Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/272

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260
APPENDIX

pieces of the organ on which Herschel played, and which may again be erected as a memorial of the great astronomer in the city that was the birthplace of his fame.

Evidently Herschel's views of the heavens left an abiding impression on Campbell's mind.[1] Eighteen years after his first meeting with Herschel, and nine after the astronomer's death, he became acquainted with Pond, then Astronomer-Royal, whose "most interesting and instructive" conversation he likens to "a gift from Providence." He then proceeds to say: "I had lately been dabbling in the astronomical relics of the Greek Alexandrian school, and had the idea of embodying my notes on ancient geography into a regular history, when this Life of Mrs. Siddons suspended my intention. But I have of late been so interested in the subject, that I revised my mathematics, the better to understand the histories of ancient science given by Ideler and Delambre. Mr. Pond's conversation has been, therefore, eagerly sought by me,—and he is most affably communicative.

"We have just been gazing on Jupiter and his moons, through a glass that makes Jove appear as large as the sun's disk, and his satellites like ordinary stars! The moon appears through it as large as a church. His opinion of her ladyship is that she is not inhabited—there being no atmosphere—and the whole region, probably, only ice and snow. Strange enough that a body, which creates such lively crotchets in so many human brains, should itself be cold and lifeless."[2]

Campbell's poetry, whether in prose or verse, would probably have been more worth reading than Dr. Burney's astronomical poem, but neither of them ever saw the light of day. One thing Campbell relates. Mrs. Pond, he says, "when I first saw her, as she was walking—shortly after their marriage—was a young, fair, and graceful woman, arm in arm with her very plain and elderly husband. There was

  1. See above, pp. 207-9.
  2. Beattie, Life of Campbell, iii. 94.