THE KNIGHT OF THE POLAR STAR 291 



compiled for the use of his friend Menander, he calls 

 the ' Systema Natures ' ' a work to which natural history 

 never had a fellow.' This ingenuous self- applause of such 

 large performance is prepossessing in its childlike in- 

 nocent vanity ; the work and the author's artless opinion 

 of it both secure our sympathy. As Arnold (of Rugby) 

 fairly says of his own writings, ' I do not consider it 

 to be arrogance to assume that I know more of a par- 

 ticular subject, which I have studied from a child, than 

 those do who notoriously do not study it at all.' It is 

 only the vanity of emptiness that is repellent. 



Vanity was the foible of the eighteenth century. 

 Few were learned, and the learned did not often meet. 

 Moderns have less difficulty in finding their level. Now 

 all are learned, even the babies, and art has made all 

 knowledge beautiful as beautiful as we care to have it. 



Linnaeus had, as was natural, that inherent ' belief 

 in his own powers, the manifestations of which it is 

 difficult to distinguish, from the workings of vanity.' 

 What seemed self-assertion was simple statement of 

 fact. The character of the Swedes is transparent as 

 their atmosphere. ' Propria laus sordet,' ingenuously 

 says Linnaeus in writing about his own memoirs from 

 Upsala, November 19, 1769, to his early friend Arch- 

 bishop Menander, ' and self-love will here and there 

 show itself.' Linnaeus was altogether a man of great 

 simplicity, telling his feeling with the openness of a 

 child. And, indeed, one smiles at the artless vanity of 

 the diary. The close of it, where the botanist's name 



r 2 



