CHAPTER IV
THE DISCOVERY OF HERSCHEL
Herschel had been studying the stars with improved telescopes for upwards of four years before any of the literary and high-placed people, who flocked every winter to Bath, knew that a man of genius lived among them and was a servant to their gaiety or devotion. Beau Nash had been a better known figure in their streets, a more respected man among a community of fops, idlers, and intriguers, and was deemed more worthy of a statue in their pump-room or their public park.[1] The man among them, who was destined to write his name on the heavens and to live when triflers and fops were all forgotten, attended their church meetings as an organist, their concerts as a conductor, and their drawing-rooms as a teacher of music to them or their children. They had not discovered that, by the irony of fate, a genius, head and shoulders above them all, was toiling for bread one half of the year, and slaving for fame or the welfare of mankind for the other half. He was really running two races before their eyes at the same time, the
- ↑ "At the east end of the saloon, a posthumous marble statue of the great Nash, executed by Prince Hoare, at the expense of the corporation, is handsomely ensconced" (Granville (in 1889), Spas of England, ii. 394).
