Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846. Various
his hospitality, and his zeal for science, were valuable, and are nearly indispensable in the president of a body which concentrates the chief intellectual force of the community. But his favourite pursuit, botany, has never deserved the name of a science, and inevitably bears a character of triviality in the eyes of the mathematician and the philosopher. The distinction given to a comparatively young man, known to the world only as a voyager, and a collector of plants and animals, not unnaturally tended to breed scoffing among the professors of the severe sciences. The feeling spread, and the opportunity for its expression was soon found. Dr Hutton, the mathematical professor at Woolwich, happened to be secretary for foreign correspondence. His residence at Woolwich was said to produce some inconvenience in his intercourse with the president; and the council passed a resolution, in 1783, recommending that "the foreign secretary should reside in London." The secret history of this transaction is, that Hutton was one of the mathematical party; though we cannot distinctly ascertain whether he had actually gone so far as to sneer at the president. Upon this Hutton resigned the office; to accept which, the emolument could not have been his object, the salary being but L.20 a-year – a sum that cannot be mentioned without a sense of disgrace to a society reckoning among its members some of the wealthiest men of England.
Hutton's resignation, or rather dismissal, produced an open war in the society. The mathematicians ranged themselves on the Huttonian side; the cultivators of natural history, and the cultivators of nothing, ranged themselves on the side of the president. The mathematicians were headed by Horsley, afterwards the bishop – a man whom Lord Brougham characterizes as extremely arrogant, of violent temper, and intoxicated with an extravagant sense of his own scientific merits, which his noble biographer pronounces to be altogether insignificant, heading this charge with the unkindest cut of all, namely, that he was "a priest." Horsley was certainly no great mathematician, as his publication of the Principia unluckily shows; but the picture is high coloured, which represents him as a hot-tempered, loud-tongued, bustling personage – a sort of bravo of science and theology, who took up the first opinion which occurred to him, scorned to rectify it by any after-thought, and plunged from one absurdity into another, for the sake of consistency. The eloquence of his attacks upon the chair, of whose possession he was supposed to be foolishly ambitious, was vaunted a good deal by his partisans. But, as the only evidence of his rhetoric in these squabbles ever quoted, is one sentence, it is like the pretension to wit on the strength of a single pun, and may be easily cast aside. This boasted sentence was uttered, in threatening the secession of the mathematical party. "The president will then be left with his train of feeble amateurs, and that toy (the mace) upon the table – the ghost of the Society in which Philosophy once reigned, and Newton officiated as her minister."
Horsley's theology was too nearly on a par with his mathematics – he was harsh and headlong. The fortunate folly of Priestley in challenging the English clergy to a trial of strength in the old arena of Unitarianism, gained him an opportunity of crushing an antagonist whose presumption was in proportion to his ignorance. Accordingly, the Unitarian was speedily put hors-de-combat, and Horsley was rewarded with a mitre.
The president had long felt that the purpose of this violent lover of parallelograms was, to unseat him. The question was therefore brought to a decision, in the shape of a resolution "approving of Sir Joseph Banks as president, and resolving to support him in his office." This resolution was carried by 119 to 43.
Honours began now to gather upon him. In 1788 he had been made a baronet. In 1795 he received the order of the Bath, then generally restricted to soldiers and diplomatists. In two years after, he was called to the Privy Council. On the death of the Duke of Ancaster he was chosen recorder of Boston; but, though often solicited to stand an election, he was never a member of Parliament. Though professing himself a Tory, he seems never to have taken any active part in politics, preserving a curious practical neutrality in Lincolnshire, and giving his interest to Mr Pelham, a Whig, and Mr Chaplin, a Tory. This, which his noble biographer curiously seems to consider as a happy proof of the absence of all party feelings, we should be apt to look upon as a proof of a degenerate wish to consult his own ease, and of a sluggish neutrality discreditable to the character of an Englishman.
However, he had more honourable distinctions. In the furious Revolutionary war – a war of principles and passions, not less than of public interests, the president of the Royal Society largely exerted his interest with both governments, to alleviate the sufferings of scientific men who happened to fall into the hands of the belligerents, and to effect the restoration of scientific property captured by our ships of war. In 1802 he was chosen one of the foreign members of the Institute of France; and his letter of thanks, a little too ardent in its gratitude, was said to have involved the baronet in some vexations peculiarly felt by his courtly temperament. He was instantly attacked for his Gallican panegyric, by a portion of the Royal Society. Cobbett, who was then looking out for a victim, and whose loyalty was at that period peculiarly glowing, flew at him like a tiger-cat; and, last and most dreaded of all, he was said to have received at Windsor some of those frowns, which to a courtier are a total eclipse of the sun. But the nation soon had higher things to think of than a slip of the President's pen, or a little betrayal of his vanity. Napoleon ascended the throne; and, when the thunderbolts began to fall, the squibs and crackers flung from hand to hand of little men are of necessity forgotten.
His latter years were signalized by acts of unequivocal public service. He is designated by Lord Brougham, and no one can have a better right to be informed of the fact, as the real founder of the African Association. – His lordship also regards him as the real founder of the colony of Botany Bay. – He was the first to suggest the transfer of the tropical fruits to the West India islands. – British horticulture owed him great services. – And the British Museum, during forty-two years of his trusteeship, was the object of his peculiar care, and finally received the bequest of his excellent library and of all his collections.
His career, however, was now, by the course of nature, drawing to its close. Yet, he had lived seventy-eight years in this anxious and disappointing world, in opulence, in peace, and in public estimation. But his lot had been singularly fortunate. Few men are without their share of those troubles which characterize the general condition of human nature. Sir Joseph Banks had his trial, in physical suffering. In the first portion of his life he had been remarkable for robust health and activity; but, from about his fortieth year, he suffered severely from attacks of gout, which increased so much, that for his last fourteen years he was scarcely able to walk. His robust mind, however, enabled him to encounter his disease by increased and extreme temperance. He gave up all fermented liquors and animal food. He seems to have derived considerable benefit from D'Huisson's medicine. But his hour was come; and on the 19th of June 1820, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, he died – just one year after his honoured and royal friend, George III.
Thus passed through the world one of those men who are among the most useful in their generation. It would be idle to pronounce him a genius, a discoverer, or a profound philosopher. But he served an important purpose in society; he suggested philosophical enterprise, he protected the honourable ambition of men whose career, without that protection, might have closed in obscure suffering: he gave the philosophy and literature of his time a leader, and formed it into a substantial shape. In this spirit he employed his life; and he accomplished his purpose with the constancy and determination of a sagacious and systematic mind. He might not be a pillar of the philosophical temple of his country, nor its architrave; but he performed the office of the clamp – he bound together the materials of both pillar and architrave, and sustained the edifice alike in its stateliness and in its security.
Lord Brougham's biography of D'Alembert commences with a brief dissertation on the interest which the mind takes in the study of mathematics. This study he regards as superior in gratification to every other, from its independence of external circumstances. In all other studies, he observes truly, that a large portion of the researches must depend upon facts imperfectly ascertained from the reports of others, and upon knowledge impeded by the capricious chances of things; while in pure science, the principles, the premises, and the conclusions, are wholly within our own power.
In a passage exhibiting the affluence of the noble lord's language, he says, "The life of a geometrician may well be supposed an uninterrupted calm, and the gratification which is derived from its researches, is of a pure and also of a lively