NATURE 



217 



THURSDAY, JULY 3, 1890. 



LIFE OF SEDGWICK. 

 I. 

 The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, 

 LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge, Prebendary of Norwich, Woodwardian 

 Professor of Geology, \d,i2,-72>- By John Willis Clark, 

 M.A., F.S.A., and Thomas McKenny Hughes, M.A., 

 F.R.S. Two Volumes. (Cambridge : University Press, 

 1890.) 



BETTER late than never ! Geologists have wraited 

 for seventeen years for a life of Sedgwick, though 

 the biographies of Murchison, Lyell, and Darwin, two 

 of whom survived him, have all been published. The 

 delay, as is admitted in the preface, requires some ex- 

 planation : whether that is really furnished may be 

 doubted. This at least is clear, that it has not been due 

 to Mr. Clark, since he only undertook his portion of 

 the work, and that the major one, in 1886. The delay is 

 the more to be regretted because not a few of those who 

 could remember Sedgwick in the days of his full vigour 

 have passed away, and, as Mr. Clark observes, " a num- 

 ber of interesting letters which he is known to have 

 written, and which were long carefully preserved, have 

 either been destroyed or cannot now be traced. These 

 remarks apply specially to the earlier years." Still, Mr. 

 Clark has had at his disposal a large amount of material, 

 from which he has drawn a picture no less vivid than 

 accurate — as we feel sure those who knew the original 

 will admit — of a man of remarkable genius and almost 

 unique personality. He has told us the story of Sedg- 

 wick's life, he has woven into it Sedgwick's letters, and the 

 result is a book which is worthy to be classed with the two 

 best biographies, at any rate of recent date, of distin- 

 guished sons of Cambridge — those of Charles Kingsley 

 and Charles Darwin. 



This book has its value as a chronicle of the develop- 

 ment of geology into a distinct and independent branch 

 of science, but this is not its only interest. True, it is a 

 record of a life comparatively uneventful. It was not 

 often that Sedgwick's geological studies conducted him 

 beyond the limits of the British Isles. His Continental 

 journeys were restricted to the western half of Europe, 

 and did not include Spain or Scandinavia, but his friends 

 were numerous and notable. His life extended over a 

 period of our national history of unusual interest. He 

 remembered vividly the great incidents of the " struggle 

 for life and death with France." He heard the death peal 

 rung for Nelson and for Wellington : he had shared in 

 the domestic strife of the Reform Bill, and had witnessed 

 the blunders of the Crimea and the peril of India. His 

 sympathies were as quick as they were wide, and he was 

 not only a frequent letter writer, but also a master of that 

 almost forgotten art. Hence these volumes contain 

 much that will be interesting to others than geologists. 

 They are the record,«not of a life devoted solely to one 

 special study, but of a man of varied interests and rare 

 enthusiasm, of unusual eloquence and exceptional de- 

 scriptive powers. Not the least valuable part of the work 

 is Sedgwick's own account (extracted from a privately 

 NO. 1079, VOL. 42] 



printed pamphlet) of the manners and customs of the 

 dalesmen of the Sedbergh district, among whom he was 

 born, whither he constantly returned, and which he loved 

 to the last hour of his life. 



This book brings before us Sedgwick as a man and as 

 a geologist, a division which corresponds with the work 

 of its joint authors. Though the two characters made up the 

 one personality, and a distinction between them must be 

 to some extent arbitrary, this may be adopted, as a 

 matter of convenience, in endeavouring to give some 

 idea of the varied contents of these volumes. 



Adam Sedgwick was born in the year 1785, the fourth 

 child of the Rev. Richard Sedgwick, vicar of Dent, an 

 old-world village, by a tributary of the Lune, among the 

 great hills of Western Yorkshire. He was a member of 

 one of the families of " statesmen " which had been 

 settled in Dent for more than three centuries. Till he 

 was sixteen years old he was taught at the Grammar 

 School, partly by his father ; then he was sent to school 

 at Sedbergh ; thence he went, in his twentieth year, to 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, after a few months' tuition 

 by John Dawson, a country surgeon (he had ushered 

 Sedgwick into the world) who had become eminent as a 

 mathematician, as teacher no less than as investigator. 

 Sedgwick's work at Cambridge was interrupted by an 

 attack of typhoid fever which nearly proved fatal, but, 

 notwithstanding this, he obtained a scholarship in his 

 College, and the fifth place among the Wranglers in the 

 Mathematical Tripos of 1808. Private pupils and read- 

 ing for his Fellowship employed him for the next two 

 years, the latter being obtained in the year 1810. The 

 double work proved a severe strain to Sedgwick's consti- 

 tution. The great importance which has always been 

 attached at Trinity College to the examination for fellow- 

 ships has its advantages and its disadvantages ; the one as 

 affording an opportunity for remedying ill-fortune at the 

 time of the degree and widening the field of choice ; the 

 other as giving an advantage to the wealthy, and pressing 

 heavily on those who must combine work for a living 

 with study for an examination. Not a few of the latter 

 have paid for success by permanent injury to health. 

 Among these, it appears, Sedgwick must be reckoned. 

 During the next three years he was out of health, and in 

 181 3 came a complete breakdown. Consumption was 

 apprehended ; but at last his naturally strong constitution 

 triumphed, and he was able to return to Cambridge and 

 take part in the regular tuition of the College. In 1816 

 he was ordained. Three years later came the great crisis 

 of his life — the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology, 

 hitherto little more than a sinecure, became vacant, and 

 Sedgwick declared himself a candidate. His prospects 

 of success at first did not seem great, for he had little, if 

 any, knowledge of the subject, and was opposed, not 

 only by a member of his own College, but also by the 

 Rev. G. Gorham, of Queens' College, who was reputed 

 to have devoted much attention to geology, though he 

 does not appear to have published anything. But the 

 opponent from within the walls of Trinity retired, and 

 then Sedgwick had an easy victory over the other. Cam- 

 bridge—perhaps Oxford also — has often been rather 

 eccentric in her elections to professorships, and prone to 

 act on the maxim "Omtie ignotum pro magnifco." But on 

 this occasion the leap in the dark was more than justified. 



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