William Herschel was descended from one of three brothers, whose Lutheran opinions made it expedient for them to quit Moravia early in the seventeenth century. Hans Herschel thereupon settled as a brewer at Pirna, in Saxony; his son Abraham rose to some repute as a landscape-gardener in the royal service at Dresden; and Abraham’s youngest son, Isaac, brought into the world with him, in 1707, an irresistible instinct and aptitude for music. Having studied at Berlin, he made his way in 1731 to Hanover, where he was immediately appointed oboist in the band of the Hanoverian Guard. A year later he married Anna Ilse Moritzen, by whom he had ten children. The fourth of these, Frederick William, kn…
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