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The author of
the "Treasury of Words" could hardly have thought that his
name would become forever associated with a particular book,
even though he hoped that he was suggesting a unique way of
utilizing the richness and flexibility of the English
language. But for almost 150 years Roget's work has been the
constant companion of all those who aspire to use the
language most effectively.
The career of
Peter Mark Roget prior to the publication of his
Thesaurus in 1852 when he was 73 years old, while
largely devoted to science and to medicine, required of him
a facility with words in the delivery of ideas and concepts.
A lifetime of secretaryships for several learned societies
had thoroughly familiarized him with the need for clarity
and forcefulness of expression. That he was justified in his
concept is made obvious by the universal acceptance of his
thesaurus as an indispensable tool for all those who wish to
write and speak with eloquence.
Born in London
the son of a Protestant pastor who died at an early age,
Roget was raised by his mother. He studied at Edinburgh
University from 1793 to 1798 and received an M.D. after his
successful defense of his Latin thesis dealing with the laws
of chemical affinity. He was, however, too late to share in
that institution's happy days as a stunning example of the
Scottish Enlightenment. He was not to know William Cullen,
the great nosologist, nor Alexander Monro Primus who brought
Hermann Boer-haave's ethos of a medical school from Leyden;
but he did learn anatomy from Monro Secundus and medicine
from John Gregory. The bright stars of David Hume, denied
professorship at the University for his radical thinking,
and that of Adam Smith had long since blazed across the
Scottish intellectual world. Moreover, Roget was too early
for Sir James Young Simpson and chloroform, or for the
dexterous Syme who was mentor and father-in-law to the great
Lord Lister. While Roget was in Edinburgh, the soil was
being prepared for the phenomenon of Paris Medicine, the
next wave of medical advance, which would be built on the
ruins of the French Revolution.
After his
graduation, the young physician looked about for the
connections he would need to launch a medical career. In
this he was fortunate in having the concerned attention of
his uncle, Sir Samuel Romilly, whose own promising political
potential, shortened by his suicide, provided an entree to
certain segments of English scientific and intellectual
life. Through his uncle, Roget was introduced to Lord
Lansdowne, for whom he served briefly as personal physician,
and to Jeremy Bentham. On his own initiative, Roget spent
some time in Bristol in Thomas Beddoes's Pneumatic
Institute, devoted to the treatment of human illness using
various gases. There he may have met illustrious figures
Humphry Davy, James Watt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William
Wordsworth and Robert Southey.
In the midst of
his desultory round of attendance at lectures and dispensary
duties, Roget learned that his uncle had maneuvered for him
an opportunity to tutor two scions of a wealthy Manchester
manufacturer on a grand tour of Europe. The Peace of Amiens
had been signed in 1802 and continental travel was once
again open to English families anxious to provide their
children with the advantages of foreign scenes.
Roget was
twenty-three when he shepherded his charges across the
English Channel and on to Paris, where they entered into the
round of parties and dinners opened to them through letters
from Sir Samuel and from the boys' family. But there was
more than that. Roget hired a French tutor and supervised
his charges' studies in mathematics, chemistry and geology.
He also saw to it that there were the obligatory trips to
museums as well as to the theatre and that the boys wrote
their impressions and comments after each visit.
The little
party pushed on to Geneva, not without encountering
obstructions, delays and disappointments injected by the
French bureaucracy. In Geneva, although the city had
recently been annexed by Napoleon, the group felt secure
enough to settle down to a life of studies, parties and
local sightseeing. The respite was short-lived, however. The
Peace of Amiens was abrogated by Napoleon in 1803 and the
position of any Englishman in French territory was in doubt.
Warned by Mme. de Stael that he faced internment, Roget
undertook to establish for himself Genevan citizenship on
the basis of his father's birth in that city. Through
prodigious effort and resourcefulness remarkable in so young
a man, Roget sneaked the party, dressed as peasants, into
Germany. He was successful in making his way to Denmark and
thence to England, delivering his charges back to their
family.
Manchester now
offered the best opportunity to establish a medical
practice, since Roget could count on the support of the
wealthy Philips family, whose sons had shared his French
experience. He quickly became associated with the local
infirmary and with the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society, before which body he gave a series of lectures on
physiology that historians credit as forming the basis of
what became the School of Medicine in that city. As
D.L.Emblen points out in his biography of Roget, "... [he]
showed that his chief interest in the new science of
physiology lay in the organization and order of several
aspects of that subject and in the relationship of the
subject to such kindred fields as anatomy." (Peter Mark
Roget: The Word and the Man, D. L. Emblen, Thomas
Crowell: New York, 1970, p. 96). It was Roget's meticulous,
precise way of looking at order, at plan and at
interdependence in animal economy that would eventually find
expression in his unique and practical lexicographic
experiment.
But the great
metropolis beckoned and the young physician finally decided
on a London career. Roget was never outstandingly successful
as a medical practitioner. He had, however, become
associated with the establishment of the Northern
Dispensary, the quintessential Victorian expression of
medical charity, to which he devoted a lifetime of practice.
Roget's metier was teaching and institutional activities. He
lectured in the Theory and Practice of Physic at the Great
Windmill Street School, which served as the school of
anatomy for Middlesex Hospital before that institution was
eclipsed by the new University College on Gower Street. The
Medical and Chirurgical Society, founded to bridge the gap
between medicine and surgery, commanded much of Roget's
attention during his London days. He served as the Society's
secretary for twelve years and contributed to its journal
Transactions. In 1814 he became a Fellow in the Royal
Society on the basis of a paper he wrote describing a
forerunner of the slide rule. He contributed many articles
to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which were carried
through several editions. In those pages he crossed swords
with George Combe, the ardent promoter of phrenology, a
discipline which Roget could not support. While serving as
secretary of the Royal Society he wrote the Bndgewater
Treatise on Physiology, which demonstrated anew Roget's
ability to organize and classify the essentials of a rapidly
developing science.
Although
extremely occupied during these years, as a list of his
extensive memberships in scientific and cultural
organizations shows, Roget seems never to have captured the
attention of his peers to the extent that niany of his
contemporaries enjoyed. There is a hint that he was always
just below the top rank, never in the front. It was, after
all, an age of giants, and to be even in the midst of all
that ferment was remarkable enough. His active oublic life
came to an end when he was eased out of the secretaryship of
the Royal Society after a conflict over the operation of the
library, and was literally forced into retirement.
An inactive
retirement was not compatible with Roget's lifestyle. Since
childhood, putting ideas and concepts in writing had been
second nature to him. He dwelt in a world of language and
his orderly, systematic mind lent itself to classification.
More than a list of synonyms, more than a dictionary, the
thesaurus Roget devised and constantly improved upon during
this time was a unique ordering of the English language to
be used by those desiring to impart an exacting and
felicitous tone to written or spoken material. Grouped by
ideas rather than by a mere alphabetical listing, the
thesaurus enabled the user to find the exact word or phrase
needed for a specific purpose. Roget had been keeping such a
word list for many years. He now proposed to enlarge it and
present it to the world of users of the English language.
The success of
this venture was never in doubt. Roget supervised some
twenty-five editions and printings of the thesaurus and was
actively at work on his masterpiece when he died in 1869 at
the age of ninety. Roget's International Thesaurus®
continues to be issued. For all those who deal with words
and with ideas as expressed in words it has become
indispensable. It remains a monument of scholarship and a
tribute to the industry and breadth of knowledge of one of
the lesser-known Victorian greats.
Donald F. Kent,
M.D. |
