LINNÆUS AND WILSON.
Fisher Ames has remarked, that it is as difficult to compare great men, as great rivers. He might have found a happier illustration; but the meaning is obvious, that whilst distinguished men bear to each other some points of resemblance, they are remarkable for points of discrepancy. Johnson traced lines of analogy and contrast between Dryden and Pope, whilst Playfair did the same between Newton and Leibnitz. Plutarch led the way in this kind of writing, but his parallels were occasionally more fanciful than true.
In many things antiquity has excelled; but in natural science and in works of fiction, the palm is due to modern times. Cuvier and Pliny, could not be impartially measured, without giving to the former a decided advantage. The light which fell on the latter was dim, in comparison with that by which the philosopher of France was guided in his researches. Persian monarchs might formerly have been amused by the tales which adulation told in their presence; but Sir Walter Scott has redeemed fiction from many of the purposes to which it has been applied.
Among the scores of men who have devoted their talents to natural science, Linnæus and Wilson are not the least conspicuous, and they bore a likeness to each other in the obscurity of their origin. The first was the son of a Pastor, who lived in a village of Sweden, and partly sustained his family by cultivating a few beds of earth. The manse (to use a word familiar in Scotland,) has more than once been the birth place of genius, as Thomson, Armstrong, and the translator of the Lusiad could have testified. The latter was descended of a line of peasantry—but they both evinced that science has palms to bestow, on all by whom they shall be nobly attempted and fairly won, whilst she leaves it to kings to adorn the undeserving with hereditary titles.
They both appear to have lived for a time out of their element, for the one had well nigh been sent to the awl, whilst the other was a weaver in Paisley. But the taste of Linnæus was early formed, whilst that of the ornithologist was not developed, until comparatively late in life. The biography of the Swede is full of incidents to show that his passion for plants took its rise in infancy, and grew with his years. The circumstances of his father being unexpectedly improved, the new residence of the Pastor was embellished by a garden, and though gardening had been his business, it now became an amusement. When the parent was employed among his plants, the son was seen by his side, drawing from paternal instruction, the elements of that science in which he was destined to excel. But the Ornithologist betrayed no early predilection for the branch of knowledge to which he subsequently became devoted. It was not until he had expatriated himself, and killed for his own sustenance, one of our forest birds—that the high resolve was formed of consecrating himself to the investigation of the feathered tribes. There is something striking in this event. An exile from Scotland, driven by poverty to seek an asylum on our shores, not knowing to what destiny his steps were tending, is reminded by an incident of the claims of science on his personal services. He had seen the birds of his own country, which Grahame had celebrated in one of his poems; but it is probable that the dishevelled plumage of the one alluded to deeply affected his mind. To an accident we owe a series of galvanic experiments, and the discovery of the law of gravitation; and if this be so, it is not to be wondered at, that to an event seemingly unimportant we should owe the enlargement of Ornithology.
Linnæus and Wilson made but small attainments in any other branch than the department in which each of them became eminent. The first was conspicuous in his medical profession, but this was the result of adventitious circumstances. He gained some acquaintance with Mineralogy, and even explored the province of Dalecarlia as a kind of Peripatetic Lecturer—but this branch belongs to Natural Science. He was sent in youth to an academy, with a view to prepare for the sacred office; but his habits, though marked by innocence, unfitted him for its duties. He appears to have been deficient in what Phrenologists call the organ of language, and especially in the acquisition of the modern tongues; but whilst others were becoming familiar with words, he was ruminating by Lake Helga, and stripping Lake Wetter of its plants, that the tribes of the North might learn to speak in flowers, and thereby resemble in traits of sentiment and imagination the caravans of the East. The attainments of the Ornithologist were from his circumstances necessarily limited. Confusion is generally consequent on education which has not discipline for its basis. Before Wilson left Scotland he attempted poetry, and some of his productions were attributed to Burns; but this kind of mistake is frequently made by the partiality of friends. The poetical productions of the Ornithologist are not entitled to much consideration; at least his temperament in this respect was more vividly displayed in action than in verbal expression. Both possessed remarkable powers of analysis, and in each the elements of taste were mingled in such a way as to turn the scale in favor of science rather than of imagination. The genius of both moved in a limited but perfect circle. That filled by the Botanist was stocked with herbs and the foliage of the Zones, surmounted by the golden flowers of the Line—and all held together by a diamond chain, whilst the choice assemblage was enlivened by the hum of the insect tribes. The other filled by the Ornithologist, was supplied from the air, and he crowded within its circumference birds of emerald and ruby grain, in the centre of which the Eagle was poised, whilst his ear was regaled by the song chanted at intervals from the curling vines of the Tropics, or the volume of melody from the woodlands of his adopted country. Each of them eventually insulated his mind to his vocation, and this is better than dispersing mental power over various pursuits. They thus reduced their genius to something of an integral kind, without the appendage of fractional parts.
Linnæus was not without decided advantages in those opportunities which foster intellect, promote emulation, and give impulse to genius. Hannah More has remarked that the best kind of education is drawn from the conversation of well-informed parents. It has been stated that the Botanist enjoyed this privilege in an eminent degree. His father took unusual pains to mature his mind, and though subjected to occasional disappointments, he met with friends even in Professors, who had sagacity to discern the sphere which he was one day to occupy. He found his way to the University of Lund, and subsequently to the one at Upsal, where lectures were delivered on his favorite science, and botanical gardens were open to his inspection. We are at a loss to imagine in what circumstances more delightful a scholar could have been placed, than those in which Linnæus was placed when he took up his abode at Hartecamp, the villa of his friend Cliffort, near Haerlem. Here he found books of science, and works of taste, exotic shrubs mingled with indigenous plants, museums filled with gems from the mines of Golconda, and cabinets full of shells culled from the grottos of the sea, and from the beaches of distant oceans. But truth constrains us to place the Ornithologist in the back ground of this picture. We find him struggling with penury from the beginning, and even traversing the moors of Scotland in search of a precarious subsistence. No university opened to him its ancient gates and cloistered cells. No man of wealth placed aviaries under his superintendence, and decoyed for his use speckled birds into the captivity of some sylvan Paradise. After his removal to this country he met with friends, but like himself, they were for the most part penniless. Among them, Joseph Dennie is worthy of mention—a man prompt to encourage every good design. He was at that time editor of the Port Folio, and through the medium of that work he served the cause of Ornithology. Dennie was the pioneer of literature in this country, and he is to be measured by the quality rather than the quantity of his works. He wrote no brilliant poems or ingenious tales, no dissertations in which philosophy led the way, and no historical works in which imposing events were arranged for the eye of posterity; but his Lay Preacher will always bear witness to the graceful structure of his mind.
Linnæus and Wilson both encountered hardships in the attainment of their purpose. Scotland treated the one, and Sweden the other, with unfeeling neglect; but the Botanist seems to have suffered most from the jealousy of rival Professors. It is singular that envy should so often disturb the quiet of men devoted to liberal pursuits; but Newton permitted some of his works to lie by him unpublished for years, because he dreaded critical attacks; and the quarrels of Addison and Pope were the subject of merriment to the people of their day. The toils of the Botanist introduced him to the perils of the Lulean desart. This rugged district was faithfully explored by the Swede; and in performing this journey, he drew subsistence from the milk of the reindeer, reconnoitered the hills and dells of Lapland, adventurously gathered moss from the brow of the precipice, and filled his herbarium with plants that rose among the rocks of the waterfall. He descended dangerous rivers in his boat; but this was the only journey in which Linnæus appears to have suffered much personal inconvenience. His subsequent tours through France, Germany and England, were excursions of pleasure, on which he went to enjoy the triumphs awarded to genius. But rugged as was the Lapland desart, the Ornithologist traversed desarts more extensive. Though poverty forbade the attempt to explore our forests, he disregarded its monitions, and we find him passing through the vale of Wyoming, and encircling the Lakes that indent the interior of New York, and then standing by those inland seas that roll on our northern borders. He descended the Ohio in his lonely skiff—he searched the islands which picture its waves—he paused in sight of smoke curling from the wigwam—he drew the chain of science around the copse, and slept in the green saloons of our wilderness. He was a Stoic of the woods as to personal suffering, but a Platonist at the same time in the mellow sensibilities of his nature.
They were both instructors of youth, but under circumstances widely different. The one was a preceptor of youth in the sequestered nooks of Pennsylvania; the other became the dignified lecturer from beneath a canopy spread over him by regal munificence. The one taught the elements of Education—the other enlarged on the lore of Science. As an instructor, Linnæus was the more successful. He resembled in some measure the Greek philosophers who taught in the suburbs of Athens, and he made Hammarby a kind of Swedish Lyceum. He possessed a remarkable talent for waking into action the latent enthusiasm of his pupils. What custom could have been more inspiring than the one he introduced at Upsal, of dividing his pupils into bands, and enjoining it on the leader of each to sound a horn when a plant should be discovered, never before seen by the fervid eye of science. This enthusiasm accounts for the fact, that his pupils subsequently explored so many countries, and investigated their floral kingdoms, whilst one of them accompanied Sir Joseph Banks round the world, and sounded his bugle among the islands of the Pacific.
They both enlarged the limits of Science. Before the time of the Swedish philosopher, Botanists had arisen in different countries; and from the earliest periods, studies based on the objects of nature must have drawn attention both for ornament and use. Lord Bacon, from the elevation which he occupied above the rest of his species, looked far into the wonders of Natural History; but Linnæus took entire possession of the green and flowery land, and led in the tribes of men to enjoy its fragrance and pluck its fruit. The poetical affections have from the infancy of time been associated with vernal buds and flowers. Poetry, when it assumes the form of language, is the melody which the mind makes when the imagination is excited by objects in the frame-work of nature, or by events susceptible of picturesque representation. In the floral games men were acting from ideal impulses, and they were doing the same through the ages of chivalry. They thus furnished materials out of which Tasso reared his immortal work. But it is one thing to look at objects as they sparkle through the medium of the imagination, and another to open on the same objects the eye of science. Many have celebrated the loves of the Shells who have not understood Conchology, and Darwin understood Plants scientifically without comprehending them poetically. But Linnæus possessed astonishing invention, and he easily detected the errors of ancient systems, and convinced mankind of the superiority of that system which bore the seal of his own imperishable mind. In like manner the Ornithologist did not strike out into ways entirely novel, but he extended paths on which men had hitherto gone for the acquisition of knowledge. He has greatly enlarged our views of the history and habits of the feathered race. From the mountain's height, as well as in the deepest recesses of the wilderness, he stretched out his hand and clasped the blue and purple bird, that our intellectual pleasures might be augmented.
Of these distinguished men, the success of Linnæus in life was by far the more conspicuous. He eventually reached every desire which he could at any time have cherished. His Professorship at Upsal yielded him a revenue equivalent to his wants. He thrust forth from thence pupils in successive companies; but distance did not diminish the veneration in which they held his person. Foreign countries sent him the symbols of admiration—literary associations vied with each other in doing him honor—and kings bestowed on him the title of nobility. But it is probable that the rural life of Tully and Pliny strongly impressed his imagination, for his highest ambition was to possess a villa. He purchased Hammarby, which, under his direction, became stocked with the productions of every clime. Here he held a kind of rural court, and, to use his own language, was happier than any Eastern Sultan. Kings and nobles sent presents to his villa, whilst pilgrim students detached for his use twigs from the Sabine farm, and leaves from the tomb of Pausilippo. The Celtic flower and the Turkish vine met in his green-house, and the bird marked by the hues of the Tropics, found a home on his lawn. But there is a contrast to this in the circumstances of the Ornithologist too painful to be distinctly traced; and he was one of the few who have lived for that gratitude which reaches its object only in the grave.
In that piety due from a creature to his Maker, Linnæus appears to have surpassed the Ornithologist. The Swedish naturalist was remarkable for his gratitude, and he often mentioned in glowing words the way in which he had been led to results and discoveries so important. He felt his dependence when buried in the solitude of the desart—nor did he forget to rear an altar at Hammarby. But the Ornithologist probably excelled him in some moral qualities, and among them was disinterestedness. The love of money was a passion too strong with Linnæus, and too feeble for his own comfort with Wilson—and neither of them, in this particular, struck the golden medium. The sensibility of the Ornithologist was likewise more refined than that of the Botanist. Linnæus was buried in the Cathedral of Upsal, with a pomp which kings alone could bestow; but Wilson was not indifferent to the spot in which he should repose. In going into battle an Admiral once thought of a tomb in Westminster Abbey—and Napoleon wished to lie on the Seine, among the French people whom he had loved so well; but the Ornithologist desired to be buried where the birds could find access to his grave.
Each of these distinguished men created an æra in Natural History. Some philosophers have associated their names with the heavenly bodies, and we are reminded of them whenever we lift our thoughts to the milky way, or to the planets as they turn in on their bright pilgrimage to share the evening repose of our world. Of some we are reminded by the balmy air, or by the insects which make it vocal; and we call others to remembrance when we look on the Peruvian Lama, or the stately Lion: but so long as the earth shall evolve its Plants, the Swedish sage cannot be forgotten—and so long as the birds can chant a note, the Druid of Ornithology shall not want a requiem.