BELL, JAMES.—This
indefatigable geographer was born in 1769, in Jedburgh. His father, the
Rev. Thomas Bell, minister of a Relief congregation in that town, and
afterwards of Dovehill chapel, in Glasgow, was a man of great worth and
considerable learning, and the author of a "Treatise on the Covenants,"
and several other pieces of a theological kind. In his childhood and youth
the subject of our memoir suffered much sickness, and gave little promise
either of bodily or mental vigour; but, as he grew up, his constitution
improved, and he began to evince that irresistible propensity to reading,
or rather devouring all books that came in his way, which ever afterwards
marked his character. It was fortunate for him that he was not bereft of
his natural guardian until he was considerably advanced in life, for he
was quite unfit to push his own way in the world, the uncommon simplicity
of his character rendering him the easy dupe of the designing and knavish.
He indeed entered into business for a short time as a manufacturer with
his characteristic ardour, but finding himself unsuccessful, he betook
himself to another and more laborious mode of making a livelihood, but one
for which he was far better qualified, namely, the private teaching of
Greek and Latin to advanced students. But as his father, with parental
prudence, had settled a small annuity upon him, he was enabled to devote a
considerable portion of his time to those studies and researches to which
his natural inclination early led him, and which he only ceased to
prosecute with his life. Mr. Bell used to advert with feelings of peculiar
satisfaction to the meetings of a little weekly society which, during this
period of his history, were held at his house and under his auspices, and
at which the members read essays and debated questions for their mutual
entertainment and improvement. On all these occasions, Mr. Bell never
failed to contribute his full share to the evening’s proceedings, and,
when fairly excited, would astonish and delight his associates,
particularly the younger part of them, with the extent and variety of his
learning, and the astonishing volubility with which he poured forth the
treasures of his capacious and well-furnished mind on almost every
possible topic of speculation or debate.
Mr. Bell’s first appearance
as an author was made about the year 1815, when he contributed several
valuable chapters to the "Glasgow Geography"—a work which had an extensive
circulation, published in five volumes 8vo, by the house of Khull,
Blackie, & Co., and which became the foundation of Mr. Bell’s "System of
Popular and Scientific Geography." In 1824 he published—in conjunction
with a young Glasgow linguist of great promise, named John Bell, who died
January 1, 1826, but no relative of the subject of this memoir— a thin 8vo
volume, entitled, "Critical Researches in Philology and Geography." The
philologist contributed two articles to the volume, the one a "Review of
Jones’s Persian Grammar," and the other a "Review of an Arabic Vocabulary
and Index to Richardson’s Arabic Grammar, by James Noble, Teacher of
Languages, in Edinburgh," both of which are characterized by a minute
acquaintance with the subjects under discussion. The geographer’s
contribution consisted of a very elaborate "Examination of the Various
Opinions that in Modern Times have been held respecting the Sources of the
Ganges, and the Correctness of the Lamas’ Map of Thibet," which elicited
high encomiums from some of the leading periodicals of the day.
Geography was the science
around which as a nucleus all his sympathies gathered, as if by an
involuntary and irresistible tendency. To it he consecrated the labour of
his life; it was the favourite study of his earlier years, and his old age
continued to be cheered by it. In every thing belonging to this science
there was a marvellous quickness and accuracy of perception—an extreme
justness of observation and inference about him. When the conversation
turned upon any geographical subject, his ideas assumed a kind of poetical
inspiration, and flowed on in such unbroken and close succession, as to
leave no opportunity to his auditors of interposing a question or pursuing
a discussion. Once engaged, there was no recalling him from his wild
excursive range—on he went, revelling in the intensity of his own
enjoyment, and bearing his hearers along with him over chains of mountains
and lines of rivers, until they became utterly bewildered by the rapidity
with which the physical features of every region of the globe were made to
pass in panoramic succession before them.
From his childhood Mr. Bell
had been subject to severe attacks of asthma. These gradually assumed a
more alarming character, and ultimately compelled him to leave Glasgow for
a residence in the country. The place which he selected for his retirement
was a humble cottage in the neighbourhood of the village of Campsie, about
twelve miles north of Glasgow. Here he spent the last ten or twelve years
of his life in much domestic comfort and tranquillity.
He was abstemious in his
general habits; and his only earthly regret—at least the only one which he
deemed of sufficient consequence to make matter of conversation—was the
smallness of his library, and his want of access to books. Yet it is
astonishing how little in the republic either of letters or of science he
allowed to escape him. His memory was so retentive, that nothing which he
had once read was ever forgotten by him. This extraordinary faculty
enabled him to execute his literary commissions with a much more limited
apparatus of books, than to others less gifted would have been an
indispensable requisite.
The closing scene of Mr.
Bell’s life was calm and peaceful. He had, as already mentioned, long
suffered violently from asthma. This painful disease gradually gained upon
his constitution, and became more severe in its periodical attacks, and
the exhausted powers of nature finally sunk in the struggle. He expired on
the 3d of May, 1833, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and was buried,
at his own express desire, in the old churchyard of Campsie—a beautiful
and sequestered spot.
In forming an estimate of
Mr. Bell’s literary character, we must always keep in view the
difficulties with which he had to struggle in his unwearied pursuit of
knowledge. He was without fortune, without powerful friends, and
destitute, to a great extent, of even the common apparatus of a scholar.
He laboured also under defects of physical organization which would have
chilled and utterly repressed any mind less ardent and enthusiastic than
his own in the pursuit of knowledge: yet he surmounted every obstacle, and
gained for himself a distinguished place among British geographers, in
despite both of his hard fortune and infirm health. Many men have made a
more brilliant display with inferior talents and fewer accomplishments;
but none ever possessed a more complete mastery over their favourite
science, and could bring to any related task a greater amount of accurate
and varied knowledge. That he was an accomplished classical scholar is
apparent from the immense mass of erudite allusions which his writings
present; but he was not an exact scholar. He knew little of the niceties
of language; his compositions are often inelegant and incorrect; he had no
idea of elaborating the expression of his thoughts, but wrote altogether
without attention to effect, and as if there were no such things as order
in thinking and method in composition. It would be doing him injustice,
however, while on this point, not to allow that his later writings exhibit
a closer connection of ideas, and greater succinctness of mental habits
than his earlier productions.
Besides the earlier
publications already adverted to, Mr. Bell edited an edition of "Rollin’s
Ancient History," including the volume on the "Arts and Sciences of the
Ancients." This work, published in Glasgow, in three closely printed
octavo volumes, bears ample evidence to the industry, research, and
sagacity of the editor. The notes are of great extent, and many of them on
the geography of the ancients, on the bearing of history, on prophecy,
more particularly the prophecies of Daniel, or such as those on the
retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks, the march of Hannibal across the Alps,
and the ruins of Babylon, amount to discussions of considerable length.
His other great work was
his "System of Geography," of which it is sufficient to say, that it has
been pronounced decidedly superior as a popular work to that of Malte Brun,
and on this account was subsequently republished in America. In this
country it obtained a very extensive circulation. The preparation of these
works, and of materials left incomplete for a "General Gazetteer,"
occupied a great many years of Mr. Bell’s life. He also took a lively
interest in the success of several scientific periodicals, and aided their
progress by numerous valuable contributions from his own pen. In all his
writings, from the causes already assigned, there is too little effort at
analysis and compression. Much might with advantage have been abridged,
and much pared off. In his "System of Geography" he occasionally borrowed
the correcting pen of a friend, hence its composition is more regulated
and chastened.
Mr. Bell’s moral character
was unimpeachable. He was remarkable for plain, undissembling honesty, and
the strictest regard to truth. In all that constituted practical
independence of character, he was well furnished; he could neither brook
dependence nor stoop to complaint. He was in the strictest sense of the
word a pious man. He was a humble and sincere Christian, and his
impressions of a religious nature appear to have been acquired in early
life. He had a deep sense of the corruption of human nature, and saw the
necessity of man’s justification by faith alone. He concurred with his
whole heart in that interpretation of the doctrines of the Bible commonly
called the Calvinistic; but in no sense of the word was he sectarian in
spirit; he had no bigotry or intolerance of opinion on religious points,
although few could wield the massive weapons of theological controversy
with greater vigour and effect. |