14 Cuvier’s Historical Eloge of Werner, 
hours, he could develope the boldest and best connected ideas ; 
but it was impossibe to make him take up the pen. He had an 
antipathy for the very mechanical art of writing, — an anti- 
pathy, the very excess of which rendered it amusing. His 
letters were extremely few. The most tender friendship, 
the most profound esteem, could scarcely draw one from him ; 
and to avoid reproaching himself with his want of polite- 
ness in this respect, he at last did not even open those that were 
addressed to him. A certain author, who wished to consult a 
great many philosophers respecting a voluminous work, had cir- 
culated his manuscript. The packet was amissing during this 
journey. After a thousand researches, it was disinterred at last 
from among a hundred others, in the possession of M. Werner. 
To crown all, I may notice, that he has never replied to the 
Academy, since it placed him in the list of its eight foreign asso- 
ciates, among whom all the greatest names that have illustrated 
Europe for a century are found : and, perhaps, he might never 
have known that he had obtained this honour, if he had not 
learned it from some almanack. 
But we must pardon him, since, about the same time, it hap- 
pened, that an express sent to him from Dresden, by his sister, 
waited two months at the inn, and at his expence, for a simple 
signature, on some pressing family business. 
In Werner, this invincible antipathy seemed the more re- 
markable, that it affected him in that which, next to his studies, 
touched him the most, I mean, complaisance and etiquette. In 
every thing else, he observed the shades of social life with as 
much punctuality as he attended to the varieties of minerals. 
This disposition to formality, which was preserved for a longer 
time in Germany than any where else, and in Saxony for a longer 
time than in any other part of Germany, was especially preserved 
in him ; apparently because, in his eyes, it was a kind of me- 
thod: he deliberated respecting the arrangement of a dinner, with 
as much gravity as he did respecting that of his library or cabinet. 
There was still, however, one point in which his regard to 
etiquette did not hold. Whatever might be the rank of any in- 
dividual, if he handled his minerals awkwardly, the professor 
was put out of all temper. The least stain on their freshness, 
the least injury to their brilliancy, touched him to the quick, and 
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