CHAPTER XII.
HERSCHEL.
"Coelorum perrupit claustra."
251. Frederick William Herschel was, born at Hanover on November 15th, 1738, two years after Lagrange and nine years before Laplace. His father was a musician in the Hanoverian army, and the son, who shewed a remarkable aptitude for music as well as a decided taste for knowledge of various sorts, entered his father's profession as a boy (1753). On the breaking out of the Seven Years' War he served during part of a campaign, but his health being delicate his parents "determined to remove him from the service—a step attended by no small difficulties," and he was accordingly sent to England (1757), to seek his fortune as a musician.
After some years spent in various parts of the country, he moved (1766) to Bath, then one of the great centres of fashion in England. At first oboist in Linley's orchestra, then organist of the Octagon Chapel, he rapidly rose to a position of great popularity and distinction, both as a musician and as a music-teacher. He played, conducted, and composed, and his private pupils increased so rapidly that the number of lessons which he gave was at one time 35 a week. But this activity by no means exhausted his extraordinary energy; he had never lost his taste for study, and, according to a contemporary biographer, "after a fatiguing day of 14 or 16 hours spent in his vocation, he would retire at night with the greatest avidity to unbend the mind, if it may be so called, with a few propositions in Maclaurin's Fluxions, or other books of that sort." His
323
