Nature was eminently liberal in the endowments of Linnæus’s mind. He had a lively imagination; a correct judgment, guided by the strict laws of system; a most retentive memory; and unremitting industry. He laboured to inspire the great and opulent with a taste for natural history, and he wished particularly that ecclesiastics should have some knowledge of it. He thought such knowledge would sweeten retirement, and that pastors had great opportunities for observing nature. He was decidedly religious himself, and not one of his greater works begins or ends without some passage expressive of admiration for the Supreme Creator.
His strength and weakness alike consisted in a rigid adherence to system. He arranged, according to a system of his own invention, all natural objects, from man down to the simple crystals. The Linnæan school is more fitted to arrange and describe the materials of science than to extend its boundaries. Its pupils have too rigidly adhered to a system, which is ill adapted to our increased sphere of knowledge.
In botany, the merits of Linnæus were transcendent. He found it a chaos, and reduced it to a system, which enabled the student to study it with ease. The great objection to his arrangement, founded on the sexual parts of plants, is, that it is artificial, and has rather retarded the knowledge of a system more philosophical, and in stricter accordance with the rules of nature. The labours of the Jussieus and De Candolle have done much to introduce a better system; but much still is wanting to complete it.
After the death of Linnæus’s only son, in November, 1783, the late eminent botanist, Sir James Smith, purchased his museum of natural history, books, and manuscripts, for 1029l. This collection consisted of nearly everything possessed by the great Linnæus and his son. Sir James Smith directed in his will that these treasures should be offered, after his own death, to the Linnæan Society of London. They were accordingly purchased by that body for 3000 guineas; and are now placed in the Society’s rooms in London.
This memoir is compiled almost entirely from a Life of Linnæus written for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and from the article ‘Linnæus,’ in the ‘Biographie Universelle,’ by the late Baron Cuvier.
[Linnæus in his Lapland dress.]
Engraved by W. Holl.
PRIESTLEY.
From a Picture by Gilbert Stewart
in the possession of T. B. Barclay, Esqr. of Liverpool.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.
