Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

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But his memory doubtless gained an immense additional advantage from his
habitual seclusion, from his unconcern with the distracting customs of
society, and, most of all, from the imperturbable abstraction under
which he studied and observed. With him there was no blending of
collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or
trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always single,
deep, and traceable. It was a mental straightforwardness and
conscientiousness, as rare, perhaps, as moral rectitude itself.

In diet, Percival was the most abstemious person I ever knew. His health
was uniformly good,--the specimens of a geologist, when he collects them
himself, being as favorable to digestion and appetite as the pebbles to
a chicken; yet, I am persuaded, my companion in no case violated the
golden rule of leaving the table unsated. No matter how long had been
his fast, he showed no impatience of hunger, made no remark upon the
excellence of any dish, found fault with nothing, or, at most, only
seemed to miss drinkable coffee and good bread, articles seldom to be
met with in the country. He ate slowly, selecting his food with the
discrimination which ought to belong to a chemist or physiologist, and
then thought no more about it. Alcoholic drinks he never tasted, except
an occasional glass of wine, to which his attention perhaps had been
called on account of its age or superior excellence. Even then it
was not the flavor which interested him, so much as the history,
geographical and other.

Peculiar as he was in his own habits of diet, he offered no strictures
upon the practice of others, however different, unless it ran into
hurtful excesses. The maxim of Epictetus in the "Enchiridion," "Never
preach how others ought to eat, but eat you as becomes you," seemed to
be his rule. Indeed, Percival was one of those rare men who withhold
alike censure and praise respecting the minor matters of life. Not that
he was without opinions on such subjects; but, to obtain them, one was
forced to question him. On the whole, I do not think it would be going
too far to apply to him the above-named moralist's description of the
wise man:--"He reproves nobody, praises nobody, blames nobody, nor even
speaks of himself; if any one praises him, in his own mind he contemns
the flatterer; if any one reproves him, he looks with care that he be
not unsettled in the state of tranquillity that he has entered into.
All his desires depend on things within his power; he transfers all
his aversions to those things which Nature commands us to avoid. His
appetites are always moderate. He is indifferent whether he be thought
foolish or ignorant. He observes himself with the nicety of an enemy or
a spy, and looks on his own wishes as betrayers."

Percival's solitary habits, combined with the invariable seriousness
of his manner, led many persons to believe him melancholy, and even
disposed to suicide. He did, indeed, confess to me, that he sometimes
felt giddy on the edge of a precipice. This was his nearest approach, I
am confident, to the idea of self-destruction. While we were examining
the great iron furnaces of Salisbury, he told me that he was afraid of
walking near the throat of a chimney when in blast, and that more than
once he had turned and run from the lurid, murky orifice, lest a sudden
failure of self-control should cause him to reel into the consuming
abyss. No,--Percival neither felt nor expressed disgust with life.
On the contrary, he was strongly attached to it; the acquisition of
knowledge clothed it with inexpressible value; the longest day was ever
too short to fulfil his designs. Like the wise, laborious men of all
ages, he almost repined at the swiftness of the years. "I am amazed at
the flight of time," he said to me, on the arrival of his forty-second
birthday; "it seems only a year since I was thirty-two;--I have lost ten
years of my life."

Before entering upon the survey of Connecticut, he was not specially
devoted to any one branch of physics, although his tastes inclined him
most toward geology. While he could sympathize perfectly, he said, with
those who threw their whole force into a single study, he felt
himself attracted equally by the entire circle of Nature, and thought
omniscience a nobler object of ambition than any one science. He
admitted that the search after all knowledge is incompatible with
eminence in any particular department; but he believed that it affords
higher pleasure to the mind, and confers ability to do signal service
to mankind in pointing out the grand connections, the general laws, of
Nature.

It is not, perhaps, widely known, that Percival was a well-informed
botanist. He studied this branch when a medical student under Professor
Ives, and assisted his instructor in laying out a small botanical
garden, the plants of which were arranged after the natural orders of
Jussieu. Soon after finishing his medical education, he gave a course of
lectures on botany in Charleston, South Carolina, before a very select
audience, composed mostly of Ladies. The only drawback to the lecturer's
success was his excessive timidity. As an evidence of the assiduity with
which he botanized, it may be mentioned that he had seen the _Geranium
Robertianum_ (a plant which nestles in the sunny clefts of our trap
mountains) in bloom, during every month of the year. One year he found
its blossoms in December, another in January, and so on, until the round
of the monthly calendar was completed.

Percival was an earnest advocate of popular education. He manifested
much interest in the first systematic attempt (at the instance of
Mr. James Brewster) to furnish the people of New Haven with popular
instruction in the form of lectures. At a public dinner, given by Mr.
Brewster, on the occasion of opening the building in which rooms had
been fitted up for these lectures, the late Mr. Skinner gave the toast,
"Our mechanics, the right arm of New Haven," and Percival followed with,
"Science, the right eye which directs the right arm of New Haven." He
believed most fully in the superiority of intelligent labor. He pointed
out cases in which a college-training had been connected with signal
eminence in mechanical invention, and said, that, according to his
observations, persons engaged in industrial pursuits usually succeeded
in proportion to the thoroughness of their education.

Percival himself gave a course of lectures, or rather, lessons, in New
Haven,--not in the building above mentioned, for his natural timidity
was too great to encounter a public audience, but in the theological
lecture-room of Yale College. They were on the German language, and
consisted chiefly of translations of prose and poetry into English,
intermingled with philosophical commentaries on the peculiarities of the
original. It was pure grammar; he did not talk German, and claimed no
acquaintance with the niceties of pronunciation; but all his listeners,
most of whom were graduates, were struck with his perfect mastery of the
subject.

Percival held one peculiar opinion concerning a branch of college
education. He objected to the modern practice of teaching the natural
sciences by means of a profusion of drawings, models, showy experiments,
and other expedients addressing the mind so strongly through the eye.
While these might be allowable in popular lectures, before audiences
lacking in early intellectual discipline, where amusement was a
consideration, and where without it the public ear could not be secured,
he thought that the collegian should study differently,--that his
understanding should be taxed severely, and that he should be inured,
from the first, to rigid attention, in order to a lasting remembrance
of the truths offered to him. It would be a useful exercise for the
instructor, he thought, to elucidate obscure phenomena and complicated
structures by words only, assisting himself, perhaps, occasionally, by
extemporaneous drawings. Such a course would inspire the scholar with
deference for his teacher, and confidence in his own ability to acquire
a similar grasp of the subject. While there is certainly some truth in
this opinion, it would not be difficult, perhaps, to invalidate its
general force. Why should the ear be the only admitted means of
acquiring knowledge? Nature, the greatest of teachers, does not judge
thus: she conveys half her wisdom to us by sight, instead of by faith;
she gives her first lessons to the infant through the eye. Would
Percival, in looking for his attentive audiences, have preferred a
congregation of blind men?

Speaking of literary composition, he said that he often took great pains
with his productions, shifting words and phrases in many ways, before
satisfying himself that he had attained the best form of expression; and
he assured me that these slowly elaborated passages were the very ones
in which he afterwards recognized the most ease and nature, and which
others supposed him to have thrown off carelessly. I asked him how it
was that children, in their unpremeditated way, expressed themselves
with so much directness and beauty. They have but a single idea to
present at a time, he said; they seize without hesitation on the first
words that offer for its expression, unperplexed by any such choice of
terms as would surely occur to maturer minds; and most important of
all, perhaps, they are wholly unembarrassed by limiting qualifications
arising from a fuller knowledge of the subject.

His prose style is a rare exemplification of classic severity and
perspicuousness. In each paragraph the ideas arrange themselves in
faultless connection, like the molecules of a crystal around its centre.
The sentences are not long, the construction is simple, the words are
English in its purity, without admixture of foreign phrase or idiom. But
the most striking peculiarity of his diction is the utter absence
of ornament; for Percival evidently held that the chief merits of
composition are clearness and directness. Poetic imagery, brilliant
climaxes and antitheses, fanciful or grotesque turns of expression, he
rejected as unfavorable to that simple truth for which he studied and
wrote. This dry, almost mathematical style, was no necessity with him;
few men, surely, have had at command a richer vocabulary, English and
foreign, than Percival; few could have adorned thought with more or
choicer garlands from the fields of knowledge and imagination.

To letter-writing he had a great aversion. I have never seen a letter
or note from him to which his signature was attached. The
autograph-fanciers, therefore, will find a scanty harvest when they come
to forage after the name of Percival. His handwriting corresponded in
some sense with his character. It was fine; the lines straight and
parallel; the letters completely formed, though without fulness of
curve; no flourishes, and no unnecessary prolongations of stroke, above
or below the general run of the line. There were few erasures, the
punctuation was perfect, and the manuscript was fit for the press as it
left his hand.

Literary criticism he rarely indulged in, being too disinclined to
praise or blame, and too intensely devoted to the acquisition of
positive knowledge. If he commented severely upon anything, it was
usually the slovenly diction of some of our State Surveys, or the
inaccuracies of translations from foreign languages.

His only published criticism, of which I am aware, was discharged at
a phrenological lecturer, whose extraordinary assumptions and
_ad-captandum_ style had excited his disgust. Percival did not reverence
the science of bumps, and believed, in the words of William Von
Humboldt, that "it is one of those discoveries which, when stripped of
all the _charlatanerie_ that surrounds them, will show but a very meagre
portion of truth." Dr. Barber, an Englishman, and a somewhat noted
teacher of elocution, having been converted to the phrenological faith,
delivered certain magniloquent lectures on the same to the citizens of
New Haven, and took pay therefor, after the manner of his sect. Percival
responded with a sharp newspaper pasquinade, entitled "A Lecture on
Nosology." At the head of the article was a wood-cut of a gigantic nose,
mapped out into faculties. "Gentlemen, the nose is the most prominent
feature in this bill," commenced the parody. "The nose is the true seat
of the mind; and therefore, gentlemen, Nosology, or the science of the
nose, is the true phrenology. He, who knows his nose, foreknows; for he
knows that which is before him. Therefore Nosology is the surest guide
to conduct. Whatever progress an individual may make, his nose is always
in advance. But society is only a congeries of individuals; consequently
its nose is always in advance,--therefore its proper guide. The nose,
rightly understood, will assuredly work wonders in the cause of
improvement; for it is always going ahead, always first in every
undertaking, always soonest at the goal. The ancients did not neglect
the nose. Look at their busts and statues! What magnification and
abduction in Jove! What insinuation and elongation in the Apollo!
Then [Greek: nous] (intellect) was surely the nose,--[Greek: gnosis]
(knowledge) noses,--[Greek: Minos] my nose. What intussusception, what
potation, and, as a necessary consequence, alas! what rubification! But
I have seen such noses. Beware of them!--they are bad noses,--very bad
noses, I assure you.... Do not, I pray you, consider me irreverent,
if I say that Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of
religion. This is indeed an awful subject, and I would not touch it on
slight grounds; but I sincerely believe that what I say is true.
Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of religion! Does
not the nose stand forth like a watchman on the walls of Zion, on the
look-out for all assailants? and when our faces are directed upwards in
devotion, does not the nose ascend the highest and most especially tend
heavenward?... Nosology is a manly science. It stands out in the open
light. It does not conceal itself behind scratches and periwigs,--nor
does it, like certain false teachers mentioned by St. Paul, go about
from house to house, leading astray silly women......Finally, gentlemen,
you may rest assured that Nosology will not gently submit to insult.
_Noli me tangere!_ Who ever endured a tweak of the nose? It will know
how to take vengeance. As Jupiter metamorphosed the inhospitable Lycians
into frogs, so its contemners will suddenly find themselves [Greek:
Barbarophonoi]!"

Percival has been thought over-tenacious of his opinions. He was
certainly very circumspect in changing them. I have witnessed, however,
several instances in which he yielded to the force of evidence in
the modification of his views. He seemed to recognize geology, in
particular, as a progressive science, in which new facts are constantly
accruing, and therefore compelling re-adaptations of our views. He felt,
indeed, in respect to all knowledge, the mathematics excepted, that
modifications of belief, in well-regulated minds, are unavoidable, as
the result of new information. Approach to higher truth through the
sciences he seemed to regard under the aspect of that of besiegers to a
beleaguered fortress. Principles and deductions, which were a boon and a
triumph for us yesterday, lose their value to-day, when a new parallel
of approach has been attained. He lost his interest in what was
abandoned, necessary as it had been to the present position, only in the
advantage of which, and its sure promise of what was still higher, he
allowed himself to rejoice.

But where evidence was wanting, he was never to be moved to a change by
any amount of importunity or temptation. This trait of character made
him somewhat impracticable as a collaborator, in the philological task
he was employed to perform under Dr. Noah Webster. Disagreements were to
have been anticipated from the striking contrasts in their minds.
They agreed in industry; but Webster was decided, practical, strongly
self-reliant, and always satisfied with doing the best that could
be done with the time and means at command. Percival was timid and
cautious, and, from the very breadth of his linguistic attainments,
undecided. He often craved more time for arriving at conclusions. When
he happened to differ from the great lexicographer, he would never yield
an iota of his ground. These differences led to an early rupture in
the engagement, almost before two letters of the alphabet had been
completed. He much preferred to relinquish a profitable undertaking to
going forward with it under circumstances not agreeable to his elevated
standard of literary accuracy and completeness. He felt that he could
live on bread and water, or even give up these, if necessary; but he
could not violate his convictions of what was true and right. He was a
perfect martyr to his literary and scientific conscientiousness.

He evinced the same spirit in respect to the geological survey. As his
mind was not satisfied, he would not make known his results to the
Legislature. They demanded the report, and he asked for an extension of
time. Thus he continued his labors from year to year, upon a stipend
scarcely adequate to cover his expenses. Instead, however, of nearing
the goal, he only receded from it. New difficulties met him in the work;
fresh questions arose, in the progress of geology itself, that called
for reexaminations. His notes swelled to volumes, and his specimens
increased to thousands. He was in danger of being crushed under the
weight of his doubts and his materials. At last, the people clamored
for the end of the work. The Legislature became peremptory, and forced
Percival to acquiesce.

In 1842 (seven years from the commencement of the survey) he rendered an
octavo report of four hundred and ninety-five pages, in the introduction
to which he observes,--"I regret to say, I have not had the means
allowed me for additional investigations, nor even for a proper use of
my materials, either notes or specimens. The number of localities from
which I have collected specimens I have estimated at nearly eight
thousand; the records of dips and bearings are still more numerous.
The report which follows is but a hasty outline, written mainly from
recollection, with only occasional reference to my materials, and under
circumstances little calculated for cool consideration. It was written,
however, with an intention to state nothing of the truth or probability
of which I did not feel satisfied. None can regret more than I do its
imperfection; still I cannot but hope that it will contribute something
towards the solution of the problem of the highest practical as well as
scientific importance, the exact determination of the geological system
of the State."

Of this remarkable production it may very briefly be said, that it will
ever remain a monument to the scientific and literary powers of its
author. It describes every shade of variation in the different rocks,
and their exact distribution over the surface of the State. This it
accomplishes with a minuteness never before essayed in any similar work.
The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest
productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the
work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology
by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly
repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,--the
language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock.
In its present form, it is safe to say, it has never found a single
reader among the persons for whose benefit it was written.

It is no part of my plan to speak of his poetical reputation. This I
leave to others better able to do him justice. Indeed, he had nearly
abandoned poetical composition before our acquaintance began. But it is
safe, perhaps, to say here, that his writings have placed him among
the first of our national poets; and had he resumed this species of
composition, he could scarcely have failed of maintaining, in the
fullest manner, his poetic fame. He possessed all the qualities reckoned
essential to poetical excellence. We have already spoken of his
astonishing memory, a trait regarded of such importance to the poet by
the ancients as to have led them to call the Muses the daughters of this
mental faculty. His powers of abstraction and imagination were no less
remarkable,--while for extreme sensitiveness he was unsurpassed. His
judgment was clear, and his appreciation of language refined to the last
degree. His musical feeling, too, as well of time as of harmony, was
intense; while he had at command the universal stores of literature and
science.

In closing these reminiscences, I cannot avoid noticing some of the
useful impressions exerted by Percival upon the literary community
amidst which he passed so large a portion of his life. To some the
influence of such a recluse will doubtless seem insignificant. The
reverse, however, I am persuaded, was the fact. Few students came to New
Haven without bringing with them, imprinted on their youthful memories,
some beautiful line of his poetry. Few had not heard of his universal
scholarship and profound learning. Next to an acquaintance with the
teachers from whom they expected to derive their educational training,
their curiosity led them to inquire for Percival. The sight of this
modest, shrinking individual, as the possessor of such mines of
intellectual wealth, it may well be understood, produced the deepest
interest. In him they recognized a man superior to the clamor of vulgar
gratification; his indifference to gain, to luxury, and every form of
display, his constant preference of the spiritual over the sensual, was
always an impressive example to them. The indigent student took fresh
courage as he saw in him to what a narrow compass exterior wants might
be reduced; the man of fashion and the fop stood abashed before the
simplicity of his dress and daily life. And wherever the spirit of
classic literature had been imbibed, and the capacity acquired of
perceiving the severe worth of the true philosopher, the inspection of
such a character, compared with the mere description of it in history,
was like the difference between a statue and a living, breathing man. As
at early dawn or in the gray twilight his slender form glided by, the
thoughtful and poetic scholar could scarce refrain from uttering to
himself,--"There goes Diogenes or Chrysippus! There goes one, by the
side of whom many a bustler in letters is only a worthless drone, many
an idolized celebrity a weak and pitiful sham!" Such a character as
Percival's, in the presence of a scholastic community, was a perpetual
incentive to industry and manliness; and although he rarely spoke in its
hearing, and has left us fewer published works than many others, still
I believe that thousands yet live to thank him for lessons derived from
the simple survey of his daily life.

Though there is little likelihood that his example of self-abnegation
and devotion to study will be followed by many of our youth,
nevertheless, the occurrence of such a model now and then in the
republic of letters constitutes a pleasing as well as useful
phenomenon,--if for no other reason, because it breaks in upon the
monotony of literary biography, and communicates a portion of that
picturesqueness to scholastic life which belongs to Nature in everything
else. That his course was fraught with happiness to himself cannot be
doubted; that it was beneficial also to his fellow-men is equally
true; and though he may be judged less leniently by minds incapable of
pronouncing that to be a character honorable in the sight of God or
man, which deviates from their own standard or creed,--to others, who
recognize the highest possible cultivation of the mental faculties and
unsullied purity of life as the noblest ends of our being, he will ever
occupy a position shared by few of mortal race.

* * * * *

ZELMA'S VOW.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART FIRST. HOW IT WAS MADE.

Who does not remember his first play?--the proudly concealed impatience
which seemed seething in the very blood,--the provoking coolness of old
play-goers,--the music that rather excited than soothed the fever
of expectation,--the mystery of mimic life that throbbed behind the
curtain,--the welcome tinkle of the prompter's bell,--the capricious
swaying to and fro of that mighty painted scroll,--its slow uplift,
revealing for an instant, perhaps, the twinkle of flying dancers' feet
and the shuffle of belated buskins? And then, the unveiled wonders
of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and
trap-doors,--people, Nature, Art, and architecture, never before beheld,
and but faintly conceived of,--the magic of shifting scenes,--the
suddenness and awfulness of subterranean and aerial descents and
ascents,--the solemn stage-walk of the heroine,--the majestic strut
of the hero,--the princely sweep of velvet,--the illusive sparkle of
paste,--the rattle of Brobdignagian pearls,--the saucy tossing of pages'
plumes,--the smiles, the wiles, the astonishing bounds and bewildering
pirouettes of the dancing Houries,--the great sobs and small shrieks
of persecuted beauty,--the blighting smile of the villain,--the lofty
indifference of supernumeraries!

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