“Where all things graceful in succession come;
Bright blossoms growing on a lofty stalk,
Music and fairy-lore in Herschel’s home.”[I]
[I] The lines are quoted in Graves’s “Life of Hamilton,” vol. ii. p. 525.
The second dealt with “high Mathesis,” and
“dimly traced Pythagorean lore;
A westward-floating, mystic dream of FOUR.”
Although not, like his friend, an incorrigible and impenitent sonnetteer, Herschel was “very guilty” of at least one specimen of the art. They were staying together, in June, 1845, at Ely, in the house of Dean Peacock. Hamilton’s inevitable sonnet came duly forth, and “next morning,” he related to De Morgan, “as my bedroom adjoined Herschel’s, and thin partitions did my madness from his great wit divide, I easily heard what Burns might have called a ‘crooning,’ and was not much surprised (being familiar with the symptoms of the attack)[J] when, before we sat down to breakfast at the Deanery, Lady Herschel handed me, in her husband’s name and her own, a sonnet of his to me, which, unless the spirit of egotism shall seize me with unexpected strength, I have no notion of letting you see.”
[J] “Aut insanit, aut versos facit.”
The circulation of Herschel’s fervid eulogy would assuredly have put his modesty to the blush. Headed “On a Scene in Ely Cathedral,” it runs as follows:—