XXXIV 



Obituary Notice of Fellow deceased. 



to have found it in the motto of Prince Henry of Portugal, the father of 

 navigation, " talent de bieu faire " — " the wish to do well." 



His literary style in early life was laboured and sometimes obscure, but 

 later became nervous and precise, and he was singularly happy, especially in 

 technical matters, in seizing the felicitous and pregnant word. Though as a 

 young man he had beguiled a tedious journey through the Sundarbans with 

 Tennyson's " Princess," poetry had no appeal to him in after-life. But artistic 

 tastes, inherited from both parents, were not atrophied. He was an accurate 

 and more than ordinarily skilful draughtsman. He was an ardent collector 

 of Wedgwood, and the severity of Flaxman's line and composition parti- 

 cularly appealed to him. He derived much pleasure at home and abroad 

 from the older masters, and much admired the modern French school before 

 its later developments. He continued to enjoy music of a classical type 

 throughout. 



A i'ew words may be said to indulge a reasonable curiosity as to the 

 physical conditions of a life in which so much was accomplished and which 

 was so prolonged. He was very abstemious and smoked only moderately, but 

 never at work. He could dispense with sleep to a remarkable extent. In his 

 prime he would work till two, to wake at five and read in bed till seven, a 

 habit he had contracted as a student. On the outward voyage the Erebus 

 stopped at Madeira, and Hooker eagerly explored its flora. Sleeping out under 

 a tree he contracted rheumatic fever. The Antarctic voyage must have tried 

 him, followed by the labour of working out its results, for Darwin reminded 

 him in 1860, " that you were bad enough before your Indian journey" (L.L., 

 vol. 2, p. 203). The " troubled heart-action " about which Darwin wrote to him 

 seriously the previous year (M.L., vol. 1, p. 98) was doubtless due to the 

 rheumatic fever. Of this he had a more severe and happily final attack in 

 1865 when he was carried in blankets by four men to see from a window his 

 father's body leave the house. In 1885 there was a return of heart trouble 

 and marked deterioration of the arteries. His retirement from official life 

 was followed by complete restoration to health, which was henceforth undis- 

 turbed except by some troublesome gouty ailments in his last years. His 

 mental powers retained unabated vigour and activity to the end. The 

 summer of 1911 enfeebled him. What seemed a temporary illness compelled 

 him at the last to remain in bed. In the last week he asked that the account 

 of the Eoyal Society dinner should be read to him. The day of his death 

 excited no anxiety. He passed away in his sleep at midnight on December 10. 



The Dean and Chapter of Westminster offered, with public approval, the 

 last supreme honour of burial in the Abbey. It would have been fitting 

 that his ashes should be placed near Darwin. But at his own expressed 

 wish he was taken back to Kew, the scene of his labours, and there on 

 December 15 he was laid to rest in the grave which contained the remains 

 of his father and of his first wife. 



Hooker's long life was, as it deserved to be, punctuated with honours. He 

 received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, and 



