Narrative and Miscellaneous PapersDe Quincey, Thomas
General
Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays; English fiction
What is it then that Lord Rosse has accomplished? If a man were aiming
at dazzling by effects of rhetoric, he might reply: He has accomplished
that which once the condition of the telescope not only refused its
permission to hope for, but expressly bade man to despair of. What is it
that Lord Rosse has revealed? Answer: he has revealed more by far than
he found. The theatre to which he has introduced us, is _immeasurably_
beyond the old one which he found. To say that he found, in the visible
universe, a little wooden theatre of Thespis, a _tréteau_ or shed of
vagrants, and that he presented us, at a price of toil and of _anxiety_
that cannot be measured, with a Roman colosseum,--_that_ is to say
nothing. It is to undertake the measurement of the tropics with the
pocket-tape of an upholsterer. Columbus, when he introduced the Old
World to the New, after all that can be said in his praise, did in
fact only introduce the majority to the minority; but Lord Rosse has
introduced the minority to the majority. There are two worlds, one
called Ante-Rosse, and the other Post-Rosse; and, if it should come to
voting, the latter would shockingly outvote the other. Augustus Cæsar
made it his boast when dying, that he had found the city of Rome built
of brick, and that he left it built of marble: _lateritiam invenit,
marmoream reliquit_. Lord Rosse may say, even if to-day he should die,
'I found God's universe represented for human convenience, even after
all the sublime discoveries of Herschel, upon a globe or spherical chart
having a radius of one hundred and fifty feet; and I left it sketched
upon a similar chart, keeping exactly the same scale of proportions, but
now elongating its radius into one thousand feet.' The reader of course
understands that this expression, founded on absolute calculations of
Dr. Nichol, is simply meant to exhibit the _relative_ dimensions of the
_mundus Ante-Rosseanus_ and the _mundus Post-Rosseanus;_ for as to
the _absolute_ dimensions, when stated in miles, leagues or any units
familiar to the human experience, they are too stunning and confounding.
If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for instance diameters of
the earth's orbit, the unit itself that should facilitate the grasping
of the result, and which really _is_ more manageable numerically,
becomes itself elusive of the mental grasp: it comes in as an
interpreter; and (as in some other cases) the interpreter is hardest to
be understood of the two. If, finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent
of the dreadful magnitudes, time combining itself with motion, as in the
flight of cannon-balls or the flight of swallows, the sublimity
becomes greater; but horror seizes upon the reflecting intellect, and
incredulity upon the irreflective. Even a railroad generation, that
_should_ have faith in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with
an '_Incredulus odi_!' we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he
_seems_ to speak falsehood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account