94 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



that is what I want, I will bo no Hanoverian')" 1 

 That these sentiments were simply an echo of In T 

 brother's, we can scarcely doubt As far also as is now 

 know ins* 1 ma-l.- irere n<.t reduced t<> 



writing. Everything seems to have been done by word 

 of iii-.uth. In fact, George Hi. and his advisers < 

 with Herschel, not as an Kn^lishman but as a German 

 No English honours were bestowed on him, sucli as 

 were bestowed on younger or less deserving nn n. 

 Sir Humphry Davy received the honour of kni-ht- 

 hood from the Prince Regent in 1812. He was fnrty 

 years younger than Herschd. Dr. Smith, one of tin- 

 founders of the Linnean Society, was knighted by the 

 Prince two years afterwards, although he was not 

 specially known as a man of science. 2 Two \ 

 later Herschel received a paltry honour, at least as 

 Englishmen counted honours. There must have been 

 reasons for this apparent neglect But whatever tin y 

 were, the truth remains that as far as can now be 

 known, the rashness and anxiety of a woman of small 

 capacity saved her son from the life of a musician in 

 a Hanoverian regiment, not to his honour or hers 

 certainly, and made a present of him to the cause of 

 science with results of unspeakable honour to himself 

 and the human race. The lad of nineteen who was 

 induced by his mother to desert an army, led by an 

 incompetent " lump of fat," as they then said, was no 

 coward. He perilled life and limb too often in his work 

 as an astronomer to be counted a poltroon as a soH!< r 



When George III. thus resolved to endow research 

 in the person of William Herschel by appointing him 

 Royal Astronomer at a salary of 200 a year, couj.l ! 



1 Memoirs, p. 276. Weld, History, etc., ii. 327, 198. 



