On another occasion of this kind, having encouraged me in a somewhat hardy resolution I had formed, Faraday backed his encouragement by an illustration drawn from his own life. The subject will interest you, and it is so sure to be talked about in the world, that no avoidable harm can rise from its introduction here.
In the year 1835, Sir Robert Peel wished to offer Faraday a pension, but that great statesman quitted office before he was able to realise his wish. The Minister who founded these pensions intended them, I believe, to be marks of honour which even proud men might accept without compromise of independence. When, however, the intimation first reached Faraday in an unofficial way, he wrote a letter announcing his determination to decline the pension; and stating that he was quite competent to earn his livelihood himself.
That letter still exists, but it was never sent, Faraday's repugnance having been overruled by his friends. When Lord Melbourne came into office, he desired to see Faraday; and probably in utter ignorance of the man--for unhappily for them and us, Ministers of State in England are only too often ignorant of great Englishmen--his Lordship said something that must have deeply displeased his visitor. All the circumstances were once communicated to me, but I have forgotten the details. The term 'humbug,' I think, was incautiously employed by his Lordship, and other expressions were used of a similar kind. Faraday quitted the Minister with his own resolves, and that evening he left his card and a short and decisive note at the residence of Lord Melbourne, stating that he had manifestly mistaken his Lordship's intention of honouring science in his person, and declining to have anything whatever to do with the proposed pension. The good-humoured nobleman at first considered the matter a capital joke; but he was afterwards led to look at it more seriously. An excellent lady, who was a friend both to Faraday and the Minister, tried to arrange matters between them; but she found Faraday very difficult to move from the position he had assumed. After many fruitless efforts, she at length begged of him to state what he would require of Lord Melbourne to induce him to change his mind. He replied, 'I should require from his Lordship what I have no right or reason to expect that he would grant--a written apology for the words he permitted himself to use to me.' The required apology came, frank and full, creditable, I thought, alike to the Prime Minister and the philosopher.
Considering the enormous strain imposed on Faraday's intellect, the boy-like buoyancy even of his later years was astonishing. He was often prostrate, but he had immense resiliency, which he brought into action by getting away from London whenever his health failed.
I have already indicated the thoughts which filled his mind during the evening of his life. He brooded on magnetic media and lines of force; and the great object of the last investigation he ever undertook was the decision of the question whether magnetic force requires time for its propagation. How he proposed to attack this subject we may never know. But he has left some beautiful apparatus behind; delicate wheels and pinions, and associated mirrors, which were to have been employed in the investigation. The mere conception of such an inquiry is an illustration of his strength and hopefulness, and it is impossible to say to what results it might have led him.
But the work was too heavy for his tired brain. It was long before he could bring himself to relinquish it and during this struggle he often suffered from fatigue of mind. It was at this period, and before he resigned himself to the repose which marked the last two years of his life, that he wrote to me the following letter-- one of many priceless letters now before me--which reveals, more than anything another pen could express, the state of his mind at the time.
I was sometimes censured in his presence for my doings in the Alps, but his constant reply was, 'Let him alone, he knows how to take care of himself.' In this letter, anxiety on this score reveals itself for the first time.
'Hampton Court, August 1, 1864.
'My Dear Tyndall,--I do not know whether my letter will catch you, but I will risk it, though feeling very unfit to communicate with a man whose life is as vivid and active as yours; but the receipt of your kind letter makes me to know that, though I forget, I am not forgotten, and though I am not able to remember at the end of a line what was said at the beginning of it, the imperfect marks will convey to you some sense of what I long to say. We had heard of your illness through Miss Moore, and I was therefore very glad to learn that you are now quite well; do not run too many risks or make your happiness depend too much upon dangers, or the hunting of them.
Sometimes the very thinking of you, and what you may be about, wearies me with fears, and then the cogitations pause and change, but without giving me rest. I know that much of this depends upon my own worn-out nature, and I do not know why I write it, save that when I write to you I cannot help thinking it, and the thoughts stand in the way of other matter.
'See what a strange desultory epistle I am writing to you, and yet I feel so weary that I long to leave my desk and go to the couch.
'My dear wife and Jane desire their kindest remembrances: I hear them in the next room:... I forget--but not you, my dear Tyndall, for I am 'Ever yours, 'M. Faraday.'
