Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/98

 Whewell was noted for his power as a University preacher. He was a man of splendid physical development. A Cambridge legend tells of a prize-fighter who had exclaimed "What a man was lost when they made you a parson!" No doubt his friends imagined him hale and hearty at a very advanced age; but it was not to be. He was fond of horseback exercise and it was this recreation which cut short his career. His horse bolted and threw him, and the injuries were such that he died in a few days. His death occurred on March 6, 1866, in the 72d year of his age. He was twice married, but, having no children, bequeathed the most of his fortune to Trinity College.

He was very fond of argument and in early life, at least, somewhat rough in manner. De Morgan wrote: "The Master of Trinity was conspicuous as a rough customer, an intellectual bully, an overbearing disputant. The character was as well established as that of Sam Johnson, but there was a marked difference. It was said of Johnson that if his pistol missed fire he would knock you down with the butt end of it; but Whewell, in like case, always acknowledged the miss, and loaded again or not as the case might be I knew him from the time when he was my teacher at Cambridge, more than forty years ago. As a teacher he was anything but dictatorial, and he was perfectly accessible to the proposal of objections. He came into contact with me in his slashing way twice in our joint lives, and on both occasions he acknowledged himself overcome by that change of manner and apologetic mode of continuance which I had seen him employ toward others under like conditions." The great variety of his studies struck some of his contemporaries as peculiar; for instance Sydney Smith said at a breakfast party with reference to Whewell: "That man's forte is science and foible omniscience." There was, however, as we have seen, a method in his madness. In his day he was a Grand Master; in more recent times some have asked what contributions did he make to science. His enduring monument is the Renovation of the Baconian philosophy.

Whewell, like Bacon, set forth a series of aphorisms giving