Volume Iii Part 36 (1/2)
The great French antiquary, Peiresc, exhibited a singular combination of learning, patient thought, and luminous sagacity, which could restore an ”airy nothing” to ”a local habitation and a name.” There was found on an amethyst, and the same afterwards occurred on the front of an ancient temple, a number of _marks_, or indents, which had long perplexed inquirers, more particularly as similar marks or indents were frequently observed in ancient monuments. It was agreed on, as no one could understand them, and all would be satisfied, that they were secret hieroglyphics. It occurred to Peiresc that these marks were nothing more than holes for small nails, which had formerly fastened little _laminae_, which represented so many Greek letters. This hint of his own suggested to him to draw lines from one hole to another; and he beheld the amethyst reveal the name of the sculptor, and the frieze of the temple the name of the G.o.d! This curious discovery has been since frequently applied; but it appears to have originated with this great antiquary, who by his learning and sagacity explained a supposed hieroglyphic, which had been locked up in the silence of seventeen centuries.[264]
Learned men, confined to their study, have often rectified the errors of travellers; they have done more, they have found out paths for them to explore, or opened seas for them to navigate. The situation of the vale of Tempe had been mistaken by modern travellers; and it is singular, observes the Quarterly Reviewer, yet not so singular as it appears to that elegant critic, that the only good directions for finding it had been given by a person who was never in Greece. Arthur Browne, a man of letters of Trinity College, Dublin--it is gratifying to quote an Irish philosopher and man of letters, from the extreme rarity of the character--was the first to detect the inconsistencies of Poc.o.c.ke and Busching, and to send future travellers to look for Tempe in its real situation, the defiles between Ossa and Olympus; a discovery subsequently realised. When Dr. Clarke discovered an inscription purporting that the pa.s.s of Tempe had been fortified by Ca.s.sius Longinus, Mr. Walpole, with equal felicity, detected, in Caesar's ”History of the Civil War,” the name and the mission of this very person.
A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply indebted, does not read Herodotus in the original; yet, by the exercise of his extraordinary apt.i.tude, it is well known that he has often corrected the Greek historian, explained obscurities in a text which he never read, by his own happy conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the subsequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded.
Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India and of Persia, at a time when our country had no immediate interests with those ancient empires, would have been placed by a cynical observer among the curious idleness of a mere man of letters. These studies were indeed prosecuted, as Mr. Mathias observes, ”on the disinterested principles of liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regulation of trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of permanent establishments, but simply and solely on the grand view of what is, and of what is past.
They were the researches of a solitary scholar in academical retirement.” Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel and Dr. Vincent, who have opened to the cla.s.sical and the political reader all he wished to learn, at a time when India and Persia had become objects interesting and important to us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their author was no more, became valuable!
The studies of the ”solitary scholar” are always useful to the world, although they may not always be timed to its present wants; with him, indeed, they are not merely designed for this purpose. Gray discovered India for himself; but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped to a particular end, will never fail being useful to the world; though it may happen that a century may elapse between the periods of the discovery and its practical utility.
Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical subject offers an instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am alluding to; it may also serve as a demonstration of the peculiar and supereminent advantages possessed by mathematicians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed relations, which form the objects of their science, and the correspondent precision in their language and reasoning:--as matter of literary history it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard accidentally discovered in the Bodleian Library an Arabic version of Apollonius _de Sectione Rationis_, which he determined to translate in Latin, but only finished about a tenth part. Halley, extremely interested by the subject, but with an entire ignorance of the Arabic language, resolved to complete the imperfect version! a.s.sisted only by the ma.n.u.script which Bernard had left, it served him as a key for investigating the sense of the original; he first made _a list of those words_ wherever they occurred, with the _train of reasoning_ in which they were involved, to decipher, by these very slow degrees, the import of the context; till at last Halley succeeded in mastering the whole work, and in bringing the translation, without the aid of any one, to the form in which he gave it to the public; so that we have here a difficult work translated from the Arabic, by one who was in no manner conversant with the language, merely by the exertion of his sagacity!
I give the memorable account, as Boyle has delivered it, of the circ.u.mstances which led Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood.
”I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only discourse I had with him, which was but a little while before he died, what were the things which induced him to think of a circulation of the blood, he answered me, that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free pa.s.sage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the pa.s.sage of the venal blood the contrary way, he was invited to think that so provident a cause as nature had not placed so many valves without design; and no design seemed more probable than that, since the blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it should be sent through the arteries and return through the veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way.”
The reason here ascribed to Harvey seems now so very natural and obvious, that some have been disposed to question his claim to the high rank commonly a.s.signed to him among the improvers of science! Dr.
William Hunter has said that after the discovery of the valves in the veins, which Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the remaining step might easily have been made by any person of common abilities. ”This discovery,” he observes, ”set Harvey to work upon the _use_ of the heart and vascular system in animals; and in the _course of some years_, he was so happy as to discover, and to prove beyond all possibility of doubt, the circulation of the blood.” He afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery should have been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges it occupied ”a course of years;” adding that ”Providence meant to reserve it for _him_, and would not let men _see what was before them, nor understand what they read_.”
It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!
It is said that a recent discovery, which ascertains that the Niger empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, was really antic.i.p.ated by the geographical ac.u.men of a student at Glasgow, who arrived at the same conclusion by a most persevering investigation of the works of travellers and geographers, ancient and modern, and by an examination of African captives; and had actually constructed, for the inspection of government, a map of Africa, on which he had traced the entire course of the Niger from the interior.
Franklin _conjectured_ the ident.i.ty of lightning and of electricity, before he had _realised_ it by decisive experiment. The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very promising cloud had pa.s.sed over it without any effect. Just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that moment when _the discovery was complete_! We owe to Priestley this admirable narrative; the strong sensation of delight which Franklin experienced as his knuckle touched the key, and at the moment when he felt that a new world was opening, might have been equalled, but it was probably not surpa.s.sed, when the same hand signed the long-disputed independence of his country!
When Leibnitz was occupied in his philosophical reasonings on his _Law of Continuity_, his singular sagacity enabled him to predict a discovery which afterwards was realised--he _imagined_ the necessary existence of the polypus!
It has been remarked of Newton, that several of his slight hints, some in the modest form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Optics, that ”If natural philosophy should be continued to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also,” is perhaps among the most important of human discoveries--it gave rise to Hartley's _Physiological Theory of the Mind_. The queries, the hints, the conjectures of Newton, display the most creative sagacity; and demonstrate in what manner the discoveries of retired men, while they bequeath their legacies to the world, afford to themselves a frequent source of secret and silent triumphs.
FOOTNOTES:
[263] The remarkable clue to the reading of the hieroglyphic language of ancient Egypt perfected in our own times is a striking instance of this; as well as the investigations now proceeding in Babylonian inscriptions, which promise to enable us to comprehend a language that was once considered as hopelessly lost.
[264] The curious reader may view the marks, and the manner in which the Greek characters were made out, in the preface to Hearne's ”Curious Discourses.” The amethyst proved more difficult than the frieze, from the circ.u.mstance, that in engraving on the stone the letters must be reversed.
SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY.
A periodical critic, probably one of the juniors, has thrown out a startling observation. ”There is,” says this literary senator, ”something melancholy in the study of biography, because it is--a history of the dead!” A truism and a falsity mixed up together is the temptation with some modern critics to commit that darling sin of theirs--novelty and originality! But we really cannot condole with the readers of Plutarch for their deep melancholy; we who feel our spirits refreshed, amidst the mediocrity of society, when we are recalled back to the men and the women who WERE! ill.u.s.trious in every glory! Biography with us is a re-union with human existence in its most excellent state!
and we find nothing dead in the past, while we retain the sympathies which only require to be awakened.
It would have been more reasonable had the critic discovered that our country has not yet had her Plutarch, and that our biography remains still little more than a ma.s.s of compilation.
In this study of biography there is a species which has not yet been distinguished--biographies composed by some domestic friend, or by some enthusiast who works with love. A term is unquestionably wanted for this distinct cla.s.s. The Germans seem to have invented a Platonic one, drawn from the Greek, _psyche_, or the soul; for they call this the _psychological life_. Another attempt has been made, by giving it the scientific term of _idiosyncrasy_, to denote a peculiarity of disposition. I would call it _sentimental biography_!
It is distinct from a _chronological_ biography, for it searches for the individual's feelings amidst the ascertained facts of his life; so that facts, which occurred remotely from each other, are here brought at once together. The detail of events which completes the chronological biography, contains many which are not connected with the peculiarity of the character itself. The _sentimental_ is also distinct from the _autobiography_, however it may seem a part of it. Whether a man be ent.i.tled to lavish his panegyric on himself, I will not decide; but it is certain that he risks everything by appealing to a solitary and suspected witness.
We have two Lives of Dante, one by Boccaccio and the other by Leonardo Aretino, both interesting: but Boccaccio's is the _sentimental life_!
Aretino, indeed, finds fault, but with all the tenderness possible, with Boccaccio's affectionate sketch, _Origine, Vita, Studi e Costumi del clarissimo Dante_, &c. ”Origin, Life, Studies and Manners, of the ill.u.s.trious Dante,” &c. ”It seems to me,” he says, ”that our Boccaccio, _dolcissimo e suavissimo uomo_, sweet and delightful man! has written the life and manners of this sublime poet as if he had been composing the _Filocolo_, the _Filostrato_, or the _Fiametta_,” the romances of Boccaccio--”for all breathes of love and sighs, and is covered with warm tears, as if a man were born in this world only to live among the enamoured ladies and the gallant youths of the ten amorous days of his hundred novels.”