No More Learning

. had
lived alone on the island for four years and four months. . . . He had with
him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock and some powder and bullets,
some tobacco, a knife, a kettle, a bible, with some other books, and his mathe-
matical implements. He diverted himself and provided for his sustenance as
well as he could; but had much ado to bear up against melancholy for the
first eight months, and was sore distressed at being left alone in such a
desolate place. He built himself two huts. . . thatched with long grass and
lined with goat skins. . . . He. . . employed himself in reading, praying and singing
psalms, so that he said he was a better Christian during his solitude than he
had ever been before. . . . When his clothes were worn out, he made himself
a coat and cap of goat-skins, which he stitched together with thongs of the
same, cut out with his knife, using a nail by way of a needle or awl. . . . At his
first coming on board, he had so much forgotten his language, for want of
use, that we could scarcely understand him, as he seemed to speak his words
by halves.
In 1740—4, commodore Anson, afterwards lord Anson and
first lord of the admiralty, made his famous voyage round the
world. The account of it was the joint production of Anson
himself and his chaplain Walters. The narrative closely holds
the reader throughout, describing how a squadron of seven vessels
sailed from Spithead for the South sea and Panama, there to join
hands with Vernon's trans-Atlantic expedition; and how, off Tierra
del Fuego, by 'a continual succession of such tempestuous weather as
surprised the oldest and most experienced mariners' it was reduced
'to a couple of shattered, half-manned cruisers, and a sloop. '
After long refitting at Juan Fernandez, two ships sailed out-
once more a formidable fighting force. They attacked and burnt
the town of Paita; and, after long watching and waiting, they
captured the Manila galleon carrying a million and a half of
dollars. Finally, Anson reached home in a single treasure-laden
ship.
Thus was this expedition finished, when it had lasted three years and nine
months; after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth:
That though prudence, intrepidity and perseverance united are not exempted
from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions
they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving
successful.
The wreck of the 'Wager,' one of Anson's ships, on a desolate
island of southern Chile, produced several narratives. The most
notable of these was written twenty-six years after the event by
16-2


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244 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 (CH.
admiral John Byron, nick-named 'foul-weather Jack, who had
sailed as a young officer in the ‘Wager. ' It is a most moving and
well told story of wanderings by land and sea, and possesses a
further literary interest inasmuch as the admiral's more famous
grandson used his 'grandad's narrative' for the description of
storm and shipwreck in Don Juan. A typical passage may be
given:
I had hitherto steered the boat; but one of our men, sinking under the
fatigue, expired soon after, which obliged me to take the oar in his room and
row against this heart-breaking stream. Whilst I was thus employed, one
of our men, whose name was John Bosman, tho' hitherto the stontest man
among us, fell from his seat under the thwarts, complaining that his strength
was quite exhausted for want of food, and that he should die very shortly.
As he lay in this condition, he would every now and then break out in the
most pathetic wishes for some little sustenance; that two or three mouthfuls
might be the means of saving his life. The Captain at this time had a large
piece of boiled seal by him and was the only one that was provided with
anything like a meal: but we were become so hardened against the impres.
sion of others' sufferings by our own; so familiarised to scenes of this and
every other kind of misery, that the poor man's dying entreaties were rain.
I sat next to him when he dropped, and having a few dried shell-fish (about
five or six) in my pocket, put one from time to time in his mouth, which
served only to prolong his pains; from which, however, soon after my little
supply failed, he was released by death. For this and another man . . . We
made a grave in the sands.
Several voyages of exploration, despatched to the Pacific in
the reign of George III, were described in readable and interesting
narratives by their commanders, John Byron (1764–6), Wallis and
Carteret (1766—8), James Cook (1768–71, 1772—5, 1776—9)
and George Vancouver (1791–5). To the general reader, there
is some sameness about the maritime part of these narratives,
wherein hardships, dangers and sufferings, the chances of the sea
and losses by disease are quietly treated as matters of course, so
that the story of a voyage is, in great part, almost like a domestic
a
diary. These narratives become more like travel-books when land
is touched. Carteret wrote an entertaining account of his pro-
ceedings at Madeira, and Wallis gives a more fresh and lively
account of the Society islands, discovered by him, than does his
more famous successor Cook.
The pre-eminent interest of Cook's first voyage, the greatest
among English voyages of discovery, gives distinction to his
narrative; and it seems almost impertinent to criticise as literature
the book in which a great man plainly and modestly sets forth
a great achievement. Yet, the account which has been most often
published was compiled by Hawkesworth from the journals of


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vii] Navigators of the Eighteenth Century 245
VII
Cook and of Joseph Banks, who accompanied the expedition as
botanist; and most people will probably find this compilation
more readable than Cook's own narrative, and will also find
Banks's journal more interesting than Cook's account. Cook's
narrative is the work of a navigator: Banks's journal is the work
of an alert scientific mind, eagerly on the watch to observe and to
describe. Cook writes thus about the most exciting and hazardous
incident of the voyage:
Our change of situation was now visible in every countenance, for it was
most sensibly felt in every breast: we had been little less than three months
entangled among shoals and rocks, that every moment threatened us with
destruction; frequently passing our nights at anchor within hearing of the
surge that broke over them; sometimes driving towards them even while
our anchors were out, and knowing that if by any accident, to which an
almost continuous tempest exposed us, they should not hold, we must in a
few minutes inevitably perish. But now, after having sailed no less than
360 leagues, without once having a man out of the chains hearing the lead
even for a minute, which perhaps never happened to any other vessel, we
found ourselves in an open sea, with deep water; and enjoyed a flow of
spirits which was equally owing to our late dangers and our present security:
yet the very waves, which by their swell convinced us that we had no rocks
or shoals to fear, convinced us also that we could not safely put the same
confidence in our vessel as before she had struck.
Cook shows a more practised hand in the livelier and easier
narrative of his second voyage Towards the South Pole and
round the World; also, in the narrative of his third voyage To the
Pacific Ocean and for exploring the Northern Hemisphere-
a narrative cut short by the death of the great navigator at the
hands of savages in the Sandwich islands.
George Vancouver, who had sailed under Cook, Rodney and
Gardner, was sent upon a voyage of discovery to the north Pacific
ocean (1791-5). His narrative, which was almost completed
when he died in 1798, was published by his brother. It contains
valuable and often picturesque observations on the countries
visited and particularly on the Spanish settlements in California.
He describes with warm sympathy the paternal relations between
the Spanish missionaries and their Indian neophytes.
The literature of maritime discovery is continued in Arctic and
Antarctic voyages accomplished and related by Franklin, Parry,
John Ross, James Ross and McClintock. These narratives, care-
fully written and, for the most part, splendidly illustrated, have the
attraction of resource, daring, endurance and brilliant achievement
in strange and novel surroundings. The later records of Arctic and
Antarctic exploration belong rather to the history of geography;


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246 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [cH.
but mention must be made of captain Robert Falcon Scott's
Journal (1913), a narrative in which the last entry was made by
the dying hand of the writer as he sank under the buffets of storm
and frost on his return journey from the south pole.
The records of land travel in the eighteenth century contain,
generally, a less interesting story and less readable matter than
the maritime records. The object of the writers is, usually, to
impart information and observations laboriously collected. Sterne's
Sentimental Journey is a notable exception, which stands apart.
The prevailing dislike of mountains, of uncultivated lands and
of Gothic buildings was unfavourable to the lighter and more
sympathetic spirit of travel.
Pennant's books of travel in Great Britain were much read
in his day. They are still valuable as antiquarian records and
collections of observations ; but they are rather in the nature
of gazetteers, and the reader opens them for information, not
for recreation. The characteristic travel-book of the eighteenth
century is a ponderous quarto or folio, handsomely printed, often
beautifully illustrated, and conveying much leisurely information
concerning monuments, customs and costumes; but, as a rule, these
productions have about them little of the personal spirit, little of the
lighter literary touch which give vitality to travel-books. Richard
Pococke, who was afterwards bishop of Ossory and was thence
translated to Meath, was an eager student and observer, possessing
something of the traveller's spirit; and his work, preserved in noble
illustrated folios, is an interesting and valuable record. But his
object was rather to give a description of Egypt and of western
Asia than to entertain himself and his readers by recounting his
experiences.
On the other hand, James Bruce, laird of Kinnaird, was a born
traveller, endowed particularly with qualifications for eastern travel
-an imposing stature and presence, great physical strength and
athletic skill, strong self-confidence, a stubborn imperious deter-
mination, and a peculiar gift for mastering languages. Sir Richard
Burton, a kindred spirit, repeatedly mentions the Lord of Geesh'
with admiration. After long travel in Barbary and Syria, Bruce
left Egypt in 1769 for Abyssinia, where he spent two years. He
takes an engaging and open delight in his own prowess and
reputation, in his feats of horsemanship and of shooting, in his
appointment as one of the royal chamberlains and as governor
of Geesh, in the king's gift 'a chain of 184 links, each link weighing
31, dwt. of fine gold,' in his friendship with the princess Ozoro
6


## p. 247 (#277) ############################################

vii] Land Travel in the Eighteenth Century 247
Esther, the most beautiful woman in Abyssinia, who once addressed
him thus: 'Sit down there, Yagoube ; God has exalted you
above
all in this country, when he has put it in your power, though but
a stranger, to confer charity upon the king of it. ' His vivid account
of the hazardous overland journey from Abyssinia to Egypt is
equal to the rest of the record. Of his departure, he writes :
Neither shall I take up the reader's time with a long narrative of leave-
taking or what took place between me and those illustrious personages with
whom I had lived so long in the most perfect and cordial friendship. Men of
little and curious minds would perhaps think I was composing a panegyric
upon myself, from which therefore I most willingly refrain.
The boast is not an empty one, for a British diplomatist, Henry
Salt, visiting Abyssinia forty years later, speaks of Bruce's enduring
renown in that country and of the extraordinary impression made
upon the people by his noble personality.
A contemporary of Bruce, more famous in his day but of a less
lasting fame, E. D. Clarke, was enabled to satisfy his passion
for travel by a succession of tutorships. He had all the high
spirit and zest of a true traveller, but these qualities appear
not so much in his eleven volumes of Travels in Europe, Asia
and Africa, as in his diaries and letters quoted in the biography
of Clarke by his college friend bishop Otter. Clarke's eager
curiosity leads him into multifarious and exciting risks, now
viewing an eruption of Vesuvius, now surreptitiously visiting
the sultan's seraglio in Stamboul, now pushing his way, in an
English uniform, through a fanatical Neapolitan crowd to view
the miracle of saint Januarius. At Brixen 'Saw a cabinet of
Natural History, extensive and full of trash. ' At Vienna,
beheld the best clown I ever saw. '
Clarke, through his presence at Alexandria in 1801 when the
French army evacuated Egypt, did much to obtain for England
the Egyptian antiquities and documents collected by the French
savants. To the university of Cambridge, he made valuable gifts.
In 1808, he became the first professor of mineralogy, and, nine
years later, he was appointed university librarian. He sold bis
collection of manuscripts to the Bodleian for £1000, and cleared
nearly £7000 by the publication of his travels.
Clarke's friend and correspondent, J. L. Burckhardt, a Swiss
by birth, but by adoption a Cambridge man and, in some sort, an
Englishman, won an enduring reputation by his extensive travels
in Asia and Africa and by his faithful descriptions of oriental life.
‘During all my journeys in the East,' he writes, “I never enjoyed


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248 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 ([
CH.
such perfect ease as at Mecca. ' And Belzoni, the explorer of the
pyramids, writes, 'What shall I say of the late Sheik Burckhardt,
who was so well acquainted with the language and manners of
these people that none of them suspected him to be an European. '
Meantime, the farthest east found an observer in Sir John Barrow,
who accompanied lord Macartney in the first British embassy to
China in 1792. But the reader should turn, not to Barrow's
formidable quarto volumes Travels in China and A Voyage to
Cochin-China, but to his Auto-biographical Memoir, published
half-a-century later. He thus describes the ambassador's entry
into Pekin:
A multitude of moveable workshops of tinkers and barbers, of cobblers
and blacksmiths, together with tents and booths, where tea and rice and
fruit with various kinds of eatables were to be sold, had contracted the street,
spacious as it was, to a narrow road in the middle, scarcely wide enough to
allow two little carts to pass each other: yet within this narrow space were
processions bearing umbrellas, flags and painted lanterns-trains carrying
corpses to their graves with lamentable cries-others with squeaking music
conducting brides to their husbands-troops of dromedaries laden with coals
from Tartary-wheelbarrows and handcarts stuffed with vegetables; and if
to these be added numbers of pedlers with their packs, jugglers and conjurers
and fortune-tellers, musicians and comedians, mountebanks and quack-doctors
---with all these impediments, so little room was left for the persons of the
embassy that it was nearly three hours before we reached the north-western
gate.
Sir John Barrow was for forty years under-secretary to the
admiralty, and distinguished himself as an enthusiastic supporter,
and, also, as historian, of Arctic exploration. The tale of
oriental travel is continued by Sir John Malcolm, who published
anonymously an account of his second journey to Persia in 1810 as
envoy to the shah from the East India company. He observes
characters and renders eastern tales with much humour and
insight. The delightful stories of Abdullah the peasant and of
Ahmed the cobbler will bear the test of reading aloud.
The 'romantic revival,' which transformed poetry and fiction,
made itself gradually felt in the literature of travel also. It is
true that solid and formal records, such as are characteristic of
the eighteenth century, continued to appear down to about 1825.
But narratives of a more natural and easy flow were already
beginning to take their place. Sir Leslie Stephen, in an admirably
humorous piece of criticism (chapter of The play-ground
of Europe) attributes, in part at least, the modern taste for
mountains and rugged scenery to the influence of Rousseau and


## p. 249 (#279) ############################################

VII] Change of Literary Tone 249
his followers. On the other hand, Byron urges that natural
scenery does not, in itself, furnish an adequate topic for the poet.
I have seen as many mountains as most men and more fleets than the
generality of landsmen, and to my mind a large convoy with a few sail-of-the-
line to conduct them is as noble and poetical a prospect as all that inanimate
nature can produce.
And he applies to poetry Pope's dictum : The proper study of
mankind is man. ' Byron's own poetical book of travels, Childe
Harold, had borne out this observation. What Byron says of poetry
may be applied to literature generally; and the better travel-books
of the nineteenth century respond to this test. They deal less
with monuments, museums, churches and institutions: they deal
more with men and women in relation to their surroundings.
Sometimes, this human interest lies in the pleasant egotism of the
traveller, sometimes in his observations on those among whom
he moves. The change of tone appears notably, if not actually first,
in works by naturalists, impelled to travel by scientific motives.
Alexander von Humboldt's narrative of travels in tropical South
America, translated into English in 1814–21, deeply influenced
later observers and travellers. In 1825 appeared Waterton's
Wanderings in South America, a most entertaining and viva-
cious record of adventurous and unconventional travel. Charles
Waterton was a Yorkshire squire of an ancient Roman catholic
family, educated at Stonyhurst, a keen sportsman and enthusiastic
naturalist, also a devoted reader of Don Quixote, of the Latin
poets and of English literature. He spent eight years managing
an estate in Guiana, and, afterwards, made four journeys of
observation in the Orinoco region, between 1812 and 1824. His
account of his ride on a crocodile is classical :
It was the first and last time I ever was on a cayman's back. Should it
be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer,- I hunted some
years with Lord Darlington's foxhounds.
But one may open the book on any page to be entertained by
vivid and humorous descriptions. Waterton afterwards turned
his Yorkshire park into a kind of preserve or museum of living
creatures. At the age of eighty-three, he was still climbing the
tallest forest trees and rising daily at 3 a. m.
The war of South American independence and the accom-
panying political revolution produced a number of descriptions of
travels in that continent. Among them, the journal of captain
Basil Hall, of the royal navy, has a deserved reputation. Sir Francis
Head's account of his rides across the Pampa, published in 1826,


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250 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 (CH.
gives a vivid, rapid and faithful sketch of Gaucho life and character.
It was received at the time with general incredulity, which, in itself,
is sufficient proof of widespread interest. But, among narratives
of South American travel Darwin's account of the voyage of the
Beagle' is pre-eminent, not only by virtue of its place in the
history of science, but, also, by virtue of its qualities as a
picturesque and readable record of travel.
In 1848, nine years after the publication of Darwin's first work,
Alfred Russel Wallace sailed to Brazil, where he spent four years
in the scientific exploration of the Amazonian region. His book
fully justifies its frequent reimpressions as a record of travel,
apart from its scientific value. The ship in which Wallace was
returning home caught fire at sea. Her people took to the boats
and were picked up by a passing vessel. Wallace's collections were
all lost. The event is admirably described by Wallace himself.
Yet more interesting and better written than his Amazonian
narrative is his work on the Malay archipelago (1869), an account
of eight years of residence and travel in the East Indies-straight-
forward, unaffected and entertaining.
About the middle of the nineteenth century, readable books of
travel multiply with increasing facilities for travel. First among
them should be mentioned a work designed for the use of travellers,
Richard Ford's Handbook for travellers in Spain (1845). By
intimate association with Spaniards and by travel on horseback
over their mountains and plains, Ford had obtained a singularly
close and sympathetic insight into the ways of the people, besides
an intimate knowledge of their country. Sitting in an armchair at
home, one may enjoy travel in Spain and intercourse with Spaniards
by turning the pages anywhere. The constant allusions to the
episodes of the Peninsular war-which was recent history at that
time-add greatly to the interest of the book; but its principal
charm lies in Ford's vein of easy conversational comment and
anecdote, illustrated by constant quotation of Spanish proverbial
sayings and local idioms. Ford's work gains a certain piquancy
from the tinge of satire which pervades it. Although funda-
mentally full of intimate sympathy for Spain and for Spaniards,
nevertheless he writes with a certain assumption of insularity,
from the slightly fastidious standpoint of an English gentleman
-an attitude which is in pleasant contrast with his familiar
knowledge of the jests and idioms of street-corner and tavern.
A contemporary book, The Bible in Spain (1843)', by Ford's friend
1 See, ante, chap. III.
>


## p. 251 (#281) ############################################

VII]
Spain. Eothen
251
Borrow, a work of extraordinary freshness, possessing a singular
indescribable quality of its own, is, in some sort, complementary to
Ford's work. Borrow writes as a wanderer, as the friend and
companion of gypsies, vagabonds and thieves. The two writers
together supply a picture of Spain such as can scarcely be
found in Spanish literature outside the pages of Don Quixote.
They make the reader feel that, in a sense, the Pyrenees are
the boundary of Europe, that Spain is, as it were, a detached
fragment of the orient, Christian, but not wholly European-
a country whose attraction lies in its contrast of rocky wilderness
and teeming garden, of natural wealth and contented poverty, in
the simplicity and dignity of its life, in the primitive brutality or
beauty of its impulses, in its pleasant oriental courtesies.
It is, therefore, a natural transition to books on the east, books
which are not so much narratives of discovery as impressions of
a world different from ours and only half revealed. In 1844
appeared two Eastern narratives, The Crescent and the Cross by
Eliot Warburton, an Irish barrister, and Eothen by his college
friend Kinglake, of the English bar, afterwards historian of the
Crimean war. Warburton's spirited and picturesque narrative
had the greater success at the time. The tenth impression
appeared within nine years, just after the author's premature
death; for Warburton perished in the 'Amazon,' burnt at sea
in 1852 on the way to the West Indies. But Warburton's book,
with its slightly melodramatic and self-conscious tone, cannot be
compared with the fine literary and scholarly quality of Eothen,
which still holds its ground as a classic, and is, perhaps, the best
book of travel in the English language. Kinglake rode from Bel-
grade to Constantinople, thence to Smyrna, by sea to Cyprus and
Beyrout, whence he rode through Palestine and across the desert
to Cairo—where he vividly describes the plague—then from Cairo
to Damascus and Anatolia. From his saddle, he looks about him
with something of that aristocratic aloofness which has been already
noticed in Richard Ford, but, also, with something of the same
scholarly and wellbred insight and sympathy. He carries with
him through the desert a trace of the atmosphere of Eton, Trinity,
Lincoln's inn and the hunting-field. The terms on which the
eastern and Latin churches live at Jerusalem remind him of the
peculiar relations subsisting at Cambridge between town and
gown. He travelled at ease, accompanied by a little cavalcade-
servant, interpreter, guide, escort. At every halt, his baggage is
unstrapped and his tent is set out 'with books and maps and
>
a


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252 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900
[CH.
fragrant tea. ' 'A speck in the broad tracts of Asia remained still
impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus and the heels of
London boots. '
The most famous passage in Eothen is the
imaginary conversation between a pasha and an English traveller.
But some will prefer the fourth chapter, where, full of Homeric
memories, Kinglake wanders through the Troad, and recalls his
debt to his mother: ‘She could teach him in earliest childhood
"
no less than this, to find a home in his saddle, and to love old
Homer, and all that old Homer sung. ' Throughout the whole book
one travels in good company.
The same is true of The Monasteries of the Levant by Robert
Curzon, afterwards lord Zouche. Between 1834 and 1837, Curzon
visited Egypt, Syria, Albania and mount Athos, in order to examine
and collect ancient manuscripts. A dozen years later, sitting among
these books, he entertained his solitary evenings in an English
country house by writing
some account of the most curious of these MSS and the places in which they
were found, as well as some of the adventures which I encountered in the
pursuit of my venerable game.
The result was a charming flow of reminiscence, the expression
of an engaging personality. His account of Egypt under Mehemet
Ali has distinct historical value; and, in chapter xvi, he describes,
as an eye-witness, the shocking scene of confusion, panic and death
which took place in the church of the Holy Sepulchre on the
occasion when Ibrahim pasha was present at the Easter ceremony
of the holy fire. In a pleasanter and lighter vein, Curzon relates
with a certain quaint simplicity his odd experiences in remote
monasteries.
But Sir Richard Burton stands first among eastern travellers
A man of cosmopolitan education and tastes, soldier, linguist,
oriental scholar, he has recorded the strenuous activities of his
crowded life in many volumes recounting travels in Asia, Africa
and South America. In 1853, Burton, disguised as an Afghan
physician and assuming the name Mirza Abdullah, made the
pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, sharing all the experiences of
his Moslem companions. His record of these experiences may
be best described in the words of another oriental scholar,
Stanley Lane Poole:
The pilgrimage to the Holy Cities of Islam records the most famous
adventure of one of the boldest explorers of the century:-its vivid descrip-
tions, its pungent uncompromising style, its intense personal note distinguish
it broadly from the common run of books of travel; and the picture it gives
of Arab life and manners, the insight it reveals in Semitic ideas give it a


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VII]
The East
253
permanent value as a national record, as true today as half a century ago,
and as true then as a thousand years before. Dashed off in Burton's rapid
impulsive way, the book is the strangest compound of Oriental learning,
a grim sardonic humour, and an insobriety of opinion expressed in the writer's
vigorous vernacular.
A more quiet and leisurely, but equally intimate picture, of
eastern life is found in A year's journey through Central and
Eastern Arabia in 1862—3 by William Gifford Palgrave, who, first
as an officer in the Indian army and, afterwards, as a Jesuit
missionary priest, had won so close an intimacy with eastern
ways and tongues that he was able to live among the Wahabees of
Arabia in the character of a Syrian doctor, in order to investigate
the possibility of Christian propaganda in that region. His book,
which bears no trace of this missionary purpose, is a pleasant
picture of daily life and of intercourse with his Arab neighbours.
Palgrave's varied career finally led him into the British diplomatic
service.
An eastern travel-book of equal interest though of quite a
different stamp is A Popular account of discoveries at Nineveh
(1851) by Austen Henry Layard, who, also, was a restlessly ener-
getic eastern wanderer of cosmopolitan tastes and habits. More
picturesque, even, than the description of the finding of the great
sculptured man-lion is the account of the removal of the colossal
man-bull by a crowd of yelling Arab workmen 'half-frantic with
excitement. In his old age, after a varied diplomatic and parlia-
mentary career, Sir Henry Layard wrote a charming account of
Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Among
literary works of eastern travel, William Hepworth Dixon's two
works on Palestine and on Cyprus also claim mention.
The exploration of Africa during the nineteenth century
produced a multitude of volumes, recording much heroic effort
and achievement.
David Livingstone must come first. His two
books contain the plain straightforward story of a strenuous
many-sided life entirely devoted to missionary work and scientific
observation in south Africa. Their pages do not much lend
themselves to telling quotation: they are clear, well written
records, recalling, in a manner, the maritime diaries or narratives
of the later eighteenth century. And, in general, this is true
of other works concerning African travel. Most of them are more
notable for what they relate than for their manner of relating it.
Burton's The Lake Regions of Central Africa, expresses the
virile and aggressive personality of that untiring traveller. Speke's
Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, a fine record of
a


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254 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 ([
CH.
exploration, is, perhaps, best in a literary sense where he describes
the court of 'Mtega, king of Uganda:
I was now requested to shoot the four cows as quickly as possible. I bor-
rowed the revolving pistol I had given him and shot all four in a second of
time. . . . The king now loaded one of the carbines I had given him with his
own hands, and giving it full cock to a page, told him to go out and shoot
a man in the outer court; which was no sooner accomplished than the little
urchin returned to announce his success with a look of glee such as one would
see in the face of a boy who had robbed a bird's nest, caught a trout, or done
any other boyish trick. The king said to him, 'And did you do it well ? '
Oh yes, capitally. He spoke the truth, no doubt, for he dared not have
trified with the king; but the affair created hardly any interest.
Travel in tropical west Africa is a lurid tale of barbaric negro
states, of slave-hunting and human sacrifice, of monstrous animals
and pestiferous swamps, of mysterious rivers and dangerous forests,
of trading and carousing in the midst of pestilence and death, of
explorers devoting health and life to their zeal for observation and
for science. Among those whose lives were sacrificed to their
passion for west African travel there are two whose literary power
raises their books above the rest. These are W. Winwood Reade
and Mary Kingsley. Reade, a nephew of the novelist, was himself
a man of literary power and promise who gave his fortune and life
to west Africa. His African Sketch-book, a charming record
of three journeys, appeared in 1873. Not long after its publication,
its writer died from the effects of his share in the Ashantee
campaign. Mary Kingsley, whose father and two uncles were all
notable voyagers and authors, travelled for scientific observation,
In 1900 she died at Simon's Town of enteric fever, caught in
tending Boer prisoners. Her Travels in West Africa, though
marred in parts by overlaboured humour, is very good at its best:
On first entering the great grim twilight regions of the forest, you hardly see
anything but the vast column-like grey tree stems in their countless thousands
around you, and the sparsely vegetated ground beneath. But day by day, as
you get trained to your surroundings, you see more and more, and a whole
world grows up gradually out of the gloom before your eyes. . . . Nor indeed
do I recommend African forest life to anyone. Unless you are interested in it
and fall under its charm, it is the most awful life in death imaginable. And
if you do fall under its spell, it takes the colour out of other kinds of living.
One kind of travel, namely Alpine climbing, has produced a
copious modern literature-peculiarly British in character—which
scarcely goes farther back than the middle of the nineteenth
century. Peaks, passes and glaciers, a series of episodes described
by different writers, appeared in 1859. The play-ground of
Europe by Sir Leslie Stephen is marked by a peculiar literary


## p. 255 (#285) ############################################

VII] Travel in Poetry and Romance 255
distinction. Whymper's books on the Alps and on the Andes
provide plenty of exciting matter. Alpine writing, including the
works of living writers and also the pages of The Alpine Journal,
is generally of good literary quality, being largely the work of
accomplished men whose recreation is Alpine climbing.
The growth of the British oversea dominions has produced
many books of travel. Conspicuous among them are Sir Charles
Dilke's two books Greater Britain (1868) and Problems of Greater
Britain (1890) which contain the observations of two journeys in
America and the Antipodes. They are notable both for their
lucid, easy mode of expression, and still more for their political
insight and clear perception of immediate difficulties and of future
possibilities—possibilities which have since, in great part, been
realised.
Only actual books of travel have here been mentioned. It
would pass the scope of this chapter to do more than hint at the
influence of these books and of personal travelling reminiscences
upon English poetry and prose fiction. Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,
Michael Scott's Tom Cringle's Log, Charles Kingsley's West-
ward Ho! , Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, R. L.
Stevenson's Treasure Island, are typical examples, and the
list might be endlessly extended. Every poet of the nineteenth
century, from Wordsworth to Tennyson and Browning, has left
upon his pages some impression of his travels. From Fielding
to Stevenson one may dip into the novelists almost at random
to find sketches of travel. The first chapter of Guy Mannering is
a vivid picture of a Scottish journey. Tom Jones and Humphrey
Clinker take us along the country roads of England. Vanity Fair
gives a picture of continental travel before the days of railways:
Pickwick is fresh with the more homely humours of the English
roadside and coaching inn. Upon another plane, Charles Lever's
wanderings inspire his pen. Later literature abounds with smaller
books of the same family-fictitious or half-fictitious stories of
trips on foot or bicycle, in canoe or caravan, at home and abroad.
One other reflection occurs. Although the literature of travel
is not the highest kind, and, indeed, cannot be called a distinct
branch, of literature, yet a history of English literature rightly
assigns a space apart to such books, because this kind of writing,
perhaps more than any other, both expresses and influences
national predilections and national character. In view of the
a


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256 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 ([
CH. VII
magnificent achievements and splendid records of other nations
who have preceded or accompanied the British in the fields of
travel and discovery, it would be most inappropriate to attempt
any kind of national comparison. But books of travel and books
inspired by travel have, probably, been more read in Great Britain
than any other books except novels. The educational value of
pleasant travel-books is great. They have provided the substance
of a thousand books for boys; and thus, both directly and in-
directly, have guided and fired the inclinations of many generations
of boys. And every reader, whether boy or man, finds in his
favourite books of travel some image of himself and some hint
towards moulding himself.


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CHAPTER VIII
THE LITERATURE OF SCIENCE
A.
PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS
course.
THE brilliant achievements of British mathematicians, astro-
nomers and physicists under the influence of Isaac Newton
were followed by a long period of comparative inactivity. This
was largely due to the fact that, during a considerable part of the
eighteenth century, members of the British school were, more or less,
out of touch with their continental contemporaries. A free exchange
of views is essential to vigour and, the more varied the outlook
and training of those concerned, the more fruitful is the inter-
The effect of this isolation, moreover, was intensified by
the manner in which English writers strove in their demonstrations
to follow Newtonian forms. If Newton, in his Principia, confined
himself to geometrical proofs, it was because their validity was
unimpeachable; and, since his results were novel, he did not wish
the discussion as to their truth to turn on the methods used to
demonstrate them. But his followers, long after the principles of
the calculus had been accepted, continued to employ geometrical
proofs, whenever it was possible, even when these did not offer
the simplest and most direct way of arriving at the result.
In short, we may say that, in the course of English mathe-
matical science, the last seventy years of the eighteenth century
form a sort of isolated backwater; for this reason, it is unnecessary
here to describe in detail the work of the writers of this period.
We must not, however, fall into the error of thinking that, among
them, there were no men of ability. The investigations of Colin
Maclaurin, of Edinburgh, on attractions, are excellent, and his
treatise on fluxions is, perhaps, the best exposition of that method
of analysis. We may also refer to the work of Thomas Simpson,
of London, on the figure of the earth, tides and various astro-
nomical problems; of John Michell, of Cambridge, who determined
the law of force between magnetic poles, invented the torsion
17
a
E. L. XIV.
CH. VIII.


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258 The Literature of Science [CH.
balance and devised the plan of determining the density of the
earth carried out by Cavendish in 1798; of Henry Cavendish",
who discovered the law of attraction in static electricity, introduced
the ideas of electrostatic capacity and specific inductive capacity
and determined the density of the earth by his wellknown
experiments; and of Joseph Priestley! , who also discovered, in-
dependently of others, the law of attraction in electrostatics and
the existence of oxygen ; while, in observational astronomy, we
need only refer to the great achievements of James Bradley and
(Sir) William Herschel. In applications of science, this period
and the early years of the nineteenth century were notable for the
development of the steam-engine. Somewhat earlier, Thomas
Savery and Thomas Newcomen had done much to bring it into
practical use; but modern forms may be said to date from the
improvements introduced by James Watt, Richard Trevithick and
Henry Bell.
With the nineteenth century, a new era in the history of
mathematics and theoretical physics in Great Britain opened.
We shall deal here only with its main features, and, so far as
possible, shall avoid technical details. Unfortunately, limits of
space forbid the introduction of those biographical touches which
would have added to the human interest of the story we have
to tell.
The first thirty or thirty-five years of this period were largely
occupied with work preparatory to the outburst of activity that
characterised the Victorian renascence. Early in the nineteenth
century, the use of analytical methods was introduced in the
Cambridge mathematical curriculum. The advocacy of this change,
originated by Robert Woodhouse, was warmly taken up by George
Peacock, Charles Babbage, (Sir) John Herschel, William Whewell
and (Sir) George Airy. These men worked under the influence of
the great French school, of which Lagrange and Laplace are the
most prominent members, and were hardly affected by their con-
temporaries, such as Gauss, Abel and Jacobi, who were then creating
new branches of pure mathematics. In England, at the beginning
of the century, Cambridge was recognised as the principal mathe-
matical school: all the reformers were residents there, and they
directed their efforts mainly to the introduction of a free use
of analysis in the university course of study. They were
successful ; and, by 1830, the fluxional and geometrical methods
of the eighteenth century had fallen into disuse. The leadership
1 See section B of the present chapter.


## p. 259 (#289) ############################################

Vill] Royal Institution. British Association 259
of Cambridge in this change was undisputed, and the employment
of analytical methods became usual throughout Great Britain.
In these years, a good deal of interesting work in physics and
chemistry was done in London, where the Royal Institution in its
laboratories offered far better opportunities for research than any
similar body in Britain. In connection with this society, we may
mention the work of Thomas Young, whose investigations on wave
motion prepared the way for the acceptance of the undulatory
theory of light, and we may associate with him the names of
(Count) Rumford and (Sir) David Brewster; optics and heat being
the subjects to which their especial attention was directed. At
the same time, John Dalton', in Manchester, was studying the
expansion of gases under varying changes of pressure and
temperature, and the tension of vapours.
At this time, interest in natural philosophy was widely dissemi-
nated, and, in science, as in politics and literature, new ideas were
readily welcomed. Institutes and scientific societies were founded
everywhere, and popular lectures by experts spread broadcast
general, though somewhat vague, information on natural philosophy
and astronomy. The year 1831 is memorable for the foundation
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The
intention of its promoters was that the Association should meet
every year for a few days at a provincial town under a distin-
guished president, with the object, partly, of encouraging personal
intercourse between leading men of science and, partly, of pro-
moting interest in scientific work in the various localities where
meetings were held. The meetings led to the regular appointment
of expert committees instructed to report on the progress in various
subjects; these reports have been, and are, of permanent value.
By way of addition to this preliminary statement, we may
also, in passing, mention the History of the Inductive Sciences,
published by Whewell in 1837. It put together in a readable
form the leading facts connected with the history and growth of
science, and, though open to criticism on questions of details-
as was inevitable in the case of an encyclopaedic work of the
kind-it served a useful purpose. Hardly less important was The
Penny Cyclopaedia, issued in twenty-seven volumes in 1833—43
with three supplements.
The most notable physicist at the beginning of the Victorian
period was Michael Faraday), who, in 1831, had begun those
investigations on electricity which have altered our conceptions
1 See section B of the present chapter.
17-2


## p. 260 (#290) ############################################

260
[CH.
The Literature of Science
of the subject, and, by their applications, have revolutionised
industrial science. Faraday had been brought up in humble
circumstances, and his career is interesting as an illustration of
the fact that, in England, no door is closed to genius. In 1812,
after attending some lectures delivered by Sir Humphry Davy,
'he sent notes of them to Davy, asking his assistance to enable him
to study science. The result was that Davy employed him as an
assistant in the chemical laboratory in the Royal Institution.
Here, Faraday's experimental skill soon led to appreciation of his
powers, and he wrote various papers on scientific questions.
Faraday's earliest electrical work related to induced currents,
and depended on his discovery of the fact that, if a wire in the shape
of a closed curve is moved to or from another wire through which
an electric current is flowing, a current is set up in the former
wire which ceases so soon as the motion ceases. The induced
current is caused by and depends on the motion of the one
wire relative to the other. Magnetic effects can be similarly
produced. Faraday went on to explain various phenomena by
the action of the induced currents which he had discovered.
As he pondered on possible explanations of these results, it
occurred to him that all space might be filled by lines of
magnetic force, every line being a closed curve passing through
the magnet to which it belongs ; and he pointed out that the
existence of these lines was suggested by the familiar experi-
ment of the arrangement of iron filings in such lines about a
magnet from whose poles they radiate. According to this view, ,
these induced currents were caused by the closed wire (or any
conductor) being moved across lines of force in its plane of motion,
and, if so, the electromotive force of an induced current would be
proportional to the number of unit lines of magnetic force cut in a
second by the moving wire. Now, the earth itself may be regarded
as a gigantic magnet, and, hence, if a copper wire spin across the
earth's lines of force, we should expect currents to be produced.
This was found to be the case. By these experiments, Faraday
tapped vast and hitherto unknown sources of electricity. The
use of dynamos as a source of mechanical power resulted from
these discoveries.
These investigations were followed by experiments to show
the identity in kind of electrical currents, however produced.
His investigations on electrolysis attracted general attention to
the subject, and led him to the remarkable conclusion that there
is a certain absolute quantity of electricity associated with each


## p. 261 (#291) ############################################

VIII]
Faraday
261
atom of matter. A few years later, in 1845, he discovered another
remarkable series of phenomena dependent on the fact that the
plane of polarisation of light can be rotated by the action of
magnets and electric currents; and, somewhat later, he discovered
and investigated diamagnetic properties in bodies.
The provision of well equipped laboratories is a modern
luxury, and Faraday was exceptionally fortunate in having access
to one. It is difficult to overrate his abilities as an experimental
philosopher; and, though he knew but little mathematics, his
conception of lines of force was essentially mathematical, and
was developed later by Clerk Maxwell and other writers. At the
time, however, it repelled mathematicians accustomed to the
formulae and symbols with which Laplace and Poisson had made
them familiar. It is interesting to see that Faraday, like Newton,
refused to contemplate the possibility of action at a distance, but
sought, rather, to explain the phenomena of attraction by changes
in a continuous medium. He was followed at the Royal Institution
by John Tyndall, whose lectures did much to excite and maintain
general interest in physical questions.
While Faraday was opening new ways of regarding physical
phenomena, the classical methods of Poisson were being applied
with success by James MacCullagh, of Dublin, to problems of
physical optics. In these investigations, MacCullagh, like his
continental contemporaries, elaborated the conception of the
ether as an elastic solid, and, thence, he deduced the laws of re-
flection and refraction ; but, though his work was ingenious, many
of his conclusions were vitiated by his erroneous assumption that
the vibrations of plane polarised light are parallel to the plane of
polarisation. Another physicist of this time whose work has
been of importance was James Prescott Joule, a pupil of Dalton,
who showed that heat and energy were interchangeable in definite
proportions. Mention should also be made of (Sir) Charles
Wheatstone, who, about 1810, brought electric telegraphy into
general use. Wheatstone was a man of wide interests : he early
suggested the use of spectrum analysis for chemical researches
invented stereoscopic instruments and, later, did much useful work
in the construction of dynamos.
This period was rich in inventions whereby science was applied
practically, as, for example, the general employment of steam-
engines for locomotion, the electric telegraph and the introduction
of lighting and heating by gas.
We turn from these practical applications to consider more


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262 The Literature of Science [CH.
abstract researches. Faraday was recognised as an exceptional
genius, and time has strengthened the recognition of his claim to
distinction ; but, in general, theoretical physics had, by now,
become so closely connected with mathematics that it seemed
hardly possible for anyone without mathematical knowledge to
make further advances in its problems. This association lasted
well into the twentieth century, and the continuation and extension
of Faraday's work fell into the hands of mathematicians.
Before proceeding to describe the remarkable work of the
school of mathematical physicists who followed Faraday, it will be
convenient to mention the leading writers of this time on pure
mathematics. We may begin by noting the fact that the range
of pure mathematics had, ere this, grown to an extent which
rendered it difficult for any man to master more than a compara-
tively small section of it, and, a fortiori, physicists took up only such
special branches of mathematics as were required for their own
purposes. We should also notice that one of the striking features
of this period has been the largely increased number of students
of mathematical and physical science: hence, to mention only
the leading writers does indirect injustice to others whose work,
though not epoch-making, has been of real importance. With
this caution, we proceed to name a few of those whose researches
have permanently affected the development of mathematics.
In the period on which we are now entering, we find half-a-
dozen mathematicians—De Morgan, Hamilton, Sylvester, Adams,
Cayley and Smith—whose researches will always make it memor-
able. Hamilton and Smith were fastidious writers, and, apart
from the value of their work, it is a pleasure to observe the
artistic manner in which they presented it; but their pupils
were few, and it was only to a select number of scholars that their
writings appealed. The others were more fortunate in being
connected with the great mathematical school of Cambridge.
Their methods are sharply contrasted. De Morgan wrote vi-
vaciously, and largely for non-specialists. Cayley's writings were
precise and methodical, and he always sought to be exhaustive.
Sylvester's papers, like his lectures, were badly constructed,
impetuous and often unfinished ; yet, experience proved them to
be amazingly stimulating. Adams's work was elegant and highly
polished. Modern pure mathematics deals so largely with abstract
and special subjects that it is almost impossible to describe the con-
clusions in a way intelligible to laymen. It will suffice to indicate
the subjects of their principal researches.


## p. 263 (#293) ############################################

vi]
Pure Mathematics
263
Of these mathematicians, Augustus De Morgan was the oldest.
He was educated at Cambridge, but, at that time, office in the
university was conditional on certain declarations of religious
belief. In consequence of this, he moved to London, and there,
through his writings and lectures, exercised wide influence. He
was well read in the philosophy and history of mathematics ; but
it is on the general influence he exerted rather than on dis-
coveries of his own that his reputation rests. With his name
we may associate that of George Boole, of Cork, the creator of
certain branches of symbolic logic, whose mathematical works are
enriched by discussions on the fundamental principles of the
subject. His writings are valuable in themselves, and their pre-
sentment of conclusions is lucid and interesting.
(Sir) William Rowan Hamilton was among the first of a small
but brilliant school of mathematicians connected with Trinity
college, Dublin, where he spent his life. We regard his papers
on optics and dynamics as specially characteristic of his clearness
of exposition: theoretical dynamics being properly treated as a
branch of pure mathematics. He is, however, best known by his
introduction, in 1852, of quaternions as a method of analysis.
Hamilton, followed, later, by authorities so good as P. G. Tait of
Cambridge and Edinburgh, A. Macfarlane of Edinburgh and
Pennsylvania and C. J. Joly of Dublin, asserted that this would
be found to be a potent instrument of research; but, as a matter
of fact, though it lends itself to concise and elegant demonstra-
tions, it is but little used by mathematicians today. In connection
with Dublin, at this time, we must also mention the name of
George Salmon, provost of Trinity college, whose works on ana-
lytical geometry and higher algebra are classical examples of how
advanced text-books should be written, and that of (Sir) Robert
Stawell Ball, first, of Dublin and, later, of Cambridge, who
produced a classical treatise on the theory of screws.
James Joseph Sylvester, like De Morgan, found an academic
life at Cambridge denied him in consequence of his theological
tenets ; but the subsequent abolition of religious tests at the older
universities enabled him, towards the end of his life, to accept
a chair at Oxford. He was a prolific writer; perhaps his favourite
studies were the theory of numbers and higher algebra ; in the
latter subject, he dealt especially with canonical forms, contra-
variants and reciprocants. The lectures that he gave at Baltimore
from 1877 to 1883, did much to stimulate interest in pure
mathematics in America.
7


## p. 264 (#294) ############################################

264
The Literature of Science
[CH.
John Couch Adams was another graduate of Cambridge, and
spent all his life in that university. There are three important
questions in theoretical astronomy, treated as a branch of pure
mathematics, which are especially connected with his name. The
first of these is his discovery, in 1846, of the planet Neptune,
through the disturbance caused by it in the orbit of Uranus ; this
was made independently of, and a few months earlier than, the
similar investigation by Leverrier. This finding of an unsuspected
and unseen planet afforded a striking demonstration of the uni-
versality of gravitation, and excited widespread admiration. The
second of these famous investigations is to be found in Adams's
discussion, published in 1855, of the secular acceleration of
the moon's mean motion—a difficult problem, involving heavy
analytical work and elaborate historical enquiries. The third is
his determination, in 1867, of the orbit of the Leonid shooting
stars.
Arthur Cayley, likewise, spent the bulk of his life at Cambridge,
first as a student and then as a professor. He discussed many
subjects in pure mathematics, his most notable researches dealing
with the general theory of curves and surfaces in analyticalgeometry,
with the theory of invariants in higher algebra, and, in ten classical
memoirs, with binary and ternary forms. He also wrote at length
on elliptic functions, but treated it from Jacobi's point of view;
and, in consequence of Weierstrass's work, much of this is out
of date.
Henry John Stephen Smith, who was educated at the sister
university of Oxford, will be long remembered for his work on the
theory of numbers, especially on linear determinate equations, and
the orders and genera of ternary quadratic forms. He was a
graceful lecturer and writer ; but, while the value of his researches
was recognised, he founded no school. His paper on the repre-
sentation of numbers by sums of four, six, eight, five and seven
squares was the occasion of a curious incident, which illustrates,
incidentally, the widespread ignorance of his work. Fourteen
years after it had been published in the Proceedings of the
Royal Society, the problem, for the single case of five squares, was
proposed by the French Academy as a subject for its grand prize,
open to the world. The problem had, in fact, years before, been
completely solved by Smith, who, to secure the reward had only
to write out his demonstration for the special case proposed.
We have already briefly described Adams's investigations in
mathematical astronomy, and, perhaps, we may here add a word


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VII]
Theoretical Physics
265
or two on the researches of (Sir) George Howard Darwin, also of
Cambridge, who investigated the form taken by a rotating viscous
mass of matter, and showed that, in the early history of the solar
system, the moon arose from a portion of the earth thrown off
(when the latter was in a plastic condition) through its increasing
velocity of rotation. Later, he demonstrated that the moons of
the other planets could not have originated in the same way.