he proceeded to Harderwijk, where he went through the requisite examinations, and defended his thesis on the cause of intermittent fever. His scanty funds were now nearly spent, but he passed on through Haarlem to Leiden; there he called on Jan Fredrik Gronovius (1690–1762), who, returning the visit, was shown the Systema naturae in MS., and was so greatly astonished at it that he sent it to press at his own expense. This famous system, which, artificial as it was, substituted order for confusion, largely made its way on account of the lucid and admirable laws, and comments on them, which were issued almost at the same time (see Botany). H. Boerhaave, whom Linnaeus saw after waiting eight days for admission, recommended him to J. Burman (1707–1780), the professor of botany at Amsterdam, with whom he stayed a twelvemonth. While there he issued his Fundamenta Botanica, an unassuming small octavo, which exercised immense influence. For some time also he lived with the wealthy banker, G. Clifford (1685–1750), who had a magnificent garden at Hartecamp, near Haarlem.
In 1736 Linnaeus visited England. He was warmly recommended by Boerhaave to Sir Hans Sloane, who seems to have received him coldly. At Oxford Dr Thomas Shaw welcomed him cordially; J. J. Dillenius, the professor of botany, was cold at first, but afterwards changed completely, kept him a month, and even offered to share the emoluments of the chair with him. He saw Philip Miller (1691–1771), the Hortulanorum Princeps, at Chelsea Physic Garden, and took some plants thence to Clifford; but certain other stories which are current about his visit to England are of very doubtful authenticity.
On his return to the Netherlands he completed the printing of his Genera Plantarum, a volume which must be considered the starting-point of modern systematic botany. During the same year, 1737, he finished arranging Clifford’s collection of plants, living and dried, described in the Hortus Cliffortianus. During the compilation he used to “amuse” himself with drawing up the Critica Botanica, also printed in the Netherlands. But this strenuous and unremitting labour told upon him; the atmosphere of the Low Countries seemed to oppress him beyond endurance; and, resisting all Clifford’s entreaties to remain with him, he started homewards, yet on the way he remained a year at Leiden, and published his Classes Plantarum (1738). He then visited Paris, where he saw Antoine and Bernard de Jussieu, and finally sailed for Sweden from Rouen. In September 1738 he established himself as a physician in Stockholm, but, being unknown as a medical man, no one at first cared to consult him; by degrees, however, he found patients, was appointed naval physician at Stockholm, with minor appointments, and in June 1739 married Sara Moræa. In 1741 he was appointed to the chair of medicine at Upsala, but soon exchanged it for that of botany. In the same year, previous to this exchange, he travelled through Öland and Gothland, by command of the state, publishing his results in Oländska och Gothländska Resa (1745). The index to this volume shows the first employment of specific names in nomenclature.
Henceforward his time was taken up by teaching and the preparation of other works. In 1745 he issued his Flora Suecica and Fauna Suecica, the latter having occupied his attention during fifteen years; afterwards, two volumes of observations made during journeys in Sweden, Wästgöta Resa (Stockholm, 1747), and Skånska Resa (Stockholm, 1751). In 1748 he brought out his Hortus Upsaliensis, showing that he had added eleven hundred species to those formerly in cultivation in that garden. In 1750 his Philosophia Botanica was given to the world; it consists of a commentary on the various axioms he had published in 1735 in his Fundamenta Botanica, and was dictated to his pupil P. Löfling (1720–1756), while the professor was confined to his bed by an attack of gout. But the most important work of this period was his Species Plantarum (Stockholm, 1753), in which the specific names are fully set forth. In the same year he was created knight of the Polar Star, the first time a scientific man had been raised to that honour in Sweden. In 1755 he was invited by the king of Spain to settle in that country, with a liberal salary, and full liberty of conscience, but he declined on the ground that whatever merits he possessed should be devoted to his country’s service, and Löfling was sent instead. He was enabled now to purchase the estates of Säfja and Hammarby; at the latter he built his museum of stone, to guard against loss by fire. His lectures at the university drew men from all parts of the world; the normal number of students at Upsala was five hundred, but while he occupied the chair of botany there it rose to fifteen hundred. In 1761 he was granted a patent of nobility, antedated to 1757, from which time he was styled Carl von Linné. To his great delight the tea-plant was introduced alive into Europe in 1763; in the same year his surviving son Carl (1741–1783) was allowed to assist his father in his professorial duties, and to be trained as his successor. At the age of sixty his memory began to fail; an apoplectic attack in 1774 greatly weakened him; two years after he lost the use of his right side; and he died on the 10th of January 1778 at Upsala, in the cathedral of which he was buried.
With Linnaeus arrangement seems to have been a passion; he delighted in devising classifications, and not only did he systematize the three kingdoms of nature, but even drew up a treatise on the Genera Morborum. When he appeared upon the scene, new plants and animals were in course of daily discovery in increasing numbers, due to the increase of trading facilities; he devised schemes of arrangement by which these acquisitions might be sorted provisionally, until their natural affinities should have become clearer. He made many mistakes; but the honour due to him for having first enunciated the principles for defining genera and species, and his uniform use of specific names, is enduring. His style is terse and laconic; he methodically treated of each organ in its proper turn, and had a special term for each, the meaning of which did not vary. The reader cannot doubt the author’s intention; his sentences are business-like and to the point. The omission of the verb in his descriptions was an innovation, and gave an abruptness to his language which was foreign to the writing of his time; but it probably by its succinctness added to the popularity of his works.
No modern naturalist has impressed his own character with greater force upon his pupils than did Linnaeus. He imbued them with his own intense acquisitiveness, reared them in an atmosphere of enthusiasm, trained them to close and accurate observation, and then despatched them to various parts of the globe.
His published works amount to more than one hundred and eighty, including the Amoenitates Academicae, for which he provided the material, revising them also for press; corrections in his handwriting may be seen in the Banksian and Linnean Society’s libraries. Many of his works were not published during his lifetime; those which were are enumerated by Dr Richard Pulteney in his General View of the Writings of Linnaeus (1781). His widow sold his collections and books to Sir J. E. Smith, the first president of the Linnean Society of London. When Smith died in 1828, a subscription was raised to purchase the herbarium and library for the Society, whose property they became. The manuscripts of many of Linnaeus’s publications, and the letters he received from his contemporaries, also came into the possession of the Society. (B. D. J.)
LINNELL, JOHN (1792–1882), English painter, was born in London on the 16th of June 1792. His father being a carver and gilder, Linnell was early brought into contact with artists, and when he was ten years old he was drawing and selling his portraits in chalk and pencil. His first artistic instruction was received from Benjamin West, and he spent a year in the house of John Varley the water-colour painter, where he had William Hunt and Mulready as fellow-pupils, and made the acquaintance of Shelley, Godwin and other men of mark. In 1805 he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where he obtained medals for drawing, modelling and sculpture. He was also trained as an engraver, and executed a transcript of Varley’s “Burial of Saul.” In after life he frequently occupied himself with the burin, publishing, in 1834, a series of outlines from Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine chapel, and, in 1840, superintending the issue of a selection of plates from the pictures in Buckingham Palace, one of them, a Titian landscape, being mezzotinted by himself. At first he supported himself mainly by miniature painting, and by the execution of larger portraits, such as the likenesses of Mulready, Whately, Peel and Carlyle. Several of his portraits he engraved with his own hand in line and mezzotint. He also painted many subjects like the “St John Preaching,” the “Covenant of Abraham,” and the “Journey to Emmaus,” in which, while the landscape is usually prominent the figures are yet of sufficient importance to supply the title
