CHAPTER II

OF SCIENTIFIC WRITERS

IN no respect has the age of which we are writing been so conspicuous as in the progress of scientific learning and discovery. With these, as with all the wonderful inventions that have grown out of the new diffusion of scientific knowledge, we have little to do, in a work which is busied with literature alone. Science, however, has not yet discovered a method of setting its new truths before the public which is half so successful or half so durable as that offered by literature; consequently we feel ourselves bound to devote some attention to the books of men of science, though it is a subject which we approach with diffidence and with some difficulty. We feel something of the same abashed respect with which honest Captain Cuttle regarded the oracular Bunsby. "Bunsby," he said, "you carry a weight of knowledge easy as would swamp one of my tonnage soon." It

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is much in the same spirit that we are inclined to look upon the literature of science, the more that we find it usually to contain as much science and as little literature as can conveniently be included within the boards of a book. We are only capable of taking cognisance of the few stray literary graces that may have crept in here and there when the muse of science nodded and the writer was off his guard, or must confine ourselves to such popular expositions as may be written down. to the literary level. Thus, our estimate of the value of a scientific book need not be in any way proportioned to the knowledge it contains, having more to do with the manner in which that knowledge is conveyed to the public. For the same reason, we should set aside a great number of the most valuable of such works, just as we should reject any other purely technical treatise. bage's Table of Logarithms, for instance, is a highly valuable work, no doubt, and so is Cavendish on Whist; but we do not include either in the category of literature.

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Among the most prominent figures in the scientific world at the commencement of the reign was one also well known in wider fields of literature. David Brewster was born in 1781 and educated at his father's school in Jedburgh and at Edinburgh University. When quite young he began to write for the Edinburgh Magazine, of

which he was appointed editor in 1802. He had chosen for a career the Church, was licensed as a preacher in 1804 and preached his first sermon in the West Kirk of Edinburgh in the same year. But his constitutional nervousness made every appearance in the pulpit a severe trial to him, and he soon gave up his clerical duties, and returned to the quieter path of private tuition. Meanwhile his scientific acquirements had become known and he was advanced as a candidate for the vacant professorship of mathematics, to which, however, Sir John Leslie's much higher claims secured his election. A similar appointment at St. Andrews was also thought too good for Brewster by the electors. He continued his work quietly, making his first mark with a paper on the "Properties of Light" addressed to the Royal Society, which was followed by his well-known contributions to the Transactions of the same body on the "Polarisation of Light." The Edinburgh Magazine, which after several changes of name became known as the Edinburgh Journal of Science, he continued to edit for many years, himself contributing many articles, especially on his special subject of optics. He was also a constant contributor to the Edinburgh and North British Reviews, and wrote occasionally in the Quarterly. To Murray's Family Library he contributed a Life of Sir Isaac Newton as well as his

famous Letters on Natural Magic, which is in its way a work almost without an equal. Among his later works were his Martyrs of Science and his More Worlds than One, an answer to some opinions advanced in Whewell's Plurality of Worlds. Brewster was also remarkable as the principal founder of the British Association, and was one of the members of the first Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. He was overwhelmed with academical honours from all quarters, was knighted and received the Hanoverian order from William IV. In 1838 he was appointed Principal of the United College of SS. Salvator and Leonard in the University of St. Andrews, and some twenty years later became Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University. He lived to a good old age, dying in 1868 at the age of eighty-six. Brewster was a very wellknown figure in the society of both Edinburgh and London and had a considerable influence in the world of letters generally. In Maclise's picture to which we have already referred we see him figuring among the brilliant band of writers who enlisted under Maginn, in the service of Fraser's Magazine.

A kindred spirit, at first the protégé and afterwards the friend of Brewster throughout lifewith the exception of a short period in which they were brought into personal rivalry-was

James David Forbes, known to science as the discoverer of the polarisation of heat. Born in 1809, the son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo and of the lady who was the object of Sir Walter Scott's early love, Forbes was nearly thirty years younger than Brewster, to whose notice he was brought by some scientific articles contributed at an early age to the periodical of which the latter was editor. By his advice, the young man took up science as a profession instead of the Bar, for which he had been originally intended, and with Brewster's aid soon became a well-known figure in the new circle to which he was thus introduced, being one of the earliest supporters of his friend's great enterprise, the founding of the British Association. In 1833 he appears, perhaps not very gratefully, as the opponent—and the successful opponent of Brewster for the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, which had become vacant by Sir John Leslie's death. Brewster, who had already been rejected once for this appointment, appears to have felt himself much aggrieved by the conduct of Forbes, but their friendship was afterwards resumed as warmly as ever. Forbes was extremely successful as a lecturer, and introduced some valuable reforms into the University. In the summer of 1840 he spent his vacation in Switzerland and the Alpine districts of Savoy, where he commenced his