Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/273

 logue in the fortieth volume of the society's ‘Memoirs’ was posthumously published, with a few indispensable additions, under the editorship of Mr. Main and Professor Pritchard.

‘Every day of Herschel's long and happy life,’ it was remarked by Professor Tait, ‘added its share to his scientific services.’ His recommendation in 1854 of photography for the registration of sun-spots (Monthly Notices, xv. 158) bore fruit in his lifetime. He published in 1864 a weighty contribution to solar physics (Quarterly Journal of Science, i. 233), urged in the ‘willow-leaf’ debate the ‘filamentous’ structure of the solar floccules (Monthly Notices, xxv. 152), observed and assigned a ‘radiant’ to the meteoric shower of 13 Nov. 1866 (ib. xxvii. 19), and pointed out with conclusive force the improbability of certain alleged changes in the Argo nebula (ib. xxviii. 225). He amused himself with translating poetry. His translation of Schiller's ‘Walk’ was printed for private circulation in 1842, and included in 1847 among Whewell's ‘English Hexameter Translations.’ He also translated Bürger's ‘Lenore,’ and in 1866 the ‘Iliad’ in ‘English accentuated hexameters.’ The first book was published with a defence of the adopted metre in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for May 1862. A version by Herschel in terza rima of the first canto of Dante's ‘Inferno’ appeared in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for July 1868.

Herschel died at Collingwood on 11 May 1871, and was buried on 19 May in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. His cordial encouragement of rising men sustained his popularity to the last. Mr. Nasmyth puts him ‘supremely at the head’ of all the scientific men of his acquaintance for knowledge, simplicity, and humility. Biot, when asked by Professor Pritchard, after the death of Laplace, whom he thought his worthiest successor, replied, ‘If I did not love him so much, I should unhesitatingly say, John Herschel.’ His private life was one unbroken tenour of domestic affection and unostentatious piety, but he shrank from active participation in worldly affairs. Love of truth was in him absolutely untainted by the egotism of the discoverer, his quiet candour being nowhere more apparent than in his correspondence with R. A. Proctor on the subject of sidereal construction in 1869–71 (, Other Suns, 1887, p. 393).

Herschel, without the soaring genius of his father, had a wider range and a more catholic mind. He was led to astronomy by filial piety, in opposition to a spontaneous preference for chemistry and optics. ‘Light,’ he used to say, ‘was his first love.’ Yet his position as a celestial explorer is unique. He was an unsurpassed observer, and his breadth of knowledge and power of vividly describing what he saw added incalculably to the value of his observations. His books hence take high rank among the elevating influences of this century. He never lost his taste for simple amusements; was in his element with children, loved gardening, and took interest in all technical arts. His unpublished correspondence on scientific subjects is of historical interest; his letters to intimate friends are full of genial and tender sentiments. His wife died on 3 Aug. 1884. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Sir William James Herschel; his second son, Professor Alexander Stewart Herschel, is well known as an astronomer and physicist; Colonel John Herschel, his third son, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1871, in recognition of his spectroscopic examination of southern nebulæ. Eight of Herschel's nine daughters are still (1891) living.

Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote in 1817–18 the articles ‘Isoperimetrical Problems’ and ‘Mathematics’ for Brewster's ‘Edinburgh Cyclopædia;’ and for the eighth edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ those on ‘Meteorology,’ ‘Physical Geography,’ and the ‘Telescope’—all three published apart as well. The first issue of the admiralty ‘Manual of Scientific Inquiry’ (London, 1849) was edited and the section on meteorology (separately printed from the third edition in 1859) written by him. He contributed several articles to the ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘Quarterly’ reviews, including critiques of Mrs. Somerville's ‘Mechanism of the Heavens,’ Whewell's ‘History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,’ Humboldt's ‘Kosmos,’ and Quetelet's ‘Theory of Probabilities’ (the last prefixed in 1862 to the second edition of Quetelet's ‘Physique Sociale’). These with his addresses in presenting the medals of the Royal Astronomical Society, his ‘Memoir of Francis Baily,’ and some poetical pieces were collected in 1857 into a volume of ‘Essays,’ followed after ten years by ‘Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects.’ Three discourses ‘On Earthquakes and Volcanoes,’ ‘On the Sun,’ and ‘On Comets,’ delivered in the parish school-house of Hawkhurst, and printed in ‘Good Words,’ originated this delightful book; the chief remaining contents were popular articles from the same periodical ‘On the Weather and Weather Prophets,’ ‘On Celestial Weighings and Measurings,’ and ‘On Light.’

Herschel's discovery of a correspondence between the crystallographical and optical peculiarities of quartz (Trans. Cambridge Phil. Society, i. 43) was designated by Sir