Principles recognized by scientific men applied to the ether controversy.

  • Abbot, Jos. Hale (Joseph Hale), 1802-1873.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles recognized by scientific men applied to the ether controversy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    3/52 (page 529)
    LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.—No. 214.—17 JUNE, 1848. From the British Quarterly Review. 'lne Works of diaries Lamb, including his Life and Letters, collected into one volume. Moxon. Early in the present century, there was, every Wednesday evening, in very humble quarters in the Temple, a snug little reunion, to which one would rather have been admitted that to any dozen brilliant conversaziones which London could offer. Nothing could be simpler than the entertainment; it had none of the attractions of wealth, of fashion, or of celebrity. It was never chronicled in the Morning Post. What was said and done there, afforded no food to idle on dits. No magnificent flunkies lined the staircase, and roared your name from one to the other, trumpeting your arrival. You were not ushered into a blaze of light, amidst jewels, plumes, and rustling dresses, crowding beneath chandeliers. It was a very small room, dimly lighted, modest in its appearance, the walls graced with an engraving or two, and a famous head of Milton, the possessor's pride. A quiet rubber, the solemnity of which was from time to time relieved by quaint quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles ; a plain clay pipe ; a crust of bread and cheese—perhaps oysters; a foaming tankard of porter ; a glass of ginger wine, and a glass or so of grog: these were all that hospitality could offer, but they were offered hospitably. The champagne was in the talk—and to hear them was worth the sacrifice of any entertainment. The guests were various, but all choice spirits.'' There you might see gentle George Dyer, as scholarly and simple as Parson Adams. There also, Manning, with his burning ardor, and great mathematical science. There Leigh Hunt, with overflowing animal spirits, quoting, misquoting, punning, and criticising—bold, yet timid; his audacity in speculation always restrained by con- stitutional timidity, which made him do away (in a parenthesis) with the very purpose of his opinion. There his fierce, irascible, dogmatic, acute, honest- hating, honest-loving, paradoxical friend Hazlitt, by turns giving vent to some political vehemence, and to some delicate criticism on painting—describ- ing with gusto, and analyzing with startling acute- ness. There also Coleridge, fat, florid, indolent, dreaming, silver-haired, and silver-tongued, pouring forth rivers of talk, on the banks of which grew lovely wild flowers of all kinds ; discoursing bland'v and poetically on all the high arguments which can interest mankind, but coming to no definite conclusion on any one of them : always intending to accomplish great works, never writing them; weak, selfish, and dreamy ; his fascinating talents somewhat tinged with mora] cant; a great power- less power, an amorphous genius. There Words- CCXIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 34 worth, rough in manner, stern in morals, cold, prosing, didactic, but surrounded by a halo of poetic glory ; having left his mountains for a few weeks of London fog and sociality. There God- win, the audacious theorist, dreaming of perfec- tibility and political justice; cold, grave, and oracular; uttering paradoxes with the passionless air of deliberative wisdom; rigid at the whist table ; admitting no aristocracy but that of letters ; receiving all opinions opposed to his own with silent scorn and exasperating superiority ; unmoved by the convulsions of society ; a ruler of the spirits — the. central calm at the heart of all agitation. There Talfourd, then a struggling barrister and flowery essayist, soon to become an eminent barris- ter and flowery poet. There also Holcroft, the author of the Road to Ruin, having risen from the bottom of the social scale to an eminent position in the world of letters—having passed the strangest and most chequered of lives ; the son of a hawking pedlar, always roaming, always changing his means of livelihood ; now employed as an infant to lead a donkey to the coal pit, there to get it loaded, and then conduct it home ; now taken as a stable boy at a trainer's, there to store up materials for Goldfinch; now setting up a school with one scholar ; now trying to be a cobbler ; now joining strolling players, and at last succeeding as a dra- matic author ; marrying four wives ; indicted for high treason on the most frivolous grounds, owing to the arbitrary measures when George the Third was king; acquitted, but ever afterwards damaged in reputation, being looked upon as an acquitted felon ; and now finally having passed through all these vicissitudes, and settled into old ags, still writing feeble comedies, translating from the German, and dabbling in pictures. The central figure of this group—the host, who numbered all these various men of genius and talent as his friends, and who differing from all, yet sym- pathized with all, was Charles Lamb, perhaps, on the whole, the most interesting of the set. Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear For rarest genius, for sterling worth, Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, And wit that never gave an ill thought birth. So sang Robert Southey, with more truth than felicity ; and so would every heart respond. As a writer, whose place is forever conquered in our literature ; and as a character, full of piquant con- trast and matter for study, we shall not be blamed, we trust, for occupying the reader's time for a brief while, in endeavoring to present some of the characteristics of his genius. Die Gestalt des Mcnsclien, says Gothe, ist der Text zu allem was sich iiber ihn empfinden