"Dear Sir,—I am anxious to thank you for the advantage I have derived from attending your most interesting lectures. Their subject, I know very well, is of great importance, and I hope to follow the advice you gave us of pursuing it beyond the lecture-room; and I can assure you that I shall always cherish with great pleasure the recollection of having been assisted in my early studies in chemistry by so distinguished a man.
"Believe me, dear Sir, yours truly,
"Albert Edward."
Prince Alfred's letter was as follows:—
"Dear Sir,—I write to thank you very much for the pleasure you have given me by your lectures, and I cannot help hoping they will not be the last I shall hear from you. Their subject was very interesting, and your clear explanations made it doubly so.
"Believe me, dear Sir, yours truly,
"Alfred."
It is interesting to learn Faraday's own views with regard to popular lectures, for never yet was there a truly scientific lecturer who was more truly popular; perhaps, indeed, there is no other single man who, without in any degree lowering his work for the purpose, succeeded so well in popularising scientific knowledge. These are his own words on the subject: "As to popular lectures (which at the same time are to be respectable and sound) none are more difficult to find. Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach." His own success as a lecturer was owing largely to the power he had of adapting himself to all minds, from the deepest thinkers to the liveliest youth; this power gave him a "wide range of influence, and his sympathy with the young among his listeners imparted more life and colour to his discourses than they might otherwise have possessed. He had the art of making philosophy charming, and this was due in no little measure to the fact that to grey-headed wisdom, he united wonderful juvenility of spirit."
"He was," to quote once more from Lady Pollock's recollections of the illustrious lecturer, "completely master of the situation; he had his audience at his command, as he had himself and all his belongings; he had nothing to fret him, and he could give his eloquence full sway. It was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and insisted upon sympathy. It waked the young from their visions and the old from their dreams. There was a gleaming in his eye which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe.... His enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of ecstasy when he expatiated on the beauty of nature, and when he lifted the veil from her deep mysteries. His body then took motion from his mind; his hair streamed out from his head, his hands were full of nervous action, his light, lithe body seemed to quiver with its eager life. His audience took fire with him, and every face was flushed.... A pleasant vein of humour accompanied his ardent imagination, and occasionally, not too often, relieved the tension of thought imposed upon his pupils. He would play with his subject now and then, but very delicately; his sport was only just enough to enliven the effort of attention. He never suffered an experiment to allure him away from his theme. Every touch of his hand was a true illustration of his argument." As he once remarked in giving advice to a young lecturer: "If I said to my audience, 'This stone will fall to the ground if I open my hand,' I should open my hand and let it fall. Take nothing for granted as known; inform the eye at the same time as you address the ear."
It is of interest here—after seeing how Faraday as a lecturer impressed others—to note some of the remarks which he made on the subject of lectures, lecturers, and lecturing in his early correspondence with his friend, Benjamin Abbott. Several long letters on this matter passed between the friends, and Faraday (he was twenty-one at the time) not only speaks in a discriminating manner with regard to lectures, but he also treats with his native good sense of lecture rooms, apparatus, etc. All his remarks, he says in his earliest letter to Abbott on the subject, are the result of his own personal observation. The most necessary quality for a lecturer, says the youthful Faraday, is a good delivery; he then dwells upon the necessity of illustrating a lecture with experiments wherever possible. (How well he carried this rule into practice has been seen in an earlier part of this chapter, where we learned of some of his Juvenile Lectures being illustrated by upwards of eighty experiments.) "A lecturer," he goes on to say, "should appear easy and collected, undaunted and unconcerned,[10] his thoughts about him, and his mind clear and free for the contemplation and description of his subject." He then says, and we instantly think of the "time" card he had placed before him later, "I disapprove of long lectures; one hour is long enough for anyone, nor should they be allowed to exceed that time."
The last of this series of letters on lectures commences in a style of genial banter, which, as it illustrates the lighter side of Faraday's character, merits quotation. "Dear Abbott," he writes, "As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains, and orders things not understood, yet full of his importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around—so sits and scribbles Mike; so he declaims to walls, stones, tables, chairs, hats, books, pens, shoes, and all the things inert that be around him, and so he will to the end of the chapter."
This playful mood comes out, also, in one or two anecdotes which are told of him, when his fame was established. For instance, an old lady friend being much troubled by some rancid butter, thought that she had hit upon a method of improving it, which she did by mixing with it a quantity of soda, she having a somewhat high opinion of the purifying virtues of that alkali, although, it is to be presumed, she little suspected the uses to which it was applied in the manufactures. By this addition of soda, she triumphantly claimed that her butter "was greatly improved." One evening, when Professor Faraday called upon her, the old lady produced a sample of her "improved" butter. A merry laugh rang out from the philosopher's lips as he exclaimed, "Well done, Mrs. W., you have improved your bad butter into very indifferent soap!"
Good-humoured and good-natured as Faraday habitually was, he did not like to be worried unnecessarily over unimportant matters; and willing as he was to place even his invaluable time at the disposal of almost anyone who claimed his attention, he had no patience with persons who came to him thoughtlessly, as the following story shows: A young man called on him one morning, and with an air of great importance confided to him the result of some original researches in electrical philosophy. "And pray," asked the professor, taking down a volume of Ree's Cyclopœdia, "did you consult this, or any elementary work, to learn whether your discovery had been anticipated?" The young man replied in the negative. "Then why do you come to waste my time about well-known facts that were published forty years ago?" "Sir," said the visitor in self-excuse, and hoping to flatter the philosopher, "I thought I had better bring the matter to headquarters immediately." "All very well for you, but not so well for headquarters," replied the professor sharply, and he forthwith set his visitor to read the article in the Cyclopœdia.