LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4064066152635

Table of Contents

       PREFACE.

       WILLIAM WHEWELL [1] .

       CONNOP THIRLWALL [18] .

       RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON [77] .

       EDWARD HENRY PALMER [88] .

       FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR.

       HENRY BRADSHAW.

       WILLIAM HEPWORTH THOMPSON.

       COUTTS TROTTER.

       RICHARD OKES.

       HENRY RICHARDS LUARD [118] .

       RICHARD OWEN [120] .

PREFACE.

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      I have frequently been asked to write my Memoirs, or I should rather say, my Recollections. I have serious doubts as to whether I recollect anything of value; and, even if I do, I have no time at present to commit it to paper. But, as the University, when I first knew it, was a very different place from what it is now; and as it has fallen to my lot to write several biographical notices of distinguished Cambridge men, in the course of which I have noted incidentally a good many of the constitutional and social changes of later years, I venture to republish what I have written. Such compositions, many of which were dashed off on the spur of the moment, under the influence of strong feeling, with no opportunity for correction or amplification, are, I am aware, defective as a serious record of lives which ought to have been told at greater length. But, that they gain in sincerity what they lose in detail, will, I hope, be conceded by those who take the trouble to read them.

      Most of these articles are reprinted as they were written, with only obvious and necessary corrections. The Life of Dr. Whewell has been slightly enlarged; and that of Bishop Thirlwall has been revised, though not substantially altered. Any merit that this Life may possess is due to the kindness of the late Master of my College, Dr. Thompson. I myself had never so much as seen Thirlwall, and undertook the article with great reluctance. But my difficulties vanished as soon as I had consulted Dr. Thompson. He had been one of Thirlwall’s intimate friends, and not only supplied me with information about him which I could not have learnt from any other source, but revised the article more than once when in type.

      The article on Dr. Luard is practically new. Soon after his death I contributed a short sketch of his Life to the Saturday Review, and afterwards another, in a somewhat different style, to a Trinity College Magazine called The Trident. Out of these, with some additions, the present article has been composed.

      It has been suggested to me that an article on Richard Owen, in a series devoted entirely, with that exception, to Cambridge men, needs justification. I would urge in my defence that the Senate coopted Owen by selecting him, in 1859, as the first recipient of an honorary degree under the new statutes.

      My cordial thanks are due to Dr. Jackson, Fellow and Prælector of Trinity College, for much valuable criticism, and assistance in preparing the volume for the press.

      I have also to thank the proprietors of the Church Quarterly Review, and those of the Saturday Review, for their kindness in allowing me to reprint articles of which they hold the copyright.

      JOHN WILLIS CLARK.

      Scroope House, Cambridge.

       1 January, 1900.

WILLIAM WHEWELL^[1].

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      Full materials for the life of Dr. Whewell are at last before the public. We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866 before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of Dr. Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate portions. It was originally intended that there should be three of these published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out this scheme; and Mr. Todhunter published the first instalment before anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together, and entrusted to Mrs. Stair Douglas, Dr. Whewell’s niece by marriage. The defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were compelled to follow.

      Few lives, we imagine, have been so many-sided as to need a double, not to say a triple, narrative in order to set them fully before the public; and we assert most distinctly that Dr. Whewell was the last man whose biography should have been so treated. His life, notwithstanding his diverse occupations and his widespread interests, presented a singular unity, due to his unflinching determination to subordinate his pursuits, his actions, and his thoughts to what he felt to be his work in the world, viz. the advancement, in the fullest sense the word can be made to bear, of his College and his University. He himself made no attempt to subdivide his time, so as to carry out some special work at the expense of other occupations. He found time for everything. His extraordinary energy, and his power of absorbing himself at a moment’s notice in whatever he had to do, whether scientific research or University business, enabled him to get through an astonishing amount of work in a single day. Much of what he did must have been very irksome and repulsive to him. He particularly disliked detail, especially that relating to finance. ‘I hate these disgusting details,’ was his way of putting aside, or trying to put aside, economical discussions at College meetings; and it was often hard to make him understand the real importance of these apparently small matters. Again, he always found time to go into society; to keep himself well acquainted with all that was going forward in politics, literature, art, music, science; and to carry on a vast correspondence with relatives, friends, and men of science in England and on the Continent. A considerable number of these letters have of course perished; but the extent of the collection is evident from Mr. Todhunter’s statement that he had examined more than 3,500 letters written to Dr. Whewell,

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