94 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



that is what I want, I will be no Hanoverian !) " l 

 That these sentiments were simply an echo of her 

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

 known, "the bargains" made were not reduced to 

 writing. Everything seems to have been done by word 

 of mouth. In fact, George in. and his advisers dealt 

 with Herschel, not as an Englishman but as a German. 

 No English honours were bestowed on him, such as 

 were bestowed on younger or less deserving men. 

 Sir Humphry Davy received the honour of knight- 

 hood from the Prince Regent in 1812. He was forty 

 years younger than Herschel. Dr. Smith, one of the 

 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 years 

 later Herschel received a paltry honour, at least as 

 Englishmen counted honours. There must have been 

 reasons for this apparent neglect. But whatever they 

 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 soldier. 

 When George ill. thus resolved to endow research 

 in the person of William Herschel by appointing him 

 Royal Astronomer at a salary of 200 a year, coupled 



1 Memoirs, p. 276. 2 Weld, History, etc., ii. 327, 198. 



