MacTutor
John Playfair
Times obituary
Some Account of the Character and Merits of the Late Professor Playfair.
(Ascribed to the Pen of Mr. Jeffrey.)
It has struck many people, we believe, as very extraordinary, that so eminent a person as Mr. Playfair should have been allowed to sink into his grave in the midst of us, without calling forth almost as much as an attempt to commemorate his merit, even in a common newspaper; and that the death of a man so eminent and so beloved and, at the same time, so closely connected with many who could well appreciate and suitably describe his excellencies, should be left without the ordinary notice of the daily obituary. No event could the kind certainly ever excite more general sympathy; and no individual membered by all the classes of his fellow-citizens: and yet it is those instances that we must look for an explanation of very by which his memory has been passed down to the more humble admirers who have been deterred from expressing their sentiment by a natural feeling of unwillingness to encroach on the privilege of those whom a nearer approach to his person and talents renders more worthy to speak of them, while the learned and eloquent among his friends have trusted each other for the performance of a task which they could not but feel to be painful in itself, and not little difficult to perform as it ought to be, or, perhaps, have reserve for some more solemn occasion that tribute for which public patience is already at its height.
We beg leave to assure our readers that it is merely from anxieties to do something to gratify this natural impatience, and that we presume to enter at all upon a subject to which we are perfectly aware that we are incapable of doing justice; For of Mr. Playfair's scientific achievements, of his proficiency in those studies to which he was peculiarly devoted, we are slenderly qualified to judge: but, we believe, we hazard nothing in saying that he was one of the most learned mathematicians of his age, and among the first, if not the very first, who introduced the beautiful discoveries of the latter continental geometers to the knowledge of his countrymen, and gave their just value and true place in the scheme of European knowledge to those important improvements by which the whole aspect of the abstract sciences has been renovated since the days of our illustrious Newton. If he did not signalize himself by any brilliant or original invention he must, at least, be allowed to have been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements of others, as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually evolved by the successive labors of so man gifted individuals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, the characteristics both of a fine and powerful understanding, a once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, for the caution and sureness of its march, than for the brilliancy or rapidity of its movements, and guided and adorned through all its progress by the most genuine enthusiasm for all that is grand, and the justest taste for all that is beautiful in truth, or the intellectus energy with which he was habitually conversant.
To what account these rare qualities might have been turned, and what more brilliant or lasting fruits they might have produced, if his whole life had been devoted to the solitary cultivation of science, it is not for us to conjecture; but it cannot be doubted that they add incalculably to his eminence and utility as a teacher. both by enabling him to direct his pupils to the most simple and luminous methods of inquiry, and to imbue their minds, from the very commencement of the study, with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, and the majesty with which they were invested, that high sense which predominated in his own bosom. While he left nothing unexplained or unreduced to its proper place in the system, he took care that the mind should never be perplexed by petty difficulties, or bewildered in use less details, and formed them betimes to that clear, masculine, direct method of investigation, by which, with the least labour, the greatest advances are accomplished.
Mr. Playfair, however, was not merely a teacher; and has fortunately left behind him a variety of works from which other generations may be enabled to judge of some of those qualifications which so powerfully recommended and endeared him to his contemporaries. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that so much of his time, and such a large proportion of his publications, should have been devoted to the subjects of Indian astronomy and the Huttonian theory of the earth. Though nothing can be more beautifully instructive than his speculations on those curious topics, it cannot be dissembled that their results are less conclusive and satisfactory than might have been desired; and that his doctrines, from the very nature of the subjects, are more questionable than we believe they could possibly have been on any other topic in the whole circle of the sciences. To the first, indeed, he came under the great disadvantages of being unacquainte with the Eastern tongues, and without the means of judging the authenticity of the documents which he was obliged to assume as the elements of his reasonings; and as to the other, though he ended, we believe, with being a very able and skilful mineralogist, we think it is now generally admitted that science does not yet afford sufficient materials for any positive conclusion; and that all attempts to establish a theory of the earth must, for many years to come, be regarded as premature. Though it is impossible, therefore, to think highly of the ingenuity, the vigour, and the eloquence of those publications, we are of opinion that a juster estimation of Mr. Playfair's talent, and a truer picture of his genius and understanding, is to be found in his other writings; in the papers, both biographical and scientific, with which he has enriched the transactions of our Royal Society; his account of De Laplace, and other articles which he is understood to have contributed to the Edinburgh Review, these outlines of his lectures on natural philosophy; and above all, his introductory discourse to the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, with the final correction of which he was occupied up to the last moments that the progress of his illness allowed him to dedicate to any intellectual exertion.
With reference to these works, we do not think we are influenced by any national or other partiality when we say that he was certainly one of the best writers of his age; and even that we do not now recollect any one of his contemporaries who was so great a master of composition. There is a certain mellowness and richness about his style, which adorns, without disguising its weight and nervousness, which is its other great characteristic: sedate gracefulness and manly simplicity in the higher passengers, and a mild majesty and considerate enthusiasm where he rises above them, of which we scarcely know where to find any in my part of his great equability, too, and which is sustained for another example. He never exhausts himself in flashes and epigrams, nor languishes into tarnishing or insipidity; at first sight you would say that plainness and good sense were the pre-dominating qualities; but, by and by, this simplicity is enriched with the delicate and vivid colours of a fine imagination; the free and forcible touches of a most powerful intellect; and the light and shades of an unerring and harmonizing taste. In comparing it with the styles of his most celebrated contemporaries, we would say that it was more purely and peculiarly a written style, and therefore rejected those ornaments that more properly belong to ratory. It had no impetuosity, hurry, or vehemence, nor burst, nor sudden turns, or abruptions, like that of Burke, and though eminently smooth and melodious, it was not modulated to a uniform system of solemn declamation like that of Johnson, nor spread out in the richer and more voluminous elocution of Stew art; nor still less broken into the patchwork of scholastic pedantry and conversational smartness which has found its admirers in Gibbon. It is a style, in short, of great freedom, force, and beauty, but the deliberate style of a man of thought and of learning, and neither that of a wit throwing out his extempores with an affectation of careless grace, nor of a rhetorican, thinking more of his man than his matter, and determined to be admired for his expression, whatever may be the fate of his sentiments.
His habits of composition, as we have understood, were not, perhaps, exactly what might have been expected from their results. He wrote rather slowly; first sketches required a masterly effort, and his greatest pleasure was in revising and correcting them; and there were no limits to the improvement which resulted from this replication. It was not the style merely, or indeed chiefly, that was gained by it. The whole reasoning, sentiment, and illustration were enlarged and newly modelled in the course of it, and a naked outline became gradually informed with life, colour, and expression. I was not at all like the common finishing and polishing to which careful authors generally subject the first drafts of their compositions nor even like the fastidious and tentative alterations with which anxious writers essay their chosen passages. It was, in fact the great ending of the picture, the working up of the figured weft on the naked and meagre wool that had been stretched to receive it; and the singular thing in this case was, not only that he left the most material part of his work to be performed after the whole outline had been finished, but that he would proceed with it to an indefinite extent, and enrich and improve as long as he thought fit, without any risk either of destroying the proportions of that outline, and injuring the harmony and unity of the design. He was completely aware, too, of the possession of this extraordinary power, and it was partly, we presume, as a consequence of it, that he was not only at all times ready to go on with any work in which he was engaged, waiting for favourable moments or hours of greater alacrity, but also misgivings as to his being that he never felt any of those doubts and able to get creditably through with his undertaking, to which, we believe, most authors are occasionally liable. As he never wrote upon any subject of which he was not perfectly master, he was secure against all blunders in the substance of what he had to say, and felt quite assured that if he was only allowed time enough, he should in fact come to say it in the very best way of which he was capable. He had no anxiety, therefore, either in undertaking or proceeding with his tasks, and intermitted and resumed them at his convenience, with the comfortable certainty that all the time he bestowed on them was turned to good account, and that what was left imperfect at one sitting might would be finished with equal ease and advantage at another. Being thus perfectly sure of both his ends and his means, he experienced in the course of his compositions none of that little fever of the spirits with which that operation is so apt to be accompanied. He had no capricious visitings of fancy which it was necessary to fix on the spot, or to lose for ever, no casual inspiration to invoke and wait for, no transitory and evanescent lights to catch before they faded. All that was in his mind was subject to his control and amenable to his call, though it might not obey at the moment, and while his taste was so sure that he was in no danger of overworking any thing that he had designed, all his thoughts and sentiments had that unity and congruity that they fell almost spontaneously in harmony and order; and the last added, incorporated, and assimilated with the first, as if they had sprung simultaneously from the same happy conception.
But we need dwell no longer on qualities that may be gathered hereafter from the works he has left behind him. Those who lived with him mourn the most for those which will be traced in no such memorial; and prize far above those talents which gained him his high name in philosophy, that personal character which endeared him to his friends and shed a grace and dignity over all the society in which he moved. The same admirable taste which is conspicuousin his writings, or rather the higher principles from which that taste was but an emanation, spread a similar charm over his whole life and conversation, and gave to the most learned philosopher of his day the manners and deportment of the most perfect gentleman. Nor was this in him the result merely of good seriousness and good temper, assisted by an early familiarity with good company, and consistent knowledge of his own place and that of all around him; his good breeding was of a higher descent, and his powers of pleasing rested on something better than mere companionable qualities. With the greatest kindness and generosity of nature, he united the most manly firmness, the highest principles of honour, and the most cheerful and social dispositions, with the gentlest and steadiest affections. Towards women he always had the most chivalrous feelings of regard and attention, and was, beyond almost all men, acceptable and agreeable in their society, -- though without the least levity or pretension unbecoming his age or condition: and such, indeed, was the fascination of the perfect simplicity and mildness of his manners, that the same tone and deportment seemed equally appropriate in all societies, and assembled him to delight the young and the the gay with the same sort of conversation which instructed the learned and the grave. There never was, indeed, a man of learning and talent who appeared in society so perfectly free from all sorts of pretension or notion of his own importance, or so little solicitous to distinguish himself, or so sincerely willing to give place to everyone else. Even upon subjects which he had thoroughly studied, he was never in the least impatient to speak, and spoke at all times without any tone of authority; while far from wishing to set off what he had to say by any brilliancy or emphasis of expression, it seemed generally as if his had studied to disguise the weight and originality of his thoughts under the plainest form of speech and the most quiet and indifferent manner: so that the profoundest remarks and subtlest observations were often dropped, not only without any solicitude that their value should be observed, but without any apparent consciousness that they possessed any. Though the most social of human beings, and the most disposed to encourage and sympathize with the gaiety and joviality of others, his own spirits were in general rather cheerful than gay, or at least never rose to any turbulence or tumult of merriment; and while he would listen with the kindest indulgence to the more extravagant sallies of his younger friends, and prompt them by the heartiest approbation, his own satisfaction might generally be traced in a slow and temperate smile, gradually mantling over his benevolent and intelligent features and lighting up the countenance of the sage with the expression of the mildest and most genuine philanthropy. It was wonderful, indeed, considering the measure of his own intellect, and the rigid and undeviating propriety of his own conduct, how tolerant he was of the defects and errors of other men. He was too indulgent, in truth, and favourable to his friends, and made a kind and liberal allowance for the faults of all mankind, except only faults of baseness or of cruelty, against which he never failed to manifest the most open scorn and detestation. Independent, in short, of his high attributes, Mr. Playfair was one of the most amiable and estimable of men, delightful in his manners, inflexible in his principles, and generous in his affections; he had all that could charm in society or attach in private; and while his friends enjoyed the free and unstudied conversation of an easy and intelligent associate, they had at all times the proud and inward assurance that he was a being upon whose perfect honour and generosity they might rely with the most implicit confidence, in life and in death; and of whom it was equally impossible that, under any circumstances, he should ever perform a mean, a selfish, or a questionable action, as that his body should cease to gravitate or his soul to live.
If we do not greatly deceive ourselves, there is nothing here of exaggeration or partial feeling, and nothing with which an indifferent and honest chronicler would not concur. Nor is it altogether idle to have dwelt so long on the personal character of this distinguished individual: for we are ourselves persuaded that this personal character has done almost as much for the cause of science and philosophy among us as the great talents and attainments with which it was combined, and has contributed in a very eminent degree to give to the better society of this our city that tone of intelligence and liberality by which it is so honourably distinguished. It is not a little advantageous to philosophy that it is in fashion; and it is still more advantageous, perhaps, to the society which is led to confer on it this apparently trivial distinction. It is a great thing for the country at large for its happiness, its prosperity, and its renown that the upper and influencing part of its population should be made familiar, evan in its untasked and social hours, with sound and liberal information, and be taught to know and respect those who have distinguished themselves for great intellectual attainments. Nor is it, after all, a slight or despicable reward for a man of genius to be received with honour in the highest and most elegant society around him, and to receive in his living person that homage and applause which is too often reserved for his memory. Now, those desirable ends can never be effectually achieved unless the manners of our leading philosophers are agreeable, and their personal habits and dispositions engaging and amiable. From the time of Hume and Robertson, we have been fortunate in Edinburgh in possessing a succession of distinguished men who have kept up this salutary connection between the learned and the fashionable world; but there never, perhaps, was any one who contributed so powerfully to confirm and extend it, and that in times when it was peculiarly difficult, as the lamented individual of whom we are now speaking; and they who have had the best opportunity to observe how superior the society of Edinburgh is to that of most other places of the same size, and how much of that superiority is owing to the cordial combination of the two aristocracies, of rank and of letters of both of which it happens to be the chief provincial seat will be best able to judge of the importance of the service he has thus rendered to its occupants, and through them, and by their example, to all the rest of the country.
In thus mournfully estimating the magnitude of the loss we have sustained, it is impossible that our thoughts should not be turned to the likelihood of its being partly supplied by the appointment of a suitable successor. That it should be wholly supplied, even with a view to the public, we confess we are not sanguine enough to expect. That our professor of mathematics and natural philosophy should have been, for more than 30 years, not only one of the most celebrated mathematicians, but one of the finest writers and one of the highest-bred gentlemen of his age, is a felicity which it is out of all calculation that we should so soon experience again: but, in an age when, very much by his efforts and example, several men of great and distinguished eminence in science can be found, and, as we understand, have already proposed themselves for the vacancy, we do trust that the chair of Mr. Playfair, or any other chair which his death may ultimately leave vacant, will not be bestowed upon a person of questionable or even ordinary attainments.
The object of such an appointment is, no doubt, to instruct youth in the elements of knowledge, but it is, notwithstanding, a most gross mistake to suppose that a capacity to teach these elements is a sufficient qualification for the office of an Edinburgh professor. If it were so, every second lad who had passed creditably through such a class in one year might be properly appointed to teach it the year after. Nobody, however, will maintain anything so absurd as this: and though we fear that the duties of those vested with the right of nomination have not always been correctly understood, no such monstrous misconception can require to be obviated. We have unfortunately in this country but too few desirable situations where to reward the successful cultivators of the abstract sciences. The prizes in their lottery are lamentably few; and it would be the height of injustice not to let them have them all. If it be of importance to a country (and it is in every respect of the very first importance) that it should possess men eminent for genius and science, it is of importance that it should encourage them; and it is obvious that no encouragement can be so effectual, so chean, and so honorable, as sacredly to reserve, and impartially to assign, to them, in proportion to their eminence, those situations of high honor and more moderate emotion to which it is their utmost ambition to aspire, and which gives them not only the rank and dignity they have so worthily earned, but the means of caltivating and diffusing, with great additional of effect, that very knowledge to which their years have been devoted. On this ground alone, the duty of giving to men distinguished for science, and devoted to it, the few scientific professorships that are established among us, appears to be absolutely imperative, on the score of mere justice, as well as of national advantage; on that of national honor, it is not of less cogency. We have once more made ourselves a name as a scientific nation in every quarter of the world: and by means of Playfair and Leslie, the Scottish philosophy of physics is nearly as well known all over the civilized world as the Scottish philosophy of mind. The Edinburgh school of science now maintains a rivalry with the most celebrated of those in England; and among foreign philosophers, the name of Playfair is more honoured and better known than that of any of the alumni of Cambridge. But is this honour, do we think, to be maintained by placing in his chair an obscure or an ordinary teacher? A man capable of instructing boys in Euclid and algebra, and fit enough to teach mathematics or natural philosophy in a provincial academy, but without knowledge of the hard knowledge of higher parts of science, and without genius to enlarge its boundaries, or to grapple, at least, with their resistance? While there are men of eminence and genius to be found, and Scotch-bred men, too, of this description, willing and anxious, as they are able, to maintain the honour of their country and their school, we trust that no such disgrace will be put on Scotland and Edinburgh on this critical and important occasion.
If lower and more selfish considerations were wanting, they, too, all lead to the same conclusion. An ordinary schoolmaster cannot, in fact, teach ordinary schooling as well as a superior person; but, even if he could, would attract the same number of pupils; and the celebrity of the teachers, therefore, is a necessary condition of the greatness of the classes, the increase of the emoluments, and the general resort of families for education to spend money and pay taxes within the extended royalty.
Perhaps the patronage of such chairs might have been better placed than in the magistracy of Edinburgh. But we are inclined to augur well of their conduct on this occasion. For a good while back they have discharged this important part of their duty uprightly and well; and seem to have a proper sense of the importance of resisting all sinister influence in those interesting nominations. At this moment, too, they probably feel have not much popularity to spare; and, upon the whole, we have much more fear of their being misled than of their going voluntarily astray. The few considerations we have now thrown out may help, perhaps, to keep them right; and, indeed, they can scarcely go wrong if they remember, first, that a person qualified to teach the elements of science, but without a name, or the chance of acquiring a name amongst its voters, is not fit to be placed at the head of the whole science of Scotland, by being appointed to the first, or the second, scientific professorship in this metropolitan university; and secondly, that the chair now to be filled is a chair of science, and ought not to be made the reward of any other than scientific eminence.
Some Account of the Character and Merits of the Late Professor Playfair.
(Ascribed to the Pen of Mr. Jeffrey.)
It has struck many people, we believe, as very extraordinary, that so eminent a person as Mr. Playfair should have been allowed to sink into his grave in the midst of us, without calling forth almost as much as an attempt to commemorate his merit, even in a common newspaper; and that the death of a man so eminent and so beloved and, at the same time, so closely connected with many who could well appreciate and suitably describe his excellencies, should be left without the ordinary notice of the daily obituary. No event could the kind certainly ever excite more general sympathy; and no individual membered by all the classes of his fellow-citizens: and yet it is those instances that we must look for an explanation of very by which his memory has been passed down to the more humble admirers who have been deterred from expressing their sentiment by a natural feeling of unwillingness to encroach on the privilege of those whom a nearer approach to his person and talents renders more worthy to speak of them, while the learned and eloquent among his friends have trusted each other for the performance of a task which they could not but feel to be painful in itself, and not little difficult to perform as it ought to be, or, perhaps, have reserve for some more solemn occasion that tribute for which public patience is already at its height.
We beg leave to assure our readers that it is merely from anxieties to do something to gratify this natural impatience, and that we presume to enter at all upon a subject to which we are perfectly aware that we are incapable of doing justice; For of Mr. Playfair's scientific achievements, of his proficiency in those studies to which he was peculiarly devoted, we are slenderly qualified to judge: but, we believe, we hazard nothing in saying that he was one of the most learned mathematicians of his age, and among the first, if not the very first, who introduced the beautiful discoveries of the latter continental geometers to the knowledge of his countrymen, and gave their just value and true place in the scheme of European knowledge to those important improvements by which the whole aspect of the abstract sciences has been renovated since the days of our illustrious Newton. If he did not signalize himself by any brilliant or original invention he must, at least, be allowed to have been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements of others, as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually evolved by the successive labors of so man gifted individuals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, the characteristics both of a fine and powerful understanding, a once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, for the caution and sureness of its march, than for the brilliancy or rapidity of its movements, and guided and adorned through all its progress by the most genuine enthusiasm for all that is grand, and the justest taste for all that is beautiful in truth, or the intellectus energy with which he was habitually conversant.
To what account these rare qualities might have been turned, and what more brilliant or lasting fruits they might have produced, if his whole life had been devoted to the solitary cultivation of science, it is not for us to conjecture; but it cannot be doubted that they add incalculably to his eminence and utility as a teacher. both by enabling him to direct his pupils to the most simple and luminous methods of inquiry, and to imbue their minds, from the very commencement of the study, with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, and the majesty with which they were invested, that high sense which predominated in his own bosom. While he left nothing unexplained or unreduced to its proper place in the system, he took care that the mind should never be perplexed by petty difficulties, or bewildered in use less details, and formed them betimes to that clear, masculine, direct method of investigation, by which, with the least labour, the greatest advances are accomplished.
Mr. Playfair, however, was not merely a teacher; and has fortunately left behind him a variety of works from which other generations may be enabled to judge of some of those qualifications which so powerfully recommended and endeared him to his contemporaries. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that so much of his time, and such a large proportion of his publications, should have been devoted to the subjects of Indian astronomy and the Huttonian theory of the earth. Though nothing can be more beautifully instructive than his speculations on those curious topics, it cannot be dissembled that their results are less conclusive and satisfactory than might have been desired; and that his doctrines, from the very nature of the subjects, are more questionable than we believe they could possibly have been on any other topic in the whole circle of the sciences. To the first, indeed, he came under the great disadvantages of being unacquainte with the Eastern tongues, and without the means of judging the authenticity of the documents which he was obliged to assume as the elements of his reasonings; and as to the other, though he ended, we believe, with being a very able and skilful mineralogist, we think it is now generally admitted that science does not yet afford sufficient materials for any positive conclusion; and that all attempts to establish a theory of the earth must, for many years to come, be regarded as premature. Though it is impossible, therefore, to think highly of the ingenuity, the vigour, and the eloquence of those publications, we are of opinion that a juster estimation of Mr. Playfair's talent, and a truer picture of his genius and understanding, is to be found in his other writings; in the papers, both biographical and scientific, with which he has enriched the transactions of our Royal Society; his account of De Laplace, and other articles which he is understood to have contributed to the Edinburgh Review, these outlines of his lectures on natural philosophy; and above all, his introductory discourse to the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, with the final correction of which he was occupied up to the last moments that the progress of his illness allowed him to dedicate to any intellectual exertion.
With reference to these works, we do not think we are influenced by any national or other partiality when we say that he was certainly one of the best writers of his age; and even that we do not now recollect any one of his contemporaries who was so great a master of composition. There is a certain mellowness and richness about his style, which adorns, without disguising its weight and nervousness, which is its other great characteristic: sedate gracefulness and manly simplicity in the higher passengers, and a mild majesty and considerate enthusiasm where he rises above them, of which we scarcely know where to find any in my part of his great equability, too, and which is sustained for another example. He never exhausts himself in flashes and epigrams, nor languishes into tarnishing or insipidity; at first sight you would say that plainness and good sense were the pre-dominating qualities; but, by and by, this simplicity is enriched with the delicate and vivid colours of a fine imagination; the free and forcible touches of a most powerful intellect; and the light and shades of an unerring and harmonizing taste. In comparing it with the styles of his most celebrated contemporaries, we would say that it was more purely and peculiarly a written style, and therefore rejected those ornaments that more properly belong to ratory. It had no impetuosity, hurry, or vehemence, nor burst, nor sudden turns, or abruptions, like that of Burke, and though eminently smooth and melodious, it was not modulated to a uniform system of solemn declamation like that of Johnson, nor spread out in the richer and more voluminous elocution of Stew art; nor still less broken into the patchwork of scholastic pedantry and conversational smartness which has found its admirers in Gibbon. It is a style, in short, of great freedom, force, and beauty, but the deliberate style of a man of thought and of learning, and neither that of a wit throwing out his extempores with an affectation of careless grace, nor of a rhetorican, thinking more of his man than his matter, and determined to be admired for his expression, whatever may be the fate of his sentiments.
His habits of composition, as we have understood, were not, perhaps, exactly what might have been expected from their results. He wrote rather slowly; first sketches required a masterly effort, and his greatest pleasure was in revising and correcting them; and there were no limits to the improvement which resulted from this replication. It was not the style merely, or indeed chiefly, that was gained by it. The whole reasoning, sentiment, and illustration were enlarged and newly modelled in the course of it, and a naked outline became gradually informed with life, colour, and expression. I was not at all like the common finishing and polishing to which careful authors generally subject the first drafts of their compositions nor even like the fastidious and tentative alterations with which anxious writers essay their chosen passages. It was, in fact the great ending of the picture, the working up of the figured weft on the naked and meagre wool that had been stretched to receive it; and the singular thing in this case was, not only that he left the most material part of his work to be performed after the whole outline had been finished, but that he would proceed with it to an indefinite extent, and enrich and improve as long as he thought fit, without any risk either of destroying the proportions of that outline, and injuring the harmony and unity of the design. He was completely aware, too, of the possession of this extraordinary power, and it was partly, we presume, as a consequence of it, that he was not only at all times ready to go on with any work in which he was engaged, waiting for favourable moments or hours of greater alacrity, but also misgivings as to his being that he never felt any of those doubts and able to get creditably through with his undertaking, to which, we believe, most authors are occasionally liable. As he never wrote upon any subject of which he was not perfectly master, he was secure against all blunders in the substance of what he had to say, and felt quite assured that if he was only allowed time enough, he should in fact come to say it in the very best way of which he was capable. He had no anxiety, therefore, either in undertaking or proceeding with his tasks, and intermitted and resumed them at his convenience, with the comfortable certainty that all the time he bestowed on them was turned to good account, and that what was left imperfect at one sitting might would be finished with equal ease and advantage at another. Being thus perfectly sure of both his ends and his means, he experienced in the course of his compositions none of that little fever of the spirits with which that operation is so apt to be accompanied. He had no capricious visitings of fancy which it was necessary to fix on the spot, or to lose for ever, no casual inspiration to invoke and wait for, no transitory and evanescent lights to catch before they faded. All that was in his mind was subject to his control and amenable to his call, though it might not obey at the moment, and while his taste was so sure that he was in no danger of overworking any thing that he had designed, all his thoughts and sentiments had that unity and congruity that they fell almost spontaneously in harmony and order; and the last added, incorporated, and assimilated with the first, as if they had sprung simultaneously from the same happy conception.
But we need dwell no longer on qualities that may be gathered hereafter from the works he has left behind him. Those who lived with him mourn the most for those which will be traced in no such memorial; and prize far above those talents which gained him his high name in philosophy, that personal character which endeared him to his friends and shed a grace and dignity over all the society in which he moved. The same admirable taste which is conspicuousin his writings, or rather the higher principles from which that taste was but an emanation, spread a similar charm over his whole life and conversation, and gave to the most learned philosopher of his day the manners and deportment of the most perfect gentleman. Nor was this in him the result merely of good seriousness and good temper, assisted by an early familiarity with good company, and consistent knowledge of his own place and that of all around him; his good breeding was of a higher descent, and his powers of pleasing rested on something better than mere companionable qualities. With the greatest kindness and generosity of nature, he united the most manly firmness, the highest principles of honour, and the most cheerful and social dispositions, with the gentlest and steadiest affections. Towards women he always had the most chivalrous feelings of regard and attention, and was, beyond almost all men, acceptable and agreeable in their society, -- though without the least levity or pretension unbecoming his age or condition: and such, indeed, was the fascination of the perfect simplicity and mildness of his manners, that the same tone and deportment seemed equally appropriate in all societies, and assembled him to delight the young and the the gay with the same sort of conversation which instructed the learned and the grave. There never was, indeed, a man of learning and talent who appeared in society so perfectly free from all sorts of pretension or notion of his own importance, or so little solicitous to distinguish himself, or so sincerely willing to give place to everyone else. Even upon subjects which he had thoroughly studied, he was never in the least impatient to speak, and spoke at all times without any tone of authority; while far from wishing to set off what he had to say by any brilliancy or emphasis of expression, it seemed generally as if his had studied to disguise the weight and originality of his thoughts under the plainest form of speech and the most quiet and indifferent manner: so that the profoundest remarks and subtlest observations were often dropped, not only without any solicitude that their value should be observed, but without any apparent consciousness that they possessed any. Though the most social of human beings, and the most disposed to encourage and sympathize with the gaiety and joviality of others, his own spirits were in general rather cheerful than gay, or at least never rose to any turbulence or tumult of merriment; and while he would listen with the kindest indulgence to the more extravagant sallies of his younger friends, and prompt them by the heartiest approbation, his own satisfaction might generally be traced in a slow and temperate smile, gradually mantling over his benevolent and intelligent features and lighting up the countenance of the sage with the expression of the mildest and most genuine philanthropy. It was wonderful, indeed, considering the measure of his own intellect, and the rigid and undeviating propriety of his own conduct, how tolerant he was of the defects and errors of other men. He was too indulgent, in truth, and favourable to his friends, and made a kind and liberal allowance for the faults of all mankind, except only faults of baseness or of cruelty, against which he never failed to manifest the most open scorn and detestation. Independent, in short, of his high attributes, Mr. Playfair was one of the most amiable and estimable of men, delightful in his manners, inflexible in his principles, and generous in his affections; he had all that could charm in society or attach in private; and while his friends enjoyed the free and unstudied conversation of an easy and intelligent associate, they had at all times the proud and inward assurance that he was a being upon whose perfect honour and generosity they might rely with the most implicit confidence, in life and in death; and of whom it was equally impossible that, under any circumstances, he should ever perform a mean, a selfish, or a questionable action, as that his body should cease to gravitate or his soul to live.
If we do not greatly deceive ourselves, there is nothing here of exaggeration or partial feeling, and nothing with which an indifferent and honest chronicler would not concur. Nor is it altogether idle to have dwelt so long on the personal character of this distinguished individual: for we are ourselves persuaded that this personal character has done almost as much for the cause of science and philosophy among us as the great talents and attainments with which it was combined, and has contributed in a very eminent degree to give to the better society of this our city that tone of intelligence and liberality by which it is so honourably distinguished. It is not a little advantageous to philosophy that it is in fashion; and it is still more advantageous, perhaps, to the society which is led to confer on it this apparently trivial distinction. It is a great thing for the country at large for its happiness, its prosperity, and its renown that the upper and influencing part of its population should be made familiar, evan in its untasked and social hours, with sound and liberal information, and be taught to know and respect those who have distinguished themselves for great intellectual attainments. Nor is it, after all, a slight or despicable reward for a man of genius to be received with honour in the highest and most elegant society around him, and to receive in his living person that homage and applause which is too often reserved for his memory. Now, those desirable ends can never be effectually achieved unless the manners of our leading philosophers are agreeable, and their personal habits and dispositions engaging and amiable. From the time of Hume and Robertson, we have been fortunate in Edinburgh in possessing a succession of distinguished men who have kept up this salutary connection between the learned and the fashionable world; but there never, perhaps, was any one who contributed so powerfully to confirm and extend it, and that in times when it was peculiarly difficult, as the lamented individual of whom we are now speaking; and they who have had the best opportunity to observe how superior the society of Edinburgh is to that of most other places of the same size, and how much of that superiority is owing to the cordial combination of the two aristocracies, of rank and of letters of both of which it happens to be the chief provincial seat will be best able to judge of the importance of the service he has thus rendered to its occupants, and through them, and by their example, to all the rest of the country.
In thus mournfully estimating the magnitude of the loss we have sustained, it is impossible that our thoughts should not be turned to the likelihood of its being partly supplied by the appointment of a suitable successor. That it should be wholly supplied, even with a view to the public, we confess we are not sanguine enough to expect. That our professor of mathematics and natural philosophy should have been, for more than 30 years, not only one of the most celebrated mathematicians, but one of the finest writers and one of the highest-bred gentlemen of his age, is a felicity which it is out of all calculation that we should so soon experience again: but, in an age when, very much by his efforts and example, several men of great and distinguished eminence in science can be found, and, as we understand, have already proposed themselves for the vacancy, we do trust that the chair of Mr. Playfair, or any other chair which his death may ultimately leave vacant, will not be bestowed upon a person of questionable or even ordinary attainments.
The object of such an appointment is, no doubt, to instruct youth in the elements of knowledge, but it is, notwithstanding, a most gross mistake to suppose that a capacity to teach these elements is a sufficient qualification for the office of an Edinburgh professor. If it were so, every second lad who had passed creditably through such a class in one year might be properly appointed to teach it the year after. Nobody, however, will maintain anything so absurd as this: and though we fear that the duties of those vested with the right of nomination have not always been correctly understood, no such monstrous misconception can require to be obviated. We have unfortunately in this country but too few desirable situations where to reward the successful cultivators of the abstract sciences. The prizes in their lottery are lamentably few; and it would be the height of injustice not to let them have them all. If it be of importance to a country (and it is in every respect of the very first importance) that it should possess men eminent for genius and science, it is of importance that it should encourage them; and it is obvious that no encouragement can be so effectual, so chean, and so honorable, as sacredly to reserve, and impartially to assign, to them, in proportion to their eminence, those situations of high honor and more moderate emotion to which it is their utmost ambition to aspire, and which gives them not only the rank and dignity they have so worthily earned, but the means of caltivating and diffusing, with great additional of effect, that very knowledge to which their years have been devoted. On this ground alone, the duty of giving to men distinguished for science, and devoted to it, the few scientific professorships that are established among us, appears to be absolutely imperative, on the score of mere justice, as well as of national advantage; on that of national honor, it is not of less cogency. We have once more made ourselves a name as a scientific nation in every quarter of the world: and by means of Playfair and Leslie, the Scottish philosophy of physics is nearly as well known all over the civilized world as the Scottish philosophy of mind. The Edinburgh school of science now maintains a rivalry with the most celebrated of those in England; and among foreign philosophers, the name of Playfair is more honoured and better known than that of any of the alumni of Cambridge. But is this honour, do we think, to be maintained by placing in his chair an obscure or an ordinary teacher? A man capable of instructing boys in Euclid and algebra, and fit enough to teach mathematics or natural philosophy in a provincial academy, but without knowledge of the hard knowledge of higher parts of science, and without genius to enlarge its boundaries, or to grapple, at least, with their resistance? While there are men of eminence and genius to be found, and Scotch-bred men, too, of this description, willing and anxious, as they are able, to maintain the honour of their country and their school, we trust that no such disgrace will be put on Scotland and Edinburgh on this critical and important occasion.
If lower and more selfish considerations were wanting, they, too, all lead to the same conclusion. An ordinary schoolmaster cannot, in fact, teach ordinary schooling as well as a superior person; but, even if he could, would attract the same number of pupils; and the celebrity of the teachers, therefore, is a necessary condition of the greatness of the classes, the increase of the emoluments, and the general resort of families for education to spend money and pay taxes within the extended royalty.
Perhaps the patronage of such chairs might have been better placed than in the magistracy of Edinburgh. But we are inclined to augur well of their conduct on this occasion. For a good while back they have discharged this important part of their duty uprightly and well; and seem to have a proper sense of the importance of resisting all sinister influence in those interesting nominations. At this moment, too, they probably feel have not much popularity to spare; and, upon the whole, we have much more fear of their being misled than of their going voluntarily astray. The few considerations we have now thrown out may help, perhaps, to keep them right; and, indeed, they can scarcely go wrong if they remember, first, that a person qualified to teach the elements of science, but without a name, or the chance of acquiring a name amongst its voters, is not fit to be placed at the head of the whole science of Scotland, by being appointed to the first, or the second, scientific professorship in this metropolitan university; and secondly, that the chair now to be filled is a chair of science, and ought not to be made the reward of any other than scientific eminence.
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