I venture to think that the History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century is the most important of her works. It is admirable in its completeness of references, its wide inclusiveness, and in its lucidity. It deserves to live, and it assuredly will live—the invaluable continuation of Grant’s fine work. The System of the Stars and the Problems in Astrophysics are works of a different order. Treasuries of knowledge and of suggestion they certainly are.
The Homeric Studies, except in one chapter, are not specially astronomical; but they are evidence of width of culture and of wide intellectual interest, and are full of delightful touches of wit and of humour.
The Herschels is excellent and agreeable biographical reading. Three lives are vividly set forth in little more than two hundred octavo pages.
It seems to me a mistake to regard Agnes Clerke’s smaller works as of less importance than her larger ones.
I have said that I consider the History her greatest work. But, in some respects, I venture to think that her greatest achievement is Modern Cosmogonies. I claim for this book that it is not only a history, but a work of philosophical thinking and of imaginative insight of a very high order.
Its small size is an accident. It is a work essentially great. In these superbly brilliant sketches Agnes Clerke’s style is at its best. Usually, it suffers from effort; the lucidity may be laboured, and the perpetual antithesis may sometimes be wearying. I have spoken of her laboriousness in study and in work, and can adorn the tale by relating what was surely a very remarkable performance. She had at the time no knowledge of Portuguese, but as part of her preparation for an article in the Edinburgh Review “Don Sebastian and his Personators,” in six weeks she not only acquired considerable knowledge of the language, but read the whole of the Lusiad in the original!
Le Style, c’est l’homme; is it surprising that the physical efforts she made I fear only too often, tended to render her writing laboured at times?
But the writing in Modern Cosmogonies, good as it is, is a small matter compared with the masterly grasp of, I may say, all things, and of their inter-relations, which the work reveals. And where else is shown in recent philosophical writing such vision and faculty divine for seizing and pointing out the reasonable spiritual clues, set in what we call Nature,—clues helping to sustainment of soul in the midst of the majestic mysteries surrounding us?
No sketch of Agnes Clerke would be complete without reference to her love of music. To her music was in the highest sense of the term a recreation. She turned to it for very life. Her piano-playing was truly musicianly, and her repertory was large. Perhaps on the whole, her playing was at its best in rendering Chopin. As an accompanist she excelled. Her teachers were,—in Dublin, Miss Flynn; in Florence, Buonamici.