ment of the wicked, it does not appear that they had any other foundation for their assertions than mere opinion and vague surmise; but now I think myself authorized, upon astronomical principles, to propose the sun as an inhabitable world, and am persuaded that the foregoing observations, with the conclusions I have drawn from them, are fully sufficient to answer every objection that may be made against it."
A man who filled the world with his renown as Herschel did, and who charmed all who happened to meet him as we know he charmed Miss Burney, Thomas Campbell, and Niemeyer, could not have been expected to leave this life without worthy commemoration from a poet's pen. Dr. Burney's Herscheliad was never published; Campbell preserved silence except in poetic prose, written while the astronomer was still living; and no one seems to have addressed himself to what was almost a duty of the age, except a writer, who hailed from Teversal Rectory, and was unable to force Uranus with its proper quantity into a line of poetry.[1]
"Herschel, alas, great astronomic sage,
Has sunk in death, yet full of honoured age,
Through widest space the heavenly orbs he viewed.
The comet's track, and stars unnumbered shewed;
Ouranus first he saw, with all its train,
And fires volcanic found in Luna's plain."
The Herscheliad could scarcely have contained poorer or more unworthy lines.
Far more worthy of record is the eulogium passed by Arago: " We may confidently assert, relative to the
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xcii. (1822).
