While we are satisfied that there is no ground for finding fault with Herschel's name for the new planet he discovered, we are more satisfied that, by the mouth of Bode, the jury, to whom he required to appeal, disallowed the flattery, and called the planet Uranus, not even Herschel, as Lalande proposed. The next planet that was discovered, the first of the asteroids, was named by its discoverer Ceres Ferdinandea after a contemptible King of Naples, but Ceres has long since swallowed Ferdinandea up. Even at the time an amused cynicism, speaking in the Letters of Horace Walpole, was saying, "Must not that host of worlds be christened? Mr. Herschel himself has stood godfather for His Majesty to the new Sidus. His Majesty has a numerous issue; but they and all the princes and princesses in Europe cannot supply appellations enough for twenty millions of new-born stars."[1]
In the year 1782 Herschel not only continued to prosecute the studies he had begun, but ventured into new and almost untrodden fields of research. Two or three months were cut out of the working time of that year by a summons to Windsor to see the King and hear what he might do for him. But his activity and enjoyment in work made up for lost time. In 1780 he contributed two papers, or twenty-five large pages, to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society; in 1781 he contributed two papers, or thirty-five pages; and in 1782, notwithstanding the loss of two months, four papers, or nearly one hundred pages—a good year's scientific work for any man, more especially for one who was giving thirty or even thirty-eight music
- ↑ Letters, vi 259.
