334 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



nomer felt incited to fresh admiration over the marvellous 

 universality of Humboldt. 'We shall all learn a great deal 

 from your book,' he wrote on April 19, 1844, 'and 1 have 

 already learnt much. . . . The survey of the universe, so 

 magnificently given in the first chapter, is the distinctive fea- 

 ture of " Cosmos." Anyone may write upon nebulae or infu- 

 soriae, but there is but one who can fill up the scheme laid 

 down in that essay.' On this account so much ' laborious 

 detail ' appeared to Bessel to be inappropriate ; he wished 

 ' Cosmos ' to remain as the grand survey, and the verification 

 of detail appeared to him ridiculous amidst the crowd of 

 thoughts instructing and delighting the reader. ' Eaphael 

 invites me to examine the heavenly eyes of the Madonna with 

 all the minuteness I can command ; by the aid of the micro- 

 scope, I discover no sharp outline, only mountains and valle} T s 

 of colour ; after writing a whole sheet descriptive of the devia- 

 tions from Nature I had witnessed, I take it to Eaphael, but 

 should be angry were he not to say : " My good friend, that 

 may be all perfectly true, but what has it to do with the ques- 

 tion ? " Some time after he pacified, in the kindest way, 

 Humboldt's tormenting doubts as to the success of his work by 

 the remark : ' It is as difficult for a proficient to satisfy him- 

 self with his masterpiece as it is for one of less skill with his 

 inferior productions.' 



In a similar strain Encke wrote, on June 28, 1844: 'Com- 

 pletion may be carried so far as only to injure freshness, as 

 Lalande has observed : " le mieux est 1'ennemi du bien.'" But 

 this was just Humboldt's ambition, to combine the greatest 

 possible finish with the greatest freshness ; that he laboured for 

 one as earnestly as for the other we shall have proof in the 

 next chapter, when discussing the last volumes of ' Cosmos,' in 

 which the scientific nature of the work is less concealed by the 

 graces of literature. In connection with Bessel's remark, we 

 may be permitted to say a few words upon the reception ac- 

 corded to ' Cosmos.' 



Towards the close of 1844 ten years after the printing of 

 some of the earlier portions, and nearly four years after the final 

 commitment to press, after endless corrections and repeated 

 revisions by competent authorities, for the purpose of securing* 



