184 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



In 1777 he applied earnestly though in vain to de Sauseure 

 to get the Emperor Joseph n. to visit his studio and accept his 

 services as a courier or guide to the glaciers. But in his literary 

 efforts he was more fortunate ; they met with all, and perhaps 

 more than all, the success they deserved. He was a ready and 

 successful writer, though he is reported to have needed the help 

 of his friend Jean Pierre Be"renger, the Genevese historian, in 

 putting his manuscript into shape. 



His Description des Glacieres, first published in 1773, was soon 

 (1775) translated into English, and went through three English 

 editions. In the printed list of subscribers we meet with many 

 of the celebrities of the time : Sir Joshua Reynolds, Angelica 

 Kaufman, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Bartolozzi. Goethe 

 read it and described its author as a ' passionirter Kletterer.' 

 Bourrit's fame spread till it reached even royal ears . In 1775 

 the King of Sardinia received him at Chambery and gave him a 

 substantial recompense, a compliment he was never tired of 

 recalling to his visitors' notice. Thus encouraged, Bourrit in 

 1779-80 took courage to face the ordeal of Paris. Here he was 

 fortunate in finding an influential friend in Buff on. It is, I think, 

 clear that there was little personal sympathy or intellectual 

 fellowship between de Saussure and the author of the Epoques de la 

 Nature. The reader will find in an earlier chapter de Saussure 's 

 personal impressions of the great scientist. Buffon, on his part, 

 seems to have been annoyed by de Saussure 's insistence on the 

 necessity for exact observation, if he did not feel it as an implicit 

 reproach. In his chapter on Glaciers he quotes Bourrit, and 

 Bourrit alone. He was at the pains to read the proofs of Bourrit's 

 later work, Description des Alpes Pennines et Rhetiennes, and to 

 acknowledge them in these surprisingly warm terms : 



' I have read, too, with great satisfaction, the seven sheets of 

 your second volume which you have been good enough to send me, 

 and which I have the honour to return. It is impossible to praise 

 too highly the courage or rather the intrepidity with which you faced 

 the dangers of your difficult travels among the glaciers and the 

 summits of the High Alps, and the description you give of them is the 

 justification of your labours and your exertions. I have been par- 

 ticularly struck by the prodigious glacier at the source of the Rhone, 

 and in general it is impossible not to praise your observations and 

 also your pictures.' 



