Mathematicians, as all men know, have been illustrious benefactors to the world, but—be the cause what it may—they have never been famous for a large-minded estimate of the pursuits and hobbies of other men, whom Nature had not made mathematical. At the time when Joseph Banks leaped—as one may say—into eminence, both scientific and social, in London, Sir John Pringle was President of the Royal Society, and his position there somewhat resembled the position in which we have seen Sir Hans Sloane to have been placed. |See before, Book I, c. 6.| Like Sir Hans, Pringle was an eminent physician, and a keen student of physics. He did not give umbrage to his scientific team, exactly in the way in which Sloane had given it—by an overweening love of reading long medical papers. But natural, not mathematical, philosophy, was his forte; and the mathematicians were somewhat uneasy in the traces whilst Sir John held the reins. If Pringle should be succeeded by Banks, there would be a change indeed on the box, but the style of coachmanship was likely to be little altered. It is not surprising that there should have been a good deal of jibbing, just as the change was at hand, and also for some time after it had been made.
The election to the Presidency.
Mr. Banks was elected to the chair of the Royal Society on the 30th of November, 1777. He found it to be a very difficult post. |1777. 30 Nov.| But, in the end, the true geniality of the man, the integrity of his nature, and the suavity of his manners, won over most, if not quite all, of his opponents. The least that can be said of his rule in that chair is that he made the Royal Society more famous throughout Europe, than it had ever been since the day when it was presided over by Newton.
For it was not the least eminent quality of Banks’ character that, to him, a touch of science ‘made the whole world kin.’ He was a good subject, as well as a good man. He knew the blessings of an aristocratic and time-honoured monarchy. He had that true insight which enables a man to discriminate sharply between the populace and the People. But, when the interests of science came into play, he could say—with literal and exactest truth,—
‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.’
He took a keen and genial delight both in watching and in promoting the progress of science on the other side of the Channel, whether France itself lay under the loose rule of the republican and dissolute Directory, or under the curbing hand of the First Consul, who was already rapidly aspiring towards empire.
On ten several occasions, Banks was the means of inducing our Government to restore scientific collections, which had been captured by British cruisers, to that magnificent Botanic Garden (the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris) for which they had been originally destined. |Cuvier, Éloge de M. Banks, passim.| Such conduct could not but win for him the affectionate reverence of Frenchmen. On one eminent occasion his good services went much further.
Banks’ intervention with respect to some of the fruits of the Expedition of la Pérouse.
Men yet remember the European interest excited by the adventurous expedition and the sad fate of the gallant seaman, John Francis De La Pérouse. When the long search for La Pérouse, which had been headed by the French Admiral Bruni d’Eutrecasteaux, came by discords to an untimely end, the collection of specimens of natural history which had been made, in the course of it, by De La Billardière, was brought into an English port. The commander, it seems, felt much as Sloane’s captain[[21]] had felt at the time of our own Revolution of 1688. From Lewis the Sixteenth he had received his commission. He was unprepared to yield an account of its performance to anybody else. He brought his cargo to England, and placed it at the absolute disposal of the French emigrant Princes.
By the eldest Prince, afterwards Lewis the Eighteenth, directions were given that an offer should be made to Queen Charlotte to place at Her Majesty’s disposal whatever she might be pleased to select from the Collections of La Billardière, and that all the remainder of them should be given to the British Museum.