Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/63

inventor of instruments of unheard-of power. He was now about to be released from the necessity of devoting the time to music which he was eager to give to astronomical science.^[1] It came about as follows:—

. . . . "He was now frequently interrupted by visitors who were introduced by some of his resident scholars, among whom I remember Sir Harry Engelfield, Dr. Blagden, and Dr. Maskelyne. With the latter he was engaged in a long conversation, which to me sounded like quarrelling, and the first words my brother said after he was gone was: 'That is a devil of a fellow.' ....

.... I suppose their names were not known, or were forgotten; for it was not till the year 1782 or 1783 that a memorandum of the names of visitors was thought of ....

.... My brother applied himself to perfect his mirrors, erecting in his garden a stand for his twenty-foot telescope; many trials were necessary before the required motions for such an unwieldy machine could be contrived. Many attempts were made by way of experiment against a mirror before an intended thirty-foot telescope could be completed, for which, between whiles (not interrupting the observations with seven, ten, and twenty-foot, and writing papers for both the Royal and Bath Philosophical Societies) gauges, shapes, weight, &c., of the mirror were calculated, and trials of the composition of the metal were made. In short, I saw nothing else and heard nothing else talked of but about these things when my brothers were together. Alex was always very alert, assisting when anything new was going forward, but he wanted perseverance, and never liked to confine himself at home for many hours together. And so it happened that my brother William was obliged to

1. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Dec. 6, 1781.