)476-A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


Urn