Part 2

‘It is most strange that in a letter on the present state of Cambridge no notice should be taken of the noble institutions which have of late years risen up within it; of the glories of its Observatory; of the newly-chartered body, the Philosophical Society, organized among its resident members in the year 1819, and now known to the world of science by its “Transactions,” the records of many important original discoveries; of the new Collections in Natural History; of the magnificent new Press; of the new School and Museum of Comparative Anatomy; of the noble extension of the collegiate buildings, made at some inconvenience and much personal cost to the present Fellows, and entailing on them and their successors the weight of an enormous debt; of the general spirit of inquiry pervading the members of the academic body, young and old; of the eight or nine _new courses_ of public lectures (established within the last twenty-five years) both on the applied sciences and the ancient languages; of the general activity of the professors, and of their correspondence with foreign establishments organized for objects like their own, whereby Cambridge is now, at least, an integral part of the vast republic of literature and science; of the crowded class at the lecture of Modern History [by Professor Smyth]; of the great knowledge of many of our younger members in modern languages; of the recent Professorship of Political Economy bestowed on a gentleman [Mr Pryme] who had been lecturing for years, and was a firm and known supporter of Liberal opinions.’

When Whewell came to the University these improvements had not been so much as thought of. He was himself to be the prime mover in bringing several of them about. It must be remembered, however, while we confess to a special enthusiasm for our hero, that he did not stand alone as the champion of intellectual development in the University. Indeed it will become evident as we proceed that he was not naturally a reformer. He had so strong a respect for existing institutions that he hesitated long before he could bring himself to sanction any change, no matter how self-evident or how salutary. As a young man, however, he found himself one of a large body of enthusiastic workers, who, while they differed widely, almost fundamentally, on the methods to be employed, were all animated by the same spirit, and stimulated one another to fresh exertions in the common cause. It was one of the most remarkable characteristics of the period of which Professor Sedgwick has sketched the results, that it was hardly more distinguished for the changes produced than for the men who brought them about.

But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood, school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His father is mentioned as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly _Lancaster Gazette_ with occasional contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr Rowley, who further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds:

‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with which Whewell mastered the exercises and lessons, raised the tale and standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now, Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed. “Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely ungrateful in _that boy Whewell_ to have discoloured both eyes of her eldest so shockingly.” But Mr Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he always let them fight it fairly out.’

In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr Rowley; but it is believed that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable; and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50_l._ per annum, at Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised versification in Greek and Latin.

In October 1812 he commenced residence at Trinity College as a sub-sizar. His first University distinction was the Chancellor’s gold medal for English Verse, the subject being ‘Boadicea.’ In after years he was fond of expressing the theory that ‘a prize-poem should be a prize-poem’: by which he probably meant that the subject should be treated in a conventional fashion, with no eccentric innovations of style or metre. It must be admitted that his own work conformed exactly to this standard. The poem was welcomed with profound admiration in the family circle at home; but his old master took a different view of the question. Professor Owen relates that Mr Rowley called one day at his mother’s house, and began as follows:

‘“I’ve sad news for you, Mrs Owen, to-day. I’ve just had a letter from Cambridge; that boy Whewell has ruined himself, he’ll never get his Wranglership now!” “Why, good gracious, Mr Rowley, what _has_ Whewell been doing?” “Why, he has gone and got the Chancellor’s gold medal for some trumpery poem, ‘Boadicea,’ or something of that kind, when he ought to have been sticking to his mathematics. I give him up now. Taking after his poor mother, I suppose.”’

The letters which he wrote home give us some pleasant glimpses of his College life, which he evidently thoroughly enjoyed. For the first time in his life he had access to a good library—that of Trinity College—and he speaks of ‘an inconceivable desire to read all manner of books at once,’ adding that at that very moment there were two folios and six quartos of different works upon his table. The success which he afterwards achieved is a proof that he entered heartily into the studies of the place; and among his friends were men who were studious then, and afterwards became eminent. Among these we may mention Mr, afterwards Sir John, Herschel, Mr Richard Jones, Mr Julius Charles Hare, and Mr Charles Babbage. A correspondent of his, writing so late as 1841, recalls the ‘Sunday morning philosophical breakfasts,’ at which they used to meet in 1815; and there are indications in the letters of similar feasts of reason and flows of soul. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that a few indications of an opposite character may be produced. He admits, in a half-bantering, half-serious way, that he had laid himself open to the charge of idleness; and he describes the diversions of himself and his friends during the long vacation of 1815 as ‘dancing at country fairs, playing billiards, tuning beakers into musical glasses,’ and the like. It need be no matter of surprise that a young man of high spirits and strong bodily frame, brought up in the seclusion of Lancashire, should have taken the fullest advantage of the first opportunity which presented itself of appreciating the lighter and brighter side of existence. This, however, was all. Whewell knew perfectly well where to stop. No scandal ever attached itself to his name; and he ‘wore the white flower of a blameless life’ through a period when the customs prevalent in the University were such as are more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1816, when he was second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize-man. On both occasions he was beaten by a Mr Jacob, of Caius College, who was his junior by two years. It is a Cambridge tradition that Mr Jacob’s success was a surprise to everybody, for he had intentionally affected to be an idle man, and showed himself on most days riding out in hunting costume, the truth being that he kept his books at a farm-house, where he pursued his studies in secrecy and quiet. He was a young man of the greatest promise; and it was expected that he would achieve a conspicuous success at the Bar. But his lungs were affected, and he died of consumption at an early age. As Mr Todhunter remarks, his fame rests mainly on the fact that he twice outstripped so formidable a competitor as the future Master of Trinity. Whewell mentions him as ‘a very pleasant as well as a very clever man,’ and adds, ‘I had as soon be beaten by him as by anybody else.’

The labours of reading for the degree over, Whewell had leisure to turn his studies in any direction whither his fancy led him. No doubt he fully appreciated the, to him, unusual position, for he tells his sister that few people could be ‘more tranquilly happy than your brother, in his green plaid dressing-gown, blue morocco slippers, and with a large book before him.’ The time had come, however, when he was to experience the first of the inevitable inconveniences of a College life. Two of his most intimate friends, Herschel and Jones, left Cambridge, and he bitterly deplores their loss. Indeed it probably needed all the attachment to the place, which he proclaims in the same letter, to prevent his following their example. He appears at one time to have thought seriously of going to the Bar. He began, however, to take pupils: an occupation which becomes a singularly absorbing one, especially when the tutor takes the interest in them which apparently he did. One of those with whom he spent the summer of 1818, in Wales, Mr Kenelm Digby, afterwards author of the _Broadstone of Honour_, who admits that he was so idle that his tutor would take no remuneration from him, has recorded that—

‘I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most generous, open-hearted, disinterested, and noble-minded men that I ever knew. I remember circumstances that called for the exercise of each of those rare qualities, when they were met in a way that would now seem incredible, so fast does the world seem moving away from all ancient standards of goodness and moral grandeur.’

This testimony is important, if only for comparison with the far different feelings with which his more official pupils regarded him in after years. In these occupations he spent the two years succeeding his degree; for the amount of special work done for the Fellowship Examination was probably not great. He was elected Fellow in October 1817; and in the summer of the following year was made one of the assistant-tutors. With this appointment the first part of his University career ends, and the second begins.

His connexion with the educational staff of Trinity College, first as assistant-tutor, then as sole tutor, lasted for just twenty years. These were the most occupied of his busy life; and in justification of what we said at the outset of the multifarious nature of his occupations, we proceed to give a rapid chronological sketch of them. His career as an author began, in 1819, with an _Elementary Treatise on Mechanics_. It went through seven editions, in each of which, as Mr Todhunter says, ‘the subject was revolutionized rather than modified; and the preface to each expounded with characteristic energy the paramount merits of the last constitution framed.’ The value of the work was greatly impaired by these proceedings, for an author can hardly expect to retain the unwavering confidence of his readers while his own opinions are in constant fluctuation. In 1820 he was Moderator, and travelled abroad for the first time. In 1821 he was working at geology seriously, and took a geological tour in the Isle of Wight with Sedgwick, who had been made Woodwardian Professor three years before. Later in the year he explored the Lake Country, and was introduced to Mr Wordsworth. Their acquaintance subsequently ripened into a friendship, which appears in numerous letters, and notably in the dedication prefixed to the _Elements of Morality_. A _Treatise on Dynamics_ was published in 1823, which was treated in much the same fashion as its fellow on _Mechanics_. The summer vacation was spent in a visit to Paris for the first time, and an architectural tour in Normandy with Mr Kenelm Digby. In 1824 he took a prominent part in the resistance to the Heads of Colleges in their attempt to nominate to the Professorship of Mineralogy; and later in the year he went again to Cumberland with Sedgwick, ‘rambling about the country, and examining the strata’; visiting Southey and Wordsworth; and, in the intervals of geology, seeing cathedrals and churches. In 1825, as the chair of Mineralogy was about to be vacated by Professor Henslow, promoted to that of Botany, Whewell announced himself a candidate; and by way of preparation spent three months in Germany, studying crystallography at the feet of Professor Mohs, of Freiburg: a subject on which he had already made communications to the Royal Society and to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This was his first introduction to Germany, in whose language and literature he thenceforward took the greatest interest. He even modified his way of writing English in accordance with German custom, as is shown by the plentiful scattering of capitals through his sentences, and by a certain ponderosity of style which savours of German originals. The dissensions as to the mode of election to the Mineralogical chair caused it to remain vacant for three years; so that Whewell, about the choice of whom there never seems to have been any doubt, had no immediate opportunity of turning to account his newly-acquired knowledge. He therefore, with even more than characteristic energy, turned his attention to two most opposite subjects, Theology, and the Density of the Earth.

In the summer of 1826 he commenced a series of investigations on the latter subject at Dolcoath Mine, Cornwall, in conjunction with Mr Airy. The essential part of the process was to compare the time of vibration of a pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of vibration of the same pendulum at a considerable depth below the surface. Unfortunately the experiments, which were renewed in 1828, failed to lead to any satisfactory result, partly through an error in the construction of the pendulum, partly through a singular fatality, by which, on both occasions, they were frustrated by a serious accident. The account he gives of himself, and of the way in which the researches were regarded by the Cornishmen, is too amusing not to be quoted. It is contained in a letter to his friend Lady Malcolm, and is dated ‘Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, June 10, 1826:

‘I venture to suppose that you never had a correspondent who at the time of writing was situated as your present one is. I am at this moment sitting in a small cavern deep in the recesses of the earth, separated by 1,200 feet of rock from the surface on which you mortals tread. I am close to a wooden partition which has been fixed here by human hands, through which I ever and anon look, by means of two telescopes, into a larger cavern. That larger den has got various strange-looking machines, illumined here and there by unseen lamps, among which is visible a clock with a face most unlike common clocks, and a brass bar which swings to and fro with a small but never-ceasing motion. I am clad in the garb of a miner, which is probably more dirty and scanty than anything you may have happened to see in the way of dress. The stillness of this subterranean solitude is interrupted by the noise, most strange to its walls, of the ticking of my clock, and the chirping of seven watches. But besides these sounds it has noises of its own which my ear catches now and then. A huge iron vessel is every quarter of an hour let down through the rock by a chain above a thousand feet long, and in its descent and ascent dashes itself against the sides of the pit with a violence and a din like thunder; and at intervals, louder and deeper still, I hear the heavy burst of an explosion when gunpowder has been used to rend the rock, which seems to pervade every part of the earth like the noise of a huge gong, and to shake the air within my prison. I have sat here for some hours, and shall sit five or six more, at the end of which time I shall climb up to the light of the sky in which you live, by about sixty ladders, which form the weary upward path from hence to your world. I ought not to omit, by way of completing the picturesque, that I have a barrel of porter close to my elbow, and a miner stretched on the granite at my feet, whose yawns at being kept here so many hours, watching my inscrutable proceedings, are most pathetic. This has been my situation and employment every day for some time, and will be so for some while longer, with the alternation of putting myself in a situation as much as possible similar, in a small hut on the surface of the earth. Is not this a curious way of spending one’s leisure time? I assure you I often think of Sir John’s favourite quotation from Leyden, “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity has brought thee here?” and sometimes doubt whether sunshine be not better than science.

‘If the object of my companion and myself had been to make a sensation, we must have been highly gratified by the impression which we have produced upon the good people in this country. There is no end to the number and oddity of their conjectures and stories about us. The most charitable of them take us to be fortune-tellers; but for the greater part we are suspected of more mischievous kinds of magic. A single loud, insulated, peal of thunder, which was heard the first Sunday after our arrival, was laid at our door; and a staff which we had occasion to plant at the top of the cliff, was reported to have the effect of sinking all unfortunate ships which sailed past.

‘I could tell you many more such histories; but I think this must be at least enough about myself, if I do not wish to make the quotation from Leyden particularly applicable.’

Whewell had been ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 1826, and this circumstance had probably directed him to a more exact study of theology than he had previously attempted. The result was a course of four sermons before the University in February 1827. The subject of these, which have never been printed, may be described as the ‘Relation of Human to Divine Knowledge.’ They attracted considerable attention when delivered; and it was even suggested that the author ought to devote himself to theology as a profession, and try to obtain one of the Divinity Professorships; but the advice was not taken. A theological tone may, however, be observed in most of his scientific works; he loved to point out analogies between scientific and moral truths, and to show that there was no real antagonism between science and revealed religion.

In 1828 the new Professor of Mineralogy entered upon his functions, and after his manner rushed into print with an _Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature_, in which there is much novelty of definition and arrangement. He was conscious that he had been somewhat precipitate; for he writes to his friend, Mr Jones, who was trying to make up his mind on certain problems of political economy, and declined to print until he had done so:

‘I avoid all your anxieties about authorship by playing for lower stakes of labour and reputation. While you work for years in the elaboration of slowly-growing ideas, I take the first buds of thought and make a nosegay of them without trying what patience and labour might do in ripening and perfecting them[3].’

At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous publication entitled _Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture_. The author need not have tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830, was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and sketch-books (for he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details. The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests, ‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the _Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages_, by Professor Willis. A glance at the dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural tour with Mr Rickman in Devon and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.