A book appeared about this time entitled, “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” which was written to prove that the Divine Governor of this world conducts its passing affairs by a fixed rule, termed natural law. The orthodox party professed to be alarmed at the temerity of the writer, and by them the book was hailed with contumely. It was known that the proof sheets had passed through the hands of Mr. Robert Chambers, and on no better authority than this, not only did the public believe the story, but the “Vestiges” was entered in the catalogue of the British Museum under his name. A writer in the Critic boldly stated, “on eminent authority,” that George Combe was the author, and though this was contradicted, and though the authorship is still a mystery, it would appear that Combe had, at all events, something to do with the work. In 1848, Robert Chambers was selected to be Lord Provost of Edinburgh; he was requested to deny the authorship, but his refusal to plead, and his consequent retirement, were probably due to his contempt for people who could make the authorship of a book a barrier to civic honours. His brother William, however, afterwards filled the office with such satisfaction to his fellow-citizens, that he was re-elected, after serving the prescribed term of three years.
Many of Robert Chambers’s earliest essays in his Journal had been upon geology, and to this branch of science he became more and more addicted, and as a geologist and antiquarian he turned to good account a somewhat extensive course of foreign travel. In 1848 he visited Switzerland; in 1849 Sweden and Norway; and in later years Iceland and the Faroe Isles, Canada, and the United States. One of the results of these travels was a volume on “Ancient Sea Margins”—containing a new theory, that had previously been propounded by him in a paper read before the “British Association,” and had attracted no little attention.
To supplement what their Journal could not supply to the reading public, he and his brother also wrote, with not very much assistance, and, of course published, “Information for the People,” “Papers for the People,” and a series of miscellaneous tracts: 200,000 of the first named are said to have been sold.
During all this hard work Robert Chambers helped to conduct one of the largest printing and publishing concerns in Scotland. One of the chiefest triumphs of the brothers was “Chambers’s Educational Course,” an educational project so complete that few men could have ever hoped to realize it. This series begins with a three-halfpenny infant primer, and goes onward through a whole library of grammars, dictionaries, histories, scientific, and all primary class books, and cheap editions of standard foreign and classical authors, till it culminates in a popular “Encyclopædia” in ten thick volumes. This “Encyclopædia” was originally founded on the “German Conversations’ Lexicon,” but the articles were in all cases either re-written or thoroughly revised. It admirably supplies the wants of those readers for whom the “Penny Encyclopædia” was in the first instance devised, before its expansion into the present more expensive form.
Literary honours fell fast upon Robert Chambers. He enjoyed the rare distinction of being nominated into the Athenæum Club by its committee of management, and was elected a member of many scientific societies; and finally the University of St. Andrews conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws.
In 1864 appeared his first real work, the “Book of Days,” but the success that attended it was dearly bought. He had found it necessary to reside for some years in London, in order to avail himself of the inexhaustible treasures of the British Museum, but on his return to Scotland he was often heard to say “that book is my death-blow.” His nervous system was shattered, and literary labour was at an end. After the completion of seventy volumes, and innumerable articles, compelling almost incessant mental effort for five-and-forty years, the overworked brain at last demanded repose. The descendants of Smollett, the novelist, offered him the use of some hitherto untouched family documents, and he was tempted once more to essay the long-loved task of composition; the volume was printed in 1867, and is said to bear painful marks of the undue strain from which his mind had suffered.
The very last years of his life were spent at St. Andrews, where on March 17th, 1871, he died, saying, “Quite comfortable—quite happy—nothing more!” leaving a family of nine children, one of whom, Mr. Robert Chambers, has for some time been a partner in the firm. His second wife (his first had died in 1863) did not survive him.
Few men have worked so hard as Robert Chambers; his life, busy in its threefold capacity of author, editor, and publisher, can scarcely have known an unprofitable hour; few men have worked so well, for not a line that he has written, not a book that he has published, but has tended in some way to the education and social improvement of the people; and few men have reaped such an honourable and profitable reward for their labours.
Dr. Carruthers, his colleague in the “Cyclopædia of English Literature,” says, “His worldly prosperity kept pace with his acquirements and his labours; he was enabled to practise a liberal hospitality and a generous citizenship; strangers of any mark in literature or science were cordially welcomed, and a forenoon antiquarian ramble with Robert Chambers in the old town of Edinburgh, or a social evening with him in Doune Terrace, were luxuries highly prized and long remembered. Thus we have an instance of a life meritorious, harmonious in all its parts, happy, and benefiting society equally by its direct operation and its example.”
The news of Robert Chambers’s death so affected his brother, Mr. David Chambers, who was at that time confined to his home through illness, that it caused the rupture of a blood-vessel in the liver, and three days after this he followed his elder brother; like him he had been an earnest friend of press reform, and had devoted much of his time to promoting the repeal of the fiscal restrictions upon newspapers.