Chapter IX: Part 9

We have dwelt of necessity in these brief remarks almost exclusively on Mr Trotter’s public career. But there was another side to his character. He was a generous and warm-hearted friend, whose friendship was all the more sincere because it was so quiet and undemonstrative. Few had the rare privilege of his intimacy; but those few will never forget that kindly face, that bright smile of welcome, that charity which found excuses for everybody—that liberality which, while it eschewed publicity, was always ready to help the deserving, whether it was a cause or an individual.

_10 December, 1887._

RICHARD OKES.

The death of Dr Okes, though he had reached the mature age of ninety-one, has taken the University by surprise[117]. He had become an institution of the place. While everything around him changed, and old things became new, his venerable figure remained unaltered, like a monument of an older faith which has survived the attacks of successive iconoclasts, to tell the younger generation what manner of men the Dons of the past had been. He was fond of saying that the first public event he could distinctly remember was the battle of Trafalgar. He had been a Master at Eton when Goodall was Provost and Keate Head-master, and he had begun to rule over King’s College when the University of Cambridge differed as widely from what it is now as the Europe of Napoleon from its present condition. Still, his load of years sat so lightly upon him, his interest in what was going forward was still so keen, that there seemed to be no reason why he should not complete his century of life. The slight infirmities from which he suffered did not prevent him, until quite lately, from attending service in chapel, at least on Sundays; his hearing was but little affected; his sight was good; and he could still enjoy the society of his friends. Only a few days before his death he was reading Miss Burney’s _Evelina_ to his daughters. When it became known on Sunday last that he had really passed away, it was hard to believe that the sad news could possibly be true.

Richard Okes was born in Cambridge, 15 December, 1797. His father, Thomas Verney Okes, was a surgeon in extensive practice. Tradition is silent respecting the future Provost’s childhood and early education; but, as in those days boys began their lives at Eton at a very early age, it is probable that when he was little older than a child he was sent to fight his battles among the collegers, in what even devoted Etonians have called ‘a proverb and a reproach’—Long Chamber. In 1816, when he was rather more than eighteen, he obtained a scholarship at King’s College; but it appears from the University records that he did not formally matriculate until November in the following year. In those days, be it remembered, King’s College was a very different place from what it is now, both structurally and educationally. The magnificent site, on which Henry VI. intended to place an equally magnificent college, was occupied by no structures of importance except the Chapel, and the Fellows’ Building, part of a second grand design which, like the first, was never completed. The scholars, or at all events the greater part of them, were packed into Old Court—the small, irregular quadrangle west of the University Library, to which the founder intended originally to limit his college. It must have been a curious structure—picturesque and interesting from an archeological point of view, but unwholesome and uncomfortable as a place of residence. The very nicknames given to some of the chambers—“the Tolbooth,” “the Block-house,” and the like—are a sufficient proof of their discomfort. In one of these, on the ground floor, facing Clare Hall, young Okes resided; and until a few months ago, when the last remnant of this part of the old college was absorbed by the University Library, the present generation could form a fairly correct idea of the gloom and damp that their ancestors were obliged to put up with. But members of Kings College had to endure something far worse than physical discomfort. It had been the object of their founder to make his college independent of the University, and, as a consequence of these well-intentioned provisions, scholars of King’s were not allowed to compete for University honours, but obtained their degrees as a matter of course. The result is not difficult to conceive. In every society there will be some whose love of letters, or whose ardour for distinction, is so strong that nothing can check it; but, as a rule, the young Etonians who were obliged to spend three years in Cambridge threw learning to the winds, and enjoyed to their hearts’ content the liberty, not to say license, of their new surroundings. It was a bad state of things; and that Okes felt it to be so is proved by the eagerness with which he, a strong Conservative, set himself to get it abolished as soon as he had the power to do so. We do not claim for the late Provost any specially studious habits as a young man; he was too genial and too fond of society to have ever been a very hard reader; but his scholarship in after years would not have been as accurate as it certainly was had he wasted his time at Cambridge; and, as a proof that he aimed at distinction, it should be mentioned that he obtained Sir William Browne’s prize for Greek and Latin Epigrams in 1819 and 1820. To the very end of his life he was fond of writing Latin verse; and when the Fellows of his college congratulated him on his ninetieth birthday in Latin and English poems, he replied in half-a-dozen Latin lines which many a younger scholar could not have turned so neatly.

He proceeded to his degree in 1821, and was in due course elected Fellow of his college. Soon afterwards he returned to Eton as an Assistant-Master. Mr Gladstone was one of the first set of boys who, in Eton phrase, were ‘up to him’ in school. He filled his difficult position with a judicious blending of severity and kindliness that made him thoroughly respected by everybody, and at the same time beloved by those boys who saw enough of him to discover that his dignified and slightly pompous demeanour concealed a singularly warm and sympathetic heart. His house was well-conducted and deservedly popular; and though in those days masters did not see much of their pupils in private, he contrived to turn several of his boys into life-long friends. In 1838 he became Lower Master—an office which he held until he returned to Cambridge in 1850. While in that influential position he introduced at least one reform into the school; he got what was called ‘an intermediate examination’ established, by which the collegers were enabled to test their capacities before submitting to the final examination which was to determine their chances of obtaining a scholarship at King’s.

In November 1850, the Provostship of King’s College having been vacated by the death of the Rev. George Thackeray, Dr Okes was elected his successor. So anxious was he to abolish the anomalous position of King’s-men with regard to University degrees that, on his way from Eton to Cambridge to be inducted into his new dignity, he stayed a few hours in London to take counsel with the Bishop of Lincoln, as Visitor of the college, on the best way of effecting an alteration. The needful negotiations were pressed forward without loss of time, and on the 1st May, 1851, the college informed the University of their willingness to abolish the existing state of things. The University, as might have been expected, took time to consider the matter; and it was not until February 18, 1852, that the Senate accepted the proposed reform. Meanwhile Dr Okes had been elected Vice-Chancellor, and, in virtue of that office, had the pleasure of signing the report which concluded the negotiations. His year of office as Vice-Chancellor ended, he took but little part in University business. He served on the Council of the Senate from 1864 to 1868, and he was occasionally a member of Syndicates; but, with these exceptions, he devoted himself to the affairs of his college.

When he returned to the University the ancient constitution still subsisted, and it may be doubted whether he could ever have brought himself into cordial sympathy with the changes inaugurated by the statutes which came into operation in 1858. The abolition of the old _Caput_, and the virtual dethronement of the Heads of Colleges, must have seemed to him to be changes which savoured of sacrilege. Still, when a reform had been once carried he accepted it loyally, and never tried by underhand devices to thwart its provisions, or to diminish its force. He was too straight-forward to pretend that he liked change, but he was too honest to take away with one hand the assent that he gave with the other. In regard to his own college he was before all things an Etonian, and he clung to the ancient system by which King’s was recruited exclusively from Eton. But, when it was decided, in 1864, to throw the college open, under certain restrictions, to all comers, he offered no violent resistance to the scheme, though he did not like it; and it may be doubted whether he ever felt that the newcomers were really King’s-men. His sense of duty, as well as his natural kindliness, compelled him to accept them; but he looked upon them as aliens. This strong conservative bias, opposed to the liberal instincts of a society which his own reform had created, sometimes brought him into collision with his Fellows; but such differences were not of long duration. He was never morose. He never bore a grudge against any one. His sense of humour, and his natural gaiety of spirits, carried him through difficulties which his habitual tone of mind would hardly have enabled him to surmount. When his portrait was painted by Herkomer, the artist showed him as he lived, with a smile on his kind face. It was objected that so jocose a countenance was at variance with the dignity of his position. ‘What would the Provost of King’s be without his jokes?’ was the reply of a sarcastic contemporary. The remark had a deeper meaning than its author either imagined or intended.

_1 December, 1888._

HENRY RICHARDS LUARD[118].

Nearly half a century has elapsed since Dr Luard became a member of Trinity College. When he came up, the University was a very different place from what it is now; the Statutes of Elizabeth were still in force; and the only study which obtained official recognition was that of mathematics. It is true that a Classical Tripos existed, but anybody who wished to be examined in it was obliged to obtain an honour in Mathematics first. The first Commission was not appointed until 1850, the year in which he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts. Nor were the changes that resulted from their labours so sweeping as to alter, to any overt and material extent, the character of the University. The University of our own time, due to more recent legislation, did not come into being until he had reached middle life.

These prefatory sentences are necessary to explain his character, which has often been misunderstood. He passed his youth and many years of his manhood in the old University, and though he was compelled, intellectually, to admit the advantage of many of the changes which have taken place in recent years, I doubt if he ever cordially accepted them. He was a man of the older generation, who had lived down into the present, and though he made friends in it, and derived many substantial advantages from it, he was always casting lingering looks behind, and sighing for a past which he could not recall. He remembered the time when the resident Fellows of his college were few in number, when they all lived in college rooms, and met every day at the service in Chapel or the dinner in Hall, and commonly took their daily exercise, a walk or a ride, in each other’s company. As his older friends passed away, he found a difficulty in making new ones; he felt out of his element; he was distracted by the multiplicity of tastes and studies; and vehemently disapproved of the modifications in the collegiate life which the new statutes have brought about. Though he himself, by a strange irony of fate, was the first Fellow to take advantage of the power of marrying and still retaining the Fellowship, he bitterly regretted that such a clause had ever become law; and it is hardly too much to say that he predicted the ruin of the college from such an innovation. And yet he was by no means an unreasoning or unreasonable Conservative. In many matters he was a Reformer; I have even heard him called a Radical; but, when his beloved college was concerned, the force of early association was too strong, and he regarded fundamental change as sacrilege.

Luard was fourteenth wrangler in 1847, a place much lower than he had been led to expect. The cause of his failure is said to have been ill-health. His disappointment, however, was speedily consoled by a Fellowship, a distinction to which he is said to have aspired from his earliest years. A friend who sat next him when he was a student at King’s College, London, remembers his writing down, “Henry Richards Luard, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,” and asking, “How do you think that looks?” But, though he was really a first-rate mathematician, his heart was elsewhere. He delighted in classical studies, especially Greek, and to the end of his life continued to collect early editions, and more, to read Greek authors. Not long ago, in the interval between two pieces of hard work, I think between two volumes of his edition of Matthew Paris, I found him reading the _Supplices_ of Euripides. He complained that it was dull, but he went through with it. His acquaintance with Greek scholarship was very accurate and remarkable. He knew all about the emendations in which the scholars of the last century displayed their ingenuity; he spoke of Bentley, Porson, Gaisford, Elmsley, and the rest, as though they had been his personal friends, and he could quote from memory, even to the last, many of their most brilliant achievements. For Porson he had a special cult, and the Life of him which he contributed to the _Cambridge Essays_ (1857) is a model of what such a composition should be, as remarkable for good taste and temperate criticism, as for erudition. He resented any slights on Porson as almost a personal affront; and spoke with unmeasured denunciation of any edition of a Greek Play, or other classical work, in which Porson did not seem to be fully appreciated. He had a priceless collection of _Porsoniana_, books which had belonged to Porson, and had been annotated by him, with notices of his life and labours, all of which he bequeathed to the Library of Trinity College; and he edited Porson’s _Correspondence_, and the _Diary of Edward Rud_, which throws so much light on the history of the college during the stormy reign of Dr Bentley. It must be confessed that Luard’s affection for these giants of classical criticism rather blinded him to the merits of their successors in our own time. He had a particular dislike for English notes; and I had rather not try to remember what I have heard him say about English translations printed side by side with the original text.

Let it not be supposed, however, that Luard confined his attention in literature to the classics. He was an insatiable reader of books on all subjects, and if the book was a new one he was particular that his copy should be uncut. He liked to read sitting in his armchair, and to cut the leaves as he went along. What he began, he considered it a point of honour to finish. It was a joke against him that he had read every word of _The Cornhill Magazine_, which he had taken in from the beginning; and I have heard him admit, more than once, that this was really the case. I think it quite likely that he had submitted the volumes published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, to the same searching investigation; for he could give a curiously minute account of the merits and demerits of each work, supported, as usual with him, by numerous quotations, cited with much volubility of utterance, and, it may be added, with unerring accuracy. The pace at which he got through a ponderous volume—without skipping, be it remarked—was really astonishing, and when he had come to the end he could not only give a clear and connected account of what he had read, but it became part of himself, and he could quote long afterwards any passage that had specially struck him.

The variety of Luard’s interests at all periods of his life, was remarkable, especially when it is remembered that he was a genuine student, with a horror of superficiality, and a conscientious determination to do whatever he took in hand as well as it could be done. But he was no Dry-as-dust. He was keenly alive to all that was passing in the world, and unlike a contemporary Cambridge antiquary who was once heard to ask, “Is the _Times_ still published?” he not only read the paper through every day, but had his own very definite opinions on men and measures. There was nothing narrow about him; he was a patriotic Englishman, but he did not ignore the existence of the Continent, and his favourite relaxation was foreign travel. As a young man he had travelled extensively, not only in Europe, but in Egypt, where he had ascended the Nile as far as the second cataract: and, as he grew older, he still sought refreshment in going over parts of his old tours, especially in those by-ways of Central Italy which lie within the limits of what he affectionately called “dear old Umbria.” He spoke more than one foreign language fluently; and, being entirely destitute of British angularity, and British prejudices in politics and religion, he always got on exceedingly well with foreigners, especially with foreign ecclesiastics. I feel that I am saying only what is literally true when I affirm that few Englishmen have understood the creed and the practice of the Roman clergy in Italy so thoroughly as he did. In illustration of this view I would refer my readers to an article called _Preaching and other matters in Rome in 1879_ which he contributed to the _Church Quarterly Review_[119]. Further, he took an intelligent interest in antiquities of all sorts, and had an acquaintance with art that was something more than respectable. Here his excellent memory stood him in good stead, for he never forgot either a picture which he had once seen, or the place in which he had seen it.

In politics he called himself a Tory, and he certainly did vote on that side; but he was in no sense of the word a party-man. For instance, when his friend Mr George Denman came forward as a Liberal candidate for the representation of the University in 1855, Luard was an active member of his committee. His knowledge of Italy made him watch the course of events there in 1859 with an enthusiastic sympathy, which was divided almost equally between the Italians and their French allies. With a curious perversity, which was not uncommon in his appreciation of men and his judgment of events, he hated Garibaldi as much as he admired Victor Emmanuel and Cavour. But from the first he never doubted of the cause of freedom, and astonished his Conservative friends by offering a wager across the high table at Trinity as to the time it would take the combined French and Italian forces to occupy Milan. So far as I can remember, he was right almost to the very day.

From his boyhood Luard had been an ardent collector of books, and it was probably this taste that induced him to take a further excursion into the past, and begin the study of manuscripts. Professor Mayor tells me that the influence and example of Dr S. R. Maitland turned his attention to the Middle Ages in the widest sense—their history, their literature, and their life. This may well have been the case, for I know, from many conversations, that he had the profoundest respect and admiration for Dr Maitland’s character, and for the thoroughness of his studies and criticisms. I do not know how Luard acquired his very accurate knowledge of medieval handwriting; but I remember that in 1855 or 1856 he gave me some lessons of the greatest value. In the second of these years the first volume of the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the University Library was published, into the preparation of which he had thrown himself with characteristic enthusiasm. As time went on, the direction of the work was left more and more to him; he became the editor, and to him the excellent index, published in 1867, is mainly, if not entirely, due.

From the study of manuscripts to their transcription and publication the transition is easy, and we need therefore find no difficulty in accounting for his employment by the Master of the Rolls. He began his work on that series in 1858 by editing certain _Lives of Edward the Confessor_, written in old French. This work, on which he had bestowed infinite pains, was not free from errors. The study of the language in which it is written was not understood at that time as it is now, and it is no discredit to Luard’s memory to admit that he was not fully prepared for the task. But such mistakes as he made are no justification for the savage and personal attack to which he was subjected, eleven years afterwards, by a critic who ought to have known better. I do not feel that this is the place to criticise, or even to mention, the long list of historical works that Luard subsequently edited, the last of which appeared not long before his death. His labours in this field of research have been better appreciated in Germany than in England, but even here scholars like Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman have spoken with cordial appreciation of the value of his work. It is worth noting too that here his passion for old methods of editing deserted him; nothing can be more thoroughly modern than his treatment of these ancient records. Nor can I leave this part of my subject without noticing his indexes. He was the very prince of index-makers; every sheet, before it was finally passed for press, was fully indexed, with the result that not only were mistakes recognised and corrected, but the index itself, worked out on a definite system conceived from the beginning, was carried through to a satisfactory conclusion without haste or weariness, and became a real catalogue of the subjects referred to in the work itself.

Luard was Registrary of the University from 1862 to his death in 1891. To this work he brought the same painstaking accuracy, and the same unselfish readiness to endure hard work, that distinguished his other labours. The ordinary duties of his office were discharged with marvellous rapidity, and almost painful attention to detail; and the records were admirably re-arranged. Mr Romilly, his predecessor, had brought order out of confusion, and prepared an excellent catalogue on modern lines; but Luard went a step farther. He bound the contents of Mr Romilly’s bundles in a series of volumes, each of which he indexed with his own hand. These separate indexes were then transcribed, and finally bound together so as to form a complete catalogue of the contents of the Registry. Every paper can now be found with the least possible loss of time, while each bound volume contains a complete history of the subject to which it relates, so far as it can be illustrated by documents in the Registry.

Luard’s duties as Registrary, added to the continuous strain of his historical work, would have been enough for most people; but he never forgot that he was a clergyman, as well as a man of letters, and he took care always to have some active clerical work to do. He was an eloquent preacher, and his sermons in the College Chapel used to be listened to with an interest that we did not always feel in what was said to us from that pulpit. They were plain, practical, persuasive; the compositions of one who was not above his congregation; who had nothing donnish about him, but who spoke to the undergraduates as one who had passed through the same temptations as themselves, and who was, therefore, in a position to show them the right road. On the same principles, for the twenty-seven years during which he was Vicar of Great S. Mary’s, he laboured in the parish in a spirit of true sympathy. There was no fussiness about him; he did not take part in movements; he did not ‘work’ a parish as a modern clergyman does, on the principle of perpetual worry, leaving neither man, nor woman, nor child at peace for a moment; he led his people to better things by gentle measures; he sympathized with their troubles; he relieved their necessities; in a word, he exercised an unbounded influence over them, while refraining from interference in matters of moral indifference. His memory will long be venerated there for active benevolence, and punctual discharge of all that it became him to do. I have heard that the full extent of his charities will never be known. He hated display, and avoided reference to what he was about unless it was necessary to stimulate others by mentioning it; but those who know best tell me that his labours among the poor were unremitting, and that his generosity knew no limits.

Nor should it be forgotten, in even the most summary record of Luard’s life at Cambridge, that it was he who got Great S. Mary’s restored in the true sense of the word, by removing the excrescences which the taste, or, rather, want of taste, of the last century had piled up in it. He pulled down the carved work thereof—the hideous ‘Golgotha’—with axes and hammers, and exhibited to an astonished and by no means complacent University the noble church in the unadorned simplicity of its architecture. The restoration of the University Church to something like its ancient arrangement will be an enduring monument of his parochial life.

He was a High Churchman, but a High Churchman with a difference. He belonged to the school of Pusey and Liddon rather than to that of the modern Ritualist, whose doings were as alien to his convictions and feelings as those of the party whom he scornfully styled ‘those Protestants.’ I have heard him called narrow and intolerant. I beg leave to refer such detractors to the sermon preached by him on the Sunday after the death of Frederick Denison Maurice. And this brings me to what was, perhaps, the leading principle of his whole life—his absolute honesty and fearlessness. He held certain beliefs and certain opinions himself, which he cherished, and which were of vital importance to himself; but he did not shut his eyes to the possibility that others who held diametrically opposite views might be in the right also. And if he found a man sincere, no considerations of party, of respectability, of imaginary dangers concealed behind opinions held to be heretical, would prevent him from speaking out and proclaiming his admiration.

In manners Luard had much of the stately courtesy which we commonly ascribe to the last century, joined to a vivacious impulsiveness due, no doubt, to his French extraction. This impulsiveness led him into a rapidity of thought and utterance which often caused him to be misunderstood. He said what came first into his thoughts, and corrected it afterwards; but, unfortunately for him, people remembered the first words used, and forgot the explanation. Hence he was often misunderstood, and credited with opinions he did not really hold. He delighted in society, and few men knew better how to deal with it, or how to make his house an agreeable centre of Cambridge life. In this he was ably seconded by his admirable wife, _qui savait tenir un salon_, as the French say, more successfully than is usual in this country. Without her help he would hardly have been able to find the time required for his continual hospitalities. The house was different from any other house that I have ever known, and reflected, more directly, the peculiar gifts and tastes of its owner. The pictures, the china, the books that lined the walls, bespoke the cultivated scholar; but the modern volumes that lay on the tables showed that he was no dry archaeologist, but full of enthusiasm for all that was best in modern literature. He had a keen sense of humour, and an admirable memory; and when the conversation turned that way, would tell endless stories of Cambridge life, or repeat page after page of his favourite Thackeray. At the same time he did not engross the conversation, but drew his guests out, and led each insensibly to what was interesting to him or to her. It is sad to think that all this has passed away; that exactly one month after Luard’s death his friends stood again beside his grave to see his only child laid in it; that his house will pass into alien hands; and that his library will share the fate of similar collections. ‘_Eheu! quanto minus est cum aliis versari quam tui meminisse._’

RICHARD OWEN[120].

A scientific naturalist who lived in England in the second quarter of this present century may be accounted a fortunate man. On the one hand was the vast field of the universe, undivided, unallotted; on the other, a public eager for instruction. At the present day, when men go to and fro, and knowledge is increased, we find it hard to realize the isolation of England until after the close of the great war, or the fear of invasion that absorbed men’s thoughts until after Trafalgar. That fear removed, the modern development of the nation began. The number of those who resorted to the Universities increased by leaps and bounds. Public school life, as we understand it, was developed. As a natural consequence, the flower of the English youth were no longer content with the knowledge that had satisfied their fathers and grandfathers. The old paths were too narrow for them. The convulsions which had shaken the continent had not been without their effect even here; and when Europe was again open, account had to be taken of the work of continental thinkers. Their achievements must be mastered, continued, developed. It was allowed on all hands, except by that small class who can neither learn nor forget, that the time for a new departure in scientific education had arrived. It was the good fortune of Richard Owen to be ready just when he was wanted, to take occasion by the hand, and to become the leader in biological research.

How did he effect this? How did a young man, launched on the great world of London with no powerful connexions,

‘Break his birth’s invidious bar,
And grasp the skirts of happy chance,
And breast the blows of circumstance
And grapple with his evil star?’

To take a metaphor from our representative system, Owen was the member for biological science in the parliament of letters for nearly half a century. And yet he was not a great thinker; his name is not associated with any far-reaching generalization, or any theory fruitful of wide results. As a comparative anatomist, and as a paleontologist, he did plenty of good and solid work. But these pursuits are most commonly those of a recluse. The man who engages in them must be content, as a general rule, with the four walls of his laboratory, and the applause of a small circle of experts. Not so Professor Owen, as he was most commonly designated, even after he had received knighthood. He contrived to lead an essentially public life; to be seen everywhere; to have his last paper talked about in fashionable drawing-rooms quite as much as in learned societies. How did he effect this? We think that the answer to our question is to be found—first, in the general eagerness for scientific instruction which was one of the characteristics of the age in which he lived; and, secondly, in his own many-sidedness. He was by no means one of those authors ‘who are all author,’ against whom Byron launched some of his most brilliant sarcasms. He was a man of science; but he was also a polished gentleman of varied accomplishments.

It is to be regretted that such a man has not found a biographer more competent than his grandson and namesake; but the reader who reaches the end of the second volume will be rewarded by a masterly essay by Mr Huxley on Owen’s place in science. This is a remarkable composition; not merely for what it says, but for what it does not say; and we recommend those who would understand it thoroughly, not merely to read it more than once, but to cultivate the useful art of reading between the lines. Of a very different nature to _The Life of Owen_ is the article which Sir W. H. Flower has contributed to the _Dictionary of National Biography_. It is of necessity much compressed, but it contains all that is really essential for the proper comprehension of Owen’s scientific career, and praise and blame are meted out with calm impartiality. For ourselves, we have a sincere admiration for Owen, but an admiration which does not exclude a readiness to admit that he had defects. In what we are about to say we do not propose to draw a fancy portrait. If we nothing extenuate, we shall set down naught in malice. In a word, we shall try to present him as he was, not as he might have been.

* * * * *

Richard Owen was born at Lancaster, 20 July, 1804. His father was a West India merchant; his mother, Catherine Parrin, was descended from a French Huguenot family. She is said to have been a woman of refinement and intelligence, with great skill in music, a talent which she transmitted to her son. In appearance she was handsome and Spanish-looking, with dark eyes and hair. Owen delighted to dwell on his mother’s charm of manner, and all that he owed to her early training and example. We can well believe this, and the Life is full of touching references to her solicitude for her darling son. The interest she felt in all that he did even led her to read through his scientific papers and his catalogue of the Hunterian collection, with what profit to herself we are not informed. Her husband died in 1809; but the family seem to have been left in fairly affluent circumstances, and continued to live, as before, at Lancaster. Owen’s education began at the grammar-school there in 1810, when he was six years old, and ended in 1820, when he was apprenticed to a local surgeon. Of his schooldays but little record has been preserved. One of the masters described him as lazy and impudent; he is said to have had no fondness for study of any kind except heraldry; and his sister used to relate that as a boy he was ‘very small and slight, and exceedingly mischievous.’

Those who value the records of boyhood for the sake of traces of the tastes which made the man celebrated, will be rewarded by the perusal of the pages which record Owen’s four years as a surgeon’s apprentice at Lancaster. Not only will they find that he worked diligently at the curative side of his profession, but that, his master being surgeon to the gaol, he had the opportunity of attending post-mortem examinations, and so laid the foundation of his knowledge of the structure of the human frame. Here too we catch a glimpse of the future comparative anatomist; but the story of ‘The Negro’s Head,’ here given in the words used by Owen when he told it himself, is unfortunately too long for quotation, and is certainly far too good to be spoilt by abbreviation.

In October 1824 Owen matriculated at the University of Edinburgh. There, in addition to the courses that were obligatory, he attended the ‘outside’ lectures in comparative anatomy delivered by Dr John Barclay. From these he derived the greatest benefit, and used in after-years to speak of Barclay with affectionate regard, as ‘my revered preceptor.’ It is noteworthy that, while at Edinburgh, Owen and one of his friends founded a students’ society, which at his suggestion was called, by a sort of prophetic instinct, the Hunterian Society. Barclay must have decided very quickly that he had to do with no common pupil, for at the end of April 1825, when Owen had been barely six months in Edinburgh, he advised him to move to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and study under Dr. Abernethy, then near the close of his brilliant but eccentric career. Armed with a letter of introduction from Barclay, Owen set out for London, where he had ‘literally not one single friend.’ No wonder that he felt ‘an indescribable sense of desolation’ as he walked up Holborn, and that ‘the number of strange faces that kept passing by increased that feeling.’ What happened next is very characteristic of the strange mixture of roughness and kindness which was natural to his new patron.

‘Abernethy had just finished lecturing, and was evidently in anything but the best of tempers, being surrounded by a small crowd of students waiting about to ask him questions. Owen was just screwing up his courage to attack this formidable personage and state his business, when Abernethy suddenly turned upon him and said: “And what do you want?” After presenting the letter Abernethy glanced at it for a moment, stuffed it into his pocket, and vouchsafed the gracious reply of “Oh!” As this did not seem to point to anything very definite, Owen was turning to go, when Abernethy called after him: “Here; come to breakfast to-morrow morning at eight,” and presenting him with his card, added, “That’s my address.” What were the terms in which Dr Barclay had spoken of him Owen never knew, but he thought they must have been favourable, for when he presented himself next morning at Abernethy’s residence, and was anticipating anything but an agreeable _tête-à-tête_ with the great doctor, he found him, to his surprise, considerably smoothed down and quite pleasant in his manner. The result of the meeting was that Abernethy offered him the post of prosector for his lectures’ (i. 30).

A year later (August 18, 1826) Owen obtained the membership of the College of Surgeons, and set up as a medical practitioner in Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where he gradually obtained a small practice among lawyers.

We have no wish to underrate Owen’s brilliant talents, or his perseverance, or his power of sustained work with a definite end in view; but at the same time it would be absurd to deny that he had good-fortune to thank for a large part of his first successes. What else made Abernethy, at their first interview, give him just the appointment best calculated to bring his peculiar gifts into the light of day? What else made the same patron procure his appointment, two years later, as assistant-conservator of the Hunterian collections, out of which all his future celebrity was developed? He might have been ‘exceedingly well informed in all that relates to his profession, an excellent anatomist, and sober and sedate very far beyond any young man I ever knew,’ as one who was in a position to know said of him in 1830, and yet have ‘bloomed unseen,’ an obscure practitioner in ‘the dusky purlieus of the law,’ had not the fickle goddess selected him as the special recipient of her favours.

Owen’s active life in London divides itself naturally into two periods, each containing nearly thirty years. The first, during which he was connected with the Royal College of Surgeons, extended from 1827 to 1856; the second, during which he was nominally superintendent of the biological side of the British Museum, from 1856 to 1883.

Those who would rightly understand his work during the former period must of necessity take into account the history and extent of the vast collection which he was expected to catalogue and to develop, for it dominated and directed all his studies. It was formed by the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter, between 1763 and 1793, in which year he died. In studying it, one is at a loss what to admire most—the beauty of the specimens themselves, and the admirable clearness with which those preserved in spirit have been dissected and mounted; or the labour and self-denial which brought them together in the midst of the incessant occupations of a large practice; or the almost prophetic instinct which divined what posterity would require in the way of such aids to study. It was Hunter’s object to illustrate the phenomena of life in all organisms, whether in health or in disease. For this purpose he collected as widely as he could. There is an osteological series, and a physiological series (in spirit), which exhibits the different organs, digestive, circulatory, and the like, in order, and traces their development from the simplest to the most complicated form. To the Invertebrata he had devoted special attention. He had secured, through his friend Sir Joseph Banks, many of the treasures collected during Cook’s voyages; and he had purchased rarities as occasion offered. Of insects he had a large collection. Nor were his observations limited to the animal kingdom. Whenever any physiological process could be illustrated by vegetable life, vegetables were pressed into the service. Nor did he fail to recognize the truth—which some persons still refuse to accept—that the remains of extinct animals are only in their proper place when side by side with those still living on the earth. ‘His collection of fossils,’ says Owen in one of his prefaces, ‘was the largest and most select of any in this country.’

To contain this collection Hunter had built a special museum in Castle Street, Leicester Square, which was open to public inspection on certain days. After his death his executors, in accordance with his will, offered the collection to the Government. ‘Buy preparations?’ exclaimed Mr Pitt; ‘why, I have not money enough for gunpowder!’ Ultimately, however, the House of Commons agreed to give £15,000 for it, just one-fifth of the sum that Hunter is said to have spent upon it. Next arose the further question, who should take care of it. The Royal Society, it is said, did not consider it ‘an object of importance to the general study of natural history’; the British Museum was literary, not scientific; and finally, in 1799, the Corporation of Surgeons, as it was then called, accepted it, under the condition that a proper catalogue should be made, a conservator appointed, and twenty-four lectures in explanation of it delivered annually in the college. Soon afterwards the Corporation of Surgeons became the Royal College of Surgeons, and a building, to which Parliament contributed £27,500, was built for its reception. This was opened in 1813.

When Owen was appointed assistant-conservator of these collections thirty-four years had elapsed since Hunter’s death. During that time they had been preserved from damage by the devoted care of Mr William Clift, who, after being Hunter’s assistant for a short time, had been appointed conservator, first by the executors, and subsequently by the college. The general arrangement had been prescribed by Hunter, but no descriptive catalogue existed, as it had been, unfortunately, Hunter’s habit to trust to his memory for the history of his specimens. Further, though lists, more or less imperfect, drawn up either by Hunter himself or under his direction, had been preserved, the bulk of his papers had been destroyed by Sir Everard Home, his brother-in-law and executor. ‘There is but one thing more to be done—to destroy the collection,’ was Clift’s remark when he heard of this act of cynical wickedness. In the scarcity, therefore, of documentary evidence, other expedients had to be resorted to for the identification of the specimens which Hunter had dissected, or had preserved entire in spirit. As Owen remarks in the preface to the first volume of his descriptive catalogue (published in 1833), ‘It was necessary to consult the book of Nature.’ At first it was no easy matter to procure the animals required; but after the establishment of the Zoological Society this difficulty was in a great measure removed, and more than two hundred dissections were made by Owen in the course of the work incident to the preparation of the first volume of the catalogue.

This sketch of the Hunterian collections, which we would gladly have worked out in greater detail had our space allowed us to do so, will perhaps be sufficient to indicate to our readers the nature of the field of research on which Owen was about to enter. It was, in fact, an undiscovered country, of which he was to be the pioneer. One would like to know whether he had any idea of what the work he was about to undertake implied; and whether he had any misgivings as to his own fitness for it. He was only twenty-three years old, so perhaps, as youth is sanguine, he entered upon it with a light heart, thinking—if he paused to think—that he had strength of will sufficient to compensate for defect of years and knowledge. ‘On vieillit vite sur les champs de bataille.’ His previous training must have been in the main professional; he could have gained at most only a glimpse of comparative anatomy at the feet of Dr Barclay; the great writers on the subject, Buffon, Daubenton, Cuvier, and the rest, must have been mere names to him. Moreover, he was obliged, for lucre’s sake, to continue the profession of a surgeon, and, though he gradually dropped it, he must, for some time at least, have spent a good deal of time over it. Besides this, he probably assisted Clift in the brief catalogue of the Hunterian collections that appeared between 1833 and 1840. But, while thus engaged, he found time for study. For three years he attempted no original work; and when he did begin to write (his first paper is dated 9 November, 1830), it is evident that the previous years had been spent in wise preparation. There is no trace of the novice in the papers that followed each other in quick succession; they evince a complete mastery of the subject from the historical, as well as from the anatomical, side. The mere number of these communications, addressed principally to the Zoological Society, is almost past belief. Before the end of 1855 more than 250 had appeared, many of which were of considerable length, and enriched with elaborate drawings made by himself. But what is more surprising still is the versatility displayed in their composition. Nowadays a biologist is compelled to specialize. By ‘the custom of the country,’ to borrow a legal phrase, he selects his own subject, and is expected not to poach on that of his neighbours. But when Owen began to work, these laws existed not, or at any rate not for him. The very nature of his work obliged him to study in quick succession the most diverse structures; and, as death does not accommodate itself to human convenience, he could not tell from day to day what animals would be sent from the Zoological Gardens to his dissecting-room. An excellent bibliography of his works at the end of the second volume of the _Life_ enables us to trace his studies in detail. For our present purpose we will only point out that between 1831 and 1835 he had written papers (among many others) on the orang-outang, beaver, Thibet bear, gannet, armadillo, seal, kangaroo, tapir, cercopithecus, crocodile, toucan, hornbill, pelican, flamingo, besides various Invertebrates.

While Owen was preparing himself for his serious attack on the catalogue an event occurred which had an important influence on his scientific development. Cuvier came to England to collect materials for his work on fishes, and naturally visited the Hunterian collection. Owen has preserved a singularly modest account of his introduction to the great French naturalist:

‘In the year 1830 I made Cuvier’s personal acquaintance at the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and was specially deputed to show and explain to him such specimens as he wished to examine. There was no special merit in my being thus deputed, the fact being that I was the only person available who could speak French, and who had at the same time some knowledge of the specimens. Cuvier kindly invited me to visit the Jardin des Plantes in the following year’ (i. 49).

Accordingly, Owen spent the month of August 1831 in Paris. It has been frequently stated, says his biographer, that Cuvier and his collection ‘made a great impression on Owen, and gave a direction to his after-studies of fossil remains,’ a position which he contests on the ground that neither Owen’s diary nor his letters describing the visit warrant such a conclusion. We do not attach much importance to this argument, but we feel certain that the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, from its unfortunate subdivision into departments widely separated structurally from each other, could not have stimulated anybody in that particular direction. That Cuvier was, to a very large extent, Owen’s master in comparative anatomy is undeniable; he quotes him with respect, not to say with reverence, in almost every page of his writings, and the ‘Prix Cuvier’ adjudged to him in 1857 probably gave him more pleasure than all his other distinctions. Cuvier’s method, as set forth in _Les Ossemens Fossiles_, of illustrating and explaining extinct animals by comparison with recent was closely followed by his illustrious disciple. But this principle might easily have been learnt—and in our judgment was learnt—by a study of his works at home. On the other hand, Owen has stated, in unequivocal terms, the direction in which Cuvier did exert a special influence upon him. In his _Anatomy of Vertebrates_ (iii. 786), published in 1868, he says:

‘At the close of my studies at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831, I returned strongly moved to lines of research bearing upon the then prevailing phases of thought on some general biological questions.

‘The great Master in whose dissecting-rooms, as well as in the public galleries of comparative anatomy, I was privileged to work, held that “species were not permanent”; and taught this great and fruitful truth, not doubtfully or hypothetically, but as a fact established inductively on a wide and well-laid basis of observation.’

Further, Owen had the opportunity of listening to some of the debates between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire on the question of how new species may originate; and ‘on returning home,’ he adds, ‘I was guided in all my work with the hope or endeavour to gain inductive ground for conclusions on these great questions.’ Here, then, was the definite educational result which Owen gained from his visit. It had, moreover, another consequence. It made him known to the French naturalists, then in the front rank of science. His scientific acquirements, coupled with his agreeable manners and facility in speaking and writing French, made him a _persona grata_ in Paris. In 1839 he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute, and read more than one paper there in French.

We have already mentioned the long line of scientific papers which, from 1830 onwards, were the result of Owen’s indomitable energy. This series was now to be interrupted for a moment by the famous _Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus_, a quarto volume of sixty-eight pages, illustrated by eight plates, drawn by himself. The shell of the nautilus, as most persons know, has always been fairly common; but the animal which was given to the Museum of the College of Surgeons in 1831 was, we believe, the first, or nearly the first, which had ever reached this country, and Owen was most fortunate in having the chance of describing such a rarity. His essay, elaborate and exhaustive as it is, was dashed off in less than a year. It was received with a general chorus of praise. Dr Buckland spoke of it as ‘Mr Owen’s admirable work,’ and they were soon in correspondence on the way in which the nautilus sinks and rises in the water. Milne Edwards translated it into French, and Oken into German. Nor has the contemporary verdict been reversed by that of posterity. Mr Huxley says of the _Memoir_ that it

‘placed its author, at a bound, in the first rank of monographers. There is nothing better in the _Mémoires sur les Mollusques_, I would even venture to say nothing so good, were it not that Owen had Cuvier’s great work for a model; certainly, in the sixty years that have elapsed since the publication of this remarkable monograph it has not been excelled’ (ii. 306).