THE HOME LIFE OF SIR DAVID BREWSTER.*
WE plead guilty to the weakness of having enjoyed this book ; that it is weakness, we may confess ; critical eyes should be occupied with detecting motes and leave the enjoyment of the sun- beam to vulgar eyes,—so at least scornfully says the critic's critic ; forgetting that the same microscope which detects flaws in the finest Manchester thread, discovers new beauties in the spider's web. But with reference to the life' before us, the flaws have not passed us unobserved ; it has all the faults incidental to a bio- graphy, when the biographer stands in close relation to his sub- ject; there are letters it might have been wiser to omit, partiali- ties which outside observers will scarcely endorse, and above all, an unveiling of the inner spiritual life which, when it cannot penetrate deep enough to be a revelation, had generally better be let alone, specially when the elements, as in Brewster's case, were rather those of religiousness than of spirituality in any true sense ; but the chapter which mostly treats of this subject is outside the region of criticism, as we think also it should have been out- side the region of publicity. For the rest, we have a faithful record of the life, or one side of the life, of one of the most indus- trious men of this century. 1Ve use the word industrious advisedly ; industry was Sir David Brewster's distinguishing characteristic. A great genius lie was not, but he had a vast untiring patience in utilizing the inspirations and often in interpreting and giving body, as it were, to the half-developed thoughts of scientific men who had preceded him. In the Lighthouse question we hold him to have been unquestionably an ill-used man, though, after all, it was but the old, old story ; while he was waiting, another stepped down before him ; yet to his overstrung nerves and irritable tem- perament it might well be difficult to bear with equanimity even a trial so very common. lie undoubtedly invented the kaleidoscope, but the stereoscope, so commonly ascribed to him, was, he himself distinctly tells us, not his invention, but a popular adaptation of a theory accurately demonstrated and illustrated by Professor Wheatstone ten years before in his reflecting stereoscope, a some- what cumbrous instrument. The 'history of this matter, as given in these pages,togetherwith the details of the controversy (concern- ing the two pictures of Chimenti da Empoli noticed by Dr. John Brown in the museum at Lille), is very interesting. Brewster's discoveries or supposed discoveries in spectrum analysis have been since to some extent disproved, though he himself to the last clung to his own theory of the trinity of colour, and Mrs. Gordon tells an amusing anecdote illustrative of the pertinacity with which he maintained his own theory of the scientific har- mony of colouring. " Upon one occasion," she writes, " he resolved to bring home a present, which should be at the same time a scientific lesson. The result was a dress in which red had its sufficient complement of green, and blue its proper companion orange. Unscientific eyes were compelled to grieve that it appeared also to possess the uncommon quality of never wearing out !"
Brewster had little reason to complain of the coldness of the times in which he lived ; few men have had honours showered upon them in equal profusion. In noticing this, his daughter in one passage put many) of these marks of distinction together, and writes :- "In 1825, Brewster was made a corresponding member of the French Institute, and from this time honours crowded in so rapidly upon him, that except any of special interest it would be tedious to enumerate them • The home Life of Sir David Brewier. By His Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. Edith burgh: Edmotistou and Douglas. 1669. in their order and succession. Suffice it to say, that the large book in which the letters, diplomas, burgess tickets, announcements of medals, &c., are collected, is a remarkable one for size and value. The large towns of Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, and Norway, South Africa, Antigua, the various States of America, besides the towns and Universities of Eng- land, Scotland, and Ireland, all contributed their quota of honours to this man of research and industry. A cape received his name in the Arctic regions, a river in the Antarctic, and a new plant discovered by Dr. Muollin in Australia was named Cassia Brewsteri. He received, besides the Copley, Rumford, and Royal Medals, two Keith Medals from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, two from the French Institute, one from Denmark, one from the Socidtd Francaise de Photographie, and various others ; of some of the most valuable of these, duplicates were sent to him, one of gold, which he turned into plate, and a facsimile of frosted silver,—all being preserved as heirlooms."
Could Sir David's better nature have been for the moment spoiled by such things as these, when he wrote to Miss Edgeworth the fierce depreciation of Bacon which ended (the italics are our own), "If Bacon introduced any new method into science, it seems strange that his contemporaries never thanked him for it." Had he forgotten the fate which had attended his own best work, or weighed the thanks meted out by a contemporary generation to Galileo, or measured the force of that truest of sarcasms, " Your fathers killed the prophets, and ye build their sepulchres "? The laurel crown of a contemporary generation falls for the most part on the bead of the man who can utilize the thoughts, the birth-throes of which were borne by others. "If Bacon had never lived and never written," adds Brewster, " science would have been just where it is at this moment." Fortunately, the assertion is safe from proof, but the thought was little worthy of the man who elsewhere could enter fully into Newton's spirit when he wrote, " If I see further than others, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants." But while abler pens will probably trace Sir David Brewster's scientific career, his daughter mainly occupies herself with the various phases of his life, of which the world sees only the results. The " Encyclopaedia," which will remain in itself a testimony to his untiring industry, tells the tale of much widely scattered knowledge collected and compressed ; but not of all the worries, disappointments, and far more serious grievances connected with the undertaking, and the indomitable perseverance which surmounted them all ; while among the incidental notices, the ' asides,' as it were, with which this biography is crowded, by no means the least interesting to many will be the observation that it was a request from Dr. Brewster to the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, of Kilmany, to write the article " Christianity," which turned the mind of the young and careless, though brilliant divine, to study the truths of which he had then but a superficial know- ledge, and was the beginning of a long and cordial friendship, which only terminated with the death of Chalmers in 1847.
In 1814 Brewster was in Paris, and there became acquainted with Biot, La Place, Humboldt, and Arago. Of the latter his letters at this period contain some interesting notices. He was then in the prime of manhood, and once more at his loved work, having survived the cruelties of a Spanish prison, and the dangers of a sojourn in Africa disguised as a Mussulman. When the two men met again in 1850, the brow of Arago was furrowed with all the cares and sorrows of a long life in a stormy period ; a little later, and, as we all know, the untiring and much loved philosopher " lay down to rest, his last characteristic words, Travaillez, travaillez bier !' " It came in Brewster's way, through his marriage, to be much interested in the " Ossian " controversy, and several pages in his biography are devoted to this subject. He took great delight him- self in collecting old Highland legends, and in solving more than the geological mysteries of that rough land. He was in 1819 in company with the widow of the Brigand Borlam, the Robin Hood of the North. The story is too good not to give entire :—
" He [Brewster] used to give as an example of the primitive state of society in the North, which would scarcely be credited in the South, that he had himself been in society, during his earlier Badenoch life, with Mrs. Mackintosh of Borlam, the brigand's widow, a stately and witty old lady. One day she had called at Belleville, and took up Lochandhu, a novel just published by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder ; Ay, ay,' said she, ' and what may this be about ?' to the consternation of the Belleville ladies ; her husband's capture and robbery of Sir Hector Munro of Navar, and her own assistance in this, his last exploit, by picking out the initials on the stolen linen, being graphically detailed therein ! On another occasion Sir David had met her at a ball at Kinrara (in 1819), when Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg was quite delighted with her quaint racy conversation. When her carriage' was announced, one of the Prince's aides-de-camp stepped forward and offered his arm. She hesi- tated a moment, and then said, with an air of resignation, ' Well, well. I suppose you'll have to see it!' He returned in fits of laughter, for the old lady's carriage was a common cart, with a wisp of straw in the middle for the seat."
It is, we think, the special charm of this volume that we are suffered to see Brewster's • home life' rather by the light of its surroundings than by any mere egoistical details ; there is much less of what he said, than of what others said to him, and the very interest his biographer takes in so many and varied subjects, even into suffering them to divert her from the central figure, is in- direct testimony to the intellectual atmosphere she breathed in the home of the father whose memory is evidently very dear to her. One of the most curious incidents she mentions is Sir David's dis- covery of the author of the letter signed " C. M." in the Scots Magazine of February 1, 1753, in which the application of the telegraph to the transmission of messages was first clearly laid down under the heading, " An expeditious method of conveying intelligence." The circumstances which led to the discovery are interesting, and not less so is the fact that the writer of the letter, Charles Morrison, was regarded as a wizard in his own city, Renfrew, and found it advisable to retire to Virginia, where he died.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science owes much to Sir David. Curious enough, when taken in connection with his habitual depreciation of Bacon, is his daughter's state- ment, that " it was through his [Brewster's] energy and unwearied perseverance, a memorable prophecy, uttered by Lord Bacon, that, for the better development of intelligence and learning there should be established ' circuits or visits to divers principal cities of the kingdom,' began to have its fulfilment." But the man had, as his daughter justly observes, a dual nature, the judgment pro- nounced by him one day might with equal conscientiousness be reversed the next ; men and things ever presenting themselves to his mind, according to the light thrown on them from his stand- point at the moment. This duality of mind, with its almost invariable accompaniment, irritability of temper, laid him open to much suffering. It may be favourable to calmness to be able to hold the judgment in suspense, but not to be under the impulse to pronounce dogmatically at one moment an opinion reversed*the next, to the bystander involving a state of self-contradictoriness of which such a mind is never conscious. Deep into the hours of the night he would study ; no half-formed fears induced him to cut short a scientific experiment, but he would perform the transit from the study to his bedroom at such hours in double-quick time, in harmony evidently with his quaint confession that " he was afraid of ghosts, though he didn't believe in them." More charac- teristic still was the tenacity with which he clung with one side of his mind to the most rigid forms of Scotch orthodoxy (sabba- tarianism excepted), while with the other grasping the most advanced scientific truths. Yet he did not by any means walk " ever with a tortured double self," he was too busy and too practical, and indeed, we may easily gather that in his mental history, whether scientific or spiritual, he was far more occupied with the application of principles than with any analysis of their roots. The creative faculty belongs to a higher order of mind than this, and to it Brewster had no claim, but he did much honest work for all that, and at the age of eighty-six was still in harness, ably rescuing the name of Newton from the calumnies cast at it by the French forger in the so-called " Pascal and Newton correspondence " with all the vigour of early years. That they who are always learning never grow old is specially true of those who are occupied with scientific studies. Thought for them, while thought remains, cannot grow stereotyped, and it is when thought begins to stagnate that the days are evil and there is no pleasure in them. With regard to the question of scientific fame, there are some men who in this life receive their good things. Brewster is among them, but though his name may not be a land- mark in history, it will be more than a generation ere it is for- gotten. And meanwhile, we thick Mrs. Gordon has done her work well, and given a real pleasure to the many to whom the name of Brewster is a household word.
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