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145 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1896. 
SIR GEORGE AIRY. 
Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy, Honorary 
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Astronomer 
Royal from 1836-1881. Edited by Wilfrid Airy, B.A., 
M.Inst.C.E. (Cambridge: University Press, 1896.) 
\Bes MORGAN, in a letter to Dr. Hamilton, has 
humorously described one of the most salient 
features of Airy’s character. ‘ Airy,” he wrote, “is the 
prince of methodists. My theory is that when he tries 
his pen on blotting-paper, he makes a duplicate by the 
pressing machine, files, and indexes it.” This is scarcely an 
exaggeration, and suggests that every line that Airy wrote, 
however trivial, found an assigned place in the Greenwich 
archives. Scarcely any one could have left fuller materials 
from which a biography could have been constructed ; 
while the genius of order and arrangement that pervaded 
Airy’s life, must have made the task of compilation com- 
paratively simple. The editor tells us that this love of 
order outlived capacity itself, and that at the close of his 
life he occasionally exhibited more anxiety to have a 
letter placed in its proper pigeon-hole, than even to 
master its contents. In addition to this mass of inform- 
ation which Airy had stored up, he had also written a 
series of skeleton annals of the Observatory, which, he 
remarks, unavoidably partook in some measure of the 
form of biography. It is from these skeleton notes, 
existing in manuscript, that his eldest surviving son has 
prepared the present biography. The editor, in the use 
he has made of this information, has had evidently but 
one wish—that of placing before the world the public life 
of a celebrated man, to whom this country is much in- 
debted for hard and conscientious work, and along lines 
which sometimes lay utterly outside his official duties. 
Mr. Wilfrid Airy is content to be merely a commentator, 
to keep in the background, and to let Sir George tell his 
own tale. The result of this devotion to the memory of 
his father, is to exhibit everywhere in the clearest 
possible manner what Airy did, and to what extent he 
can command our gratitude; but it prevents the intro- 
duction of any great amount of new or interesting inform- 
ation, which the less public portion of his papers might 
have disclosed, and to a knowledge of which the public 
might be permitted. 
The plan of the book is arranged to give a strictly 
chronological account of Airy’s life, and indeed, after 
Airy came prominently before the public, each year is 
separately treated. Seeing that the history of the 
National Observatory for forty-five years is the history 
of Airy’s life, the main contents of these yearly accounts 
are supplied either by copious extracts from, or abridge- 
ments of, the Annual Reports of the Astronomer Royal 
to the Board of Visitors. These extracts are supple- 
mented by references to other work in which Airy was 
interested, but of which no mention to the Board of 
Visitors was necessary. At the end of each yearly 
summary, a few remarks on private history are added ; 
but these generally contain little more than the dates 
NO. 1416, VOL. 55] 
for which he had leave of absence, and the mention of 
the places visited on those occasions. Sometimes a letter 
to or from private friends is added, and every one will 
regret that more examples of his correspondence could 
not be given. But in justice to the editor, it must be 
borne in mind that, if the book is to be kept within 
ordinary bounds, it is not possible to allow more than 
five or six pages to each year so treated, a space tha 
does not permit many extracts from private letters. No 
doubt the editor regrets that he has been compelled to 
suppress so much that would have added to the interest 
of the book. 
In the first chapter is given a personal sketch of the 
subject of the memoir, dealing with his habits and amuse- 
ments, and necessarily offering some estimate of his 
character. In one or two particulars this is, perhaps, 
written rather too modestly. For instance, there is very 
little allusion to Airy’s classical attainments, on which, 
on more than one occasion, the writer of this notice has 
had reason to remark that Airy prided himself. More- 
over, that Airy laid great stress on the importance of a 
classical education is shown by his references, in the 
earlier part of the autobiography, to the authors that he 
read, and his strict adherence to the practice of writing 
some Latin prose every day. In 1824, he conceived the 
idea of competing for the Middle Bachelor’s Prize, and 
began a Latin essay with that view. This he abandoned 
with regret, not from the hopelessness of the competition, 
but from want of leisure. 
In the second chapter, and generally throughout the 
book, Airy speaks for himself in the first person. Here 
he gives an interesting description of the life of a Sizar 
at Cambridge some eighty years ago. It is curious and 
instructive to follow Airy’s life at this time, ridiculed for 
his strict adherence to the prescribed costume of drab 
knee-breeches, dining off the fragments of the Fellows 
dinner, brought to him on pewter plates, declaiming in 
chapel, and the undergraduates attempting to cough him 
down because he was long in preaching. The content- 
ment with which Airy went through this portion of his 
life, the pleasure with which he looks back to his quiet 
rooms in Neville’s Court, almost the worst in the college, 
his continual success in his many examinations, all offer 
pictures which we cannot afford to lose, and will be read 
with a certain charm by those who knew him in his later 
days. Airy retained for his University a profound affec- 
tion throughout his life, an affection which, among other 
ways, evidenced itself in the continual struggle which he 
waged in after years with the examiners, in his attempts 
to place the examinations on a footing that he held to 
be best suited for undergraduate education. The corre- 
spondence which Airy had with Prof. Cayley and others 
on this subject is specially interesting as offering a con- 
spicuous example of Airy’s power of controversy, a power 
which many must have had reason to remember. We 
have no intention of criticising the position which Airy 
supported, a position which was perhaps inevitable, con- 
sidering his own University career and early training, 
both of which he found admirably adapted to his after- 
official life. This life possibly prevented him from fully 
appreciating the educational value of a mathematical 
training, marvellously widened and extended as it had 
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