FORSTER (George), the son of the preceding, was born at Dantzick, and accompanied his father to England when he was about twelve years of age. He was entered a student in the academy at Warrington, and soon acquired a very perfect use of the English tongue. He also distinguished himself greatly by his attainments in science and literature in general; adding to an excellent memory, quick parts and a fertile imagination. His temper was mild and amiable; in which he much differed from his father, one of the most quarrelsome and irritable of men; by which disposition, joined to a total want of prudence in common concerns, he lost almost all the
friends his talents had acquired him, and involved himself and family in perpetual difficulties.
The case was very different with the subject of this memoir; for when Dr Forster was appointed naturalist to captain Cook, his son, through the interest of the friends whom his good nature had made, was associated with him in his office. The voyage continued during the space of three years; and on their return the two Forsters published jointly a botanical work in Latin, containing the characters of a number of new genera of plants, discovered by them in their circumnavigation. Thus far they acted properly in the service of government for the advancement of science; but in publishing another work their conduct was not proper.
The father had come under an engagement not to publish separately, from the authorised narrative, any account of the voyage; and this engagement he and his son were determined to violate. An account of the voyage, therefore, was published in English and German by George; and the language, which is correct and elegant, was undoubtedly his; but those who knew both him and his father, are satisfied that the matter proceeded from the joint stock of their observations and reflections. Several parts of the work, and particularly the elaborate investigations relative to the languages spoken by the natives of the South Sea Islands, and the speculations concerning their successive migrations, are thought to be strongly impressed with the genius of the elder Forster.
That a work thus surreptitiously ushered into the world was not patronised by those with whom the authors had so ungratefully broken faith, could excite no wonder, even though the publication itself had been otherwise unexceptionable; but this was far from being the case. It abounds with reflections injurious to the government whose servants they had been, and not just to the navigators employed on voyages of discovery. The younger Forster, too, had some time before published a book replete with factious sentiments; and the coldness with which he and his father were both treated in consequence of such conduct, determined them to leave London.
We have already related all that we know of the father, who was recommended to our notice only by his connection with the illustrious Cook; and of the son, there is a short account in the Monthly Magazine, by Charles Pougens, fraught with those impious and seditious reflections which so frequently disgrace a miscellany, which would otherwise be highly valuable. According to this author, George Forster was desirous to settle in France. Avaricious of glory, and an idolator of liberty, Paris was the city most suitable to his taste and character of any in Europe. Notwithstanding this, he was soon constrained to leave it: the interest of his family demanded this sacrifice; for a learned man, who fails round the world, may enrich his memory, but he will not better his fortune. He was accordingly obliged to accept the place of professor of natural history in the university of Cassel. But his factious spirit accompanied him whithersoever he went. It is well known, that the petty princes of Germany have long been in the practice of hiring out their troops to more opulent sovereigns engaged in war. This practice, which we are not disposed to defend, not only scandalized our Cosmopolite, but so irritated
ritated his temper and offended his pride, because, forsooth, the Prince of Hesse-Cassel would not by him be persuaded to relinquish it, that he did every thing in his power, we are told, to withdraw himself from a situation so unsuitable to a thinking being. Every thing in his power! Did the Prince retain him in the university contrary to his inclination? The university of Cassel must be contemptible indeed, if the prelections of such a man as George Forster were of such consequence to it.
He got away, however; and the senate of Poland having offered him a chair in the university of Wilna, Forster accepted of the invitation. But although this office was very lucrative, and the enlightened patriots of that country did not neglect to procure him all the literary succours of which he stood in need, he could not be long happy in a semi-barbarous nation, in which liberty was suffered to expire under the intrigues of Russia and Prussia.
On this, with wonderful consistency, the man who could not endure the despotism of Hesse, or even the aristocracy of England, accepted of the propositions of that friend to liberty Catharine II; who, jealous of every species of glory, wished to signalize her reign, by procuring to the Russian nation the honour of undertaking, after the example of England and France, a new voyage of discovery round the world. Unfortunately for the progress of knowledge, the war with the Ottoman Porte occasioned the miscarriage of this useful project.
But Forster could not long remain in obscurity. The different publications with which he occasionally enriched natural history and literature, increased his reputation. The Elector of Mentz accordingly appointed him president of the university of the same name; and he was discharging the functions of his new office when the French troops took possession of the capital. This philosophical traveller, who had studied society under all the various aspects arising from different degrees of civilization; who had viewed man simple and happy at Otaheite;—an eater of human flesh in New Zealand, corrupted by commerce in England, depraved in France by luxury and atheism, in Brabant by superstition, and in Poland by anarchy;—beheld with wild enthusiasm the dawns of the French revolution, and was the first, says M. Pougens, to promulgate republicanism in Germany.
The Mayencois, who had formed themselves into a national convention, sent him to Paris, in order to solicit their reunion with the French republic. But, in the course of his mission, the city of Mentz was besieged and retaken by the Prussian troops. This event occasioned the loss of all his property; and what was still more disastrous, that of his numerous manuscripts, which fell into the hands of the Prince of Prussia.
Our biographer, after conducting his hero through these scenes of public life, proceeds to give us a view of his domestic habits and private principles. He tells us, that he formed a connection (whether a marriage or not, the studied ambiguity of his language leaves rather uncertain) with a young woman named Theresa Hayne, who, by the illumination of French philosophy, had divested herself of all the prejudices which, we trust, the ladies of this country still consider as their
honour, as they are certainly the guardians of domestic peace. Miss Hayne was indignant at the very name of duty. With Eloisa she had taken it into her head, that
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment dies.
She was frank enough, however, says our author, to acknowledge the errors of her imagination; and from this expression, and his calling her afterwards Forster's wife, we are led to suppose that she was actually married to him. But their union, of whatever kind, was of short duration. Though the lady is said to have been passionately attached to celebrated names, the name of George Forster was not sufficient to satisfy her. He soon ceased, we are informed, to please her; she therefore transferred her affections to another; and, as was very natural for a woman who was indignant at the name of duty, she proved false to her husband's bed. Forster, however, pretended to be such a friend to the modern rights of men and women, that he defended the character of his Theresa against crowds who condemned her conduct. Nay, we are told, that he considered himself, and every other husband who ceases to please, as the adulterer of nature. He therefore laboured strenuously to obtain a divorce, to enable Theresa Hayne to espouse the man whom she preferred to himself. Strange, however, to tell, the prejudices even of this Cosmopolite were too strong for his principles. While he was endeavouring to procure the divorce, he made preparations at the same time, by the study of the oriental languages, to undertake a journey to Tibet and Indostan, in order to remove from that part of the world, in which both his heart and his person had experienced so severe a shock. But the chagrin occasioned by his misfortunes, joined to a scorbutic affection, to which he had been long subject, and which he had contracted at sea during the voyage of circumnavigation, abridged his life, and prevented him from realising this double project. He died at Paris, at the age of thirty-nine, on the 13th of February 1792.
This is a strange tale; but we trust it will not prove useless. The latter part of it at least shows, that when men divest themselves of the principles of religion, they soon degenerate from the dignity of philosophers to the level of mere sensualists; and that the woman who can, in defiance of decorum and honour, transfer her affections and her person from man to man, ranks no higher in the scale of being than a female brute of more than common sagacity. It shews likewise, that the contempt of our modern fages for those partial attachments which unite individuals in one family, is a mere pretence; that the dictates of nature will be heard; and the laws of nature's God obeyed. George Forster, though he was such a zealous advocate for liberty and equality, as to vindicate the adultery of his wife; yet felt so sensibly the wound which her infidelity inflicted on his honour, that he could not survive it, but perished, in consequence, in the flower of his age.