79+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hoarded wealth, which proved as barren after his death as it had been 

 during his life. 



Imprisoned in his own egotism, he did not know how to contribute 

 his quota generously to the long day's labor of humanity. He sought 

 to set his trade-mark on every thought. He would have desired a pat- 

 ent of protection for every experiment. His work was in consequence 

 visited with the curse of sterility. A slave to meum and tuum in 

 his own words, " the great rudder of human affairs " his peevish rec- 

 lamations were met with the inexorable Sic vos non vobis of ironical 

 destiny. Of the innumerable inventions which he originated, scarcely 

 one has been associated with his name. His suggestions bore fruit in 

 the hands of others. His ideas were appropriated and perfected by 

 his rivals. His experiments conferred luster on his successors. By 

 tacit consent, his intellectual inheritance was divided, and his claims 

 ignored. Newton took up the theory of light where he abandoned it, 

 and left him far behind in the momentous search for the law of gravi- 

 tation. Mayow carried forward the investigations which he had set on 

 foot as to the purpose subserved by the air in respiration.* His method 

 was used by Picard in 1670, with striking success, in his new measure- 

 ment of the earth. His observations formed the basis upon which 

 Bradley founded, in 1728, his discovery of the aberration of light. 

 That his repeated disappointments and mischances were in any degree 

 attributable to his own deficiencies, naturally did not occur to him. 

 It was simpler and more consolatory to set them down to the prevalent 

 malignity and injustice of mankind. Hence the deepening shade of 

 misanthropy which enveloped in saturnine reserve the later years of 

 his life. 



Nevertheless, Hooke was, in spite of conspicuous defects, by no 

 means a bad man. His morals were irreproachable, his diligence was 

 untiring, and his religious sentiments seem to have been unfeignedly 

 devout. His faults were warpings of the mind, closely dependent, 

 perhaps, on his unfortunate physical constitution. In spirit, as well as 

 in person, Nature had set him somewhat awry. " Certainly," writes 

 Bacon, " there is a consent between the body and the mind ; and where 

 Nature erreth in the one, she ventureth in the other. Ubi peccat in 

 uno, periclitatur in altero." It was his misfortune that he could neither 

 win sympathy nor inspire pity. His talents earned for him patronage ; 

 but his peculiarities repelled friendship. He lived sixty-eight years 

 without attaching to himself a single human being, and died only to 

 make room for his rival. And yet his intellectual qualities did not de- 

 mand admiration more than his moral failings claimed tenderness. 

 For surely infirmity has been rarely combined with genius in more 

 painful and pitiable guise than in Robert Hooke. Edinburgh Revieic. 



* For an interesting account of Mayow's experiments, see Miss Buckley's " Short His- 

 tory of Science," p. 181. 



