Few men have done as much in their lives. He formed the living link between two styles or traditions of science by being the last major specimen of one breed, and the inspiration and intellectual role model for the generation to follow. For John Herschel was perhaps the last significant figure to devote himself wholly and full-time to fundamental research in astronomy and its related sciences on the strength of a private fortune. And while the stature that he enjoyed did much to stimulate the concept of the 'professional' astronomer in Britain, so many of these men of the rising generation who admired his thorough-going dedication to science were themselves more obviously professional in the respect that they earned their livings through academic science. One sees in him, therefore, an eclectic blend of attitudes towards what science was, how it should be pursued, and how it should be paid for.
Poetry is the affected expression of exaggerated sentiments.
Logic is the art of talking unintelligibly of matters of which we are ignorant. Yet that promise was never fulfilled in his lifetime, and in the introductory pages of his definitive 'Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars' one senses the presence of a problem long since recognised yet not yet solved. 12, No. 2, December 1957. Herschel at the Cape. Diaries and correspondence of Sir John Herschel 1834-1838.