Curiosities of Human Nature Part 2

Hugo Grotius, celebrated for his early display of genius and learning, as well as for his adventures and writings in after life, was born at Delft, in Holland, April 10, 1583. He had the best masters to direct his education, and from childhood, was not only distinguished by the great brilliancy of his mind, but also by his application to study. Such was his progress, that, at eight years of age, he composed Latin elegiac verses of great cleverness, and at fourteen, he maintained public theses in mathematics, law, and philosophy with general applause. His reputation by this time was established, and he was mentioned by the princ.i.p.al scholars of the age, as a prodigy of learning, and as destined to make a conspicuous figure in the republic of letters.

In 1598, he accompanied Barnevelt, amba.s.sador extraordinary of the Dutch Republic, in a journey to France, where he was introduced to Henry IV., who was so pleased with his learning, that he presented him with his picture and a gold chain. While in France, he took the degree of doctor of laws. The following year he commenced practice as an advocate, and pleaded his first cause at Delft. In the same year, though then only seventeen, he was chosen historiographer to the United Provinces, in preference to several learned men who were candidates for that office.

Grotius now rapidly rose in rank and reputation: he published several works of great merit, and was appointed to various public offices of high trust. On one occasion he was sent by the government to England to attend to some negotiations, at which time he became acquainted with King James II. But serious religious difficulties now began to agitate Holland. In 1618, a synod met at Dort to take these into consideration.

They proceeded to condemn the Arminian doctrines, and to banish all the preachers who upheld them. Barnevelt, who was a celebrated statesman, Grotius, and Hoogurbetz, advocated these sentiments; they were tried and condemned; the first was executed and the two others were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.

In his prison of Louvestien, Grotius found consolation in literary pursuits. His wife, after much entreaty, was permitted to visit him, and she did everything which the most devoted affection could suggest, to alleviate his confinement. She was accustomed to send him books in the chest which was conveyed out and in, with his linen: this was carefully examined by the jailer, for a time, but finding nothing amiss, he became less suspicious and careful.

Taking notice of this, the wife of Grotius, after he had been confined about two years, devised a scheme for his escape. She pretended to have a large quant.i.ty of books to send away. Having a small chest of drawers, about three feet and a half long, she packed her husband into it, and it was carried out by two soldiers, who supposed they were transporting a quant.i.ty of books. The chest was now put on a horse, and carried to Gorc.u.m, where the ill.u.s.trious prisoner was set at liberty.

Disguised in the dress of a mason, with a rule and a trowel in his hand, he fled to Antwerp, which was not under the government of the Stadtholder, Prince Maurice, who had caused his imprisonment. Here he wrote to the State's General of Holland, a.s.serting his innocence of any wrong, in the course he had taken, and for which he had been deprived of liberty. He afterwards went to Paris, where he received a pension from the king.

After the death of Prince Maurice, his confiscated property and estates were restored, and he returned to Holland; but he still found such a spirit of rancor against him, among the princ.i.p.al persons, that he left the country forever, and took up his residence at Hamburgh. Here he received the most flattering proposals from the kings of Portugal, Spain, Denmark, and other countries, who admired his great abilities, and desired him to seek shelter and protection with them.

He finally adopted Sweden as his country, and becoming the queen's amba.s.sador to France, he proceeded, in that character, to Paris, where, for eight years, he sustained the interests of his patron with firmness and dignity. At last, being weary of public life, he solicited his recall. In August, 1648, he embarked for Lubec, where he intended to reside; but, meeting with a dreadful storm, he was driven upon the coast of Pomerania, and obliged to take a land journey of sixty miles, in order to reach Rostock, during which he was exposed to the rain and inclement weather. A fever soon set in, and at midnight, on the 28th of August, the ill.u.s.trious stranger died.

Grotius has left behind him many works, some of them of great value. His treatise upon the "Truth of the Christian Religion," written in Latin, like his other productions, is one of the best defences of that system which has ever appeared. His work on the law of Peace and War, is still of high authority. We must look upon Grotius as a man of great acuteness, as well as vast expanse of mind. He was, indeed, in advance of his generation, and, like other patriots and philanthropists, who see farther than those around them, he was an object of hatred and disgust, for those very things which in an after age brought him the homage and grat.i.tude of mankind. In an intolerant age, Grotius was in favor of toleration, and this alone was a crime which his generation could not forget or forgive.

NEWTON.

Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of natural philosophers, was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, December 25, 1642, old style. At his birth he was so small and weak that his life was despaired of. On the death of his father, which took place while he was yet an infant, the manor of Woolsthorpe became his heritage. His mother sent him, at an early age, to the village school, and in his twelfth year, to the seminary of Grantham.

While here he displayed a decided taste for mechanical and philosophical inventions; and avoiding the society of other children, provided himself with a collection of saws, hammers, and other instruments, with which he constructed models of many kinds of machinery. He also made hour-gla.s.ses, acting by the descent of water. A new windmill, of a peculiar construction, having been erected in the town, he studied it until he succeeded in imitating it, and placed a mouse inside, which he called the miller.

Some knowledge of drawing being necessary in these operations, he applied himself, without a master, to the study; and the walls of his room were covered with all sorts of designs. After a short period, however, his mother took him home, for the purpose of employing him on the farm and about the affairs of the house. She sent him several times to market, at Grantham, with the produce of the farm. A trusty servant was sent with him, and the young philosopher left him to manage the business, while he himself employed his time in reading. A sundial, which he constructed on the wall of the house at Woolsthorpe, is still shown. His irresistible pa.s.sion for study and science finally induced his mother to send him back to Grantham. Here he continued for a time, and was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1660.

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At the latter place he studied mathematics with the utmost a.s.siduity. In 1667, he obtained a fellows.h.i.+p; in 1669, the mathematical professors.h.i.+p; and in 1671, he became a member of the Royal Society. It was during his abode at Cambridge that he made his three great discoveries, of fluxions, the nature of light and colors, and the laws of gravitation.

To the latter of these his attention was first turned by his seeing an apple fall from a tree. The Principia, which unfolded to the world the theory of the universe, was not published till 1687. In that year also Newton was chosen one of the delegates to defend the privileges of the university against James II.; and in 1688 and 1701 he was elected one of the members of the university. He was appointed warden of the mint in 1696; he was made master of it in 1699; was chosen president of the Royal Society in 1703; and was knighted in 1705. He died March 20, 1727.

His "Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse"

appeared in 1733, in quarto. "It is astonis.h.i.+ng," says Dr. Hutton, "what care and industry Newton employed about the papers relating to chronology, church history, &c.; as, on examining them, it appears that many are copies over and over again, often with little or no variation."

All the works of this eminent philosopher were published by Dr. Samuel Horsley, in 1779, in five volumes, quarto; and an English translation of his "Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematicae," is extant.

The character of this great man has been thus drawn by Mr. Hume, in his history of England. "In Newton, Britain may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever rose for the ornament and instruction of the human species. Cautious in admitting no principles but such as were founded on experiment, but resolute to adopt every such principle, however new or unusual; from modesty, ignorant of his superiority over the rest of mankind, and thence less careful to accommodate such reasonings to common apprehensions; more anxious to merit than acquire fame:--he was from these causes long unknown to the world; but his reputation at last broke out with a l.u.s.tre, which scarcely any writer, during his own lifetime, had ever before attained.

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time some of the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity in which they ever did and ever will remain."

The remains of Sir Isaac Newton were interred in Westminster Abbey, where a magnificent monument is erected to his memory, with a Latin inscription, concluding thus:--"Let mortals congratulate themselves that so great an ornament of human nature has existed." His character is shown, by Dr. Brewster, to have been that of the humble and sincere Christian. Of nature, antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures, he was a diligent, sagacious, and faithful interpreter. He maintained by his philosophy the dignity of the Supreme Being, and in his manners he exhibited the simplicity of the Gospel. "I seem to myself," he said, "to be like a child, picking up a sh.e.l.l here and there on the sh.o.r.e of the great ocean of truth." He would hardly admit that he had a genius above other men, but attributed his discoveries to the intentness with which he applied to the study of philosophy. We cannot better close our notice of this great man, than in the words of Pope:

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night-- G.o.d said, 'let Newton be'--and all was light!"

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MAGLIABECCHI.

Antony Magliabecchi was born at Florence, on the 29th of October, in the year 1633. His parents were so poor as to be well satisfied when they got him into the service of a man who sold greens. He had not yet learned to read, but he was perpetually poring over the leaves of old books, that were used as waste paper in his master's shop. A bookseller who lived in the neighborhood, observed this, and knowing that the boy could not read, asked him one day what he meant by staring so much at pieces of printed paper? He said, that he did not know how it was, but that he loved it of all things; that he was very uneasy in the business he was in, and should be the happiest creature in the world if he could live with him, who had always so many books about him.

The bookseller was pleased with this answer; and at last told him, that if his master were willing to part with him, he would take him. Young Magliabecchi was highly delighted, and the more so, when his master, agreeably to the bookseller's desire, gave him leave to go. He went, therefore, directly to his new business. He had not long been there, before he could find out any book that was asked for, as readily as the bookseller himself. In a short period he had learned to read, and then he was always reading when he could find time.

He seems never to have applied himself to any particular study. A love of reading was his ruling pa.s.sion, and a prodigious memory his great talent. He read all kinds of books, almost indifferently, as they came into his hands, and that with a surprising quickness; yet he retained not only the sense, but often the words and the very manner of spelling.

His extraordinary application and talents soon recommended him to Ermina, librarian to the Cardinal de Medicis, and Marmi, the Grand Duke's librarian. He was by them introduced to the conversation of the learned, and made known at court. He now began to be looked upon everywhere as a prodigy, particularly for his unbounded memory.

In order to make an experiment in respect to this, a gentleman of Florence, who had written a piece, which was to be printed, lent the ma.n.u.script to Magliabecchi. Sometime after it had been returned, he came to the librarian with a melancholy face, and told him that by some accident he had lost his ma.n.u.script; and seemed almost inconsolable, entreating Magliabecchi, at the same time, to endeavor to recollect as much of it as he possibly could, and write it down. Magliabecchi a.s.sured him he would do so, and on setting about it, wrote down the whole, without missing a word.

By treasuring up everything he read, in this wonderful manner, or at least the subject, and all the princ.i.p.al parts of the books he ran over, his head became at last, as one of his acquaintance expressed it, "an universal index, both of t.i.tles and matter."

By this time, Magliabecchi was grown so famous for the vast extent of his reading, and his amazing retention of what he had read, that it began to grow common amongst the learned to consult him when they were writing on any subject. Thus, for instance, if a priest was going to compose a panegyric upon any favorite saint, and came to communicate his design to Magliabecchi, he would immediately tell him who had said anything of that saint, and in what part of their works, and that, sometimes, to the number of above a hundred authors. He would tell them not only who had treated of their subject designedly, but of such, also, as had touched upon it incidentally, in writing on other subjects. All this he did with the greatest exactness, naming the author, the book, the words, and often the very number of the page in which the pa.s.sage referred to was inserted. He did this so often, so readily, and so exactly, that he came at last to be looked upon almost as an oracle, for the ready and full answers that he gave to all questions proposed to him in respect to any subject or science whatever.

It was his great eminence in this way, and his almost inconceivable knowledge of books, that induced the Grand Duke, Cosmo the third, to make him his librarian. What a happiness must it have been to one like Magliabecchi, who delighted in nothing so much as reading, to have the command and use of such a collection of books as that in the Duke's palace! He was also very conversant with the books in the Lorenzo library; and had the keeping of those of Leopoldo, and Francisco Maria, the two cardinals of Tuscany.

Magliabecchi had a local memory, too, of the places where every book stood, in the libraries which he frequented; he seems, indeed, to have carried this even farther. One day the Grand Duke sent for him to ask whether he could get him a book that was particularly scarce. "No, sir,"

answered Magliabecchi, "for there is but one in the world, and that is in the Grand Signior's library at Constantinople; it is the seventh book on the second shelf, on the right hand, as you go in."

Though Magliabecchi lived so sedentary a life, with such an intense and almost perpetual application to books, yet he arrived to a good old age.

He died in his eighty-first year, on the 14th of July, 1714. By his will he left a very fine library, of his own collection, for the use of the public, with a fund to maintain it; and whatever should remain over, to the poor.

In his manner of living, Magliabecchi affected the character of Diogenes; three hard eggs, and a draught or two of water, were his usual repast. When his friends went to see him, they generally found him lolling in a sort of fixed wooden cradle, in the middle of his study, with a mult.i.tude of books, some thrown in heaps, and others scattered about the floor, around him. His cradle, or bed, was generally attached to the nearest pile of books by a number of cobwebs: at the entrance of any one, he used to call out, "Don't hurt my spiders!"

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JAMES CRICHTON.

James Crichton, commonly called 'The Admirable,' son of Robert Crichton, of Eliock, who was Lord Advocate to King James VI., was born in Scotland, in the year 1561. The precise place of his birth is not mentioned, but he received the best part of his education at St.

Andrews, at that time the most celebrated seminary in Scotland, where the ill.u.s.trious Buchanan was one of his masters. At the early age of fourteen, he took his degree of Master of Arts, and was considered a prodigy, not only in abilities, but in actual attainments.

It was the custom of the time for Scotchmen of birth to finish their education abroad, and serve in some foreign army, previously to entering that of their own country. When he was only sixteen or seventeen years old, Crichton's father sent him to the Continent. He had scarcely arrived in Paris, which was then a gay and splendid city, famous for jousting, fencing, and dancing, when he publicly challenged all scholars and philosophers to a disputation at the College of Navarre. He proposed that it should be carried on in any one of twelve specified languages, and have relation to any science or art, whether practical or theoretical. The challenge was accepted; and, as if to show in how little need he stood of preparation, or how lightly he held his adversaries, he spent the six weeks that elapsed between the challenge and the contest, in a continual round of tilting, hunting, and dancing.

On the appointed day, however, and in the contest, he is said to have encountered all the gravest philosophers and divines, and to have acquitted himself to the astonishment of all who heard him. He received the public praises of the president and four of the most eminent professors. The very next day he appeared at a tilting match in the Louvre, and carried off the ring from all his accomplished and experienced compet.i.tors.

Enthusiasm was now at its height, particularly among the ladies of the court, and from the versatility of his talents, his youth, the gracefulness of his manners, and the beauty of his person, he was named _L'Admirable_. After serving two years in the army of Henry III., who was engaged in a civil war with his Huguenot subjects, Crichton repaired to Italy, and repeated at Rome, in the presence of the Pope and cardinals, the literary challenge and triumph that had gained him so much honor at Paris.

From Rome he went to Venice, at which gay city he arrived in a depressed state of spirits. None of his Scottish biographers are very willing to acknowledge the fact, but it appears quite certain, that, spite of his n.o.ble birth and connexions, he was miserably poor, and became for some time dependent on the bounty of a Venetian printer--the celebrated Aldus Manutius. After a residence of four months at Venice, where his learning, engaging manners, and various accomplishments, excited universal wonder, as is made evident by several Italian writers who were living at the time, and whose lives were published, Crichton went to the neighboring city of Padua, in the learned university of which he reaped fresh honors by Latin poetry, scholastic disputation, an exposition of the errors of Aristotle and his commentators, and as a playful wind-up of the day's labors, a declamation upon the happiness of ignorance.