6

occupation to which he had betaken himself, he was remarkable for his cheerfulness and buoyant spirits. He contrived for himself a system of palpable arithmetic, on a different principle from that of Saunderson, and possessing the advantage in point of neatness and simplicity. An explanation of it may be found in a letter from himself, inserted in the Encyclopædia Britannica' under the article Blind. Dr. Moyes, who must have been a person of extraordinary mental endowments, and who affords us certainly, next to Saunderson, the most striking example on record of attainments in the Mathematics, made without any assistance from the eye, received his degree from a college in America, in which country he lectured for some years. He eventually made in this way a good deal of money; and some time before his death had retired to the town of Pittenweem, not far from his native place, where his society was much courted. His lectures

are said to have been well delivered, and his explanations were eminently perspicuous. It has been reported that he could distinguish colours by the touch; but as this circumstance is not mentioned in his friend Dr. Blacklock's article just referred to, we may fairly assume that he did not himself pretend to the possession of any such power.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Difficulties occasioned by Blindness conquered.

Homer; Milton; Salinas; Stanley; Metcalf; Henry the Minstrel; Scapinelli; Blacklock; Anna Williams; Huber.

But,

MATHEMATICAL investigation is, strictly speaking, merely a mental exercise, and it is certainly conceivable that every theorem man has yet demonstrated in abstract science might have been discovered by him without the aid of his external senses. on the other hand, every operation of mind is so greatly facilitated by the employment of sensible symbols, and especially the processes of acquiring, apprehending, and recollecting knowledge, as well as of pursuing long and intricate calculations or deductions, receive such important assistance from those lines, figures, letters, and other marks which may be made to present the record of every thought faithfully to the eye, that we are justified in quoting any remarkable case of progress, even in abstract science, attained without the aid of this invaluable organ, as a noble example of what perseverance may accomplish in the face of the most formidable difficulties. It is much even for the mind to rise superior to so crushing a calamity as the loss of sight, and to maintain or recover its spirit of exertion under a deprivation which may be said to take from it for ever that which nature has appointed to be at once the chief helpmate and best sweetener of its labours. It would seem almost as if life could scarcely continue desirable to him whose hourly

thought may be expressed, in the language, familiar to all, of Milton's beautiful and pathetic lamenta

Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased."

What an attestation to the medicinal value of intellectual labour, that it has so often cheered even such desolation as this! and how strong must be the natural love of knowledge in the human mind, that even in the midst of such impediments to its gratification it has in so many instances so eagerly sought and so largely attained its end! After the examples

we have mentioned of individuals who in this state of blindness have distinguished themselves by their eminence in the severest exercises of the mind, it may be thought less surprising that others should, in the same condition, have devoted themselves with success to pursuits of a less laborious character, and not so rigorously taxing the attention and the memory. Poetry and music, for example, may be deemed the especially appointed occupations of the blind, as having their subject and their materials chiefly in the imagination and the affections, and being apparently better fitted to dispense with the aid of visible symbols than the intricate reasonings and calculations of science. Yet even poetry owes much of its inspiration to the eye wandering in freedom over nature; and more to that serenity and gladness of the soul, which so heavy an affliction as the loss of sight is apt to

destroy or impair. Whosoever, therefore, suffering under this doom, shall not

Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward,"

be the healing and strengthening toils in which he exercises his spirit those of science or of song, still presents us with an example of heroic wisdom well worthy of our admiration.

It seems to have been the tradition of Greece that the Iliad and Odyssey were both composed by HOMER after he was blind, although, of course, from materials which he had collected before that misfortune befel him; for it is very evident that the author of these poems must, at one time of his life, have surveyed whatever was most interesting that the world had at that early age to shew, with no dim or unobservant eye. But of Homer, in truth, we know nothing. The origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the most perplexing problem in literature; and Homer must, in all probability, ever remain to us a mere name. The poems themselves are Homer, and perhaps there never was another. But if

"Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,

And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,"

instead of being fablers themselves, were merely the creations of other fablers, the Poet of Paradise at least uttered his harmonious numbers in darkness,-as he himself expresses it,

"In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round." MILTON is supposed to have been in the fifty-fourth year of his age when he commenced the composition of his immortal epic, although the high theme had doubtless for some time before occupied his thoughts.

At this period of his life he was quite blind, having lost his sight, which had early begun to decay, during the composition of his famous 'Defence of the People of England,' in answer to Salmasius. He felt the calamity that was coming upon him while occupied with this work, but the apprehension did not induce him even to relax his labours; and after the foreseen event had occurred, we find him, in one of his majestic strains, consoling himself under the extinction of his sight by the thought of the cause in which he had sacrificed it :

:

"What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Whereof all Europe rings from side to side."

Paradise Lost was probably only the work of three or four years, since there is reason to believe that it was completed in 1665, although not published till 1667. But this poem, as is well known, was not the only fruit of the noble intellect of Milton, while bearing up against the accumulated pressure of disease, old age, and the " evil days" on which he had fallen. Beside a mass of philological labours of extraordinary magnitude, and several political tracts, which in eloquence and power are scarcely surpassed by anything he had written in the vigour of life and health, we owe to the blind old man the Paradise Regained, and the Samson Agonistes, the not unworthy companions of his grander song. We cannot mourn over the sightless orbs of Milton; he could not have done greater things than he did in his blindness:

Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroically hath finished
A life heroic.-

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail,

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair."