Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves
Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves
Neaves was known as one of the early analysts of the
Life
Neaves was born in Edinburgh on 14 October 1800, the son of Charles Neaves (1777-1868), a Forfar solicitor and clerk of the Justiciary Court in Edinburgh, and his first wife. His father later married Mary Anne Wilson (1792-1887), sister of John and James Wilson.[1]
Neaves was educated at the
From 1841 to 1845, he was
Charles Neaves had acknowledged skills as a composer of verse.
He was vice-president of the
He is buried in the family plot in Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh with his second wife, Elisabeth MacDonald (1811-1888). His first wife, Mary Anne, is buried in a south section of Dean Cemetery.
Evolutionary analyst
As a judge of the Court of Session, Neaves was familiar with one of his predecessors, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, to whom he credited the origination of the concepts of the theory of evolution.[6] In 1875, Neaves published a poem within a book of verse[7][8] to establish this point:
Though Darwin now proclaims the law
And spreads it far abroad, O!
The man that first the secret saw
Was honest old Monboddo.
The architect precedence takes
Of him that bears the hod, O!
So up and at them, Land of Cakes,
We'll vindicate Monboddo
In another instance he elaborates on Monboddo's writings again in Blackwood's Magazine, indicating the clarity with which Monboddo foresaw evolutionary theory:
The rise of every man he loved to trace,
Up to the very pod O!
And, in baboons, our parent race
Was found by old Monboddo.
Their A, B, C, he made them speak,
And learn their qui, quae, quod, O!
Till Hebrew, Latin, Welsh, and Greek
They knew as well's Monboddo!
Poet and critic
Not only did Neaves produce poetry but he was a prolific critic, often in venues such as Blackwood's Magazine. One of his thematic elements was virtue, which naturally tied to his theological roots. He also conducted critiques of others' poetry based upon how their attitudes deviated from virtue and a common theme of under-recognition of women, as in the scalding criticism of the poet Thomas Carew.[9]
Quotations
In
Pouter, tumbler and fantail are from the same source;
The racer and hack may be traced to one horse;
So men were developed from monkeys of course,
Which nobody can deny.
This quote became so famous in that early era that the authorship of the quotation became a matter of public dispute. Although Bartlett and Darwin clearly attributed the quotation to Neaves, Zachary Macaulay argued that he had made this statement three years earlier.
Lord Neaves may have also been an early thinker on the issue of women's rights with the following quote, that would have bordered on heresy in his era:
So I wonder a woman, the Mistress of Hearts,
Should assent to aspire to be Master of Arts;
A Ministering Angel in Woman we see,
And an Angel need cover no other Degree.
—O why should a Woman not get a Degree?
See also
- History of evolution
References
- ^ Grave of Mary Ann Neaves, Dean Cemetery
- ^ "Edinburgh Post Office annual directory, 1832-1833". National Library of Scotland. p. 142. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
- ^ Edinburgh Post Office directories, 1845-1878
- ^ Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scotland, Accession 4BAI
- ^ British Authors of the 19th Century (1936)
- ^ Watt, Archibald, A Goodly Heritage, Halcon Printing Ltd., Stonehaven, UK (1985)
- ^ "The Memory of Monboddo: An Excellent New Song," Blackwood's Magazine 90 (Sept. 1861): 363–64
- ^ Neaves, Charles, Lord Neaves, Songs and Verses, Fourth Edition, London p5 (1875)
- ^ Charles Neaves, "Carew and Herrick," in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XLV, No. CCLXXXIV, June 1839, pp. 782–94. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Vol. 13
- ^ Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1855