Pliny the Elder, naturalist. A most industrious compiler and a student of extraordinary devotion, but curiously devoid of critical ability. He was parsimonious of his time; slept little; was grave and noble. Lost his life in visiting

Vesuvius during an eruption.

n. Pliny the Younger (he took the name of his mother's family), author of the "Epistles." Very precocious; a man of

great accomplishments, a great orator, a patron of men of learning, and an able statesman.

Porta, Giovanni Baptista; an Italian philosopher of high eminence in his day, 1550-1615. Inventor of the camera obscura. He was a youthful prodigy, and became universally accomplished. He wrote well on many subjects besides science. He founded societies, and gave a notable impulse to the study of natural science. Unmarried. B. A younger brother shared his ardour for study. Saussure, H. B. de; Swiss geologist and physicist. Carefully educated; was appointed Professor at Geneva æt. 22. His constitution became injured by the effects of Alpine exploration, also by anxiety on money matters. Died æt. 59.

F. Agriculturist and author of works on agriculture and statistics.

S. Nicholas Theodore; naturalist and chemist. Died æt. 78. He was first associated with his father in his pursuits, but afterwards followed an independent line of inquiry. Stephenson, George; eminent engineer. The father of rail

ways. A big, raw-boned youth, who educated himself. By steady but slow advances, he became engineer to a colliery at £100 a year, æt. 41. His first steam-engine was made æt. 43. He gained the prize for the best design for a locomotive æt. 49, and thenceforward his way to fortune He invented the whole system of railway labour, its signals, "navvies," rails, stations, and locomotives; and his success was gained in the teeth of all kinds of opposition and absurd objections.

was short.

S. Robert; precocious and industrious. Became the foremost engineer of his day.

Volta, Alexandre; an Italian physicist of the highest order, best

known by his electrical (Voltaic) researches. Napoleon

desired to make him the representative of Italian science, and pushed him forward in many ways, but Volta had no ambition of that kind. He was a man of noble presence, strong and rapid intelligence, large and just ideas, affectionate and sincere character. His scholars idolized him. He distinguished himself early at college. Began to write on electricity æt. 24. During the last six years of his life, he lived only for his family. Died æt. 82.

[S.] One of his two sons died æt. 18, full of promise. Watt, James; inventor of the steam-engine and of much else.

He had a share in the discovery of the composition of water. Was very delicate as a child; was precocious, fond of experiment; read with avidity and indiscriminately. Æt. 21, he had attracted the notice of the authorities of the University of Glasgow, as being an ingenious and philosophical workman. His progress to fortune was slow and mainly due to his fortunate association with Boulton, who supplied energy, concentration of purpose, daring, administrative skill and capital. Watt ailed continually, and he was very irresolute until he approached old age, when his vigour became more and more remarkable. Few men had read so much as Watt, or remembered what they had read with such accuracy. He had a prodigious and orderly memory, and singular clearness in explaining. As an inventive genius he has never been surpassed.

[G.] A humble teacher of mathematics, and something of an oddity. Mr. Muirhead says of him, in his Life of Watt, "It is curious to observe how decidedly a turn for scientific pursuits seems, in some measure at least, to have been common to every male of that family, so as to have become almost the birthright of both the grandsons of Thomas Watt, 'the old mathematician.' And it may be added, that the same inclination still continued to ‘run in their veins' till the line of direct male descent itself became extinct by the death, without issue, of both the sons of the illustrious improver of the steam-engine." (Page 17.)

[F.] A man of zeal and intelligence, for twenty years town councillor, treasurer, and baillie of Glasgow.

[] Agnes Muirhead was a superior woman, of good under

standing, fine womanly presence, orderly, and ladylike. An old woman described her from recollection, as “a braw braw woman, none now to be seen like her."

Ju.] John Muirhead seems to have been of kindred disposition to Watt's father; the two were closely united in many

adventures.

[B.] Died at sea, æt. 21. (See above, the allusion to the two grandsons.)

S.

Gregory died æt. 27. Was of great promise as a man of science, and intimately attached to Sir Humphry Davy. Is well known to geologists by his experiment of fusing stones and making artificial basalt.

[S.] James died unmarried, æt. 79. Had great natural abilities, but he was a recluse, and somewhat peculiar in his habits. Wollaston, William Hyde, M.D.; a very ingenious natural

philosopher and experimentalist, known chiefly by his invention of the goniometer, which gave an accurate basis to the science of crystallography, and by that of the camera lucida. Also by his discovery of the metal palladium.

"A peculiar taste for intellectual pursuits of the more exact kind appears to have been hereditary in the family."

CHAPTER XII.

POETS.

THE Poets and Artists generally are men of high aspirations, but, for all that, they are a sensuous, erotic race, exceedingly irregular in their way of life. Even the stern and virtue-preaching Dante is spoken of by Boccaccio in most severe terms.1 Their talents are usually displayed early in youth, when they are first shaken by the tempestuous passion of love. Of all who have a place in the appendix to this chapter, Cowper is the only one who began to write in mature life; and none of the others who are named in the heading to my appendix, except possibly Camoens and Spenser, delayed authorship till after thirty. It may be interesting, and it is instructive, to state a few facts in evidence of their early powers.

Beranger, a printer's compositor, taught himself and began to publish at 16. Burns was a village celebrity at 16, and soon after began to write: Calderon at 14. Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" was published when he was 20. Goldoni produced a comedy in manuscript that amazed all who saw it, at 8. Ben Jonson, a bricklayer's lad, fairly worked his way upwards through Westminster and Cambridge, and became famous by his "Every Man in his Humour," at 24. Keats, a surgeon's apprentice, first published at 21 and died at 25.

Metastasio improvised in

1 See Preface to the Translation of the "Inferno," by Rossetti, p. xix.

public when a child, and wrote at 15. Tom Moore pub. lished under the name of Thomas Little, and was famous at 23. Ovid wrote verses from boyhood. Pope published his "Pastorals " æt. 16, and translated the "Iliad" between 25 and 30. Shakespeare must have begun very early, for he had written almost all his historical plays by the time he was 34. Schiller, a boy of promise, became famous through his "Brigands" at 23. Sophocles, at the age of 27, beat Æschylus in the public games. I now annex the usual tables.