Note 84 — MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE; ANTERIOR TO HIS SETTLEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA.

The opinion, that Mr. Rittenhouse was, in his youth and the first years of his manhood, “without literary friends or society, and with but two or three books,” though erroneous in fact, was propagated pretty early; and that opinion has, since, generally prevailed. About twenty-two years before his death, a book was published in Philadelphia, under the title of Caspipina’s Letters; of which the Rev. Mr. Duché, then assistant-minister of Christ-church and St. Peter’s in that city, was the writer. In that pleasant little work, its amiable and worthy author (who has been dead many years) has thus mentioned our philosopher. “After taking a few turns in the garden, we walked back again to the college, where we had appointed to meet the modest and ingenious Mr. Rittenhouse, who, without one single advantage from a private tutor, or public education, by the mere force of genius and industry, may now justly be reckoned the first astronomer and mathematician in the world.”

Under such circumstances as these, it is by no means a matter of surprise, that Dr. Rush should have been led into a similar mistake.

It is, nevertheless, truly astonishing to find an American writer (the late Rev. Mr. Linn,) who, five years after Dr. Rittenhouse’s death, published in Philadelphia, where both resided, a poem entitled, “The Powers of Genius;” but, in which the name of Rittenhouse is not once noticed! And yet that gentleman had not omitted to introduce, in one of his notes, an observation which shews, that an European philosopher, also of sublime genius, was present to his mind’s eye!—“From the exhibitions of American talents,” said Mr. Linn, “I indulge the warmest expectations. I behold, in imagination, the Newtons, the Miltons, and the Robertsons, of this new world; and I behold the sun of genius” (likewise “in imagination,” it is presumed,) “pouring on our land his meridian beams.”

The writer of these memoirs believes Dr. Linn to have been a very worthy, as well as an ingenious man: as such, he regrets his premature death, and entertains a respect for his memory. But he could not, in justice to the merit of Dr. Rittenhouse’s character, pass unnoticed so unaccountable an omission as the one just mentioned, in Dr. Linn’s Poem.