IN a work which has more than one author, it is right to distinguish as far as possible what has been contributed by each.

The first part of this book, then, has been mainly composed by the present writer (who has acted as editor), and the second by Mr. Garnett; but it is due to Mr. Garnett to add that, while he had the chief share of the labour of collecting materials for the whole biography, and the entire burden of the account here given of Maxwell’s contributions to science, the substance of Chapters XI. XII. XIII. is also largely drawn from information obtained through him. The matter of whole pages remains almost in his very words, although for the sake of uniformity and simplicity the first person has still been used in speaking of my own reminiscences.

The narrative of Maxwell’s early life has been facilitated—(1) by a diary kept by Maxwell’s father from 1841 to 1847, and often referred to in these pages as “the Diary;” (2) by two albums containing a series of water-colour drawings by Maxwell’s first cousin, Mrs. Hugh Blackburn (née Isabella Wedderburn), the value of which may be inferred from the outlined reproductions of a few of them prepared by Mrs. Blackburn herself as illustrations for this book. They are literally bits out of the past, each containing an exact representation, by a most accurate observer and clever draughtswoman, of some incident which had just happened when the sketch was made. The figures, even as outlined, bring back the persons with singular vividness to the memory of those who knew them.

For these and many other advantages the thanks of the authors are due to Maxwell’s relatives, but above all to his widow, not only for the free access she has given them to various documents, such as those mentioned above, but for the generous confidence she has reposed in them throughout, and for many important suggestions made by her during the progress of the work.

Their thanks are also due in an especial manner to Professor G. G. Stokes of Cambridge for his kindness in reading most of Part II. in MS., and for many valuable suggestions both with regard to the subject matter and the mode of treating it, which were received from him; and to Professor P. G. Tait of the University of Edinburgh for his zealous and able assistance in many ways.

The book owes much, of course, to those who entrusted the letters here published to the authors’ care. Their names are duly mentioned in the course of the work. Our task has also been lightened by the help of those friends whose contributions are inserted with their names. In describing the life of one who was so many-sided, it is no small advantage to be thus enabled to register the impression which he made on different men. Even should this occasion slight repetitions and discrepancies, the reader may thus form a fuller and, on the whole, a truer image than could be conveyed by a single narrator. Attention is here particularly directed to the statements in Chapter XIII. by Dr. Paget, the Rev. Dr. Guillemard (of Little St. Mary’s, Cambridge), and Professor Hort.

As a general rule, no attempt has been made to weave the correspondence into the narrative. The facts relating to each period have been grouped together, and the letters have been appended to these in chronological order.

A word should be said respecting Part III. Whatever may be the judgment of critics as to the literary merits of Maxwell’s occasional writings in verse, there can be no doubt of their value for the purpose of the present work. Like everything which he did, they are characteristic of him, and some of them have a curious biographical interest. Maxwell was singularly reserved in common life, but would sometimes in solitude express his deepest feelings in a copy of verses which he would afterwards silently communicate to a friend. Again, he shrank from controversy. But his active mind was constantly playing on contemporary fallacies, or what appeared so to him, and his turn for parody and burlesque enabled him to give humorous expression to his criticism of mistaken methods. Of the later pieces here reproduced, several appeared in Nature with the signature StartFraction d p Over d t EndFraction (which happens to be the analytical equivalent of the thermodynamical formula JCM); and one (the “Notes on the President’s Address”) was published in Blackwood’s Magazine for December 1874. The greater number are now printed for the first time.

The juvenile verses and translations have been included for the same reason which has led to the prominence given to the early life in Part I. If we are right in our estimate of Maxwell, it must be interesting to watch the unfolding of such a mind and character from the first, and this not only for the psychological student, but for all those who share Wordsworth’s fondness for “days” that are “linked each to each with natural piety.”

While the last sheets were being revised for the press the sad news arrived that Maxwell’s first cousin, Mr. Colin Mackenzie, had died on board the Bosnia, on his way home from America. There was no one whose kind encouragement had more stimulated the preparation of this volume, or whose pleasure in it would have been a more welcome reward. But he, too, is gone before his time, and this book will be sent into the world with fewer good wishes. He deserves to be remembered with affection wherever the name of James Clerk Maxwell is honoured or beloved.

LEWIS CAMPBELL.

August 1882.