202 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



they would have been to the point. When Dr. Burney 

 made Herschel aware of his purpose in calling, the 

 latter insisted on the trunk being unpacked, the 

 poem produced, and the reading finished then and 

 there. What the poet knew would be the work of 

 a week or a month, if the book had been finished, 

 the astronomer hoped to get out of the road as 

 speedily as he would an ordinary observation on a 

 starry night. He found himself buttonholed to in- 

 stalments that spread over many months, and seem 

 to have grown very captivating, though he must have 

 soon seen that, if his was the sword of fame, Burney 

 considered his tongue as the more important trumpet, 

 that would blow that fame abroad to all time. But 

 the situation was full of surprises. " He made a 

 discovery to me," Dr. Burney goes on to say, " which 

 had I known it sooner, would have overset me, and 

 prevented my reading any part of my work. He 

 said that he had almost always had an aversion to 

 poetry, which he regarded as the arrangement of 

 fine words, without any useful meaning or adher- 

 ence to truth ; but that when truth and science were 

 united to these fine words, he liked poetry very 

 well." This is rather an odd confession to come 

 from a man whose sister tells us, " He composed glees, 

 catches, etc., for such voices as he could secure, as it 

 was not easy to find a singer to take the place of 

 Miss Linley." 1 However, Dr. Burney managed to 

 persuade him that in his didactic poem fine words 

 were united to science and truth. The astronomer 

 called on the poet in town, lived in his house, and 



1 Was the song referred to on p. 321 of the Memoirs, "In thee I bear 

 so dear a part," his own? It "was going to be published by desire." 



