ALL OF A SUDDEN 03, MOMENTOUS MOMENTS IN THE LIVES OF GREAT MEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1895, 16 March 1888, Page 31

ALL OF A SUDDEN 03, MOMENTOUS MOMENTS IN THE LIVES OF GREAT MEN.

Not only has the general career of literary g been directed by apparently chance circumstances, but particular efforts have h id their origin much in the same way. G ibbon's great work on the Roman Empire vv as first conceived as he lingered one even-r ing amid the vestiges of her ancient glory. "It was at Rome, says the historian, uon the lath of October 1704, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the b. ire-footed friars were singing vespers in the 'J emple of Jupiter, that the idea of writingthe decline and fall of the city first started Ui mv mind."

The " Task," by which the reputation of Cowper was established, had its origin in a s; ortive observation made by his friend, Lady Austen. She had frequently urged l.isn to try his powers in blank verse, and on h s pleading the lack of a subject, remarked. " Oh ! you can never be in want of a subject; yiin can write upon any; write upon this £>; Ea." The poet obeyed :—: — I sine the Sofa . . . Tn3 theme, i h<mgh humble, yet august and proud Hie occasion— for the Fair commauda the song."

It was the reading of a poem on winter, by aMr Riccaltoun, that first suggested' to Thomson the idea ol[ his famous " Seasons/

• It first," says the poet, writing to a friend, " put the design into my head. In it are some masterly strokes that awakened me."

Malebranche, ohe of the most famous of the metaphysicians of France, was loitering idly in a bookseller's shop, and on turning over a parcel of books he lighted on one of the works of Descartes, the "Traite de rhomme." From that moment he became alive to his real mission in the worlc. _ He read, we are told, with such ravenous delight, and was so overpowered by the novelty and Inminousness of the ;ideas, and by the solidity and coherence of the principles of the author, that he was repeatedly compelled, by violent palpitations of the heart, to lay the volume down.

These physical symptoms of enthusiasm remind us of the effect produced on Alfieri, the great tragic poet of Italy, by the per^ual of the " Lives " of Plutarch. " This book of books," he says, " I read over five or six times, with such transports of excitement, tears, and enthusiasm, that a person in an adjoining room would have supposed I was mad." It was this work which inspired in him an undying passion for freedom and independence.

Like Malebranche, our own countryman. John Locke, owed much to falling in with the writings of Descartes. The first books, he told Lady Masham, which gave him a relish for philosophical things were those of this profound thinker. Locke, in his turn, had a lasting influence on Jonathan Edwards. The celebrated author of the " Freedom of the Will " had his intense passion for abstract thought first kindled by reading Locke on the " Human Understanding." He afterwards declared that it gave him " far higher pleasure than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly-discovered treasure." Benjamin Franklin attributed an influence on some of the principal events of his life to his meeting with two books : one an " Essay on Projects," by Defoe, and the other an " Essay to do Good," by Dr Mather. The thinking powers of Richter — the famous Jean Paul of German literature— tUte from an incident which he has described in his autobiography as the Irirth of bis selfconsciousness. " Never shall I forget," he says, " the inner sensation, hitherto untold to any, when I was present at the birthof my self-consciousness, of which I can specify both time and place. One morning, when Sbill quite a young child, I was standing under the doorway and looking towards the woodstack on the left, when suddenly the internal vision, « lam an ego ' passed before me like a lightning flash from heaven, and has remained with me shining brightly ever since ; my ego had seen itself then for tho first time and fcr ever.'' The birth of intellect in the case of William Cobbett has been told by himself in a passage well worlh quoting for its charming freshness and simplicity. When a boy of 11 years of age he wus making his way to Kew to seek for work in fche royal gardens there and on nearing his journey's cmlfound himself with only threepence left in his pocket. "With this for my whole fortune." he says, " I was trudging through Richmond in my blue smock-frock, and my red gaiteis tied under my knees, when my eyes fell on a little book in a bookseller's window, ' Tale of a Tub,' price 3d. The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I had the, 3d, but then I could have supper. In I went and got the book, which I was so impatient ti read that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, where there s;ood a haystack. On the shady side ot this I sat down to read. The book was so different from anything that I had ever read before, that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description, and it produced what I have always considered a birth of intellect. I read oa till it was dark, without any thought about supper or bed. When I could see no longer I put my little book in my pocket and tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning, when off I Stivted to Kew, reading my little book." Flamstced, the first Astronomer Royal of England, received his eai-liesi, impulse to the study of the heavens by having sent to him Sacrobosco's book, "Do Sphsvira." when he was kept at home from school on account of illness. Faraday, w\ieu a bookseller's apprentice, was first powerfully attracted to the study of chemistry by attending one of Sir Humphrey Davy's lectures at the Royal Institution. What caused Vaucanson, the foremost French mechanician of the first half of the eighteenth century, 'to select the course of life in which he gained such distinction was tl\c circumstance of his being struck, one day whilst waiting for his mother at the residence of her confessor, by the uniform motion of the clock in the hall. The first suggestion of the pendulum itself for measuring the flight of time occurred to Galileo in 1583, whilst watching the vibrations of the great bronze lamp still to be seen swinging from the roof of the cathedral of Pisa. "He observed that whatever the range of its oscillations they were invariably executed in equal times, and the experimental verification of this fact led him to the important discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum. An equally sudden and happy thought was that which directed the mind of Newton to the subject of gravity. An apple had fallen on his head as he sat reading under a tree. "When he observed tho smallness of the apple he was surprised at the f orce of the stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling bodies, from whence he deduced the principle of gravity and laid the foundation of his philosophy." This plausible and favourite story has been questioned, but it seems to rest on good authority. Tradition long marked a tree as that from which the apple descended on the crown of the philosopher. Owing to decay it was cut down in 1820, its wood,"however, being carefully preserved. The vast and varied labours of Cuvier in tbe sciences of zoology and paleontology had an apparently accidental beginning. As a boy he was attracted to the study of natural history by a volume of Buffon which he chanced to fall in with

Thomas Pennant— of the " Tour in Scotland " and " Tour in Wales "—had his passion for natural history called into being

by obtaining the present of a book on birds. Having begun with a military conqueror we may well end with a peaceful naturalist and antiquary. We have spoken now o£ momentous moments which have influenced the lives of no fewer than 28 remarkable men. And to those we have given, everyone will be able, from the harvest of his reading, to add examples of his own.— James Mason, in the " Leisure Hour."