The Simplicity of Great Minds
It is not surprising that our distinguished philosophers and mathematicians have rarely evinced much knowledge of men and manners, or of the ordinary circumstances of life, since they are so much occupied in telling “the number of the stars,” in tracing the wonders of creation, or in balancing the mental and physical powers of man. Our illustrious Cantab, Bacon, says his biographer, was cheated by his servants at the bottom, whilst he sat in abstraction at the top of his table; and he of whom Dr. Johnson said (the great and good Newton,) that had he lived in the days of ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a deity; of whom, too, the poet wrote—
“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night,
God said, ‘Let Newton be,’ and all was light,”
Caused a smaller hole to be perforated in his room door, when his favourite cat had a kitten, not remembering that it would follow puss through the larger one. Another more modern and less distinguished but not less amiable Cantab, who was Senior Wrangler in his year, one day inquired—
“OF WHAT COUNTRY MARINES WERE?”
Another distinguished Senior Wrangler, Professor and divine, occasionally amuses his friends by rehearsing the fact, that once, having, to preach in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, he hired a blind horse to ride the distance on, and his path laying cross a common, where the road was but indistinctly marked, he became so absorbed in abstract calculations, that, forgetting to guide his steed aright, he and the horse wandered so far awry, that they tumbled “head over heels,” as the folks say, upon a cow slumbering by the way side. On dit, the same Cantab was one morning caught over his breakfast-fire with an egg in his hand, to minute the time by, and his—