a degree of the earth’s surface had been found, we should rather dwell on the image of Newton, during the long years of intense study he had bestowed, without being able to see his way to the proof of his theory, and on the quires of paper covered with figures,—vast calculations which would never come right,—that he had locked up and tried to turn his mind away from, for many years before the source of error was discovered. Instead of fancying the transport of Galvani when his wife took him into the kitchen, and showed him how the frog she had cut up for soup twitched when she touched it with a certain scalpel of his, we should think of his protracted labours in the pursuit of the secret which now bears his name, and of his failure to grasp it, through a wrong idea which he could not detect in his own mind, so that another man, Volta, is now always, and very properly, put forward as the greater discoverer in that particular department of electrical science. It would be wrong, in the same way, to imagine Harvey suddenly struck with the notion that the valves in the veins must have some use, and that that use must be to let the blood go to the heart, but not from it; and that therefore the blood must circulate throughout the whole body. So far from this, Harvey thought, and studied, and waited—and thought and studied again; and then he had to admit that serious difficulties remained; and then he had to bear the ill-usage which always clogs the steps of discoverers. Everybody said first, that the notion was absurd and wicked; then, that it was of no consequence; and lastly, that it was all-important, but nothing new. These are the three stages through which every great discovery has to pass. First, the world is shocked at your nonsense, and your crazy state of mind: next, it does not matter whether your view is true or not: and finally, all the world knew what you have to tell them before you were born. So it was, of course, in Harvey’s case. It was so shocking that he should discredit the Vital Spirits for which the arteries were made, that his practice fell off seriously after the publication of his treatise on the circulation of the blood. Then, he was merely toying with the court when he showed Charles I. the way in which the heart beat:—it was making a fuss about a small matter. Next, people were tired of the subject, for the circulation of the blood was such an old idea! It was not new; and Harvey never said it was: but the notion was mixed up with such conjectures and fancies, and such wrong causes were assigned, that the subject became wholly new in Harvey’s hands. Among other proofs of this, there is the very instructive fact, that Harvey’s discovery was not believed in by any physician in Europe, who was above forty at the time of his death.
Such is the course of a discoverer’s experience; not very charming to “the natural man;” not at all encouraging to any man who is not above self-regards,—who proposes such a career to himself for any lower reason than that he cannot help what he is doing, or that he hopes to extend science, and therefore human welfare, by what he is attempting. I have always considered Dr. Jenner one of the fairest and finest specimens ever known of the order of discoverers; and no one will dispute his fitness to be the representative man of that class of human benefactors. The briefest contemplation of his career will serve better than any preaching,—any warning from any person who is not a discoverer,—against the high-flying popular notion of the brilliancy of the lot of the man who sees the gem lying at the bottom of the mine, with the fairy eyes of Clearsight, and fetches it up with the power of Longarm; and thenceforth has only to enjoy the homage of mankind for the rest of his days. Jenner could have told that the lot of the Discoverer is but little happier (as superficial people count happiness) than that of the Inventor.
Edward Jenner set out in life with a superior constitution of mind. He was an inveterate observer from his cradle. One of the first signs of an infant having a due proportion of senses and faculties is its following with its eyes the movement of flies in the air. This boy followed up all the movements of all creatures within his reach, from the time he felt himself firm on his feet. When other little boys were at play, he was hunting out curiosities; and as a school-boy, at Cirencester, he was always obtaining fossils from the oolitic formation in that neighbourhood. At eight years old, he had a collection of dormice nests. He was patient and accurate as an observer, and methodical in all his ways; so that some of his friends, who were not mental philosophers, were perplexed from time to time, by some unquestionable evidence of his having the temperament of the poet. No great discoverer has been a man of prosaic nature, for the simple reason, that the faculty of imagination is required for the mere formation of hypothesis, and for perceiving the bearings of a theory. Nothing can be more ignorant than the notion that accuracy about facts is in any kind of opposition to the exercise of imagination, as both orders of men combine to assure us. The discoverer must see by the bright forecast of the imagination, the great new thing he is to give to mankind, and where to look for it; and the genuine poet is remarkable for nothing more than for his closeness to the truth of life and nature. Where is Shakspere ever wrong as a naturalist (allowance being made for the age), any more than as a moralist? Then we find Edward Jenner spying all the ways of birds and insects, knowing all the animals in the vale of Gloucester, pondering in his rides of twenty or thirty miles any proverb, or prejudice, or odd story that he had picked up in any farmhouse or cottage; and at the same time apt to break out into singing when Nature was in a cheerful mood, and to send notes in verse, taking a poetical view of the commonest incidents. In calling off from joining in a country excursion, one month of June, on account of doubtful weather, he sent his excuse in the form of this pretty poem—
SIGNS OF RAIN.
An excuse for not accepting the invitation of a friend to make a country excursion.
The hollow winds begin to blow,
The clouds look black, the glass is low,
The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,
