William Rowan Hamilton

“ The next moment Rowan had thrown himself suddenly aside, and as he did so felt the great pterodactyl sweep over him by a few feet, glimpsed a beam of pale light that flickered down from the upheld globe and struck the street beside him, cracking and rending the pavement there with its intense heat and scorching his own shoulder as it grazed it. ”

“ We say frequent and considerable, because no historian of philosophy is exempt from the defect more or less; or rather (to pass out of the self-confidence of the Absolute into the modesty of the Relative) we seldom find any historian whose estimate of great philosophical thinkers does not often differ from our own. Hence we are glad when ample original extracts are produced, enabling us to test the historian, and judge for ourselves—a practice which Sir W. Hamilton would have required no stimulus to enforce upon him. ”

“ If the sentence which we have quoted above be intended to deny the predicate, 'active and fertile thinker,' of Sir W. Hamilton, we cannot acquiesce in it. His intellect appears to us thoroughly active and fertile, even when we dissent from his reasonings—nay, even in the midst of his inconsistencies, when a new growth of opinions is unexpectedly pushed up on ground which we supposed to be already pre-occupied by another both older and different. And we find this same judgment implied in the discriminating remarks upon his philosophical procedure made by Mr Mill himself— (pp. 271, 272) . ”

“ Moreover, the living force of philosophy, as directress of human intelligence, depends upon keeping up in each of her devotees a full mastery of many divergent and opposite veins of reasoning—a knowledge, negative and affirmative, of the full case of opponents as well as of his own.
It is to Philosophy alone that our allegiance is sworn; and while we concur mostly with Mr Mill's opinions, we number both him and Sir W. Hamilton as a noble pair of brethren, serving alike in her train. ”

“ Hamilton heard the wrongs of the colonies discussed without any of the excitement or pyrotechnical brilliancy to which he had become accustomed. New York was not only the hot-bed of Toryism, but even such ardent Republicans as William Livingston, George Clinton, and John Jay were aristocrats, holding themselves fastidiously aloof from the rank and file that marched and yelled under the name of Sons of Liberty. To Hamilton the conflict had been spectacular rather than real, until he met and moved with these sombre, undemonstrative, superficially unpleasing men of Boston ”

“ They were the men who were to throw their weight on the side of the new government. How persistently Hamilton sought to inform himself of the precise nature of the interests needing protection in the separate localities, from New Hampshire to Georgia, is evidenced by his unpublished correspondence with business men in all the commercial centres. [221]
The third interest which Hamilton consolidated was composed of the land speculators and promoters and embraced all the leading men of the time—Washington, Franklin, Robert Morris, James Wilson, William Blount, and other men of eminence. ”

“ The name is not fifty years old, and twenty years ago Hamilton had less than 4000 inhabitants. Its growth bears no comparison with that of some American cities, but it is still very remarkable, and its wealth, importance, and defencelessness are quite sufficient to make it an object of attack. The houses are built of stone. Banks, hotels, manufactories, churches—well constructed and handsome—give proof of the prosperity of the community; and the residence there of Sir Alan MacNab, who lived somewhere in the vicinity in a brand new mediæval castle, should be some guarantee for their loyalty. ”

“ The state of his health compelled him, however, to live abroad, and he died at Lyons on the 25th of March 1754. He was buried in the Abbey Church of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh. He was twice married—“into families of distinction” says the preface of the authorized edition of his poems.
Hamilton left behind him a considerable number of poems, none of them except “The Braes of Yarrow” of striking originality. The collection is composed of odes, epitaphs, short pieces of translation, songs, and occasional verses. The longest is “Contemplation, or the Triumph of Love” (about 500 lines) . ”

“ From the third son, Claud, descends the duke of Abercorn, heir male of the house of Hamilton.
The first marquess of Hamilton had a natural son, Sir John Hamilton of Lettrick, who was legitimated in 1600 and was ancestor of the lords Bargany. His two legitimate sons were James, 3rd marquess and first duke of Hamilton, and William, who succeeded his brother as 2nd duke and was in turn succeeded under the special remainder contained in the patent of dukedom, by his niece Anne, duchess of Hamilton, who was married in 1656 to William Douglas, earl of Selkirk. ”

“ We mean the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton. We know no more invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than reading with a will, anything he has written upon permanently important subjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a glance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness and downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of learning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or modern—not even Leibnitz ”

“ He was obliged by ill-health and pecuniary difficulties to leave the school to his teachers, and went on to Washington, and then to Boston, where he could only obtain four pupils. A professor at the Boston University attacked him as a charlatan, but a committee examined and approved his four pupils, and he soon had two hundred. Hamilton also taught at the colleges of Schenectady, Princeton, Yale, Hartford, and Middleburg, and often had the teachers as well as their pupils in his classes. ”

“ These differences seem to have been adjusted, and Hamilton died quietly at his Piccadilly house at 10.10 a.m. on 6 April 1803. His wife was at his bedside, and Nelson held his hand. He was buried at Milford Haven. In character Hamilton is described (Southey, Life of Nelson) as being a mild and amiable man. From studying antiquities he had learnt (he said) 'the perpetual fluctuation of everything,' and that the present hour was the sweetest in life. 'Do all the good you can upon earth, and take the chance of eternity without dismay.'
Hamilton had no child by his second wife. ”

“ After the death of John’s brother James in 1777 the title was for a time dormant; then in 1799 the House of Lords declared that William Hamilton (1765–1814) , a descendant of John Hamilton, the paternal great-grandfather of the 2nd baron, was entitled to the dignity. ”

“ In 1792 he made a good finish to his labours by an excavation, in conjunction with Prince Marco Antonio Borghese, on the territory of the ancient Gabii (marbles found there by him are now in the Louvre) . The excavations at Hadrian's villa were undertaken by Hamilton with James Byres and Thomas Jenkins. With the last named Hamilton often acted in partnership. Hamilton sold the antiquities which he discovered or bought up, but did not adopt the lax trading principles of the Roman art-dealers of his day. ”

“ Sir William Hamilton is, however, a firm believer in the a priori character of many axioms, and of the sciences deduced from them; and is so far from considering those axioms to rest on the evidence of experience, that he declares certain of them to be true even of Noumena—of the Unconditioned—of which it is one of the principal aims of his philosophy to prove that the nature of our faculties debars us from having any knowledge. ”

“ Hamilton became a member of the provincial council in 1746. He was residing in London in 1748, when he was commissioned by the sons of William Penn as lieutenant-governor of the province and territories. He resigned in 1754, and when the news of Indian outrages reached Philadelphia in the autumn of 1755, entered actively on the work of defence, and reported to the assembly that a chain of garrisoned forts and block-houses was nearly completed from Delaware river to the Maryland line. ”

“ Hamilton had a good instinct and, as a rule, good luck in making discoveries. He began in 1769 with his well-known excavation of Hadrian's villa below Tivoli. He found sixty marbles (chiefly busts) , ‘some of the first rank.’ In 1771 he found many statues while excavating on the Via Appia in the ‘tenuta del Colombaro.’ He also excavated at Prima Porta and in the country round the Alban mountains. Some fine antiquities were discovered by him at Monte Cagnuolo, the villa of Antoninus Pius, near the ancient Lanuvium (cp. Ancient Marbles in Brit. Mus. pl. 45, x. frontisp. and pl. 25, 26) . ”

“ Sir William Hamilton was a native of Scotland, born in 1730, and was Minister at Naples for the long period of thirty-six years. He was a distinguished antiquary, remarkable for his taste in, and appreciation of, the fine arts. He possessed also scientific acquirements, and had some knowledge of mineralogy: he was a Trustee of the British Museum, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries: he was also a distinguished member of the Dillettanti Club, and appears among their portraits in their meeting-room at the Thatched House Tavern. ”

“ My secret wounds impart,
Tell all I hope, tell all I fear,
Each motion in my heart.
But she methinks is list'ning now,
To some enchanting strain,
The smile that triumphs o’er her brow,
Seems not to heed my pain. ”

“ William Hamilton was one of the wealthiest men of his day and loved display and the rôle of a lavish host. Maintaining a large retinue of servants and living in a style surpassing that of most of his neighbors, his dinner parties and other social gatherings were attended by the most eminent personages of the time. A man of culture and refinement, he accumulated many valuable paintings and rare books, and his gardens, greenhouse and grounds were his particular pride and joy. To a large collection of native American plants and shrubs he added many exotic trees and plants. ”

“ He was excessively precise and hard to please with reference to the final polish of his own works for publication; and it was probably for this reason that he published so little compared with the extent of his investigations.
Like most men of great originality, Hamilton generally matured his ideas before putting pen to paper. “He used to carry on,” says his elder son, William Edwin Hamilton, “long trains of algebraical and arithmetical calculations in his mind, during which he was unconscious of the earthly necessity of eating ”

“ It was most ingenious, and does honour to your imagination." Troup, with an angry exclamation, sprang to his feet. Hamilton deftly caught him by the ankle and his great form sprawled on the grass. He arose in wrath.
"You are no older than one of your own young ones!" he began; then recovered, and resumed his seat. "This is the latest story I have heard of you," he continued: "Some man from New England came here recently with a letter to you. When he returned to his rural home he was asked if he had seen the great man. ”

“ Hamilton was one of the first Englishmen who collected and appreciated Greek vases. He valued them chiefly as good models for modern artists, and is said to have ridiculed antiquarians by training (1780) his monkey to hold a coin-collector's magnifying glass. Hamilton renounced collecting after 1772, but the passion revived, and in 1787 Goethe (Italienische Reise, 27 May 1787) found his private art-vaults at Naples full of busts, torsos, vases, and bronzes. Tischbein once saw Hamilton at Naples in full court dress helping a ragged lazarone to carry a basketful of vases. ”

“ So also a master has the right of property in his servants, to use them for his own benefit, in any way consistent with their nature as human beings, not only sentient, like mere animals, but also as rational, as accountable beings, having immortal souls. A man may not lawfully use his servants as if they were mere animals, without souls, and irresponsible to God. ”

“ For an instant Challoner was stunned. His wife had never looked at him like that; there was something in the catch of her breath, too, as she ended, that meant denial, he was certain. But he took courage and renewed his attack; and meeting with no success, he turned to imploring, begging for the money. Did she not know that he would not ask her if he did not have to have it? Women never could understand why men had to have money—she didn't understand. If she would only let him have the money, he would pledge himself to mend his ways, anything—but he must have money. ”

“ Such a business in its numerous departments and in its unceasing demands for judgment, patience, endurance and persistence was an education in itself. The best qualities of a man’s head and heart were sure to be exercised, developed and strengthened. Robert Hamilton quickly and resolutely gave himself in the most thorough systematic manner to his life’s work and has not only built up a liberal fortune, but guarded and promoted the welfare of the large family of whom he was the eldest—but seventeen years old, as he said, at the time of his father’s death. ”

“ Every master is bound by the very nature of the relation he sustains to his servants, to see to it that they receive suitable religious instruction, that they rest on the Sabbath, and that they be encouraged, nay required, to attend seriously on the public worship of God. ”

“ It is impossible that Hamilton could have sat for all the alleged portraits of himself, scattered over the United States, or he would have had no time to do any work. Moreover, few realize his personality or the contemporaneous description of him. That in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is the best. That in the City Hall, New York, is one of the best, and the copy of it in the Treasury Department, Washington, is better. Several others are charming, notably, the one at Morristown Headquarters, New Jersey, and the one painted for his army friends, now in the possession of Mr. Philip Schuyler. ”