Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which, however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine of ‘philogiston’ after it had been abandoned by nearly every other chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud. ‘Though all the world is at present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and yet, if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it.’ These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.
He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he should accompany Captain Cook’s expedition to the South Seas, and the arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in his stead. He was a person ‘far better qualified,’ said Priestley. Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But Priestley believed that he ‘could not have acquitted himself in it to proper advantage.’ ‘Though I have made discoveries in some branches of chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it, and know but little of the common processes.’
Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title might well be ‘The Story of a Man of Character.’ Not the least of its virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley’s unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon his life: ‘I am thankful to that good Providence which always took more care of me than ever I took of myself.’
CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
Hero-worship is appropriate only to youth. With age one becomes cynical, or indifferent, or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the marvelous is dulled, or one’s boys are just entering college and life is agreeably practical. Marriage and family cares are good if only for the reason that they keep a man from getting bored. But they also stifle his yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels him to be respectable and to carry a level head? The father of a family and husband of a federated club woman has no business with hero-worship. Let him leave such folly to beardless youth.
But if a man has never outgrown the boy that was in him, or has never married, then may he do this thing. He will be happy himself, and others will be happy as they consider him. Indeed, there is something altogether charming about the personality of him who proves faithful to his early loves in literature and art; who continues a graceful hero-worship through all the caprices of literary fortune; and who, even though his idol may have been dethroned, sets up a private shrine at which he pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd which hurries by on its way to do homage to strange gods.
Some men are born to be hero-worshipers. Théophile Gautier is an example. If one did not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature, one would certainly love him because he dared to be sentimental. He displayed an almost comic excess of emotion at his first meeting with Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as he tells the story; but he tells it exactly, not being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon Hugo with his friends Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel. Twice he mounted the staircase leading to the poet’s door. His feet dragged as if they had been shod with lead instead of leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat moistened his brow. As he was on the point of ringing the bell, an idiotic terror seized him, and he fled down the stairs, four steps at a time, Gérard and Pétrus after him, shouting with laughter. But the third attempt was successful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo—and lived. The author of Odes et Ballades was just twenty-eight years old. Youth worshiped youth in those great days.
Gautier said little during that visit, but he stared at the poet with all his might. He explained afterwards that one may look at gods, kings, pretty women, and great poets rather more scrutinizingly than at other persons, and this too without annoying them. ‘We gazed at Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did not appear to be inconvenienced.’
What brings Gautier especially to mind is the appearance within a few weeks of an amusing little volume entitled Le Romantisme et l’éditeur Renduel. Its chief value consists, no doubt, in what the author, M. Adolphe Jullien, has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher must have been a man of unusual gifts and unusual fortune. He was a fortunate man because he had the luck to publish some of the best works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and he was a gifted man because he was able successfully to manage his troop of geniuses, neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing them to quarrel overmuch with one another. Renduel’s portrait faces the title-page of the volume, and there are two portraits of him besides. There are fac-similes of agreements between the great publisher and his geniuses. There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo with a brow truly monumental. There is a caricature of Alfred de Musset with a figure like a Regency dandy,—a figure which could have been acquired only by much patience and unremitted tight-lacing; also one of Balzac, which shows that that great novelist’s waist-line had long since disappeared, and that he had long since ceased to care. What was a figure to him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!