The article on Dr Luard is practically new. Soon after his death I contributed a short sketch of his Life to the _Saturday Review_, and afterwards another, in a somewhat different style, to a Trinity College Magazine called _The Trident_. Out of these, with some additions, the present article has been composed.
It has been suggested to me that an article on Richard Owen, in a series devoted entirely, with that exception, to Cambridge men, needs justification. I would urge in my defence that the Senate coopted Owen by selecting him, in 1859, as the first recipient of an honorary degree under the new statutes.
My cordial thanks are due to Dr Jackson, Fellow and Prælector of Trinity College, for much valuable criticism, and assistance in preparing the volume for the press.
I have also to thank the proprietors of the _Church Quarterly Review_, and those of the _Saturday Review_, for their kindness in allowing me to reprint articles of which they hold the copyright.
SCROOPE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE. _1 January, 1900._
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON 153
_Church Quarterly Review_, October, 1883.
Full materials for the life of Dr Whewell are at last before the public. We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866 before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of Dr Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate portions. It was originally intended that there should be three of these published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out this scheme; and Mr Todhunter published the first instalment before anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together, and entrusted to Mrs Stair Douglas, Dr Whewell’s niece by marriage. The defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were compelled to follow.