LITERARY NOTICES. 



75 1 



TOM EDWARD'S BIOGRAPHY. 



Our notice of the career of Thomas 

 Edward, printed last month, has elicit- 

 ed much interesting and sympathetic 

 comment from the press, accompanied 

 in repeated instances with something 

 like skepticism as to its verity, or the 

 possibility that a man of such genius 

 could have been so long neglected in a 

 community claiming the slightest de- 

 gree of civilized intelligence. The story 

 will appear more incredible in this 

 country, where we can hardly appre- 

 ciate the intensity of the class-feeling 

 that pervades British society. The 

 open secret of the case is, that Edward 

 was a laborer, and not a gentleman, 

 and, belonging to the servile class, he 

 was not recognized or aided by the 

 people around him. Scientific men 

 corresponded with him, but they were 

 at a distance, and probably neither 

 knew nor inquired anything about his 

 personal circumstances. And so he 

 was left to fight his course alone, which 

 he did manfully and bravely, contented 

 if he could only work. The world 

 never heard of Banff before, and it will 

 be now known more for its meanness 

 toward a poor shoemaker than for any 

 other cause. But what shall we say 

 of the meanness of the reviewer who 

 thinks that the world should not have 

 been apprised of the career of this re- 

 markable naturalist until after his 

 death ? The Banff people, it is to be 

 presumed, will not offer much excuse 

 for their neglect, but a reviewer can 

 express regret that justice has been 

 done him by a distinguished biogra- 

 pher, as if he grudged the man the sat- 

 isfaction of being justly recognized in 

 his declining years. It was not enough 

 that he should never have been the re- 

 cipient of any aid to facilitate his sci- 

 entific studies, but he must be refused 

 also that reward which is the spur of 

 ambition to the highest natures, the 

 sympathy and approbation of their fel- 

 low-men ! And if there be a lower depth 



of meanness yet, a reviewer can find it. 

 Although Edward had been battered 

 through a career that would have killed 

 most men, enduring privation and ex- 

 posure until health gave way with the 

 approach of old age, yet the critic of 

 the London Academy fears that the 

 effect of publishing this premature bi- 

 ography will be, that no more work 

 can be got out of the old man. This is 

 what he says : 



" Interesting and valuable though this 

 memoir of a self-helpful and a self-denying 

 life undoubtedly is, we are not sure that Mr. 

 Smiles would not have acted a wiser part in 

 deferring its publication'. For it is rather 

 bold to assert of one who is but threescore 

 and two, and has shown but few signs of 

 mental decline, that 'hie jacet is all that re- 

 mains to be added.' Bather we would hope 

 that the downward course of Edward's life, 

 smoothed by the queen's recognition of his 

 services, may be a long and useful one, and 

 that, having survived the danger of unmer- 

 ited neglect, he may be spared the harder 

 trial of intrusive patronage, to which this 

 premature biography is likely enough to ex- 

 pose him. It is a perilous precedent for a 

 successful author to have set, and we could 

 have wished, for the sake of others, that 

 Mr. Smiles had denied himself the pleasure 

 of forestalling the verdict of posterity, and 

 had culled his last example of self-help 

 from a career already concluded." 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Notes on Life-Ixsurance. Third edition. 

 Revised, enlarged, and rearranged. By 

 Gustavus W. Smith. New York : D. 

 Van Nostrand. Pp. 204. Price, $2. 



Tins bonk is an attempt to unfold the 

 " mystery and art" of life-insurance, to the 

 general reader; to put before him in simple 

 form, rid, as far as may be, of technicali- 

 ties, a statement of the data upon which 

 life-insurance problems are based, and the 

 methods by which they are solved. For 

 fifty years and more the business has been 

 prominently before the public. It has been 

 urged and expounded with a zeal and per- 

 sistency that have become proverbial, and 

 the inference is natural that there ought, 

 by this time, to be among the people at 



