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Title: A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I

Author: Augustus De Morgan

Editor: David Eugene Smith

Release date: October 20, 2007 [eBook #23100]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BUDGET OF
PARADOXES, VOLUME I ***

Transcriber's A few typographical errors have been corrected. They
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appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the
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BY AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN

A BUDGET OF
PARADOXES
REPRINTED WITH THE AUTHOR'S ADDITIONS FROM THE ATHENAEUM

SECOND EDITION EDITED BY DAVID EUGENE SMITH

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST NAGEL

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

UNABRIDGED EDITION—TWO VOLUMES BOUND AS ONE

Volume I

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC., NEW YORK

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

(1872)

It is not without hesitation that I have taken upon myself the editorship of a
work left avowedly imperfect by the author, and, from its miscellaneous and
discursive character, difficult of completion with due regard to editorial
limitations by a less able hand.
Had the author lived to carry out his purpose he would have looked through
his Budget again, amplifying and probably rearranging some of its contents.
He had collected materials for further illustration of Paradox of the kind
treated of in this book; and he meant to write a second part, in which the
contradictions and inconsistencies of orthodox learning would have been
subjected to the same scrutiny and castigation as heterodox ignorance had
already received.
It will be seen that the present volume contains more than the Athenæum
Budget. Some of the additions formed a Supplement to the original articles.
These supplementary paragraphs were, by the author, placed after those to
which they respectively referred, being distinguished from the rest of the
text by brackets. I have omitted these brackets as useless, except where they
were needed to indicate subsequent writing.
Another and a larger portion of the work consists of discussion of matters of
contemporary interest, for the Budget was in some degree a receptacle for
the author's thoughts on any literary, scientific, or social question. Having
grown thus gradually to its present size, the book as it was left was not quite
in a fit condition for publication, but the alterations which have been made
are slight and few, being in most cases verbal, and such as the sense
absolutely required, or transpositions of sentences to secure coherence with
the rest, in places where the author, in his more recent insertion of them,
had overlooked the connection in which they stood. In no case has the
meaning been in any degree modified or interfered with.
One rather large omission must be mentioned here. It is an account of the
quarrel between Sir James South and Mr. Troughton on the mounting, etc.
of the equatorial telescope at Campden Hill. At some future time when the
affair has passed entirely out of the memory of living Astronomers, the
appreciative sketch, which is omitted in this edition of the Budget, will be
an interesting piece of history and study of character.[1]

A very small portion of Mr. James Smith's circle-squaring has been left out,
with a still smaller portion of Mr. De Morgan's answers to that
Cyclometrical Paradoxer.
In more than one place repetitions, which would have disappeared under the
author's revision, have been allowed to remain, because they could not have
been taken away without leaving a hiatus, not easy to fill up without
damage to the author's meaning.
I give these explanations in obedience to the rules laid down for the
guidance of editors at page 15.[2] If any apology for the fragmentary
character of the book be thought necessary, it may be found in the author's
own words at page 281 of the second volume.[3]
The publication of the Budget could not have been delayed without
lessening the interest attaching to the writer's thoughts upon questions of
our own day. I trust that, incomplete as the work is compared with what it
might have been, I shall not be held mistaken in giving it to the world.
Rather let me hope that it will be welcomed as an old friend returning under
great disadvantages, but bringing a pleasant remembrance of the
amusement which its weekly appearance in the Athenæum gave to both
writer and reader.
The Paradoxes are dealt with in chronological order. This will be a guide to
the reader, and with the alphabetical Index of Names, etc., will, I trust,
obviate all difficulty of reference.
Sophia De Morgan.

6 Merton Road, Primrose Hill.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

If Mrs. De Morgan felt called upon to confess her hesitation at taking upon
herself the labor of editing these Paradoxes, much more should one who
was born two generations later, who lives in another land and who was
reared amid different influences, confess to the same feeling when
undertaking to revise this curious medley. But when we consider the nature

of the work, the fact that its present rarity deprives so many readers of the
enjoyment of its delicious satire, and the further fact that allusions that were
commonplace a half century ago are now forgotten, it is evident that some
one should take up the work and perform it con amore.
Having long been an admirer of De Morgan, having continued his work in
the bibliography of early arithmetics, and having worked in his library
among the books of which he was so fond, it is possible that the present
editor, whatever may be his other shortcomings, may undertake the labor
with as much of sympathy as any one who is in a position to perform it.
With this thought in mind, two definite rules were laid down at the
beginning of the task: (1) That no alteration in the text should be made, save
in slightly modernizing spelling and punctuation and in the case of manifest
typographical errors; (2) That whenever a note appeared it should show at
once its authorship, to the end that the material of the original edition might
appear intact.
In considering, however, the unbroken sequence of items that form the
Budget, it seems clear that readers would be greatly aided if the various
leading topics were separated in some convenient manner. After
considerable thought it was decided to insert brief captions from time to
time that might aid the eye in selecting the larger subjects of the text. In
some parts of the work these could easily be taken from the original folio
heads, but usually they had to be written anew. While, therefore, the present
editor accepts the responsibility for the captions of the various subdivisions,
he has endeavored to insert them in harmony with the original text.
As to the footnotes, the first edition had only a few, some due to De Morgan
himself and others to Mrs. De Morgan. In the present edition those due to
the former are signed A. De M., and those due to Mrs. De Morgan appear
with her initials, S. E. De M. For all other footnotes the present editor is
responsible. In preparing them the effort has been made to elucidate the text
by supplying such information as the casual reader might wish as he passes
over the pages. Hundreds of names are referred to in the text that were more
or less known in England half a century ago, but are now forgotten there
and were never familiar elsewhere. Many books that were then current have
now passed out of memory, and much that agitated England in De Morgan's
prime seems now like ancient history. Even with respect to well-known

names, a little information as to dates and publications will often be
welcome, although the editor recognizes that it will quite as often be
superfluous. In order, therefore, to derive the pleasure that should come
from reading the Budget, the reader should have easy access to the
information that the notes are intended to supply. That they furnish too
much here and too little there is to be expected. They are a human product,
and if they fail to serve their purpose in all respects it is hoped that this
failure will not seriously interfere with the reader's pleasure.
In general the present editor has refrained from expressing any opinions that
would strike a discordant note in the reading of the text as De Morgan left
it. The temptation is great to add to the discussion at various points, but it is
a temptation to be resisted. To furnish such information as shall make the
reading more pleasant, rather than to attempt to improve upon one of the
most delicious bits of satire of the nineteenth century, has been the editor's
wish. It would have been an agreeable task to review the history of circle
squaring, of the trisection problem, and of the duplication of the cube. This,
however, would be to go too far afield. For the benefit of those who wish to
investigate the subject the editor can only refer to such works and articles as
the following: F. Rudio, Archimedes, Huygens, Lambert, Legendre,—mit
einer Uebersicht über die Geschichte des Problemes von der Quadratur des
Zirkels, Leipsic, 1892; Thomas Muir, "Circle," in the eleventh edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica; the various histories of mathematics; and to his
own article on "The Incommensurability of π" in Prof. J. W. A. Young's
Monographs on Topics of Modern Mathematics, New York, 1911.
The editor wishes to express his appreciation and thanks to Dr. Paul Carus,
editor of The Monist and The Open Court for the opportunity of
undertaking this work; to James Earl Russell, LL.D., Dean of Teachers
College, Columbia University, for his encouragement in its prosecution; to
Miss Caroline Eustis Seely for her intelligent and painstaking assistance in
securing material for the notes; and to Miss Lydia G. Robinson and Miss
Anna A. Kugler for their aid and helpful suggestions in connection with the
proof-sheets. Without the generous help of all five this work would have
been impossible.
David Eugene Smith.

Teachers College, Columbia University.

A BUDGET OF PARADOXES
INTRODUCTORY.

If I had before me a fly and an elephant, having never seen more than one
such magnitude of either kind; and if the fly were to endeavor to persuade
me that he was larger than the elephant, I might by possibility be placed in a
difficulty. The apparently little creature might use such arguments about the
effect of distance, and might appeal to such laws of sight and hearing as I, if
unlearned in those things, might be unable wholly to reject. But if there
were a thousand flies, all buzzing, to appearance, about the great creature;
and, to a fly, declaring, each one for himself, that he was bigger than the
quadruped; and all giving different and frequently contradictory reasons;
and each one despising and opposing the reasons of the others—I should
feel quite at my ease. I should certainly say, My little friends, the case of
each one of you is destroyed by the rest. I intend to show flies in the swarm,
with a few larger animals, for reasons to be given.
In every age of the world there has been an established system, which has
been opposed from time to time by isolated and dissentient reformers. The
established system has sometimes fallen, slowly and gradually: it has either
been upset by the rising influence of some one man, or it has been sapped
by gradual change of opinion in the many.
I have insisted on the isolated character of the dissentients, as an element of
the a priori probabilities of the case. Show me a schism, especially a
growing schism, and it is another thing. The homeopathists, for instance,
shall be, if any one so think, as wrong as St. John Long; but an organized
opposition, supported by the efforts of many acting in concert, appealing to
common arguments and experience, with perpetual succession and a
common seal, as the Queen says in the charter, is, be the merit of the schism
what it may, a thing wholly different from the case of the isolated opponent
in the mode of opposition to it which reason points out.

During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been
gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become
mathematical. The question now is, not whether this or that hypothesis is
better or worse to the pure thought, but whether it accords with observed
phenomena in those consequences which can be shown necessarily to
follow from it, if it be true. Even in those sciences which are not yet under
the dominion of mathematics, and perhaps never will be, a working copy of
the mathematical process has been made. This is not known to the followers
of those sciences who are not themselves mathematicians and who very
often exalt their horns against the mathematics in consequence. They might
as well be squaring the circle, for any sense they show in this particular.
A great many individuals, ever since the rise of the mathematical method,
have, each for himself, attacked its direct and indirect consequences. I shall
not here stop to point out how the very accuracy of exact science gives
better aim than the preceding state of things could give. I shall call each of
these persons a paradoxer, and his system a paradox. I use the word in the
old sense: a paradox is something which is apart from general opinion,
either in subject-matter, method, or conclusion.
Many of the things brought forward would now be called crotchets, which
is the nearest word we have to old paradox. But there is this difference, that
by calling a thing a crotchet we mean to speak lightly of it; which was not
the necessary sense of paradox. Thus in the sixteenth century many spoke
of the earth's motion as the paradox of Copernicus, who held the ingenuity
of that theory in very high esteem, and some, I think, who even inclined
towards it. In the seventeenth century, the depravation of meaning took
place, in England at least. Phillips says paradox is "a thing which seemeth
strange"—here is the old meaning: after a colon he proceeds—"and absurd,
and is contrary to common opinion," which is an addition due to his own
time.
Some of my readers are hardly inclined to think that the word paradox
could once have had no disparagement in its meaning; still less that persons
could have applied it to themselves. I chance to have met with a case in
point against them. It is Spinoza's Philosophia Scripturæ Interpres,
Exercitatio Paradoxa, printed anonymously at Eleutheropolis, in 1666. This
place was one of several cities in the clouds, to which the cuckoos resorted

who were driven away by the other birds; that is, a feigned place of
printing, adopted by those who would have caught it if orthodoxy could
have caught them. Thus, in 1656, the works of Socinus could only be
printed at Irenopolis. The author deserves his self-imposed title, as in the
following:[4]
"Quanto sane satius fuisset illam [Trinitatem] pro mysterio non habuisse, et
Philosophiæ ope, antequam quod esset statuerent, secundum veræ logices
præcepta quid esset cum Cl. Kleckermanno investigasse; tanto fervore ac
labore in profundissimas speluncas et obscurissimos metaphysicarum
speculationum atque fictionum recessus se recipere ut ab adversariorum
telis sententiam suam in tuto collocarent. Profecto magnus ille vir ... dogma
illud, quamvis apud theologos eo nomine non multum gratiæ iniverit, ita ex
immotis Philosophiæ fundamentis explicat ac demonstrat, ut paucis tantum
immutatis, atque additis, nihil amplius animus veritate sincere deditus
desiderare possit."
This is properly paradox, though also heterodox. It supposes, contrary to all
opinion, orthodox and heterodox, that philosophy can, with slight changes,
explain the Athanasian doctrine so as to be at least compatible with
orthodoxy. The author would stand almost alone, if not quite; and this is
what he meant. I have met with the counter-paradox. I have heard it
maintained that the doctrine as it stands, in all its mystery is a priori more
likely than any other to have been Revelation, if such a thing were to be;
and that it might almost have been predicted.
After looking into books of paradoxes for more than thirty years, and
holding conversation with many persons who have written them, and many
who might have done so, there is one point on which my mind is fully made
up. The manner in which a paradoxer will show himself, as to sense or
nonsense, will not depend upon what he maintains, but upon whether he has
or has not made a sufficient knowledge of what has been done by others,
especially as to the mode of doing it, a preliminary to inventing knowledge
for himself. That a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is one of the most
fallacious of proverbs. A person of small knowledge is in danger of trying
to make his little do the work of more; but a person without any is in more
danger of making his no knowledge do the work of some. Take the
speculations on the tides as an instance. Persons with nothing but a little

geometry have certainly exposed themselves in their modes of objecting to
results which require the higher mathematics to be known before an
independent opinion can be formed on sufficient grounds. But persons with
no geometry at all have done the same thing much more completely.
There is a line to be drawn which is constantly put aside in the arguments
held by paradoxers in favor of their right to instruct the world. Most persons
must, or at least will, like the lady in Cadogan Place,[5] form and express an
immense variety of opinions on an immense variety of subjects; and all
persons must be their own guides in many things. So far all is well. But
there are many who, in carrying the expression of their own opinions
beyond the usual tone of private conversation, whether they go no further
than attempts at oral proselytism, or whether they commit themselves to the
press, do not reflect that they have ceased to stand upon the ground on
which their process is defensible. Aspiring to lead others, they have never
given themselves the fair chance of being first led by other others into
something better than they can start for themselves; and that they should
first do this is what both those classes of others have a fair right to expect.
New knowledge, when to any purpose, must come by contemplation of old
knowledge in every matter which concerns thought; mechanical contrivance
sometimes, not very often, escapes this rule. All the men who are now
called discoverers, in every matter ruled by thought, have been men versed
in the minds of their predecessors, and learned in what had been before
them. There is not one exception. I do not say that every man has made
direct acquaintance with the whole of his mental ancestry; many have, as I
may say, only known their grandfathers by the report of their fathers. But
even on this point it is remarkable how many of the greatest names in all
departments of knowledge have been real antiquaries in their several
subjects.
I may cite, among those who have wrought strongly upon opinion or
practice in science, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Euclid, Archimedes, Roger
Bacon, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Ramus, Tycho Brahé, Galileo, Napier,
Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton, Locke. I take none but names known out of
their fields of work; and all were learned as well as sagacious. I have
chosen my instances: if any one will undertake to show a person of little or
no knowledge who has established himself in a great matter of pure
thought, let him bring forward his man, and we shall see.

This is the true way of putting off those who plague others with their great
discoveries. The first demand made should be—Mr. Moses, before I allow
you to lead me over the Red Sea, I must have you show that you are learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians upon your own subject. The plea that it is
unlikely that this or that unknown person should succeed where Newton,
etc. have failed, or should show Newton, etc. to be wrong, is utterly null
and void. It was worthily versified by Sylvanus Morgan (the great herald
who in his Sphere of Gentry gave coat armor to "Gentleman Jesus," as he
said), who sang of Copernicus as follows (1652):

"If Tellus winged be,
The earth a motion round;
Then much deceived are they
Who nere before it found.
Solomon was the wisest,
His wit nere this attained;
Cease, then, Copernicus,
Thy hypothesis is vain."

Newton, etc. were once unknown; but they made themselves known by
what they knew, and then brought forward what they could do; which I see
is as good verse as that of Herald Sylvanus. The demand for previous
knowledge disposes of twenty-nine cases out of thirty, and the thirtieth is
worth listening to.
I have not set down Copernicus, Galileo, etc. among the paradoxers, merely
because everybody knows them; if my list were quite complete, they would
have been in it. But the reader will find Gilbert, the great precursor of sound
magnetical theory; and several others on whom no censure can be cast,
though some of their paradoxes are inadmissible, some unprovoked, and
some capital jokes, true or false: the author of Vestiges of Creation is an
instance. I expect that my old correspondent, General Perronet Thompson,
will admit that his geometry is part and parcel of my plan; and also that, if
that plan embraced politics, he would claim a place for his Catechism on
the Corn Laws, a work at one time paradoxical, but which had more to do
with the abolition of the bread-tax than Sir Robert Peel.

My intention in publishing this Budget in the Athenæum is to enable those
who have been puzzled by one or two discoverers to see how they look in a
lump. The only question is, has the selection been fairly made? To this my
answer is, that no selection at all has been made. The books are, without
exception, those which I have in my own library; and I have taken all—I
mean all of the kind: Heaven forbid that I should be supposed to have no
other books! But I may have been a collector, influenced in choice by bias?
I answer that I never have collected books of this sort—that is, I have never
searched for them, never made up my mind to look out for this book or that.
I have bought what happened to come in my way at show or auction; I have
retained what came in as part of the undescribed portion of miscellaneous
auction lots; I have received a few from friends who found them among
what they called their rubbish; and I have preserved books sent to me for
review. In not a few instances the books have been bound up with others,
unmentioned at the back; and for years I knew no more I had them than I
knew I had Lord Macclesfield's speech on moving the change of Style,
which, after I had searched shops, etc. for it in vain, I found had been
reposing on my own shelves for many years, at the end of a summary of
Leibnitz's philosophy. Consequently, I may positively affirm that the
following list is formed by accident and circumstance alone, and that it truly
represents the casualties of about a third of a century. For instance, the large
proportion of works on the quadrature of the circle is not my doing: it is the
natural share of this subject in the actual run of events.
[I keep to my plan of inserting only such books as I possessed in 1863,
except by casual notice in aid of my remarks. I have found several books on
my shelves which ought to have been inserted. These have their titles set
out at the commencement of their articles, in leading paragraphs; the
casuals are without this formality.[6]]
Before proceeding to open the Budget, I say something on my personal
knowledge of the class of discoverers who square the circle, upset Newton,
etc. I suspect I know more of the English class than any man in Britain. I
never kept any reckoning; but I know that one year with another—and less
of late years than in earlier time—I have talked to more than five in each
year, giving more than a hundred and fifty specimens. Of this I am sure, that
it is my own fault if they have not been a thousand. Nobody knows how
they swarm, except those to whom they naturally resort. They are in all

ranks and occupations, of all ages and characters. They are very earnest
people, and their purpose is bona fide the dissemination of their paradoxes.
A great many—the mass, indeed—are illiterate, and a great many waste
their means, and are in or approaching penury. But I must say that never, in
any one instance, has the quadrature of the circle, or the like, been made a
pretext for begging; even to be asked to purchase a book is of the very
rarest occurrence—it has happened, and that is all.
These discoverers despise one another: if there were the concert among
them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to
a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something to a very
genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my own door,
saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he picked it up in my
pocket for an introduction, I know not. But that day week came another
Frenchman to my house, and that day fortnight a French lady; both failed,
and I had no more trouble. The same thing happened with Poles. It is not so
with circle-squarers, etc.: they know nothing of each other. Some will read
this list, and will say I am right enough, generally speaking, but that there is
an exception, if I could but see it.
I do not mean, by my confession of the manner in which I have sinned
against the twenty-four hours, to hold myself out as accessible to personal
explanation of new plans. Quite the contrary: I consider myself as having
made my report, and being discharged from further attendance on the
subject. I will not, from henceforward, talk to any squarer of the circle,
trisector of the angle, duplicator of the cube, constructor of perpetual
motion, subverter of gravitation, stagnator of the earth, builder of the
universe, etc. I will receive any writings or books which require no answer,
and read them when I please: I will certainly preserve them—this list may
be enlarged at some future time.
There are three subjects which I have hardly anything upon; astrology,
mechanism, and the infallible way of winning at play. I have never cared to
preserve astrology. The mechanists make models, and not books. The
infallible winners—though I have seen a few—think their secret too
valuable, and prefer mutare quadrata rotundis—to turn dice into coin—at
the gaming-house: verily they have their reward.

I shall now select, to the mystic number seven, instances of my personal
knowledge of those who think they have discovered, in illustration of as
many misconceptions.
1. Attempt by help of the old philosophy, the discoverer not being in
possession of modern knowledge. A poor schoolmaster, in rags, introduced
himself to a scientific friend with whom I was talking, and announced that
he had found out the composition of the sun. "How was that done?"—"By
consideration of the four elements."—"What are they?"—"Of course, fire,
air, earth, and water."—"Did you not know that air, earth, and water, have
long been known to be no elements at all, but compounds?"—"What do you
mean, sir? Who ever heard of such a thing?"
2. The notion that difficulties are enigmas, to be overcome in a moment by a
lucky thought. A nobleman of very high rank, now long dead, read an article
by me on the quadrature, in an early number of the Penny Magazine. He
had, I suppose, school recollections of geometry. He put pencil to paper,
drew a circle, and constructed what seemed likely to answer, and, indeed,
was—as he said—certain, if only this bit were equal to that; which of
course it was not. He forwarded his diagram to the Secretary of the
Diffusion Society, to be handed to the author of the article, in case the
difficulty should happen to be therein overcome.
3. Discovery at all hazards, to get on in the world. Thirty years ago, an
officer of rank, just come from foreign service, and trying for a decoration
from the Crown, found that his claims were of doubtful amount, and was
told by a friend that so and so, who had got the order, had the additional
claim of scientific distinction. Now this officer, while abroad, had
bethought himself one day, that there really could be no difficulty in finding
the circumference of a circle: if a circle were rolled upon a straight line
until the undermost point came undermost again, there would be the straight
line equal to the circle. He came to me, saying that he did not feel equal to
the statement of his claim in this respect, but that if some clever fellow
would put the thing in a proper light, he thought his affair might be
managed. I was clever enough to put the thing in a proper light to himself,
to this extent at least, that, though perhaps they were wrong, the advisers of
the Crown would never put the letters K.C.B. to such a circle as his.

4. The notion that mathematicians cannot find the circle for common
purposes. A working man measured the altitude of a cylinder accurately,
and—I think the process of Archimedes was one of his proceedings—found
its bulk. He then calculated the ratio of the circumference to the diameter,
and found it answered very well on other modes of trial. His result was
about 3.14. He came to London, and somebody sent him to me. Like many
others of his pursuit, he seemed to have turned the whole force of his mind
upon one of his points, on which alone he would be open to refutation. He
had read some of Kater's experiments, and had got the Act of 1825 on
weights and measures. Say what I would, he had for a long time but one
answer—"Sir! I go upon Captain Kater and the Act of Parliament." But I
fixed him at last. I happened to have on the table a proof-sheet of the
Astronomical Memoirs, in which were a large number of observed places of
the planets compared with prediction, and asked him whether it could be
possible that persons who did not know the circle better than he had found
it could make the calculations, of which I gave him a notion, so accurately?
He was perfectly astonished, and took the titles of some books which he
said he would read.
5. Application for the reward from abroad. Many years ago, about twenty-
eight, I think, a Jesuit came from South America, with a quadrature, and a
cutting from a newspaper announcing that a reward was ready for the
discovery in England. On this evidence he came over. After satisfying him
that nothing had ever been offered here, I discussed his quadrature, which
was of no use. I succeeded better when I told him of Richard White, also a
Jesuit, and author of a quadrature published before 1648, under the name of
Chrysæspis, of which I can give no account, having never seen it. This
White (Albius) is the only quadrator who was ever convinced of his error.
My Jesuit was struck by the instance, and promised to read more geometry
—he was no Clavius—before he published his book. He relapsed, however,
for I saw his book advertised in a few days. I may say, as sufficient proof of
my being no collector, that I had not the curiosity to buy his book; and my
friend the Jesuit did not send me a copy, which he ought to have done, after
the hour I had given him.
6. Application for the reward at home. An agricultural laborer squared the
circle, and brought the proceeds to London. He left his papers with me, one
of which was the copy of a letter to the Lord Chancellor, desiring his

Lordship to hand over forthwith 100,000 pounds, the amount of the alleged
offer of reward. He did not go quite so far as M. de Vausenville, who, I
think in 1778, brought an action against the Academy of Sciences to recover
a reward to which he held himself entitled. I returned the papers, with a
note, stating that he had not the knowledge requisite to see in what the
problem consisted. I got for answer a letter in which I was told that a person
who could not see that he had done the thing should "change his business,
and appropriate his time and attention to a Sunday-school, to learn what he
could, and keep the litle children from durting their close." I also received a
letter from a friend of the quadrator, informing me that I knew his friend
had succeeded, and had been heard to say so. These letters were printed—
without the names of the writers—for the amusement of the readers of
Notes and Queries, First Series, xii. 57, and they will appear again in the
sequel.
[There are many who have such a deep respect for any attempt at thought
that they are shocked at ridicule even of those who have made themselves
conspicuous by pretending to lead the world in matters which they have not
studied. Among my anonyms is a gentleman who is angry at my treatment
of the "poor but thoughtful" man who is described in my introduction as
recommending me to go to a Sunday-school because I informed him that he
did not know in what the difficulty of quadrature consisted. My impugner
quite forgets that this man's "thoughtfulness" chiefly consisted in his
demanding a hundred thousand pounds from the Lord Chancellor for his
discovery; and I may add, that his greatest stretch of invention was finding
out that "the clergy" were the means of his modest request being unnoticed.
I mention this letter because it affords occasion to note a very common
error, namely, that men unread in their subjects have, by natural wisdom,
been great benefactors of mankind. My critic says, "Shakspeare, whom the
Pror (sic) may admit to be a wisish man, though an object of contempt as to
learning ..." Shakespeare an object of contempt as to learning! Though not
myself a thoroughgoing Shakespearean—and adopting the first half of the
opinion given by George III, "What! is there not sad stuff? only one must
not say so"—I am strongly of opinion that he throws out the masonic signs
of learning in almost every scene, to all who know what they are. And this
over and above every kind of direct evidence. First, foremost, and enough,
the evidence of Ben Jonson that he had "little Latin and less Greek"; then

Shakespeare had as much Greek as Jonson would call some, even when he
was depreciating. To have any Greek at all was in those days exceptional. In
Shakespeare's youth St. Paul's and Merchant Taylor's schools were to have
masters learned in good and clean Latin literature, and also in Greek if such
may be gotten. When Jonson spoke as above, he intended to put
Shakespeare low among the learned, but not out of their pale; and he spoke
as a rival dramatist, who was proud of his own learned sock; and it may be
a subject of inquiry how much Latin he would call little. If Shakespeare's
learning on certain points be very much less visible than Jonson's, it is
partly because Shakespeare's writings hold it in chemical combination,
Jonson's in mechanical aggregation.]
7. An elderly man came to me to show me how the universe was created.
There was one molecule, which by vibration became—Heaven knows how!
—the Sun. Further vibration produced Mercury, and so on. I suspect the
nebular hypothesis had got into the poor man's head by reading, in some
singular mixture with what it found there. Some modifications of vibration
gave heat, electricity, etc. I listened until my informant ceased to vibrate—
which is always the shortest way—and then said, "Our knowledge of elastic
fluids is imperfect." "Sir!" said he, "I see you perceive the truth of what I
have said, and I will reward your attention by telling you what I seldom
disclose, never, except to those who can receive my theory—the little
molecule whose vibrations have given rise to our solar system is the Logos
of St. John's Gospel!" He went away to Dr. Lardner, who would not go into
the solar system at all—the first molecule settled the question. So hard upon
poor discoverers are men of science who are not antiquaries in their subject!
On leaving, he said, "Sir, Mr. De Morgan received me in a very different
way! he heard me attentively, and I left him perfectly satisfied of the truth
of my system." I have had much reason to think that many discoverers, of
all classes, believe they have convinced every one who is not peremptory to
the verge of incivility.
My list is given in chronological order. My readers will understand that my
general expressions, where slighting or contemptuous, refer to the ignorant,
who teach before they have learned. In every instance, those of whom I am
able to speak with respect, whether as right or wrong, have sought
knowledge in the subject they were to handle before they completed their
speculations. I shall further illustrate this at the conclusion of my list.

Before I begin the list, I give prominence to the following letter, addressed
by me to the Correspondent of October 28, 1865. Some of my paradoxers
attribute to me articles in this or that journal; and others may think—I know
some do think—they know me as the writer of reviews of some of the very
books noticed here. The following remarks will explain the way in which
they may be right, and in which they may be wrong.

THE EDITORIAL SYSTEM.
"Sir,—I have reason to think that many persons have a very inaccurate
notion of the Editorial System. What I call by this name has grown up in the
last centenary—a word I may use to signify the hundred years now ending,
and to avoid the ambiguity of century. It cannot conveniently be explained
by editors themselves, and edited journals generally do not like to say much
about it. In your paper perhaps, in which editorial duties differ somewhat
from those of ordinary journals, the common system may be freely spoken
of.
"When a reviewed author, as very often happens, writes to the editor of the
reviewing journal to complain of what has been said of him, he frequently
—even more often than not—complains of 'your reviewer.' He sometimes
presumes that 'you' have, 'through inadvertence' in this instance, 'allowed
some incompetent person to lower the character of your usually accurate
pages.' Sometimes he talks of 'your scribe,' and, in extreme cases, even of
'your hack.' All this shows perfect ignorance of the journal system, except
where it is done under the notion of letting the editor down easy. But the
editor never accepts the mercy.
"All that is in a journal, except what is marked as from a correspondent,
either by the editor himself or by the correspondent's real or fictitious
signature, is published entirely on editorial responsibility, as much as if the
editor had written it himself. The editor, therefore, may claim, and does
claim and exercise, unlimited right of omission, addition, and alteration.
This is so well understood that the editor performs his last function on the
last revise without the 'contributor' knowing what is done. The word
contributor is the proper one; it implies that he furnishes materials without
stating what he furnishes or how much of it is accepted, or whether he be

the only contributor. All this applies both to political and literary journals.
No editor acknowledges the right of a contributor to withdraw an article, if
he should find alterations in the proof sent to him for correction which
would make him wish that the article should not appear. If the demand for
suppression were made—I say nothing about what might be granted to
request—the answer would be, 'It is not your article, but mine; I have all the
responsibility; if it should contain a libel, I could not give you up, even at
your own desire. You have furnished me with materials, on the known and
common understanding that I was to use them at my discretion, and you
have no right to impede my operations by making the appearance of the
article depend on your approbation of my use of your materials.'
"There is something to be said for this system, and something against it—I
mean simply on its own merits. But the all-conquering argument in its favor
is, that the only practicable alternative is the modern French plan of no
articles without the signature of the writers. I need not discuss this plan;
there is no collective party in favor of it. Some may think it is not the only
alternative; they have not produced any intermediate proposal in which any
dozen of persons have concurred. Many will say, Is not all this, though
perfectly correct, well known to be matter of form? Is it not practically the
course of events that an engaged contributor writes the article, and sends it
to the editor, who admits it as written—substantially, at least? And is it not
often very well known, by style and in other ways, who it was wrote the
article? This system is matter of form just as much as loaded pistols are
matter of form so long as the wearer is not assailed; but matter of form
takes the form of matter in the pulling of a trigger, so soon as the need
arises. Editors and contributors who can work together find each other out
by elective affinity, so that the common run of events settles down into most
articles appearing much as they are written. And there are two safety-
valves; that is, when judicious persons come together. In the first place, the
editor himself, when he has selected his contributor, feels that the
contributor is likely to know his business better than an editor can teach
him; in fact, it is on that principle that the selection is made. But he feels
that he is more competent than the writer to judge questions of strength and
of tone, especially when the general purpose of the journal is considered, of
which the editor is the judge without appeal. An editor who meddles with
substantive matter is likely to be wrong, even when he knows the subject;

but one who prunes what he deems excess, is likely to be right, even when
he does not know the subject. In the second place, a contributor knows that
he is supplying an editor, and learns, without suppressing truth or
suggesting falsehood, to make the tone of his communications suit the
periodical in which they are to appear. Hence it very often arises that a
reviewed author, who thinks he knows the name of his reviewer, and
proclaims it with expressions of dissatisfaction, is only wrong in supposing
that his critic has given all his mind. It has happened to myself more than
once, to be announced as the author of articles which I could not have
signed, because they did not go far enough to warrant my affixing my name
to them as to a sufficient expression of my own opinion.
"There are two other ways in which a reviewed author may be wrong about
his critic. An editor frequently makes slight insertions or omissions—I
mean slight in quantity of type—as he goes over the last proof; this he does
in a comparative hurry, and it may chance that he does not know the full
sting of his little alteration. The very bit which the writer of the book most
complains of may not have been seen by the person who is called the writer
of the article until after the appearance of the journal; nay, if he be one of
those—few, I daresay—who do not read their own articles, may never have
been seen by him at all. Possibly, the insertion or omission would not have
been made if the editor could have had one minute's conversation with his
contributor. Sometimes it actually contradicts something which is allowed
to remain in another part of the article; and sometimes, especially in the
case of omission, it renders other parts of the article unintelligible. These
are disadvantages of the system, and a judicious editor is not very free with
his unus et alter pannus. Next, readers in general, when they see the pages
of a journal with the articles so nicely fitting, and so many ending with the
page or column, have very little notion of the cutting and carving which
goes to the process. At the very last moment arises the necessity of some
trimming of this kind; and the editor, who would gladly call the writer to
counsel if he could, is obliged to strike out ten or twelve lines. He must do
his best, but it may chance that the omission selected would take from the
writer the power of owning the article. A few years ago, an able opponent of
mine wrote to a journal some criticisms upon an article which he expressly
attributed to me. I replied as if I were the writer, which, in a sense, I was.
But if any one had required of me an unmodified 'Yes' or 'No' to the

question whether I wrote the article, I must, of two falsehoods, have chosen
'No': for certain omissions, dictated by the necessities of space and time,
would have amounted, had my signature been affixed, to a silent surrender
of points which, in my own character, I must have strongly insisted on,
unless I had chosen to admit certain inferences against what I had
previously published in my own name. I may here add that the forms of
journalism obliged me in this case to remind my opponent that it could not
be permitted to me, in that journal, either to acknowledge or deny the
authorship of the articles. The cautions derived from the above remarks are
particularly wanted with reference to the editorial comments upon letters of
complaint. There is often no time to send these letters to the contributor, and
even when this can be done, an editor is—and very properly—never of so
editorial a mind as when he is revising the comments of a contributor upon
an assailant of the article. He is then in a better position as to information,
and a more critical position as to responsibility. Of course, an editor never
meddles, except under notice, with the letter of a correspondent, whether of
a complainant, of a casual informant, or of a contributor who sees reason to
become a correspondent. Omissions must sometimes be made when a
grievance is too highly spiced. It did once happen to me that a waggish
editor made an insertion without notice in a letter signed by me with some
fiction, which insertion contained the name of a friend of mine, with a satire
which I did not believe, and should not have written if I had. To my strong
rebuke, he replied—'I know it was very wrong; but human nature could not
resist.' But this was the only occasion on which such a thing ever happened
to me.
"I daresay what I have written may give some of your readers to understand
some of the pericula et commoda of modern journalism. I have known men
of deep learning and science as ignorant of the prevailing system as any
uneducated reader of a newspaper in a country town. I may perhaps induce
some writers not to be too sure about this, that, or the other person. They
may detect their reviewer, and they may be safe in attributing to him the
general matter and tone of the article. But about one and another point,
especially if it be a short and stinging point, they may very easily chance to
be wrong. It has happened to myself, and within a few weeks to publication,
to be wrong in two ways in reading a past article—to attribute to editorial

insertion what was really my own, and to attribute to myself what was
really editorial insertion."

What is a man to do who is asked whether he wrote an article? He may, of
course, refuse to answer; which is regarded as an admission. He may say, as
Swift did to Serjeant Bettesworth, "Sir, when I was a young man, a friend of
mine advised me, whenever I was asked whether I had written a certain
paper, to deny it; and I accordingly tell that I did not write it." He may say,
as I often do, when charged with having invented a joke, story, or epigram,
"I want all the credit I can get, and therefore I always acknowledge all that
is attributed to me, truly or not; the story, etc. is mine." But for serious
earnest, in the matter of imputed criticism, the answer may be, "The article
was of my material, but the editor has not let it stand as I gave it; I cannot
own it as a whole." He may then refuse to be particular as to the amount of
the editor's interference. Of this there are two extreme cases. The editor
may have expunged nothing but a qualifying adverb. Or he may have done
as follows. We all remember the account of Adam which satirizes woman,
but eulogizes her if every second and third line be transposed. As in:

"Adam could find no solid peace
When Eve was given him for a mate,
Till he beheld a woman's face,
Adam was in a happy state."

If this had been the article, and a gallant editor had made the transpositions,
the author could not with truth acknowledge. If the alteration were only an
omitted adverb, or a few things of the sort, the author could not with truth
deny. In all that comes between, every man must be his own casuist. I
stared, when I was a boy, to hear grave persons approve of Sir Walter
Scott's downright denial that he was the author of Waverley, in answer to
the Prince Regent's downright question. If I remember rightly, Samuel
Johnson would have approved of the same course.
It is known that, whatever the law gives, it also gives all that is necessary to
full possession; thus a man whose land is environed by land of others has a
right of way over the land of these others. By analogy, it is argued that

when a man has a right to his secret, he has a right to all that is necessary to
keep it, and that is not unlawful. If, then, he can only keep his secret by
denial, he has a right to denial. This I admit to be an answer against all men
except the denier himself; if conscience and self-respect will allow it, no
one can impeach it. But the question cannot be solved on a case. That
question is, A lie, is it malum in se, without reference to meaning and
circumstances? This is a question with two sides to it. Cases may be
invented in which a lie is the only way of preventing a murder, or in which
a lie may otherwise save a life. In these cases it is difficult to acquit, and
almost impossible to blame; discretion introduced, the line becomes very
hard to draw.
I know but one work which has precisely—as at first appears—the
character and object of my Budget. It is the Review of the Works of the
Royal Society of London, by Sir John Hill, M.D. (1751 and 1780, 4to.). This
man offended many: the Royal Society, by his work, the medical
profession, by inventing and selling extra-pharmacopœian doses; Garrick,
by resenting the rejection of a play. So Garrick wrote:

"For physic and farces his equal there scarce is;
His farces are physic; his physic a farce is."

I have fired at the Royal Society and at the medical profession, but I have
given a wide berth to the drama and its wits; so there is no epigram out
against me, as yet. He was very able and very eccentric. Dr. Thomson (Hist.
Roy. Soc.) says he has no humor, but Dr. Thomson was a man who never
would have discovered humor.
Mr. Weld (Hist. Roy. Soc.) backs Dr. Thomson, but with a remarkable
addition. Having followed his predecessor in observing that the
Transactions in Martin Folkes's time have an unusual proportion of trifling
and puerile papers, he says that Hill's book is a poor attempt at humor, and
glaringly exhibits the feelings of a disappointed man. It is probable, he
adds, that the points told with some effect on the Society; for shortly after
its publication the Transactions possess a much higher scientific value.
I copy an account which I gave elsewhere.

When the Royal Society was founded, the Fellows set to work to prove all
things, that they might hold fast that which was good. They bent themselves
to the question whether sprats were young herrings. They made a circle of
the powder of a unicorn's horn, and set a spider in the middle of it; "but it
immediately ran out." They tried several times, and the spider "once made
some stay in the powder." They inquired into Kenelm Digby's sympathetic
powder. "Magnetic cures being discoursed of, Sir Gilbert Talbot promised
to communicate what he knew of sympathetical cures; and those members
who had any of the powder of sympathy, were desired to bring some of it at
the next meeting."
June 21, 1661, certain gentlemen were appointed "curators of the proposal
of tormenting a man with the sympathetic powder"; I cannot find any record
of the result. And so they went on until the time of Sir John Hill's satire, in
1751. This once well-known work is, in my judgment, the greatest
compliment the Royal Society ever received. It brought forward a number
of what are now feeble and childish researches in the Philosophical
Transactions. It showed that the inquirers had actually been inquiring; and
that they did not pronounce decision about "natural knowledge" by help of
"natural knowledge." But for this, Hill would neither have known what to
assail, nor how. Matters are now entirely changed. The scientific bodies are
far too well established to risk themselves. Ibit qui zonam perdidit:

"Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat."

These great institutions are now without any collective purpose, except that
of promoting individual energy; they print for their contributors, and guard
themselves by a general declaration that they will not be answerable for the
things they print. Of course they will not put forward anything for
everybody; but a writer of a certain reputation, or matter of a certain look of
plausibility and safety, will find admission. This is as it should be; the
pasturer of flocks and herds and the hunters of wild beasts are two very
different bodies, with very different policies. The scientific academies are
what a spiritualist might call "publishing mediums," and their spirits fall
occasionally into writing which looks as if minds in the higher state were
not always impervious to nonsense.

The following joke is attributed to Sir John Hill. I cannot honestly say I
believe it; but it shows that his contemporaries did not believe he had no
humor. Good stories are always in some sort of keeping with the characters
on which they are fastened. Sir John Hill contrived a communication to the
Royal Society from Portsmouth, to the effect that a sailor had broken his leg
in a fall from the mast-head; that bandages and a plentiful application of
tarwater had made him, in three days, able to use his leg as well as ever.
While this communication was under grave discussion—it must be
remembered that many then thought tarwater had extraordinary remedial
properties—the joker contrived that a second letter should be delivered,
which stated that the writer had forgotten, in his previous communication,
to mention that the leg was a wooden leg! Horace Walpole told this story, I
suppose for the first time; he is good authority for the fact of circulation, but
for nothing more.
Sir John Hill's book is droll and cutting satire. Dr. Maty, (Sec. Royal
Society) wrote thus of it in the Journal Britannique (Feb. 1751), of which
he was editor:
"Il est fâcheux que cet ingénieux Naturaliste, qui nous a déjà donné et qui
nous prépare encore des ouvrages plus utiles, emploie à cette odieuse tâche
une plume qu'il trempe dans le fiel et dans l'absinthe. Il est vrai que
plusieurs de ses remarques sont fondées, et qu'à l'erreur qu'il indique, il joint
en même tems la correction. Mais il n'est pas toujours équitable, et ne
manque jamais d'insulter. Que peut après tout prouver son livre, si ce n'est
que la quarante-cinquième partie d'un très-ample et très-utile Recueil n'est
pas exempte d'erreurs? Devoit-il confondre avec des Ecrivains superficiels,
dont la Liberté du Corps ne permet pas de restreindre la fertilité, cette foule
de savans du Premier ordre, dont les Ecrits ont orné et ornent encore les
Transactions? A-t-il oublié qu'on y a vu fréquemment les noms des Boyle,
des Newton, des Halley, des De Moivres, des Hans Sloane, etc.? Et qu'on y
trouve encore ceux des Ward, des Bradley, des Graham, des Ellicot, des
Watson, et d'un Auteur que Mr. Hill préfère à tous les autres, je veux dire de
Mr. Hill lui-même?"[7]
This was the only answer; but it was no answer at all. Hill's object was to
expose the absurdities; he therefore collected the absurdities. I feel sure that
Hill was a benefactor of the Royal Society; and much more than he would

have been if he had softened their errors and enhanced their praises. No
reviewer will object to me that I have omitted Young, Laplace, etc. But then
my book has a true title. Hill should not have called his a review of the
"Works."
It was charged against Sir John Hill that he had tried to become a Fellow of
the Royal Society and had failed. This he denied, and challenged the
production of the certificate which a candidate always sends in, and which
is preserved. But perhaps he could not get so far as a certificate—that is,
could not find any one to recommend him; he was a likely man to be in
such a predicament. As I have myself run foul of the Society on some little
points, I conceive it possible that I may fall under a like suspicion. Whether
I could have been a Fellow, I cannot know; as the gentleman said who was
asked if he could play the violin, I never tried. I have always had a high
opinion of the Society upon its whole history. A person used to historical
inquiry learns to look at wholes; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
the College of Physicians, etc. are taken in all their duration. But those who
are not historians—I mean not possessed of the habit of history—hold a
mass of opinions about current things which lead them into all kinds of
confusion when they try to look back. Not to give an instance which will
offend any set of existing men—this merely because I can do without it—
let us take the country at large. Magna Charta for ever! glorious safeguard
of our liberties! Nullus liber homo capiatur aut imprisonetur ... aut aliquo
modo destruatur, nisi per judicium parium ....[8] Liber homo: frank home; a
capital thing for him—but how about the villeins? Oh, there are none now!
But there were. Who cares for villains, or barbarians, or helots? And so
England, and Athens, and Sparta, were free States; all the freemen in them
were free. Long after Magna Charta, villains were sold with their "chattels
and offspring," named in that order. Long after Magna Charta, it was law
that "Le Seigniour poit rob, naufrer, et chastiser son villein a son volunt,
salve que il ne poit luy maim."[9]
The Royal Society was founded as a co-operative body, and co-operation
was its purpose. The early charters, etc. do not contain a trace of the
intention to create a scientific distinction, a kind of Legion of Honor. It is
clear that the qualification was ability and willingness to do good work for
the promotion of natural knowledge, no matter in how many persons, nor of
what position in society. Charles II gave a smart rebuke for exclusiveness,

as elsewhere mentioned. In time arose, almost of course, the idea of
distinction attaching to the title; and when I first began to know the Society,
it was in this state. Gentlemen of good social position were freely elected if
they were really educated men; but the moment a claimant was announced
as resting on his science, there was a disposition to inquire whether he was
scientific enough. The maxim of the poet was adopted; and the Fellows
were practically divided into Drink-deeps and Taste-nots.
I was, in early life, much repelled by the tone taken by the Fellows of the
Society with respect to their very mixed body. A man high in science—
some thirty-seven years ago (about 1830)—gave me some encouragement,
as he thought. "We shall have you a Fellow of the Royal Society in time,"
said he. Umph! thought I: for I had that day heard of some recent elections,
the united science of which would not have demonstrated I. 1, nor
explained the action of a pump. Truly an elevation to look up at! It came,
further, to my knowledge that the Royal Society—if I might judge by the
claims made by very influential Fellows—considered itself as entitled to the
best of everything: second-best being left for the newer bodies. A secretary,
in returning thanks for the Royal at an anniversary of the Astronomical,
gave rather a lecture to the company on the positive duty of all present to
send the very best to the old body, and the absolute right of the old body to
expect it. An old friend of mine, on a similar occasion, stated as a fact that
the thing was always done, as well as that it ought to be done.
Of late years this pretension has been made by a President of the Society. In
1855, Lord Rosse presented a confidential memorandum to the Council on
the expediency of enlarging their number. He says, "In a Council so small it
is impossible to secure a satisfactory representation of the leading scientific
Societies, and it is scarcely to be expected that, under such circumstances,
they will continue to publish inferior papers while they send the best to our
Transactions."
And, again, with all the Societies represented on the Council, "even if every
Science had its Society, and if they published everything, withholding their
best papers [i.e., from the Royal Society], which they would not be likely to
do, still there would remain to the Royal Society ...." Lord Rosse seems to
imagine that the minor Societies themselves transfer their best papers to the
Royal Society; that if, for instance, the Astronomical Society were to

receive from A.B. a paper of unusual merit, the Society would transfer it to
the Royal Society. This is quite wrong: any preference of the Royal to
another Society is the work of the contributor himself. But it shows how
well hafted is the Royal Society's claim, that a President should acquire the
notion that it is acknowledged and acted upon by the other Societies, in
their joint and corporate capacities. To the pretension thus made I never
could give any sympathy. When I first heard Mr. Christie, Sec. R. S., set it
forth at the anniversary dinner of the Astronomical Society, I remembered
the Baron in Walter Scott:

"Of Gilbert the Galliard a heriot he sought,
Saying, Give thy best steed as a vassal ought."

And I remembered the answer:

"Lord and Earl though thou be, I trow
I can rein Buck's-foot better than thou."

Fully conceding that the Royal Society is entitled to preeminent rank and all
the respect due to age and services, I could not, nor can I now, see any more
obligation in a contributor to send his best to that Society than he can make
out to be due to himself. This pretension, in my mind, was hooked on, by
my historical mode of viewing things already mentioned, to my knowledge
of the fact that the Royal Society—the chief fault, perhaps, lying with its
President, Sir Joseph Banks—had sternly set itself against the formation of
other societies; the Geological and Astronomical, for instance, though it
must be added that the chief rebels came out of the Society itself. And so a
certain not very defined dislike was generated in my mind—an anti-
aristocratic affair—to the body which seemed to me a little too uplifted.
This would, I daresay, have worn off; but a more formidable objection
arose. My views of physical science gradually arranged themselves into a
form which would have rendered F.R.S., as attached to my name, a false
representation symbol. The Royal Society is the great fortress of general
physics: and in the philosophy of our day, as to general physics, there is
something which makes the banner of the R.S. one under which I cannot
march. Everybody who saw the three letters after my name would infer
certain things as to my mode of thought which would not be true inference.
It would take much space to explain this in full. I may hereafter, perhaps,

write a budget of collected results of the a priori philosophy, the nibbling at
the small end of omniscience, and the effect it has had on common life,
from the family parlor to the jury-box, from the girls'-school to the vestry-
meeting. There are in the Society those who would, were there no others,
prevent my criticism, be its conclusions true or false, from having any
basis; but they are in the minority.
There is no objection to be made to the principles of philosophy in vogue at
the Society, when they are stated as principles; but there is an omniscience
in daily practice which the principles repudiate. In like manner, the most
retaliatory Christians have a perfect form of round words about behavior to
those who injure them; none of them are as candid as a little boy I knew,
who, to his mother's admonition, You should love your enemies, answered
—Catch me at it!
Years ago, a change took place which would alone have put a sufficient
difficulty in the way. The co-operative body got tired of getting funds from
and lending name to persons who had little or no science, and wanted F.R.S.
to be in every case a Fellow Really Scientific. Accordingly, the number of
yearly elections was limited to fifteen recommended by the Council, unless
the general body should choose to elect more; which it does not do. The
election is now a competitive examination: it is no longer—Are you able
and willing to promote natural knowledge; it is—Are you one of the upper
fifteen of those who make such claim. In the list of candidates—a list
rapidly growing in number—each year shows from thirty to forty of those
whom Newton and Boyle would have gladly welcomed as fellow-laborers.
And though the rejected of one year may be the accepted of the next—or of
the next but one, or but two, if self-respect will permit the candidate to hang
on—yet the time is clearly coming when many of those who ought to be
welcomed will be excluded for life, or else shelved at last, when past work,
with a scientific peerage. Coupled with this attempt to create a kind of order
of knighthood is an absurdity so glaring that it should always be kept before
the general eye. This distinction, this mark set by science upon successful
investigation, is of necessity a class-distinction. Rowan Hamilton, one of
the greatest names of our day in mathematical science, never could attach
F.R.S. to his name—he could not afford it. There is a condition precedent—
Four Red Sovereigns. It is four pounds a year, or—to those who have
contributed to the Transactions—forty pounds down. This is as it should be:

the Society must be supported. But it is not as it should be that a kind of
title of honor should be forged, that a body should take upon itself to confer
distinctions for science, when it is in the background—and kept there when
the distinction is trumpeted—that the wearer is a man who can spare four
pounds a year. I am well aware that in England a person who is not gifted
either by nature or art, with this amount of money power, is, with the mass,
a very second-rate sort of Newton, whatever he may be in the field of
investigation. Even men of science, so called, have this feeling. I know that
the scientific advisers of the Admiralty, who, years ago, received 100
pounds a year each for his trouble, were sneered at by a wealthy pretender
as "fellows to whom a hundred a year is an object." Dr. Thomas Young was
one of them. To a bookish man—I mean a man who can manage to collect
books—there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40 pounds worth of books
deducted from my shelves, and the life-use of the Society's splendid library
instead, would have been a capital exchange. But there may be, and are,
men who want books, and cannot pay the Society's price. The Council
would be very liberal in allowing books to be consulted. I have no doubt
that if a known investigator were to call and ask to look at certain books,
the Assistant-Secretary would forthwith seat him with the books before him,
absence of F.R.S. not in any wise withstanding. But this is not like having
the right to consult any book on any day, and to take it away, if farther
wanted.
So much for the Royal Society as concerns myself. I must add that there is
not a spark of party feeling against those who wilfully remain outside. The
better minds of course know better; and the smaller savants look
complacently on the idea of an outer world which makes élite of them. I
have done such a thing as serve on a committee of the Society, and report
on a paper: they had the sense to ask, and I had the sense to see that none of
my opinions were compromised by compliance. And I will be of any use
which does not involve the status of homo trium literarum; as I have
elsewhere explained, I would gladly be Fautor Realis Scientiæ, but I would
not be taken for Falsæ Rationis Sacerdos.
Nothing worse will ever happen to me than the smile which individuals
bestow on a man who does not groove. Wisdom, like religion, belongs to
majorities; who can wonder that it should be so thought, when it is so
clearly pictured in the New Testament from one end to the other?

The counterpart of paradox, the isolated opinion of one or of few, is the
general opinion held by all the rest; and the counterpart of false and absurd
paradox is what is called the "vulgar error," the pseudodox. There is one
great work on this last subject, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of Sir Thomas
Browne, the famous author of the Religio Medici; it usually goes by the
name of Browne "On Vulgar Errors" (1st ed. 1646; 6th, 1672). A careful
analysis of this work would show that vulgar errors are frequently opposed
by scientific errors; but good sense is always good sense, and Browne's
book has a vast quantity of it.
As an example of bad philosophy brought against bad observation. The
Amphisbæna serpent was supposed to have two heads, one at each end;
partly from its shape, partly because it runs backwards as well as forwards.
On this Sir Thomas Browne makes the following remarks:
"And were there any such species or natural kind of animal, it would be
hard to make good those six positions of body which, according to the three
dimensions, are ascribed unto every Animal; that is, infra, supra, ante,
retro, dextrosum, sinistrosum: for if (as it is determined) that be the anterior
and upper part wherein the senses are placed, and that the posterior and
lower part which is opposite thereunto, there is no inferior or former part in
this Animal; for the senses, being placed at both extreams, doth make both
ends anterior, which is impossible; the terms being Relative, which
mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And therefore this
duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both extreams, and had been
more tolerable to have settled three or four at one. And therefore also Poets
have been more reasonable than Philosophers, and Geryon or Cerberus less
monstrous than Amphisbæna."
There may be paradox upon paradox: and there is a good instance in the
eighth century in the case of Virgil, an Irishman, Bishop of Salzburg and
afterwards Saint, and his quarrels with Boniface, an Englishman,
Archbishop of Mentz, also afterwards Saint. All we know about the matter
is, that there exists a letter of 748 from Pope Zachary, citing Virgil—then, it
seems, at most a simple priest, though the Pope was not sure even of that—
to Rome to answer the charge of maintaining that there is another world
(mundus) under our earth (terra), with another sun and another moon.
Nothing more is known: the letter contains threats in the event of the charge

being true; and there history drops the matter. Since Virgil was afterwards a
Bishop and a Saint, we may fairly conclude that he died in the full flower of
his orthodox reputation. It has been supposed—and it seems probable—that
Virgil maintained that the earth is peopled all the way round, so that under
some spots there are antipodes; that his contemporaries, with very dim ideas
about the roundness of the earth, and most of them with none at all,
interpreted him as putting another earth under ours—turned the other way,
probably, like the second piece of bread-and-butter in a sandwich, with a
sun and moon of its own. In the eighth century this would infallibly have
led to an underground Gospel, an underground Pope, and an underground
Avignon for him to live in. When, in later times, the idea of inhabitants for
the planets was started, it was immediately asked whether they had sinned,
whether Jesus Christ died for them, whether their wine and their water
could be lawfully used in the sacraments, etc.
On so small a basis as the above has been constructed a companion case to
the persecution of Galileo. On one side the positive assertion, with
indignant comment, that Virgil was deposed for antipodal heresy, on the
other, serious attempts at justification, palliation, or mystification. Some
writers say that Virgil was found guilty; others that he gave satisfactory
explanation, and became very good friends with Boniface: for all which see
Bayle. Some have maintained that the antipodist was a different person
from the canonized bishop: there is a second Virgil, made to order. When
your shoes pinch, and will not stretch, always throw them away and get
another pair: the same with your facts. Baronius was not up to the plan of a
substitute: his commentator Pagi (probably writing about 1690) argues for it
in a manner which I think Baronius would not have approved. This Virgil
was perhaps a slippery fellow. The Pope says he hears that Virgil pretended
licence from him to claim one of some new bishoprics: this he declares is
totally false. It is part of the argument that such a man as this could not have
been created a Bishop and a Saint: on this point there will be opinions and
opinions.[10]
Lactantius, four centuries before, had laughed at the antipodes in a manner
which seems to be ridicule thrown on the idea of the earth's roundness.
Ptolemy, without reference to the antipodes, describes the extent of the
inhabited part of the globe in a way which shows that he could have had no
objection to men turned opposite ways. Probably, in the eighth century, the

roundness of the earth was matter of thought only to astronomers. It should
always be remembered, especially by those who affirm persecution of a true
opinion, that but for our knowing from Lactantius that the antipodal notion
had been matter of assertion and denial among theologians, we could never
have had any great confidence in Virgil really having maintained the simple
theory of the existence of antipodes. And even now we are not entitled to
affirm it as having historical proof: the evidence goes to Virgil having been
charged with very absurd notions, which it seems more likely than not were
the absurd constructions which ignorant contemporaries put upon sensible
opinions of his.
One curious part of this discussion is that neither side has allowed Pope
Zachary to produce evidence to character. He shall have been an Urban, say
the astronomers; an Urban he ought to have been, say the theologians. What
sort of man was Zachary? He was eminently sensible and conciliatory; he
contrived to make northern barbarians hear reason in a way which puts him
high among that section of the early popes who had the knack of managing
uneducated swordsmen. He kept the peace in Italy to an extent which
historians mention with admiration. Even Bale, that Maharajah of pope-
haters, allows himself to quote in favor of Zachary, that "multa Papalem
dignitatem decentia, eademque præclara (scilicet) opera confecit."[11] And
this, though so willing to find fault that, speaking of Zachary putting a little
geographical description of the earth on the portico of the Lateran Church,
he insinuates that it was intended to affirm that the Pope was lord of the
whole. Nor can he say how long Zachary held the see, except by
announcing his death in 752, "cum decem annis pestilentiæ sedi
præfuisset."[12]
There was another quarrel between Virgil and Boniface which is an
illustration. An ignorant priest had baptized "in nomine Patria, et Filia et
Spiritua Sancta." Boniface declared the rite null and void: Virgil maintained
the contrary; and Zachary decided in favor of Virgil, on the ground that the
absurd form was only ignorance of Latin, and not heresy. It is hard to
believe that this man deposed a priest for asserting the whole globe to be
inhabited. To me the little information that we have seems to indicate—but
not with certainty—that Virgil maintained the antipodes: that his ignorant
contemporaries travestied his theory into that of an underground cosmos;
that the Pope cited him to Rome to explain his system, which, as reported,

looked like what all would then have affirmed to be heresy; that he gave
satisfactory explanations, and was dismissed with honor. It may be that the
educated Greek monk, Zachary, knew his Ptolemy well enough to guess
what the asserted heretic would say; we have seen that he seems to have
patronized geography. The description of the earth, according to historians,
was a map; this Pope may have been more ready than another to prick up
his ears at any rumor of geographical heresy, from hope of information.
And Virgil, who may have entered the sacred presence as frightened as
Jacquard, when Napoleon I sent for him and said, with a stern voice and
threatening gesture, "You are the man who can tie a knot in a stretched
string," may have departed as well pleased as Jacquard with the riband and
pension which the interview was worth to him.
A word more about Baronius. If he had been pope, as he would have been
but for the opposition of the Spaniards, and if he had lived ten years longer
than he did, and if Clavius, who would have been his astronomical adviser,
had lived five years longer than he did, it is probable, nay almost certain,
that the great exhibition, the proceeding against Galileo, would not have
furnished a joke against theology in all time to come. For Baronius was
sensible and witty enough to say that in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit
intended to teach how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes; and Clavius,
in his last years, confessed that the whole system of the heavens had broken
down, and must be mended.
The manner in which the Galileo case, a reality, and the Virgil case, a
fiction, have been hawked against the Roman see are enough to show that
the Pope and his adherents have not cared much about physical philosophy.
In truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which in
modern times has almost usurped the name philosophy, in England at least,
has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of persecution
which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops, etc. of the
Middle Ages knew that the contest between nominalism and realism, for
instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than anything
in astronomy, etc. A wrong notion about substance might play the mischief
with transubstantiation.
The question of the earth's motion was the single point in which orthodoxy
came into real contact with science. Many students of physics were

suspected of magic, many of atheism: but, stupid as the mistake may have
been, it was bona fide the magic or the atheism, not the physics, which was
assailed. In the astronomical case it was the very doctrine, as a doctrine,
independently of consequences, which was the corpus delicti: and this
because it contradicted the Bible. And so it did; for the stability of the earth
is as clearly assumed from one end of the Old Testament to the other as the
solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to be totidem verbis dictated by
the God of Truth can refuse to believe it; and they make strange reasons.
They undertake, a priori, to settle Divine intentions. The Holy Spirit did not
mean to teach natural philosophy: this they know beforehand; or else they
infer it from finding that the earth does move, and the Bible says it does not.
Of course, ignorance apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean
truth. But this puts the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out
what the writer meant, until we otherwise find out what is true. Those who
like may, of course, declare for an inspiration over which they are to be
viceroys; but common sense will either accept verbal meaning or deny
verbal inspiration.

A BUDGET OF PARADOXES.
VOLUME I.

THE STORY OF BURIDAN'S ASS.

Questiones Morales, folio, 1489 [Paris]. By T. Buridan.

This is the title from the Hartwell Catalogue of Law Books. I suppose it is
what is elsewhere called the "Commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle,"
printed in 1489.[13] Buridan[14] (died about 1358) is the creator of the
famous ass which, as Burdin's[15] ass, was current in Burgundy, perhaps is,
as a vulgar proverb. Spinoza[16] says it was a jenny ass, and that a man
would not have been so foolish; but whether the compliment is paid to
human or to masculine character does not appear—perhaps to both in one.
The story told about the famous paradox is very curious. The Queen of
France, Joanna or Jeanne, was in the habit of sewing her lovers up in sacks,
and throwing them into the Seine; not for blabbing, but that they might not
blab—certainly the safer plan. Buridan was exempted, and, in gratitude,
invented the sophism. What it has to do with the matter has never been
explained. Assuredly qui facit per alium facit per se will convict Buridan of
prating. The argument is as follows, and is seldom told in full. Buridan was
for free-will—that is, will which determines conduct, let motives be ever so
evenly balanced. An ass is equally pressed by hunger and by thirst; a bundle
of hay is on one side, a pail of water on the other. Surely, you will say, he
will not be ass enough to die for want of food or drink; he will then make a
choice—that is, will choose between alternatives of equal force. The
problem became famous in the schools; some allowed the poor donkey to
die of indecision; some denied the possibility of the balance, which was no
answer at all.

MICHAEL SCOTT'S DEVILS.

The following question is more difficult, and involves free-will to all who
answer—"Which you please." If the northern hemisphere were land, and all
the southern hemisphere water, ought we to call the northern hemisphere an
island, or the southern hemisphere a lake? Both the questions would be
good exercises for paradoxers who must be kept employed, like Michael
Scott's[17] devils. The wizard knew nothing about squaring the circle, etc.,
so he set them to make ropes out of sea sand, which puzzled them. Stupid
devils; much of our glass is sea sand, and it makes beautiful thread. Had
Michael set them to square the circle or to find a perpetual motion, he
would have done his work much better. But all this is conjecture: who
knows that I have not hit on the very plan he adopted? Perhaps the whole
race of paradoxers on hopeless subjects are Michael's subordinates,
condemned to transmigration after transmigration, until their task is done.
The above was not a bad guess. A little after the time when the famous
Pascal papers[18] were produced, I came into possession of a
correspondence which, but for these papers, I should have held too
incredible to be put before the world. But when one sheep leaps the ditch,
another will follow: so I gave the following account in the Athenæum of
October 5, 1867:
"The recorded story is that Michael Scott, being bound by contract to
produce perpetual employment for a number of young demons, was worried
out of his life in inventing jobs for them, until at last he set them to make
ropes out of sea sand, which they never could do. We have obtained a very
curious correspondence between the wizard Michael and his demon-slaves;
but we do not feel at liberty to say how it came into our hands. We much
regret that we did not receive it in time for the British Association. It
appears that the story, true as far as it goes, was never finished. The demons
easily conquered the rope difficulty, by the simple process of making the
sand into glass, and spinning the glass into thread, which they twisted.
Michael, thoroughly disconcerted, hit upon the plan of setting some to
square the circle, others to find the perpetual motion, etc. He commanded
each of them to transmigrate from one human body into another, until their
tasks were done. This explains the whole succession of cyclometers, and all
the heroes of the Budget. Some of this correspondence is very recent; it is
much blotted, and we are not quite sure of its meaning: it is full of
figurative allusions to driving something illegible down a steep into the sea.

It looks like a humble petition to be allowed some diversion in the intervals
of transmigration; and the answer is—

Rumpat et serpens iter institutum,[19]

—a line of Horace, which the demons interpret as a direction to come
athwart the proceedings of the Institute by a sly trick. Until we saw this, we
were suspicious of M. Libri,[20] the unvarying blunders of the
correspondence look like knowledge. To be always out of the road requires
a map: genuine ignorance occasionally lapses into truth. We thought it
possible M. Libri might have played the trick to show how easily the
French are deceived; but with our present information, our minds are at rest
on the subject. We see M. Chasles does not like to avow the real source of
information: he will not confess himself a spiritualist."

PHILO OF GADARA.

Philo of Gadara[21] is asserted by Montucla,[22] on the authority of Eutocius,
[23] the commentator on Archimedes, to have squared the circle within the

ten-thousandth part of a unit, that is, to four places of decimals. A modern
classical dictionary represents it as done by Philo to ten thousand places of
decimals. Lacroix comments on Montucla to the effect that myriad (in
Greek ten thousand) is here used as we use it, vaguely, for an immense
number. On looking into Eutocius, I find that not one definite word is said
about the extent to which Philo carried the matter. I give a translation of the
passage:
"We ought to know that Apollonius Pergæus, in his Ocytocium [this work is
lost], demonstrated the same by other numbers, and came nearer, which
seems more accurate, but has nothing to do with Archimedes; for, as before
said, he aimed only at going near enough for the wants of life. Neither is
Porus of Nicæa fair when he takes Archimedes to task for not giving a line
accurately equal to the circumference. He says in his Cerii that his teacher,
Philo of Gadara, had given a more accurate approximation (εἰς
ἀκριβεστέρους ἀριθμοὺς ἀγάγειν) than that of Archimedes, or than 7 to
22. But all these [the rest as well as Philo] miss the intention. They multiply

and divide by tens of thousands, which no one can easily do, unless he be
versed in the logistics [fractional computation] of Magnus [now unknown]."
Montucla, or his source, ought not to have made this mistake. He had been
at the Greek to correct Philo Gadetanus, as he had often been called, and he
had brought away and quoted ἀπὸ Γάδαρων. Had he read two sentences
further, he would have found the mistake.
We here detect a person quite unnoticed hitherto by the moderns, Magnus
the arithmetician. The phrase is ironical; it is as if we should say, "To do
this a man must be deep in Cocker."[24] Accordingly, Magnus, Baveme,[25]
and Cocker, are three personifications of arithmetic; and there may be more.

ON SQUARING THE CIRCLE.
Aristotle, treating of the category of relation, denies that the quadrature has
been found, but appears to assume that it can be done. Boethius,[26] in his
comment on the passage, says that it has been done since Aristotle, but that
the demonstration is too long for him to give. Those who have no notion of
the quadrature question may look at the English Cyclopædia, art.
"Quadrature of the Circle."

Tetragonismus. Id est circuli quadratura per Campanum,
Archimedem Syracusanum, atque Boetium mathematicæ
perspicacissimos adinventa.—At the end, Impressum Venetiis per
Ioan. Bapti. Sessa. Anno ab incarnatione Domini, 1503. Die 28
Augusti.

This book has never been noticed in the history of the subject, and I cannot
find any mention of it. The quadrature of Campanus[27] takes the ratio of
Archimedes,[28] 7 to 22 to be absolutely correct; the account given of
Archimedes is not a translation of his book; and that of Boetius has more
than is in Boethius. This book must stand, with the next, as the earliest in
print on the subject, until further showing: Murhard[29] and Kastner[30] have
nothing so early. It is edited by Lucas Gauricus,[31] who has given a short
preface. Luca Gaurico, Bishop of Civita Ducale, an astrologer of

astrologers, published this work at about thirty years of age, and lived to
eighty-two. His works are collected in folios, but I do not know whether
they contain this production. The poor fellow could never tell his own
fortune, because his father neglected to note the hour and minute of his
birth. But if there had been anything in astrology, he could have worked
back, as Adams[32] and Leverrier[33] did when they caught Neptune: at sixty
he could have examined every minute of his day of birth, by the events of
his life, and so would have found the right minute. He could then have gone
on, by rules of prophecy. Gauricus was the mathematical teacher of Joseph
Scaliger,[34] who did him no credit, as we shall see.

BOVILLUS ON THE QUADRATURE PROBLEM.

In hoc opere contenta Epitome.... Liber de quadratura Circuli....
Paris, 1503, folio.

The quadrator is Charles Bovillus,[35] who adopted the views of Cardinal
Cusa,[36] presently mentioned. Montucla is hard on his compatriot, who, he
says, was only saved from the laughter of geometers by his obscurity.
Persons must guard against most historians of mathematics in one point:
they frequently attribute to his own age the obscurity which a writer has in
their own time. This tract was printed by Henry Stephens,[37] at the
instigation of Faber Stapulensis,[38] and is recorded by Dechales,[39] etc. It
was also introduced into the Margarita Philosophica of 1815,[40] in the
same appendix with the new perspective from Viator. This is not extreme
obscurity, by any means. The quadrature deserved it; but that is another
point.
It is stated by Montucla that Bovillus makes π = √10. But Montucla cites a
work of 1507, Introductorium Geometricum, which I have never seen.[41]
He finds in it an account which Bovillus gives of the quadrature of the
peasant laborer, and describes it as agreeing with his own. But the
description makes π = 3-1/8, which it thus appears Bovillus could not
distinguish from √10. It seems also that this 3-1/8, about which we shall see
so much in the sequel, takes its rise in the thoughtful head of a poor laborer.

It does him great honor, being so near the truth, and he having no means of
instruction. In our day, when an ignorant person chooses to bring his fancy
forward in opposition to demonstration which he will not study, he is
deservedly laughed at.

THE STORY OF LACOMME'S ATTEMPT AT QUADRATURE.

Mr. James Smith,[42] of Liverpool—hereinafter notorified—attributes the
first announcement of 3-1/8 to M. Joseph Lacomme, a French well-sinker,
of whom he gives the following account:
"In the year 1836, at which time Lacomme could neither read nor write, he
had constructed a circular reservoir and wished to know the quantity of
stone that would be required to pave the bottom, and for this purpose called
on a professor of mathematics. On putting his question and giving the
diameter, he was surprised at getting the following answer from the
Professor: 'Qu'il lui était impossible de le lui dire au juste, attendu que
personne n'avait encore pu trouver d'une manière exacte le rapport de la
circonférence au diametre.'[43] From this he was led to attempt the solution
of the problem. His first process was purely mechanical, and he was so far
convinced he had made the discovery that he took to educating himself, and
became an expert arithmetician, and then found that arithmetical results
agreed with his mechanical experiments. He appears to have eked out a bare
existence for many years by teaching arithmetic, all the time struggling to
get a hearing from some of the learned societies, but without success. In the
year 1855 he found his way to Paris, where, as if by accident, he made the
acquaintance of a young gentleman, son of M. Winter, a commissioner of
police, and taught him his peculiar methods of calculation. The young man
was so enchanted that he strongly recommended Lacomme to his father,
and subsequently through M. Winter he obtained an introduction to the
President of the Society of Arts and Sciences of Paris. A committee of the
society was appointed to examine and report upon his discovery, and the
society at its séance of March 17, 1856, awarded a silver medal of the first
class to M. Joseph Lacomme for his discovery of the true ratio of diameter
to circumference in a circle. He subsequently received three other medals
from other societies. While writing this I have his likeness before me, with

his medals on his breast, which stands as a frontispiece to a short biography
of this extraordinary man, for which I am indebted to the gentleman who
did me the honor to publish a French translation of the pamphlet I
distributed at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, at Oxford, in 1860."—Correspondent, May 3, 1866.
My inquiries show that the story of the medals is not incredible. There are
at Paris little private societies which have not so much claim to be
exponents of scientific opinion as our own Mechanics' Institutes. Some of
them were intended to give a false lustre: as the "Institut Historique," the
members of which are "Membre de l'Institut Historique." That M. Lacomme
should have got four medals from societies of this class is very possible:
that he should have received one from any society at Paris which has the
least claim to give one is as yet simply incredible.

NICOLAUS OF CUSA'S ATTEMPT.

Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia. Venice, 1514. 3 vols. folio.

The real title is "Hæc accurata recognitio trium voluminum operum clariss.
P. Nicolai Cusæ ... proxime sequens pagina monstrat."[44] Cardinal Cusa,
who died in 1464, is one of the earliest modern attempters. His quadrature
is found in the second volume, and is now quite unreadable.
In these early days every quadrator found a geometrical opponent, who
finished him. Regimontanus[45] did this office for the Cardinal.

HENRY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.

De Occulta Philosophia libri III. By Henry Cornelius Agrippa.
Lyons, 1550, 8vo.
De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum. By the same. Cologne,
1531, 8vo.

The first editions of these works were of 1530, as well as I can make out;
but the first was in progress in 1510.[46] In the second work Agrippa repents
of having wasted time on the magic of the first; but all those who actually
deal with demons are destined to eternal fire with Jamnes and Mambres and
Simon Magus. This means, as is the fact, that his occult philosophy did not
actually enter upon black magic, but confined itself to the power of the
stars, of numbers, etc. The fourth book, which appeared after the death of
Agrippa, and really concerns dealing with evil spirits, is undoubtedly
spurious. It is very difficult to make out what Agrippa really believed on the
subject. I have introduced his books as the most marked specimens of
treatises on magic, a paradox of our day, though not far from orthodoxy in
his; and here I should have ended my notice, if I had not casually found
something more interesting to the reader of our day.

WHICH LEADS TO WALTER SCOTT.
Walter Scott, it is well known, was curious on all matters connected with
magic, and has used them very widely. But it is hardly known how much
pains he has taken to be correct, and to give the real thing. The most
decided detail of a magical process which is found in his writings is that of
Dousterswivel in The Antiquary; and it is obvious, by his accuracy of
process, that he does not intend the adept for a mere impostor, but for one
who had a lurking belief in the efficacy of his own processes, coupled with
intent to make a fraudulent use of them. The materials for the process are
taken from Agrippa. I first quote Mr. Dousterswivel:
"... I take a silver plate when she [the moon] is in her fifteenth mansion,
which mansion is in de head of Libra, and I engrave upon one side de worts
Schedbarschemoth Schartachan [ch should be t]—dat is, de Intelligence of
de Intelligence of de moon—and I make his picture like a flying serpent
with a turkey-cock's head—vary well—Then upon this side I make de table
of de moon, which is a square of nine, multiplied into itself, with eighty-one
numbers [nine] on every side and diameter nine...."
In the De Occulta Philosophia, p. 290, we find that the fifteenth mansion of
the moon incipit capite Libræ, and is good pro extrahendis thesauris, the

object being to discover hidden treasure. In p. 246, we learn that a silver
plate must be used with the moon. In p. 248, we have the words which
denote the Intelligence, etc. But, owing to the falling of a number into a
wrong line, or the misplacement of a line, one or other—which takes place
in all the editions I have examined—Scott has, sad to say, got hold of the
wrong words; he has written down the demon of the demons of the moon.
Instead of the gibberish above, it should have been Malcha betarsisim hed
beruah schenhakim. In p. 253, we have the magic square of the moon, with
eighty-one numbers, and the symbol for the Intelligence, which Scott likens
to a flying serpent with a turkey-cock's head. He was obliged to say
something; but I will stake my character—and so save a woodcut—on the
scratches being more like a pair of legs, one shorter than the other, without
a body, jumping over a six-barred gate placed side uppermost. Those who
thought that Scott forged his own nonsense, will henceforth stand corrected.
As to the spirit Peolphan, etc., no doubt Scott got it from the authors he
elsewhere mentions, Nicolaus Remigius[47] and Petrus Thyracus; but this
last word should be Thyræus.
The tendency of Scott's mind towards prophecy is very marked, and it is
always fulfilled. Hyder, in his disguise, calls out to Tippoo: "Cursed is the
prince who barters justice for lust; he shall die in the gate by the sword of
the stranger." Tippoo was killed in a gateway at Seringapatam.[48]

FINAEUS ON CIRCLE SQUARING.

Orontii Finaei ... Quadratura Circuli. Paris, 1544, 4to.

Orontius[49] squared the circle out of all comprehension; but he was killed
by a feather from his own wing. His former pupil, John Buteo,[50] the same
who—I believe for the first time—calculated the question of Noah's ark, as
to its power to hold all the animals and stores, unsquared him completely.
Orontius was the author of very many works, and died in 1555. Among the
laudatory verses which, as was usual, precede this work, there is one of a
rare character: a congratulatory ode to the wife of the author. The French
now call this writer Oronce Finée; but there is much difficulty about
delatinization. Is this more correct than Oronce Fine, which the translator of

De Thou uses? Or than Horonce Phine, which older writers give? I cannot
understand why M. de Viette[51] should be called Viète, because his Latin
name is Vieta. It is difficult to restore Buteo; for not only now is butor a
blockhead as well as a bird, but we really cannot know what kind of bird
Buteo stood for. We may be sure that Madame Fine was Denise Blanche;
for Dionysia Candida can mean nothing else. Let her shade rejoice in the
fame which Hubertus Sussannæus has given her.
I ought to add that the quadrature of Orontius, and solutions of all the other
difficulties, were first published in De Rebus Mathematicis Hactenus
Desideratis,[52] of which I have not the date.

DUCHESNE, AND A DISQUISITION ON ETYMOLOGY.

Nicolai Raymari Ursi Dithmarsi Fundamentum Astronomicum, id
est, nova doctrina sinuum et triangulorum.... Strasburg, 1588, 4to.
[53]

People choose the name of this astronomer for themselves: I take Ursus,
because he was a bear. This book gave the quadrature of Simon Duchesne,
[54] or à Quercu, which excited Peter Metius,[55] as presently noticed. It also

gave that unintelligible reference to Justus Byrgius which has been used in
the discussion about the invention of logarithms.[56]
The real name of Duchesne is Van der Eycke. I have met with a tract in
Dutch, Letterkundige Aanteekeningen, upon Van Eycke, Van Ceulen,[57]
etc., by J. J. Dodt van Flensburg,[58] which I make out to be since 1841 in
date. I should much like a translation of this tract to be printed, say in the
Phil. Mag. Dutch would be clear English if it were properly spelt. For
example, learn-master would be seen at once to be teacher; but they will
spell it leermeester. Of these they write as van deze; widow they make
weduwe. All this is plain to me, who never saw a Dutch dictionary in my
life; but many of their misspellings are quite unconquerable.

FALCO'S RARE TRACT.

Jacobus Falco Valentinus, miles Ordinis Montesiani, hanc circuli
quadraturam invenit. Antwerp, 1589, 4to.[59]

The attempt is more than commonly worthless; but as Montucla and others
have referred to the verses at the end, and as the tract is of the rarest, I will
quote them:

Circulus loquitur.
Vocabar ante circulus
Eramque curvus undique
Ut alta solis orbita
Et arcus ille nubium.
Eram figura nobilis
Carensque sola origine
Carensque sola termino.
Modo indecora prodeo
Novisque fœdor angulis.
Nec hoc peregit Archytas[60]
Neque Icari pater neque
Tuus, Iapete, filius.
Quis ergo casus aut Deus
Meam quadravit aream?

Respondet auctor.
Ad alta Turiæ ostia
Lacumque limpidissimum
Sita est beata civitas
Parum Saguntus abfuit
Abestque Sucro plusculum.
Hic est poeta quispiam
Libenter astra consulens
Sibique semper arrogans
Negata doctioribus,
Senex ubique cogitans
Sui frequenter immemor

Nec explicare circinum
Nec exarare lineas
Sciens ut ipse prædicat.
Hic ergo bellus artifex
Tuam quadravit aream.[61]

Falco's verses are pretty, if the ˘-mysteries be correct; but of these things I
have forgotten—what I knew. [One mistake has been pointed out to me: it is
Archytas].
As a specimen of the way in which history is written, I copy the account
which Montucla—who is accurate when he writes about what he has seen—
gives of these verses. He gives the date 1587; he places the verses at the
beginning instead of the end; he says the circle thanks its quadrator
affectionately; and he says the good and modest chevalier gives all the glory
to the patron saint of his order. All of little consequence, as it happens; but
writing at second-hand makes as complete mistakes about more important
matters.

BUNGUS ON THE MYSTERY OF NUMBER.

Petri Bungi Bergomatis Numerorum mysteria. Bergomi
[Bergamo], 1591, 4to. Second Edition.

The first edition is said to be of 1585;[62] the third, Paris, 1618. Bungus is
not for my purpose on his own score, but those who gave the numbers their
mysterious characters: he is but a collector. He quotes or uses 402 authors,
as we are informed by his list; this just beats Warburton,[63] whom some
eulogist or satirist, I forget which, holds up as having used 400 authors in
some one work. Bungus goes through 1, 2, 3, etc., and gives the account of
everything remarkable in which each number occurs; his accounts not being
always mysterious. The numbers which have nothing to say for themselves
are omitted: thus there is a gap between 50 and 60. In treating 666, Bungus,
a good Catholic, could not compliment the Pope with it, but he fixes it on
Martin Luther with a little forcing. If from A to I represent 1-10, from K to
S 10-90, and from T to Z 100-500, we see:

MA R T I N L U T E R A
30 1 80 100 9 40 20 200 100 5 80 1

which gives 666. Again, in Hebrew, Lulter does the same:

‫ל ו ל ת ר‬
200 400 30 6 30

And thus two can play at any game. The second is better than the first: to
Latinize the surname and not the Christian name is very unscholarlike. The
last number mentioned is a thousand millions; all greater numbers are
dismissed in half a page. Then follows an accurate distinction between
number and multitude—a thing much wanted both in arithmetic and logic.

WHICH LEADS TO A STORY ABOUT THE ROYAL SOCIETY.
What may be the use of such a book as this? The last occasion on which it
was used was the following. Fifteen or sixteen years ago the Royal Society
determined to restrict the number of yearly admissions to fifteen men of
science, and noblemen ad libitum; the men of science being selected and
recommended by the Council, with a power, since practically surrendered,
to the Society to elect more. This plan appears to me to be directly against
the spirit of their charter, the true intent of which is, that all who are fit
should be allowed to promote natural knowledge in association, from and
after the time at which they are both fit and willing. It is also working more
absurdly from year to year; the tariff of fifteen per annum will soon amount
to the practical exclusion of many who would be very useful. This begins to
be felt already, I suspect. But, as appears above, the body of the Society has
the remedy in its own hands. When the alteration was discussed by the
Council, my friend the late Mr. Galloway,[64] then one of the body, opposed
it strongly, and inquired particularly into the reason why fifteen, of all
numbers, was the one to be selected. Was it because fifteen is seven and
eight, typifying the Old Testament Sabbath, and the New Testament day of
the resurrection following? Was it because Paul strove fifteen days against
Peter, proving that he was a doctor both of the Old and New Testament?
Was it because the prophet Hosea bought a lady for fifteen pieces of silver?

Was it because, according to Micah, seven shepherds and eight chiefs
should waste the Assyrians? Was it because Ecclesiastes commands equal
reverence to be given to both Testaments—such was the interpretation—in
the words "Give a portion to seven, and also to eight"? Was it because the
waters of the Deluge rose fifteen cubits above the mountains?—or because
they lasted fifteen decades of days? Was it because Ezekiel's temple had
fifteen steps? Was it because Jacob's ladder has been supposed to have had
fifteen steps? Was it because fifteen years were added to the life of
Hezekiah? Was it because the feast of unleavened bread was on the fifteenth
day of the month? Was it because the scene of the Ascension was fifteen
stadia from Jerusalem? Was it because the stone-masons and porters
employed in Solomon's temple amounted to fifteen myriads? etc. The
Council were amused and astounded by the volley of fifteens which was
fired at them; they knowing nothing about Bungus, of which Mr. Galloway
—who did not, as the French say, indicate his sources—possessed the copy
now before me. In giving this anecdote I give a specimen of the book,
which is exceedingly rare. Should another edition ever appear, which is not
very probable, he would be but a bungling Bungus who should forget the
fifteen of the Royal Society.

AND ALSO TO A QUESTION OF EVIDENCE.
[I make a remark on the different colors which the same person gives to one
story, according to the bias under which he tells it. My friend Galloway told
me how he had quizzed the Council of the Royal Society, to my great
amusement. Whenever I am struck by the words of any one, I carry away a
vivid recollection of position, gestures, tones, etc. I do not know whether
this be common or uncommon. I never recall this joke without seeing
before me my friend, leaning against his bookcase, with Bungus open in his
hand, and a certain half-depreciatory tone which he often used when
speaking of himself. Long after his death, an F.R.S. who was present at the
discussion, told me the story. I did not say I had heard it, but I watched him,
with Galloway at the bookcase before me. I wanted to see whether the two
would agree as to the fact of an enormous budget of fifteens having been
fired at the Council, and they did agree perfectly. But when the paragraph of
the Budget appeared in the Athenæum, my friend, who seemed rather to

object to the showing-up, assured me that the thing was grossly
exaggerated; there was indeed a fifteen or two, but nothing like the number
I had given. I had, however, taken sharp note of the previous narration.

AND TO ANOTHER QUESTION OF EVIDENCE.
I will give another instance. An Indian officer gave me an account of an
elephant, as follows. A detachment was on the march, and one of the gun-
carriages got a wheel off the track, so that it was also off the ground, and
hanging over a precipice. If the bullocks had moved a step, carriages,
bullocks, and all must have been precipitated. No one knew what could be
done until some one proposed to bring up an elephant, and let him manage
it his own way. The elephant took a moment's survey of the fix, put his
trunk under the axle of the free wheel, and waited. The surrounders, who
saw what he meant, moved the bullocks gently forward, the elephant
followed, supporting the axle, until there was ground under the wheel, when
he let it quietly down. From all I had heard of the elephant, this was not too
much to believe. But when, years afterwards, I reminded my friend of his
story, he assured me that I had misunderstood him, that the elephant was
directed to put his trunk under the wheel, and saw in a moment why. This is
reasonable sagacity, and very likely the correct account; but I am quite sure
that, in the fit of elephant-worship under which the story was first told, it
was told as I have first stated it.]

GIORDANO BRUNO AND HIS PARADOXES.

[Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figura ... item de
Innumerabilibus, Immenso, et Infigurabili ... Frankfort, 1591,
8vo.[65]

I cannot imagine how I came to omit a writer whom I have known so many
years, unless the following story will explain it. The officer reproved the
boatswain for perpetual swearing; the boatswain answered that he heard the
officers swear. "Only in an emergency," said the officer. "That's just it,"
replied the other; "a boatswain's life is a life of 'mergency." Giordano Bruno

was all paradox; and my mind was not alive to his paradoxes, just as my
ears might have become dead to the boatswain's oaths. He was, as has been
said, a vorticist before Descartes,[66] an optimist before Leibnitz, a
Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange
opinions of his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome,
February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the holy Church,
and the rights and liberties of the same. These last words are from the writ
of our own good James I, under which Leggatt[67] was roasted at
Smithfield, in March 1612; and if I had a copy of the instrument under
which Wightman[68] was roasted at Lichfield, a month afterwards, I daresay
I should find something quite as edifying. I extract an account which I gave
of Bruno in the Comp. Alm. for 1855:
"He was first a Dominican priest, then a Calvinist; and was roasted alive at
Rome, in 1600, for as many heresies of opinion, religious and
philosophical, as ever lit one fire. Some defenders of the papal cause have
at least worded their accusations so to be understood as imputing to him
villainous actions. But it is positively certain that his death was due to
opinions alone, and that retractation, even after sentence, would have saved
him. There exists a remarkable letter, written from Rome on the very day of
the murder, by Scioppius[69] (the celebrated scholar, a waspish convert from
Lutheranism, known by his hatred to Protestants and Jesuits) to
Rittershusius,[70] a well-known Lutheran writer on civil and canon law,
whose works are in the index of prohibited books. This letter has been
reprinted by Libri (vol. iv. p. 407). The writer informs his friend (whom he
wished to convince that even a Lutheran would have burnt Bruno) that all
Rome would tell him that Bruno died for Lutheranism; but this is because
the Italians do not know the difference between one heresy and another, in
which simplicity (says the writer) may God preserve them. That is to say,
they knew the difference between a live heretic and a roasted one by actual
inspection, but had no idea of the difference between a Lutheran and a
Calvinist. The countrymen of Boccaccio would have smiled at the idea
which the German scholar entertained of them. They said Bruno was burnt
for Lutheranism, a name under which they classed all Protestants: and they
are better witnesses than Schopp, or Scioppius. He then proceeds to
describe to his Protestant friend (to whom he would certainly not have
omitted any act which both their churches would have condemned) the

mass of opinions with which Bruno was charged; as that there are
innumerable worlds, that souls migrate, that Moses was a magician, that the
Scriptures are a dream, that only the Hebrews descended from Adam and
Eve, that the devils would be saved, that Christ was a magician and
deservedly put to death, etc. In fact, says he, Bruno has advanced all that
was ever brought forward by all heathen philosophers, and by all heretics,
ancient and modern. A time for retractation was given, both before sentence
and after, which should be noted, as well for the wretched palliation which
it may afford, as for the additional proof it gives that opinions, and opinions
only, brought him to the stake. In this medley of charges the Scriptures are a
dream, while Adam, Eve, devils, and salvation are truths, and the Saviour a
deceiver. We have examined no work of Bruno except the De Monade, etc.,
mentioned in the text. A strong though strange theism runs through the
whole, and Moses, Christ, the Fathers, etc., are cited in a manner which
excites no remark either way. Among the versions of the cause of Bruno's
death is atheism: but this word was very often used to denote rejection of
revelation, not merely in the common course of dispute, but by such writers,
for instance, as Brucker[71] and Morhof.[72] Thus Morhof says of the De
Monade, etc., that it exhibits no manifest signs of atheism. What he means
by the word is clear enough, when he thus speaks of a work which
acknowledges God in hundreds of places, and rejects opinions as
blasphemous in several. The work of Bruno in which his astronomical
opinions are contained is De Monade, etc. (Frankfort, 1591, 8vo). He is the
most thorough-going Copernican possible, and throws out almost every
opinion, true or false, which has ever been discussed by astronomers, from
the theory of innumerable inhabited worlds and systems to that of the
planetary nature of comets. Libri (vol. iv)[73] has reprinted the most striking
part of his expressions of Copernican opinion."

THIS LEADS TO THE CHURCH QUESTION.
The Satanic doctrine that a church may employ force in aid of its dogma is
supposed to be obsolete in England, except as an individual paradox; but
this is difficult to settle. Opinions are much divided as to what the Roman
Church would do in England, if she could: any one who doubts that she
claims the right does not deserve an answer. When the hopes of the

Tractarian section of the High Church were in bloom, before the most
conspicuous intellects among them had transgressed their ministry, that
they might go to their own place, I had the curiosity to see how far it could
be ascertained whether they held the only doctrine which makes me the
personal enemy of a sect. I found in one of their tracts the assumption of a
right to persecute, modified by an asserted conviction that force was not
efficient. I cannot now say that this tract was one of the celebrated ninety;
and on looking at the collection I find it so poorly furnished with contents,
etc., that nothing but searching through three thick volumes would decide.
In these volumes I find, augmenting as we go on, declarations about the
character and power of "the Church" which have a suspicious appearance.
The suspicion is increased by that curious piece of sophistry, No. 87, on
religious reserve. The queer paradoxes of that tract leave us in doubt as to
everything but this, that the church(man) is not bound to give his whole
counsel in all things, and not bound to say what the things are in which he
does not give it. It is likely enough that some of the "rights and liberties" are
but scantily described. There is now no fear; but the time was when, if not
fear, there might be a looking for of fear to come; nobody could then be so
sure as we now are that the lion was only asleep. There was every
appearance of a harder fight at hand than was really found needful.
Among other exquisite quirks of interpretation in the No. 87 above
mentioned is the following. God himself employs reserve; he is said to be
decked with light as with a garment (the old or prayer-book version of
Psalm civ. 2). To an ordinary apprehension this would be a strong image of
display, manifestation, revelation; but there is something more. "Does not a
garment veil in some measure that which it clothes? Is not that very light
concealment?"
This No. 87, admitted into a series, fixes upon the managers of the series,
who permitted its introduction, a strong presumption of that underhand
intent with which they were charged. At the same time it is honorable to our
liberty that this series could be published: though its promoters were greatly
shocked when the Essayists and Bishop Colenso[74] took a swing on the
other side. When No. 90 was under discussion, Dr. Maitland,[75] the
librarian at Lambeth, asked Archbishop Howley[76] a question about No. 89.
"I did not so much as know there was a No. 89," was the answer. I am

almost sure I have seen this in print, and quite sure that Dr. Maitland told it
to me. It is creditable that there was so much freedom; but No. 90 was too
bad, and was stopped.
The Tractarian mania has now (October 1866) settled down into a chronic
vestment disease, complicated with fits of transubstantiation, which has
taken the name of Ritualism. The common sense of our national character
will not put up with a continuance of this grotesque folly; millinery in all its
branches will at last be advertised only over the proper shops. I am told that
the Ritualists give short and practical sermons; if so, they may do good in
the end. The English Establishment has always contained those who want
an excitement; the New Testament, in its plain meaning, can do little for
them. Since the Revolution, Jacobitism, Wesleyanism, Evangelicism,
Puseyism,[77] and Ritualism, have come on in turn, and have furnished hot
water for those who could not wash without it. If the Ritualists should
succeed in substituting short and practical teaching for the high-spiced
lectures of the doctrinalists, they will be remembered with praise. John the
Baptist would perhaps not have brought all Jerusalem out into the
wilderness by his plain and good sermons: it was the camel's hair and the
locusts which got him a congregation, and which, perhaps, added force to
his precepts. When at school I heard a dialogue, between an usher and the
man who cleaned the shoes, about Mr. ——, a minister, a very corporate
body with due area of waistcoat. "He is a man of great erudition," said the
first. "Ah, yes sir," said Joe; "any one can see that who looks at that silk
waistcoat."]

OF THOMAS GEPHYRANDER SALICETUS.
[When I said at the outset that I had only taken books from my own store, I
should have added that I did not make any search for information given as
part of a work. Had I looked through all my books, I might have made
some curious additions. For instance, in Schott's Magia Naturalis[78] (vol.
iii. pp. 756-778) is an account of the quadrature of Gephyrauder, as he is
misprinted in Montucla. He was Thomas Gephyrander Salicetus; and he
published two editions, in 1608 and 1609.[79] I never even heard of a copy
of either. His work is of the extreme of absurdity: he makes a distinction

between geometrical and arithmetical fractions, and evolves theorems from
it. More curious than his quadrature is his name; what are we to make of it?
If a German, he is probably a German form of Bridgeman. and Salicetus
refers him to Weiden. But Thomas was hardly a German Christian name of
his time; of 526 German philosophers, physicians, lawyers, and theologians
who were biographed by Melchior Adam,[80] only two are of this name. Of
these one is Thomas Erastus,[81] the physician whose theological writings
against the Church as a separate power have given the name of Erastians to
those who follow his doctrine, whether they have heard of him or not.
Erastus is little known; accordingly, some have supposed that he must be
Erastus, the friend of St. Paul and Timothy (Acts xix. 22; 2 Tim. iv. 20;
Rom. xvi. 23), but what this gentleman did to earn the character is not
hinted at. Few words would have done: Gaius (Rom. xvi. 23) has an
immortality which many more noted men have missed, given by John
Bunyan, out of seven words of St. Paul. I was once told that the Erastians
got their name from Blastus, and I could not solve bl = er: at last I
remembered that Blastus was a chamberlain[82] as well as Erastus; hence
the association which caused the mistake. The real heresiarch was a
physician who died in 1583; his heresy was promulgated in a work,
published immediately after his death by his widow, De Excommunicatione
Ecclesiastica. He denied the power of excommunication on the principle
above stated; and was answered by Besa.[83] The work was translated by Dr.
R. Lee[84] (Edinb. 1844, 8vo). The other is Thomas Grynæus,[85] a
theologian, nephew of Simon, who first printed Euclid in Greek; of him
Adam says that of works he published none, of learned sons four. If
Gephyrander were a Frenchman, his name is not so easily guessed at; but he
must have been of La Saussaye. The account given by Schott is taken from
a certain Father Philip Colbinus, who wrote against him.

In some manuscripts lately given to the Royal Society, David Gregory,[86]
who seems to have seen Gephyrander's work, calls him Salicetus
Westphalus, which is probably on the title-page. But the only Weiden I can
find is in Bavaria. Murhard has both editions in his Catalogue, but had
plainly never seen the books: he gives the author as Thomas Gep.
Hyandrus, Salicettus Westphalus. Murhard is a very old referee of mine; but
who the non nominandus was to see Montucla's Gephyrander in Murhard's
Gep. Hyandrus, both writers being usually accurate?]

NAPIER ON REVELATIONS.

A plain discoverie of the whole Revelation of St. John ...
whereunto are annexed certain oracles of Sibylla.... Set Foorth by
John Napeir L. of Marchiston. London, 1611, 4to.[87]

The first edition was Edinburgh, 1593,[88] 4to. Napier[89] always believed
that his great mission was to upset the Pope, and that logarithms, and such
things, were merely episodes and relaxations. It is a pity that so many books
have been written about this matter, while Napier, as good as any, is
forgotten and unread. He is one of the first who gave us the six thousand
years. "There is a sentence of the house of Elias reserved in all ages,
bearing these words: The world shall stand six thousand years, and then it
shall be consumed by fire: two thousand yeares voide or without lawe, two
thousand yeares under the law, and two thousand yeares shall be the daies
of the Messias...."
I give Napier's parting salute: it is a killing dilemma:
"In summar conclusion, if thou o Rome aledges thyselfe reformed, and to
beleeue true Christianisme, then beleeue Saint John the Disciple, whome
Christ loued, publikely here in this Reuelation proclaiming thy wracke, but
if thou remain Ethnick in thy priuate thoghts, beleeuing[90] the old Oracles
of the Sibyls reuerently keeped somtime in thy Capitol: then doth here this
Sibyll proclame also thy wracke. Repent therefore alwayes, in this thy latter
breath, as thou louest thine Eternall salvation. Amen."
—Strange that Napier should not have seen that this appeal could not
succeed, unless the prophecies of the Apocalypse were no true prophecies at
all.

OF GILBERT'S DE MAGNETE.

De Magnete magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete
tellure. By William Gilbert. London, 1600, folio.—There is a

second edition; and a third, according to Watt.[91]

Of the great work on the magnet there is no need to speak, though it was a
paradox in its day. The posthumous work of Gilbert, "De Mundo nostro
sublunari philosophia nova" (Amsterdam, 1651, 4to)[92] is, as the title
indicates, confined to the physics of the globe and its atmosphere. It has
never excited attention: I should hope it would be examined with our
present lights.

OF GIOVANNI BATISTA PORTA.

Elementorum Curvilineorium Libri tres. By John Baptista Porta.
Rome, 1610, 4to.[93]

This is a ridiculous attempt, which defies description, except that it is all
about lunules. Porta was a voluminous writer. His printer announces
fourteen works printed, and four to come, besides thirteen plays printed,
and eleven waiting. His name is, and will be, current in treatises on physics
for more reasons than one.

CATALDI ON THE QUADRATURE.

Trattato della quadratura del cerchio. Di Pietro Antonio Cataldi.
Bologna, 1612, folio.[94]

Rheticus,[95] Vieta, and Cataldi are the three untiring computers of
Germany, France, and Italy; Napier in Scotland, and Briggs[96] in England,
come just after them. This work claims a place as beginning with the
quadrature of Pellegrino Borello[97] of Reggio, who will have the circle to
be exactly 3 diameters and 69/484 of a diameter. Cataldi, taking Van
Ceulen's approximation, works hard at the finding of integers which nearly
represent the ratio. He had not then the continued fraction, a mode of
representation which he gave the next year in his work on the square root.
He has but twenty of Van Ceulen's thirty places, which he takes from

Clavius[98]: and any one might be puzzled to know whence the Italians got
the result; Van Ceulen, in 1612, not having been translated from Dutch. But
Clavius names his comrade Gruenberger, and attributes the approximation
to them jointly; "Lud. a Collen et Chr. Gruenbergerus[99] invenerunt," which
he had no right to do, unless, to his private knowledge, Gruenberger had
verified Van Ceulen. And Gruenberger only handed over twenty of the
places. But here is one instance, out of many, of the polyglot character of
the Jesuit body, and its advantages in literature.

OF LANSBERGIUS.

Philippi Lausbergii Cyclometriæ Novæ Libri Duo. Middleburg,
1616, 4to.[100]

This is one of the legitimate quadratures, on which I shall here only remark
that by candlelight it is quadrature under difficulties, for all the diagrams
are in red ink.

A TEXT LEADING TO REMARKS ON PRESTER JOHN.

Recherches Curieuses des Mesures du Monde. By S. C. de V.
Paris, 1626, 8vo (pp. 48).[101]

It is written by some Count for his son; and if all the French nobility would
have given their sons the same kind of instruction about rank, the old
French aristocracy would have been as prosperous at this moment as the
English peerage and squireage. I sent the tract to Capt. Speke,[102] shortly
after his arrival in England, thinking he might like to see the old names of
the Ethiopian provinces. But I first made a copy of all that relates to Prester
John,[103] himself a paradox. The tract contains, inter alia, an account of the
four empires; of the great Turk, the great Tartar, the great Sophy, and the
great Prester John. This word great (grand), which was long used in the
phrase "the great Turk," is a generic adjunct to an emperor. Of the Tartars it
is said that "c'est vne nation prophane et barbaresque, sale et vilaine, qui

mangent la chair demie cruë, qui boiuent du laict de jument, et qui n'vsent
de nappes et seruiettes que pour essuyer leurs bouches et leurs mains."[104]
Many persons have heard of Prester John, and have a very indistinct idea of
him. I give all that is said about him, since the recent discussions about the
Nile may give an interest to the old notions of geography.
"Le grand Prestre Jean qui est le quatriesme en rang, est Empereur
d'Ethiopie, et des Abyssins, et se vante d'estre issu de la race de Dauid,
comme estant descendu de la Royne de Saba, Royne d'Ethiopie, laquelle
estant venuë en Hierusalem pour voir la sagesse de Salomon, enuiron l'an
du monde 2952, s'en retourna grosse d'vn fils qu'ils nomment Moylech,
duquel ils disent estre descendus en ligne directe. Et ainsi il se glorifie
d'estre le plus ancien Monarque de la terre, disant que son Empire a duré
plus de trois mil ans, ce que nul autre Empire ne peut dire. Aussi met-il en
ses tiltres ce qui s'ensuit: Nous, N. Souuerain en mes Royaumes,
vniquement aymé de Dieu, colomne de la foy, sorty de la race de Inda, etc.
Les limites de cet Empire touchent à la mer Rouge, et aux montagnes
d'Azuma vers l'Orient, et du costé de l'Occident, il est borné du fleuue du
Nil, qui le separe de la Nubie, vers le Septentrion il a l'Ægypte, et au Midy
les Royaumes de Congo, et de Mozambique, sa longueur contenant
quarante degré, qui font mille vingt cinq lieuës, et ce depuis Congo ou
Mozambique qui sont au Midy, iusqu'en Ægypte qui est au Septentrion, et
sa largeur contenant depuis le Nil qui est à l'Occident, iusqu'aux montagnes
d'Azuma, qui sont à l'Orient, sept cens vingt cinq lieues, qui font vingt neuf
degrez. Cét empire a sous soy trente grandes Prouinces, sçavoir, Medra,
Gaga, Alchy, Cedalon, Mantro, Finazam, Barnaquez, Ambiam, Fungy,
Angoté, Cigremaon, Gorga, Cafatez, Zastanla, Zeth, Barly, Belangana,
Tygra, Gorgany, Barganaza, d'Ancut, Dargaly, Ambiacatina, Caracogly,
Amara, Maon (sic), Guegiera, Bally, Dobora et Macheda. Toutes ces
Prouinces cy dessus sont situées iustement sous la ligne equinoxiale, entres
les Tropiques de Capricorne, et de Cancer. Mais elles s'approchent de nostre
Tropique, de deux cens cinquante lieuës plus qu'elles ne font de l'autre
Tropique. Ce mot de Prestre Jean signifie grand Seigneur, et n'est pas
Prestre comme plusieurs pense, il a esté tousiours Chrestien, mais souuent
Schismatique: maintenant il est Catholique, et reconnaist le Pape pour
Souuerain Pontife. I'ay veu quelqu'vn des ses Euesques, estant en
Hierusalem, auec lequel i'ay conferé souuent par le moyen de nostre

trucheman: il estoit d'vn port graue et serieux, succiur (sic) en son parler,
mais subtil à merueilles en tout ce qu'il disoit. Il prenoit grand plaisir au
recit que je luy faisais de nos belles ceremonies, et de la grauité de nos
Prelats en leurs habits Pontificaux, et autres choses que je laisse pour dire,
que l'Ethiopien est ioyoux et gaillard, ne ressemblant en rien a la saleté du
Tartare, ny à l'affreux regard du miserable Arabe, mais ils sont fins et
cauteleux, et ne se fient en personne, soupçonneux à merueilles, et fort
devotieux, ils ne sont du tout noirs comme l'on croit, i'entens parler de ceux
qui ne sont pas sous la ligne Equinoxiale, ny trop proches d'icelle, car ceux
qui sont dessous sont les Mores que nous voyons."[105]
It will be observed that the author speaks of his conversation with an
Ethiopian bishop, about that bishop's sovereign. Something must have
passed between the two which satisfied the writer that the bishop
acknowledged his own sovereign under some title answering to Prester
John.

CONCERNING A TRACT BY FIENUS.

De Cometa anni 1618 dissertationes Thomæ Fieni[106] et Liberti
Fromondi[107] ... Equidem Thomæ Fieni epistolica quæstio, An
verum sit Cœlum moveri et Terram quiescere? London, 1670,
8vo.

This tract of Fienus against the motion of the earth is a reprint of one
published in 1619.[108] I have given an account of it as a good summary of
arguments of the time, in the Companion to the Almanac for 1836.

ON SNELL'S WORK.

Willebrordi Snellii. R. F. Cyclometricus. Leyden, 1621, 4to.

This is a celebrated work on the approximative quadrature, which, having
the suspicious word cyclometricus, must be noticed here for distinction.[109]

ON BACON'S NOVUM ORGANUM.

1620. In this year, Francis Bacon[110] published his Novum Organum,[111]
which was long held in England—but not until the last century—to be the
work which taught Newton and all his successors how to philosophize. That
Newton never mentions Bacon, nor alludes in any way to his works, passed
for nothing. Here and there a paradoxer ventured not to find all this
teaching in Bacon, but he was pronounced blind. In our day it begins to be
seen that, great as Bacon was, and great as his book really is, he is not the
philosophical father of modern discovery.
But old prepossession will find reason for anything. A learned friend of
mine wrote to me that he had discovered proof that Newton owned Bacon
for his master: the proof was that Newton, in some of his earlier writings,
used the phrase experimentum crucis, which is Bacon's. Newton may have
read some of Bacon, though no proof of it appears. I have a dim idea that I
once saw the two words attributed to the alchemists: if so, there is another
explanation; for Newton was deeply read in the alchemists.
I subjoin a review which I wrote of the splendid edition of Bacon by
Spedding,[112] Ellis,[113] and Heath.[114] All the opinions therein expressed
had been formed by me long before: most of the materials were collected
for another purpose.

The Works of Francis Bacon. Edited by James Spedding, R.
Leslie Ellis, and Douglas D. Heath. 5 vols.[115]

No knowledge of nature without experiment and observation: so said
Aristotle, so said Bacon, so acted Copernicus, Tycho Brahé,[116] Gilbert,
Kepler, Galileo, Harvey, etc., before Bacon wrote.[117] No derived
knowledge until experiment and observation are concluded: so said Bacon,
and no one else. We do not mean to say that he laid down his principle in
these words, or that he carried it to the utmost extreme: we mean that
Bacon's ruling idea was the collection of enormous masses of facts, and

then digested processes of arrangement and elimination, so artistically
contrived, that a man of common intelligence, without any unusual sagacity,
should be able to announce the truth sought for. Let Bacon speak for
himself, in his editor's English:
"But the course I propose for the discovery of sciences is such as leaves but
little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits and
understandings nearly on a level. For, as in the drawing of a straight line or
a perfect circle, much depends on the steadiness and practice of the hand, if
it be done by aim of hand only, but if with the aid of rule or compass little
or nothing, so it is exactly with my plan.... For my way of discovering
sciences goes far to level men's wits, and leaves but little to individual
excellence; because it performs everything by the surest rules and
demonstrations."
To show that we do not strain Bacon's meaning, we add what is said by
Hooke,[118] whom we have already mentioned as his professed disciple,
and, we believe, his only disciple of the day of Newton. We must, however,
remind the reader that Hooke was very little of a mathematician, and spoke
of algebra from his own idea of what others had told him:
"The intellect is not to be suffered to act without its helps, but is continually
to be assisted by some method or engine, which shall be as a guide to
regulate its actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss. Of this
engine, no man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any thoughts and
he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch; but there is yet somewhat
more to be added, which he seemed to want time to complete. By this, as by
that art of algebra in geometry, 'twill be very easy to proceed in any natural
inquiry, regularly and certainly.... For as 'tis very hard for the most acute wit
to find out any difficult problem in geometry without the help of algebra ...
and altogether as easy for the meanest capacity acting by that method to
complete and perfect it, so will it be in the inquiry after natural knowledge."
Bacon did not live to mature the whole of this plan. Are we really to believe
that if he had completed the Instauratio we who write this—and who feel
ourselves growing bigger as we write it—should have been on a level with
Newton in physical discovery? Bacon asks this belief of us, and does not
get it. But it may be said, Your business is with what he did leave, and with

its consequences. Be it so. Mr. Ellis says: "That his method is impracticable
cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced
any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been
established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance
with it." That this is very true is well known to all who have studied the
history of discovery: those who deny it are bound to establish either that
some great discovery has been made by Bacon's method—we mean by the
part peculiar to Bacon—or, better still, to show that some new discovery
can be made, by actually making it. No general talk about induction: no
reliance upon the mere fact that certain experiments or observations have
been made; let us see where Bacon's induction has been actually used or
can be used. Mere induction, enumeratio simplex, is spoken of by himself
with contempt, as utterly incompetent. For Bacon knew well that a thousand
instances may be contradicted by the thousand and first: so that no
enumeration of instances, however large, is "sure demonstration," so long
any are left.
The immortal Harvey, who was inventing—we use the word in its old sense
—the circulation of the blood, while Bacon was in the full flow of thought
upon his system, may be trusted to say whether, when the system appeared,
he found any likeness in it to his own processes, or what would have been
any help to him, if he had waited for the Novum Organum. He said of
Bacon, "He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." This has been
generally supposed to be only a sneer at the sutor ultra crepidam; but we
cannot help suspecting that there was more intended by it. To us, Bacon is
eminently the philosopher of error prevented, not of progress facilitated.
When we throw off the idea of being led right, and betake ourselves to that
of being kept from going wrong, we read his writings with a sense of their
usefulness, his genius, and their probable effect upon purely experimental
science, which we can be conscious of upon no other supposition. It amuses
us to have to add that the part of Aristotle's logic of which he saw the value
was the book on refutation of fallacies. Now is this not the notion of things
to which the bias of a practised lawyer might lead him? In the case which is
before the Court, generally speaking, truth lurks somewhere about the facts,
and the elimination of all error will show it in the residuum. The two senses
of the word law come in so as to look almost like a play upon words. The
judge can apply the law so soon as the facts are settled: the physical

philosopher has to deduce the law from the facts. Wait, says the judge, until
the facts are determined: did the prisoner take the goods with felonious
intent? did the defendant give what amounts to a warranty? or the like.
Wait, says Bacon, until all the facts, or all the obtainable facts, are brought
in: apply my rules of separation to the facts, and the result shall come out as
easily as by ruler and compasses. We think it possible that Harvey might
allude to the legal character of Bacon's notions: we can hardly conceive so
acute a man, after seeing what manner of writer Bacon was, meaning only
that he was a lawyer and had better stick to his business. We do ourselves
believe that Bacon's philosophy more resembles the action of mind of a
common-law judge—not a Chancellor—than that of the physical inquirers
who have been supposed to follow in his steps. It seems to us that Bacon's
argument is, there can be nothing of law but what must be either
perceptible, or mechanically deducible, when all the results of law, as
exhibited in phenomena, are before us. Now the truth is, that the physical
philosopher has frequently to conceive law which never was in his previous
thought—to educe the unknown, not to choose among the known. Physical
discovery would be very easy work if the inquirer could lay down his this,
his that, and his t'other, and say, "Now, one of these it must be; let us
proceed to try which." Often has he done this, and failed; often has the truth
turned out to be neither this, that, nor t'other. Bacon seems to us to think
that the philosopher is a judge who has to choose, upon ascertained facts,
which of known statutes is to rule the decision: he appears to us more like a
person who is to write the statute-book, with no guide except the cases and
decisions presented in all their confusion and all their conflict.
Let us take the well-known first aphorism of the Novum Organum:
"Man being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so
much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the
course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do
anything."

This aphorism is placed by Sir John Herschel[119] at the head of his
Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy: a book containing notions of
discovery far beyond any of which Bacon ever dreamed; and this because it
was written after discovery, instead of before. Sir John Herschel, in his
version, has avoided the translation of re vel mente observaverit, and gives

us only "by his observation of the order of nature." In making this the
opening of an excellent sermon, he has imitated the theologians, who often
employ the whole time of the discourse in stuffing matter into the text,
instead of drawing matter out of it. By observation he (Herschel) means the
whole course of discovery, observation, hypothesis, deduction, comparison,
etc. The type of the Baconian philosopher as it stood in his mind, had been
derived from a noble example, his own father, William Herschel,[120] an
inquirer whose processes would have been held by Bacon to have been
vague, insufficient, compounded of chance work and sagacity, and too
meagre of facts to deserve the name of induction. In another work, his
treatise on Astronomy,[121] Sir John Herschel, after noting that a popular
account can only place the reader on the threshold, proceeds to speak as
follows of all the higher departments of science. The italics are his own:
"Admission to its sanctuary, and to the privileges and feelings of a votary, is
only to be gained by one means—sound and sufficient knowledge of
mathematics, the great instrument of all exact inquiry, without which no
man can ever make such advances in this or any other of the higher
departments of science as can entitle him to form an independent opinion
on any subject of discussion within their range."
How is this? Man can know no more than he gets from observation, and yet
mathematics is the great instrument of all exact inquiry. Are the results of
mathematical deduction results of observation? We think it likely that Sir
John Herschel would reply that Bacon, in coupling together observare re
and observare mente, has done what some wags said Newton afterwards did
in his study-door—cut a large hole of exit for the large cat, and a little hole
for the little cat.[122] But Bacon did no such thing: he never included any
deduction under observation. To mathematics he had a dislike. He averred
that logic and mathematics should be the handmaids, not the mistresses, of
philosophy. He meant that they should play a subordinate and subsequent
part in the dressing of the vast mass of facts by which discovery was to be
rendered equally accessible to Newton and to us. Bacon himself was very
ignorant of all that had been done by mathematics; and, strange to say, he
especially objected to astronomy being handed over to the mathematicians.
Leverrier and Adams, calculating an unknown planet into visible existence
by enormous heaps of algebra, furnish the last comment of note on this

specimen of the goodness of Bacon's views. The following account of his
knowledge of what had been done in his own day or before it, is Mr.
Spedding's collection of casual remarks in Mr. Ellis's several prefaces:
"Though he paid great attention to astronomy, discussed carefully the
methods in which it ought to be studied, constructed for the satisfaction of
his own mind an elaborate theory of the heavens, and listened eagerly for
the news from the stars brought by Galileo's telescope, he appears to have
been utterly ignorant of the discoveries which had just been made by
Kepler's calculations. Though he complained in 1623 of the want of
compendious methods for facilitating arithmetical computations, especially
with regard to the doctrine of Series, and fully recognized the importance of
them as an aid to physical inquiries—he does not say a word about Napier's
Logarithms, which had been published only nine years before and reprinted
more than once in the interval. He complained that no considerable advance
had made in geometry beyond Euclid, without taking any notice of what
had been done by Archimedes and Apollonius. He saw the importance of
determining accurately the specific gravity of different substances, and
himself attempted to form a table of them by a rude process of his own,
without knowing of the more scientific though still imperfect methods
previously employed by Archimedes, Ghetaldus,[123] and Porta. He speaks
of the εὕρηκα of Archimedes in a manner which implies that he did not
clearly apprehend either the nature of the problem to be solved or the
principles upon which the solution depended. In reviewing the progress of
mechanics, he makes no mention of Archimedes himself, or of Stevinus,
[124]
Galileo, Guldinus,[125] or Ghetaldus. He makes no allusion to the
theory of equilibrium. He observes that a ball of one pound weight will fall
nearly as fast through the air as a ball of two, without alluding to the theory
of the acceleration of falling bodies, which had been made known by
Galileo more than thirty years before. He proposes an inquiry with regard to
the lever—namely, whether in a balance with arms of different length but
equal weight the distance from the fulcrum has any effect upon the
inclination,—though the theory of the lever was as well understood in his
own time as it is now. In making an experiment of his own to ascertain the
cause of the motion of a windmill, he overlooks an obvious circumstance
which makes the experiment inconclusive, and an equally obvious variation
of the same experiment which would have shown him that his theory was

false. He speaks of the poles of the earth as fixed, in a manner which seems
to imply that he was not acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes;
and in another place, of the north pole being above and the south pole
below, as a reason why in our hemisphere the north winds predominate over
the south."
Much of this was known before, but such a summary of Bacon's want of
knowledge of the science of his own time was never yet collected in one
place. We may add, that Bacon seems to have been as ignorant of
Wright's[126] memorable addition to the resources of navigation as of
Napier's addition to the means of calculation. Mathematics was beginning
to be the great instrument of exact inquiry: Bacon threw the science aside,
from ignorance, just at the time when his enormous sagacity, applied to
knowledge, would have made him see the part it was to play. If Newton had
taken Bacon for his master, not he, but somebody else, would have been
Newton.[127]

ON METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES.
There is an attempt at induction going on, which has yielded little or no
fruit, the observations made in the meteorological observatories. This
attempt is carried on in a manner which would have caused Bacon to dance
for joy; for he lived in times when Chancellors did dance. Russia, says M.
Biot,[128] is covered by an army of meteorographs, with generals, high
officers, subalterns, and privates with fixed and defined duties of
observation. Other countries have also their systematic observations. And
what has come of it? Nothing, says M. Biot, and nothing will ever come of
it; the veteran mathematician and experimental philosopher declares, as
does Mr. Ellis, that no single branch of science has ever been fruitfully
explored in this way. There is no special object, he says. Any one would
suppose that M. Biot's opinion, given to the French Government upon the
proposal to construct meteorological observatories in Algeria (Comptes
Rendus, vol. xli, Dec. 31, 1855), was written to support the mythical Bacon,
modern physics, against the real Bacon of the Novum Organum. There is no
special object. In these words lies the difference between the two methods.

[In the report to the Greenwich Board of Visitors for 1867 Mr. Airy,[129]
speaking of the increase of meteorological observatories, remarks,
"Whether the effect of this movement will be that millions of useless
observations will be added to the millions that already exist, or whether
something may be expected to result which will lead to a meteorological
theory, I cannot hazard a conjecture." This is a conjecture, and a very
obvious one: if Mr. Airy would have given 2-3/4d. for the chance of a
meteorological theory formed by masses of observations, he would never
have said what I have quoted.]

BASIS OF MODERN DISCOVERY.
Modern discoveries have not been made by large collections of facts, with
subsequent discussion, separation, and resulting deduction of a truth thus
rendered perceptible. A few facts have suggested an hypothesis, which
means a supposition, proper to explain them. The necessary results of this
supposition are worked out, and then, and not till then, other facts are
examined to see if these ulterior results are found in nature. The trial of the
hypothesis is the special object: prior to which, hypothesis must have been
started, not by rule, but by that sagacity of which no description can be
given, precisely because the very owners of it do not act under laws
perceptible to themselves.[130] The inventor of hypothesis, if pressed to
explain his method, must answer as did Zerah Colburn,[131] when asked for
his mode of instantaneous calculation. When the poor boy had been
bothered for some time in this manner, he cried out in a huff, "God put it
into my head, and I can't put it into yours."[132] Wrong hypotheses, rightly
worked from, have produced more useful results than unguided observation.
But this is not the Baconian plan. Charles the Second, when informed of the
state of navigation, founded a Baconian observatory at Greenwich, to
observe, observe, observe away at the moon, until her motions were known
sufficiently well to render her useful in guiding the seaman. And no doubt
Flamsteed's[133] observations, twenty or thirty of them at least, were of
signal use. But how? A somewhat fanciful thinker, one Kepler, had hit upon
the approximate orbits of the planets by trying one hypothesis after another:

he found the ellipse, which the Platonists, well despised of Bacon, and who
would have despised him as heartily if they had known him, had
investigated and put ready to hand nearly 2000 years before.[134] The sun in
the focus, the motions of the planet more and more rapid as they approach
the sun, led Kepler—and Bacon would have reproved him for his rashness
—to imagine that a force residing in the sun might move the planets, a force
inversely as the distance. Bouillaud,[135] upon a fanciful analogy, rejected
the inverse distance, and, rejecting the force altogether, declared that if such
a thing there were, it would be as the inverse square of the distance.
Newton, ready prepared with the mathematics of the subject, tried the fall
of the moon towards the earth, away from her tangent, and found that, as
compared with the fall of a stone, the law of the inverse square did hold for
the moon. He deduced the ellipse, he proceeded to deduce the effect of the
disturbance of the sun upon the moon, upon the assumed theory of
universal gravitation. He found result after result of his theory in
conformity with observed fact: and, by aid of Flamsteed's observations,
which amended what mathematicians call his constants, he constructed his
lunar theory. Had it not been for Newton, the whole dynasty of Greenwich
astronomers, from Flamsteed of happy memory, to Airy whom Heaven
preserve,[136] might have worked away at nightly observation and daily
reduction, without any remarkable result: looking forward, as to a
millennium, to the time when any man of moderate intelligence was to see
the whole explanation. What are large collections of facts for? To make
theories from, says Bacon: to try ready-made theories by, says the history of
discovery: it's all the same, says the idolater: nonsense, say we!
Time and space run short: how odd it is that of the three leading ideas of
mechanics, time, space, and matter, the first two should always fail a
reviewer before the third. We might dwell upon many points, especially if
we attempted a more descriptive account of the valuable edition before us.
No one need imagine that the editors, by their uncompromising attack upon
the notion of Bacon's influence common even among mathematicians and
experimental philosophers, have lowered the glory of the great man whom
it was, many will think, their business to defend through thick and thin.
They have given a clearer notion of his excellencies, and a better idea of the
power of his mind, than ever we saw given before. Such a correction as
theirs must have come, and soon, for as Hallam says—after noting that the

Novum Organum was never published separately in England, Bacon has
probably been more read in the last thirty years—now forty—than in the
two hundred years which preceded. He will now be more read than ever he
was. The history of the intellectual world is the history of the worship of
one idol after another. No sooner is it clear that a Hercules has appeared
among men, than all that imagination can conceive of strength is attributed
to him, and his labors are recorded in the heavens. The time arrives when,
as in the case of Aristotle, a new deity is found, and the old one is
consigned to shame and reproach. A reaction may afterwards take place,
and this is now happening in the case of the Greek philosopher. The end of
the process is, that the opposing deities take their places, side by side, in a
Pantheon dedicated not to gods, but to heroes.

THE REAL VALUE OF BACON'S WORKS.
Passing over the success of Bacon's own endeavors to improve the details
of physical science, which was next to nothing, and of his method as a
whole, which has never been practised, we might say much of the good
influence of his writings. Sound wisdom, set in sparkling wit, must instruct
and amuse to the end of time: and, as against error, we repeat that Bacon is
soundly wise, so far as he goes. There is hardly a form of human error
within his scope which he did not detect, expose, and attach to a satirical
metaphor which never ceases to sting. He is largely indebted to a very
extensive reading; but the thoughts of others fall into his text with such a
close-fitting compactness that he can make even the words of the Sacred
Writers pass for his own. A saying of the prophet Daniel, rather a hackneyed
quotation in our day, Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia, stands in
the title-page of the first edition of Montucla's History of Mathematics as a
quotation from Bacon—and it is not the only place in which this mistake
occurs. When the truth of the matter, as to Bacon's system, is fully
recognized, we have little fear that there will be a reaction against the man.
First, because Bacon will always live to speak for himself, for he will not
cease to be read: secondly, because those who seek the truth will find it in
the best edition of his works, and will be most ably led to know what Bacon
was, in the very books which first showed at large what he was not.

THE CONGREGATION OF THE INDEX, ON COPERNICUS.
In this year (1620) appeared the corrections under which the Congregation
of the Index—i.e., the Committee of Cardinals which superintended the
Index of forbidden books—proposed to allow the work of Copernicus to be
read. I insert these conditions in full, because they are often alluded to, and
I know of no source of reference accessible to a twentieth part of those who
take interest in the question.
By a decree of the Congregation of the Index, dated March 5, 1616, the
work of Copernicus, and another of Didacus Astunica,[137] are suspended
donec corrigantur, as teaching:
"Falsam illam doctrinam Pythagoricam, divinæ que Scripturæ omnino
adversantem, de mobilitate Terræ et immobilitate Solis."[138]
But a work of the Carmelite Foscarini[139] is:
"Omnino prohibendum atque damnandum," because "ostendere conatur
præfatam doctrinam ... consonam esse veritati et non adversari Sacræ
Scripturæ."[140]
Works which teach the false doctrine of the earth's motion are to be
corrected; those which declare the doctrine conformable to Scripture are to
be utterly prohibited.
In a "Monitum ad Nicolai Copernici lectorem, ejusque emendatio,
permissio, et correctio," dated 1620 without the month or day, permission is
given to reprint the work of Copernicus with certain alterations; and, by
implication, to read existing copies after correction in writing. In the
preamble the author is called nobilis astrologus; not a compliment to his
birth, which was humble, but to his fame. The suspension was because:
"Sacræ Scripturæ, ejusque veræ et Catholicæ interpretationi repugnantia
(quod in homine Christiano minime tolerandum) non per hypothesin
tractare, sed ut verissima adstruere non dubitat!"[141]
And the corrections relate:

"Locis in quibus non ex hypothesi, sed asserendo de situ et motu Terræ
disputat."[142]
That is, the earth's motion may be an hypothesis for elucidation of the
heavenly motions, but must not be asserted as a fact.

(In Pref. circa finem.) "Copernicus. Si fortasse erunt ματαιόλογοι, qui cum
omnium Mathematum ignari sint, tamen de illis judicium sibi summunt,
propter aliquem locum scripturæ, male ad suum propositum detortum, ausi
fuerint meum hoc institutum reprehendere ac insectari: illos nihil moror
adeo ut etiam illorum judicium tanquam temerarium contemnam. Non enim
obscurum est Lactantium, celebrem alioqui scriptorem, sed Mathematicum
parum, admodum pueriliter de forma terræ loqui, cum deridet eos, qui
terram globi formam habere prodiderunt. Itaque non debet mirum videri
studiosis, si qui tales nos etiam videbunt. Mathemata Mathematicis
scribuntur, quibus et hi nostri labores, si me non fallit opinio, videbuntur
etiam Reipub. ecclesiasticæ conducere aliquid.... Emend. Ibi si fortasse dele
omnia, usque ad verbum hi nostri labores et sic accommoda—Cœterum hi
nostri labores."[143]
All the allusion to Lactantius, who laughed at the notion of the earth being
round, which was afterwards found true, is to be struck out.

(Cap. 5. lib. i. p. 3) "Copernicus. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus,
videbitur hæc quæstio nondum absoluta, et ideireo minime contemnenda.
Emend. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus, nihil refert an Terram in
medio Mundi, an extra Medium existere, quoad solvendas cœlestium
motuum apparentias existimemus."[144]
We must not say the question is not yet settled, but only that it may be
settled either way, so far as mere explanation of the celestial motions is
concerned.

(Cap. 8. lib. i.) "Totum hoc caput potest expungi, quia ex professo tractat de
veritate motus Terræ, dum solvit veterum rationes probantes ejus quietem.
Cum tamen problematice videatur loqui; ut studiosis satisfiat, seriesque et
ordo libri integer maneat; emendetur ut infra."[145]
A chapter which seems to assert the motion should perhaps be expunged;
but it may perhaps be problematical; and, not to break up the book, must be
amended as below.

(p. 6.) "Copernicus. Cur ergo hesitamus adhuc, mobilitatem illi formæ suæ
a natura congruentem concedere, magisquam quod totus labatur mundus,
cujus finis ignoratur, scirique nequit, neque fateamur ipsius cotidianæ
revolutionis in cœlo apparentiam esse, et in terra veritatem? Et hæc perinde
se habere, ac si diceret Virgilianus Æneas: Provehimur portu ... Emend. Cur
ergo non possum mobilitatem illi formæ suæ concedere, magisque quod
totus labatur mundus, cujus finis ignoratur scirique nequit, et quæ apparent
in cœlo, perinde se habere ac si ..."[146]
"Why should we hesitate to allow the earth's motion," must be altered into
"I cannot concede the earth's motion."

(p. 7.) "Copernicus. Addo etiam, quod satis absurdum videretur, continenti
sive locanti motum adscribi, et non potius contento et locato, quod est terra.
Emend. Addo etiam difficilius non esse contento et locato, quod est Terra,
motum adscribere, quam continenti."[147]
We must not say it is absurd to refuse motion to the contained and located,
and to give it to the containing and locating; say that neither is more
difficult than the other.

(p. 7.) "Copernicus. Vides ergo quod ex his omnibus probabilior sit
mobilitas Terræ, quam ejus quies, præsertim in cotidiana revolutione,
tanquam terræ maxime propria. Emend. Vides ... delendus est usque ad
finem capitis."[148]

Strike out the whole of the chapter from this to the end; it says that the
motion of the earth is the most probable hypothesis.

(Cap. 9. lib. i. p. 7.) "Copernicus. Cum igitur nihil prohibeat mobilitatem
Terræ, videndum nunc arbitror, an etiam plures illi motus conveniant, ut
possit una errantium syderum existimari. Emend. Cum igitur Terram moveri
assumpserim, videndum nunc arbitror, an etiam illi plures possint convenire
motus."[149]
We must not say that nothing prohibits the motion of the earth, only that
having assumed it, we may inquire whether our explanations require several
motions.

(Cap. 10. lib. i. p. 9.) "Copernicus. Non pudet nos fateri ... hoc potius in
mobilitate terræ verificari. Emend. Non pudet nos assumere ... hoc
consequenter in mobilitate verificari."[150]
(Cap. 10. lib. i. p. 10.) "Copernicus. Tanta nimirum est divina hæc. Opt.
Max. fabrica. Emend. Dele illa verba postrema."[151]

(Cap. ii. lib. i.[152]) "Copernicus. De triplici motu telluris demonstratio.
Emend. De hypothesi triplicis motus Terræ, ejusque demonstratione."[153]
(Cap. 10. lib. iv. p. 122.[154]) "Copernicus. De magnitudine horum trium
siderum, Solis, Lunæ, et Terræ. Emend. Dele verba horum trium siderum,
quia terra non est sidus, ut facit eam Copernicus."[155]
We must not say we are not ashamed to acknowledge; assume is the word.
We must not call this assumption a Divine work. A chapter must not be
headed demonstration, but hypothesis. The earth must not be called a star;
the word implies motion.
It will be seen that it does not take much to reduce Copernicus to pure
hypothesis. No personal injury being done to the author—who indeed had
been 17 years out of reach—the treatment of his book is now an excellent
joke. It is obvious that the Cardinals of the Index were a little ashamed of

their position, and made a mere excuse of a few corrections. Their mode of
dealing with chap. 8, this problematice videtur loqui, ut studiosis satisfiat,
[156] is an excuse to avoid corrections. But they struck out the stinging

allusion to Lactantius[157] in the preface, little thinking, honest men, for
they really believed what they said—that the light of Lactantius would grow
dark before the brightness of their own.

THE CONVOCATION AT OXFORD EQUALLY AT FAULT.
1622. I make no reference to the case of Galileo, except this. I have pointed
out (Penny Cycl. Suppl. "Galileo"; Engl. Cycl. "Motion of the Earth") that it
is clear the absurdity was the act of the Italian Inquisition—for the private
and personal pleasure of the Pope, who knew that the course he took would
not commit him as Pope—and not of the body which calls itself the Church.
Let the dirty proceeding have its right name. The Jesuit Riccioli,[158] the
stoutest and most learned Anti-Copernican in Europe, and the Puritan
Wilkins, a strong Copernican and Pope-hater, are equally positive that the
Roman Church never pronounced any decision: and this in the time
immediately following the ridiculous proceeding of the Inquisition. In like
manner a decision of the Convocation of Oxford is not a law of the English
Church; which is fortunate, for that Convocation, in 1622, came to a
decision quite as absurd, and a great deal more wicked than the declaration
against the motion of the earth. The second was a foolish mistake; the first
was a disgusting surrender of right feeling. The story is told without
disapprobation by Anthony Wood, who never exaggerated anything against
the university of which he is writing eulogistic history.

In 1622, one William Knight[159] put forward in a sermon preached before
the University certain theses which, looking at the state of the times, may
have been improper and possibly of seditious intent. One of them was that
the bishop might excommunicate the civil magistrate: this proposition the
clerical body could not approve, and designated it by the term erronea,[160]
the mildest going. But Knight also declared as follows:
"Subditis mere privatis, si Tyrannus tanquam latro aut stuprator in ipsos
faciat impetum, et ipsi nec potestatem ordinariam implorare, nec alia

ratione effugere periculum possint, in presenti periculo se et suos contra
tyrannum, sicut contra privatum grassatorem, defendere licet."[161]
That is, a man may defend his purse or a woman her honor, against the
personal attack of a king, as against that of a private person, if no other
means of safety can be found. The Convocation sent Knight to prison,
declared the proposition "falsa, periculosa, et impia," and enacted that all
applicants for degrees should subscribe this censure, and make oath that
they would neither hold, teach, nor defend Knight's opinions.
The thesis, in the form given, was unnecessary and improper. Though
strong opinions of the king's rights were advanced at the time, yet no one
ventured to say that, ministers and advisers apart, the king might personally
break the law; and we know that the first and only attempt which his
successor made brought on the crisis which cost him his throne and his
head. But the declaration that the proposition was false far exceeds in all
that is disreputable the decision of the Inquisition against the earth's motion.
We do not mention this little matter in England. Knight was a Puritan, and
Neal[162] gives a short account of his sermon. From comparison with Wood,
[163] I judge that the theses, as given, were not Knight's words, but the

digest which it was customary to make in criminal proceedings against
opinion. This heightens the joke, for it appears that the qualifiers of the
Convocation took pains to present their condemnation of Knight in the
terms which would most unequivocally make their censure condemn
themselves. This proceeding took place in the interval between the two
proceedings against Galileo: it is left undetermined whether we must say
pot-kettle-pot or kettle-pot-kettle.

Liberti Fromondi.... Ant-Aristarchus, sive orbis terræ immobilis.
Antwerp, 1631, 8vo.[164]

This book contains the evidence of an ardent opponent of Galileo to the
fact, that Roman Catholics of the day did not consider the decree of the
Index or of the Inquisition as a declaration of their Church. Fromond would
have been glad to say as much, and tries to come near it, but confesses he
must abstain. See Penny Cyclop. Suppl. "Galileo," and Eng. Cycl. "Motion

of the Earth." The author of a celebrated article in the Dublin Review, in
defence of the Church of Rome, seeing that Drinkwater Bethune[165] makes
use of the authority of Fromondus, but for another purpose, sneers at him
for bringing up a "musty old Professor." If he had known Fromondus, and
used him he would have helped his own case, which is very meagre for
want of knowledge.[166]

Advis à Monseigneur l'eminentissime Cardinal Duc de Richelieu,
sur la Proposition faicte par le Sieur Morin pour l'invention des
longitudes. Paris, 1634, 8vo.[167]

This is the Official Report of the Commissioners appointed by the Cardinal,
of whom Pascal is the one now best known, to consider Morin's plan. See
the full account in Delambre, Hist. Astr. Mod. ii. 236, etc.

THE METIUS APPROXIMATION.

Arithmetica et Geometria practica. By Adrian Metius. Leyden,
1640, 4to.[168]

This book contains the celebrated approximation guessed at by his father,
Peter Metius,[169] namely that the diameter is to the circumference as 113 to
355. The error is at the rate of about a foot in 2,000 miles. Peter Metius,
having his attention called to the subject by the false quadrature of
Duchesne, found that the ratio lay between 333/106 and 377/120. He then
took the liberty of taking the mean of both numerators and denominators,
giving 355/113. He had no right to presume that this mean was better than
either of the extremes; nor does it appear positively that he did so. He
published nothing; but his son Adrian,[170] when Van Ceulen's work showed
how near his father's result came to the truth, first made it known in the
work above. (See Eng. Cyclop., art. "Quadrature.")

ON INHABITABLE PLANETS.

A discourse concerning a new world and another planet, in two
books. London, 1640, 8vo.[171]
Cosmotheoros: or conjectures concerning the planetary worlds
and their inhabitants. Written in Latin, by Christianus Huyghens.
This translation was first published in 1698. Glasgow, 1757, 8vo.
[The original is also of 1698.][172]

The first work is by Bishop Wilkins, being the third edition, [first in 1638]
of the first book, "That the Moon may be a Planet"; and the first edition of
the second work, "That the Earth may be a Planet." [See more under the
reprint of 1802.] Whether other planets be inhabited or not, that is, crowded
with organisations some of them having consciousness, is not for me to
decide; but I should be much surprised if, on going to one of them, I should
find it otherwise. The whole dispute tacitly assumes that, if the stars and
planets be inhabited, it must be by things of which we can form some idea.
But for aught we know, what number of such bodies there are, so many
organisms may there be, of which we have no way of thinking nor of
speaking. This is seldom remembered. In like manner it is usually forgotten
that the matter of other planets may be of different chemistry from ours.
There may be no oxygen and hydrogen in Jupiter, which may have gens of
its own.[173] But this must not be said: it would limit the omniscience of the
a priori school of physical inquirers, the larger half of the whole, and would
be very unphilosophical. Nine-tenths of my best paradoxers come out from
among this larger half, because they are just a little more than of it at their
entrance.
There was a discussion on the subject some years ago, which began with

The plurality of worlds: an Essay. London, 1853, 8vo. [By Dr.
Wm. Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge]. A
dialogue on the plurality of worlds, being a supplement to the
Essay on that subject. [First found in the second edition, 1854;
removed to the end in subsequent editions, and separate copies
issued.][174]

A work of skeptical character, insisting on analogies which prohibit the
positive conclusion that the planets, stars, etc., are what we should call
inhabited worlds. It produced several works and a large amount of
controversy in reviews. The last predecessor of whom I know was

Plurality of Worlds.... By Alexander Maxwell. Second Edition.
London, 1820, 8vo.

This work is directed against the plurality by an author who does not admit
modern astronomy. It was occasioned by Dr. Chalmers's[175] celebrated
discourses on religion in connection with astronomy. The notes contain
many citations on the gravity controversy, from authors now very little
read: and this is its present value. I find no mention of Maxwell, not even in
Watt.[176] He communicated with mankind without the medium of a
publisher; and, from Vieta till now, this method has always been favorable
to loss of books.
A correspondent informs me that Alex. Maxwell, who wrote on the plurality
of worlds, in 1820, was a law-bookseller and publisher (probably his own
publisher) in Bell Yard. He had peculiar notions, which he was fond of
discussing with his customers. He was a bit of a Swedenborgian.

INHABITED PLANETS IN FICTION.
There is a class of hypothetical creations which do not belong to my
subject, because they are acknowledged to be fictions, as those of Lucian,
[177] Rabelais,[178] Swift, Francis Godwin,[179] Voltaire, etc. All who have

more positive notions as to either the composition or organization of other
worlds, than the reasonable conclusion that our Architect must be quite able
to construct millions of other buildings on millions of other plans, ought to
rank with the writers just mentioned, in all but self-knowledge. Of every
one of their systems I say, as the Irish Bishop said of Gulliver's book,—I
don't believe half of it. Huyghens had been preceded by Fontenelle,[180]
who attracted more attention. Huyghens is very fanciful and very positive;
but he gives a true account of his method. "But since there's no hopes of a
Mercury to carry us such a journey, we shall e'en be contented with what's

in our power: we shall suppose ourselves there...." And yet he says, "We
have proved that they live in societies, have hands and feet...." Kircher[181]
had gone to the stars before him, but would not find any life in them, either
animal or vegetable.
The question of the inhabitants of a particular planet is one which has truth
on one side or the other: either there are some inhabitants, or there are none.
Fortunately, it is of no consequence which is true. But there are many cases
where the balance is equally one of truth and falsehood, in which the choice
is a matter of importance. My work selects, for the most part, sins against
demonstration: but the world is full of questions of fact or opinion, in which
a struggling minority will become a majority, or else will be gradually
annihilated: and each of the cases subdivides into results of good, and
results of evil. What is to be done?

"Periculosum est credere et non credere;
Hippolitus obiit quia novercæ creditum est;
Cassandræ quia non creditum ruit Ilium:
Ergo exploranda est veritas multum prius
Quam stulta prove judicet sententia."[182]

Nova Demonstratio immobilitatis terræ petita ex virtute
magnetica. By Jacobus Grandamicus. Flexiae (La Flèche), 1645,
4to.[183]

No magnetic body can move about its poles: the earth is a magnetic body,
therefore, etc. The iron and its magnetism are typical of two natures in one
person; so it is said, "Si exaltatus fuero à terra, omnia traham ad me ipsum."
[184]

A VENETIAN BUDGET OF PARADOXES.

Le glorie degli incogniti, o vero gli huomini illustri dell'
accademia de' signori incogniti di Venetia. Venice, 1647, 4to.

This work is somewhat like a part of my own: it is a budget of Venetian
nobodies who wished to be somebodies; but paradox is not the only means
employed. It is of a serio-comic character, gives genuine portraits in
copperplate, and grave lists of works; but satirical accounts. The astrologer
Andrew Argoli[185] is there, and his son; both of whom, with some of the
others, have place in modern works on biography. Argoli's discovery that
logarithms facilitate easy processes, but increase the labor of difficult ones,
is worth recording.

Controversiæ de vera circuli mensura ... inter ... C. S.
Longomontanum et Jo. Pellium.[186] Amsterdam, 1647, 4to.

Longomontanus,[187] a Danish astronomer of merit, squared the circle in
1644: he found out that the diameter 43 gives the square root of 18252 for
the circumference; which gives 3.14185... for the ratio. Pell answered him,
and being a kind of circulating medium, managed to engage in the
controversy names known and unknown, as Roberval, Hobbes, Carcavi,
Lord Charles Cavendish, Pallieur, Mersenne, Tassius, Baron Wolzogen,
Descartes, Cavalieri and Golius.[188] Among them, of course,
Longomontanus was made mincemeat: but he is said to have insisted on the
discovery of his epitaph.[189]

THE CIRCULATING MEDIA OF MATHEMATICS.
The great circulating mediums, who wrote to everybody, heard from
everybody, and sent extracts to everybody else, have been Father Mersenne,
John Collins, and the late Professor Schumacher: all "late" no doubt, but
only the last recent enough to be so styled. If M.C.S. should ever again
stand for "Member of the Corresponding Society," it should raise an
acrostic thought of the three. There is an allusion to Mersenne's occupation
in Hobbes's reply to him. He wanted to give Hobbes, who was very ill at
Paris, the Roman Eucharist: but Hobbes said, "I have settled all that long
ago; when did you hear from Gassendi?" We are reminded of William's
answer to Burnet. John Collins disseminated Newton, among others.
Schumacher ought to have been called the postmaster-general of astronomy,
as Collins was called the attorney-general of mathematics.[190]

THE SYMPATHETIC POWDER.

A late discourse ... by Sir Kenelme Digby.... Rendered into
English by R. White. London, 1658, 12mo.

On this work see Notes and Queries, 2d series, vii. 231, 299, 445, viii. 190.
It contains the celebrated sympathetic powder. I am still in much doubt as to
the connection of Digby with this tract.[191] Without entering on the subject
here, I observe that in Birch's History of the Royal Society,[192] to which

both Digby and White belonged, Digby, though he brought many things
before the Society, never mentioned the powder, which is connected only
with the names of Evelyn[193] and Sir Gilbert Talbot.[194] The sympathetic
powder was that which cured by anointing the weapon with its salve instead
of the wound. I have long been convinced that it was efficacious. The
directions were to keep the wound clean and cool, and to take care of diet,
rubbing the salve on the knife or sword.[195] If we remember the dreadful
notions upon drugs which prevailed, both as to quantity and quality, we
shall readily see that any way of not dressing the wound would have been
useful. If the physicians had taken the hint, had been careful of diet etc., and
had poured the little barrels of medicine down the throat of a practicable
doll, they would have had their magical cures as well as the surgeons.[196]
Matters are much improved now; the quantity of medicine given, even by
orthodox physicians, would have been called infinitesimal by their
professional ancestors. Accordingly, the College of Physicians has a right to
abandon its motto, which is Ars longa, vita brevis, meaning Practice is
long, so life is short.

HOBBES AS A MATHEMATICIAN.

Examinatio et emendatio Mathematicæ Hodiernæ. By Thomas
Hobbes. London, 1666, 4to.

In six dialogues: the sixth contains a quadrature of the circle.[197] But there
is another edition of this work, without place or date on the title-page, in
which the quadrature is omitted. This seems to be connected with the
publication of another quadrature, without date, but about 1670, as may be
judged from its professing to answer a tract of Wallis, printed in 1669.[198]
The title is "Quadratura circuli, cubatio sphæræ, duplicatio cubi," 4to.[199]
Hobbes, who began in 1655, was very wrong in his quadrature; but, though
not a Gregory St. Vincent,[200] he was not the ignoramus in geometry that
he is sometimes supposed. His writings, erroneous as they are in many
things, contain acute remarks on points of principle. He is wronged by
being coupled with Joseph Scaliger, as the two great instances of men of
letters who have come into geometry to help the mathematicians out of their

difficulty. I have never seen Scaliger's quadrature,[201] except in the answers
of Adrianus Romanus,[202] Vieta and Clavius, and in the extracts of Kastner.
[203] Scaliger had no right to such strong opponents: Erasmus or Bentley

might just as well have tried the problem, and either would have done much
better in any twenty minutes of his life.[204]

AN ESTIMATE OF SCALIGER.
Scaliger inspired some mathematicians with great respect for his
geometrical knowledge. Vieta, the first man of his time, who answered him,
had such regard for his opponent as made him conceal Scaliger's name. Not
that he is very respectful in his manner of proceeding: the following dry
quiz on his opponent's logic must have been very cutting, being true. "In
grammaticis, dare navibus Austros, et dare naves Austris, sunt æque
significantia. Sed in Geometricis, aliud est adsumpsisse circulum BCD non
esse majorem triginta sex segmentis BCDF, aliud circulo BCD non esse
majora triginta sex segmenta BCDF. Illa adsumptiuncula vera est, hæc falsa."
[205]
Isaac Casaubon,[206] in one of his letters to De Thou,[207] relates that,
he and another paying a visit to Vieta, the conversation fell upon Scaliger,
of whom the host said that he believed Scaliger was the only man who
perfectly understood mathematical writers, especially the Greek ones: and
that he thought more of Scaliger when wrong than of many others when
right; "pluris se Scaligerum vel errantem facere quam multos
κατορθούντας."[208] This must have been before Scaliger's quadrature
(1594). There is an old story of some one saying, "Mallem cum Scaligero
errare, quam cum Clavio recte sapere."[209] This I cannot help suspecting to
have been a version of Vieta's speech with Clavius satirically inserted, on
account of the great hostility which Vieta showed towards Clavius in the
latter years of his life.
Montucla could not have read with care either Scaliger's quadrature or
Clavius's refutation. He gives the first a wrong date: he assures the world
that there is no question about Scaliger's quadrature being wrong, in the
eyes of geometers at least: and he states that Clavius mortified him
extremely by showing that it made the circle less than its inscribed

dodecagon, which is, of course, equivalent to asserting that a straight line is
not always the shortest distance between two points. Did Clavius show this?
No, it was Scaliger himself who showed it, boasted of it, and declared it to
be a "noble paradox" that a theorem false in geometry is true in arithmetic;
a thing, he says with great triumph, not noticed by Archimedes himself! He
says in so many words that the periphery of the dodecagon is greater than
that of the circle; and that the more sides there are to the inscribed figure,
the more does it exceed the circle in which it is. And here are the words, on
the independent testimonies of Clavius and Kastner:
"Ambitus dodecagoni circulo inscribendi plus potest quam circuli ambitus.
Et quanto deinceps plurium laterum fuerit polygonum circulo inscribendum,
tanto plus poterit ambitus polygoni quam ambitus circuli."[210]
There is much resemblance between Joseph Scaliger and William Hamilton,
[211]
in a certain impetuousity of character, and inaptitude to think of
quantity. Scaliger maintained that the arc of a circle is less than its chord in
arithmetic, though greater in geometry; Hamilton arrived at two quantities
which are identical, but the greater the one the less the other. But, on the
whole, I liken Hamilton rather to Julius than to Joseph. On this last hero of
literature I repeat Thomas Edwards,[212] who says that a man is unlearned
who, be his other knowledge what it may, does not understand the subject
he writes about. And now one of many instances in which literature gives to
literature character in science. Anthony Teissier,[213] the learned annotator
of De Thou's biographies, says of Finæus, "Il se vanta sans raison avoir
trouvé la quadrature du cercle; la gloire de cette admirable découverte était
réservée à Joseph Scalinger, comme l'a écrit Scévole de St. Marthe."[214]

JOHN GRAUNT AS A PARADOXER.

Natural and Political Observations ... upon the Bills of Mortality.
By John Graunt, citizen of London. London, 1662, 4to.[215]

This is a celebrated book, the first great work upon mortality. But the
author, going ultra crepidam, has attributed to the motion of the moon in
her orbit all the tremors which she gets from a shaky telescope.[216] But

there is another paradox about this book: the above absurd opinion is
attributed to that excellent mechanist, Sir William Petty, who passed his
days among the astronomers. Graunt did not write his own book! Anthony
Wood[217] hints that Petty "assisted, or put into a way" his old benefactor:
no doubt the two friends talked the matter over many a time. Burnet and
Pepys[218] state that Petty wrote the book. It is enough for me that Graunt,
whose honesty was never impeached, uses the plainest incidental
professions of authorship throughout; that he was elected into the Royal
Society because he was the author; that Petty refers to him as author in
scores of places, and published an edition, as editor, after Graunt's death,
with Graunt's name of course. The note on Graunt in the Biographia
Britannica may be consulted; it seems to me decisive. Mr. C. B. Hodge, an
able actuary, has done the best that can be done on the other side in the
Assurance Magazine, viii. 234. If I may say what is in my mind, without
imputation of disrespect, I suspect some actuaries have a bias: they would
rather have Petty the greater for their Coryphæus than Graunt the less.[219]
Pepys is an ordinary gossip: but Burnet's account has an animus which is of
a worse kind. He talks of "one Graunt, a Papist, under whose name Sir
William Petty[220] published his observations on the bills of mortality." He
then gives the cock without a bull story of Graunt being a trustee of the
New River Company, and shutting up the cocks and carrying off their keys,
just before the fire of London, by which a supply of water was delayed.[221]
It was one of the first objections made to Burnet's work, that Graunt was not
a trustee at the time; and Maitland, the historian of London, ascertained
from the books of the Company that he was not admitted until twenty-three
days after the breaking out of the fire. Graunt's first admission to the
Company took place on the very day on which a committee was appointed
to inquire into the cause of the fire. So much for Burnet. I incline to the
view that Graunt's setting London on fire strongly corroborates his having
written on the bills of mortality: every practical man takes stock before he
commences a grand operation in business.

MANKIND A GULLIBLE LOT.

De Cometis: or a discourse of the natures and effects of Comets,
as they are philosophically, historically, and astrologically
considered. With a brief (yet full) account of the III late Comets,
or blazing stars, visible to all Europe. And what (in a natural way
of judicature) they portend. Together with some observations on
the nativity of the Grand Seignior. By John Gadbury,
Φιλομαθηματικός. London, 1665, 4to.

Gadbury, though his name descends only in astrology, was a well-informed
astronomer.[222] D'Israeli[223] sets down Gadbury, Lilly, Wharton, Booker,
etc., as rank rogues: I think him quite wrong. The easy belief in roguery and
intentional imposture which prevails in educated society is, to my mind, a
greater presumption against the honesty of mankind than all the roguery and
imposture itself. Putting aside mere swindling for the sake of gain, and
looking at speculation and paradox, I find very little reason to suspect wilful
deceit.[224] My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that,
so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a
thousand times as much as there is to believe in, judging by experience. I do
not say anything against Isaac D'Israeli for talking his time. We are all in
the team, and we all go the road, but we do not all draw.

A FORERUNNER OF A WRITTEN ESPERANTO.

An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language.
By John Wilkins [Dean of Ripon, afterwards Bishop of Chester].
[225] London, 1668, folio.

This work is celebrated, but little known. Its object gives it a right to a place
among paradoxes. It proposes a language—if that be the proper name—in
which things and their relations shall be denoted by signs, not words: so that
any person, whatever may be his mother tongue, may read it in his own
words. This is an obvious possibility, and, I am afraid, an obvious
impracticability. One man may construct such a system—Bishop Wilkins
has done it—but where is the man who will learn it? The second tongue
makes a language, as the second blow makes a fray. There has been very
little curiosity about his performance, the work is scarce; and I do not know

where to refer the reader for any account of its details, except, to the partial
reprint of Wilkins presently mentioned under 1802, in which there is an
unsatisfactory abstract. There is nothing in the Biographia Britannica,
except discussion of Anthony Wood's statement that the hint was derived
from Dalgarno's book, De Signis, 1661.[226] Hamilton (Discussions, Art. 5,
"Dalgarno") does not say a word on this point, beyond quoting Wood; and
Hamilton, though he did now and then write about his countrymen with a
rough-nibbed pen, knew perfectly well how to protect their priorities.

GREGOIRE DE ST. VINCENT.

Problema Austriacum. Plus ultra Quadratura Circuli. Auctore P.
Gregorio a Sancto Vincentio Soc. Jesu., Antwerp, 1647, folio.—
Opus Geometricum posthumum ad Mesolabium. By the same.
Gandavi [Ghent], 1668, folio.[227]

The first book has more than 1200 pages, on all kinds of geometry. Gregory
St. Vincent is the greatest of circle-squarers, and his investigations led him
into many truths: he found the property of the area of the hyperbola[228]
which led to Napier's logarithms being called hyperbolic. Montucla says of
him, with sly truth, that no one has ever squared the circle with so much
genius, or, excepting his principal object, with so much success.[229] His
reputation, and the many merits of his work, led to a sharp controversy on
his quadrature, which ended in its complete exposure by Huyghens and
others. He had a small school of followers, who defended him in print.

RENE DE SLUSE.

Renati Francisci Slusii Mesolabum. Leodii Eburonum [Liège],
1668, 4to.[230]

The Mesolabum is the solution of the problem of finding two mean
proportionals, which Euclid's geometry does not attain. Slusius is a true

geometer, and uses the ellipse, etc.: but he is sometimes ranked with the
trisecters, for which reason I place him here, with this explanation.
The finding of two mean proportionals is the preliminary to the famous old
problem of the duplication of the cube, proposed by Apollo (not
Apollonius) himself. D'Israeli speaks of the "six follies of science,"—the
quadrature, the duplication, the perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone,
magic, and astrology. He might as well have added the trisection, to make
the mystic number seven: but had he done so, he would still have been very
lenient; only seven follies in all science, from mathematics to chemistry!
Science might have said to such a judge—as convicts used to say who got
seven years, expecting it for life, "Thank you, my Lord, and may you sit
there till they are over,"—may the Curiosities of Literature outlive the
Follies of Science!

JAMES GREGORY.
1668. In this year James Gregory, in his Vera Circuli et Hyperbolæ
Quadratura,[231] held himself to have proved that the geometrical
quadrature of the circle is impossible. Few mathematicians read this very
abstruse speculation, and opinion is somewhat divided. The regular circle-
squarers attempt the arithmetical quadrature, which has long been proved to
be impossible. Very few attempt the geometrical quadrature. One of the last
is Malacarne, an Italian, who published his Solution Géométrique, at Paris,
in 1825. His method would make the circumference less than three times
the diameter.

BEAULIEU'S QUADRATURE.

La Géométrie Françoise, ou la Pratique aisée.... La quadracture du
cercle. Par le Sieur de Beaulieu, Ingénieur, Géographe du Roi ...
Paris, 1676, 8vo. [not Pontault de Beaulieu, the celebrated
topographer; he died in 1674].[232]

If this book had been a fair specimen, I might have pointed to it in
connection with contemporary English works, and made a scornful
comparison. But it is not a fair specimen. Beaulieu was attached to the
Royal Household, and throughout the century it may be suspected that the
household forced a royal road to geometry. Fifty years before, Beaugrand,
the king's secretary, made a fool of himself, and [so?] contrived to pass for a
geometer. He had interest enough to get Desargues, the most powerful
geometer of his time,[233] the teacher and friend of Pascal, prohibited from
lecturing. See some letters on the History of Perspective, which I wrote in
the Athenæum, in October and November, 1861. Montucla, who does not
seem to know the true secret of Beaugrand's greatness, describes him as "un
certain M. de Beaugrand, mathématicien, fort mal traité par Descartes, et à
ce qu'il paroit avec justice."[234]
Beaulieu's quadrature amounts to a geometrical construction[235] which
gives π = √10. His depth may be ascertained from the following extracts.
First on Copernicus:
"Copernic, Allemand, ne s'est pas moins rendu illustre par ses doctes écrits;
et nous pourrions dire de luy, qu'il seroit le seul et unique en la force de ses
Problèmes, si sa trop grande présomption ne l'avoit porté à avancer en cette
Science une proposition aussi absurde, qu'elle est contre la Foy et raison, en
faisant la circonférence d'un Cercle fixe, immobile, et le centre mobile, sur
lequel principe Géométrique, il a avancé en son Traitté Astrologique le
Soleil fixe, et la Terre mobile."[236]
I digress here to point out that though our quadrators, etc., very often, and
our historians sometimes, assert that men of the character of Copernicus,
etc., were treated with contempt and abuse until their day of ascendancy
came, nothing can be more incorrect. From Tycho Brahé[237] to Beaulieu,
there is but one expression of admiration for the genius of Copernicus.
There is an exception, which, I believe, has been quite misunderstood.
Maurolycus,[238] in his De Sphæra, written many years before its
posthumous publication in 1575, and which it is not certain he would have
published, speaking of the safety with which various authors may be read
after his cautions, says, "Toleratur et Nicolaus Copernicus qui Solem fixum
et Terram in girum circumverti posuit: et scutica potius, aut flagello, quam

reprehensione dignus est."[239] Maurolycus was a mild and somewhat
contemptuous satirist, when expressing disapproval: as we should now say,
he pooh-poohed his opponents; but, unless the above be an instance, he was
never savage nor impetuous. I am fully satisfied that the meaning of the
sentence is, that Copernicus, who turned the earth like a boy's top, ought
rather to have a whip given him wherewith to keep up his plaything than a
serious refutation. To speak of tolerating a person as being more worthy of
a flogging than an argument, is almost a contradiction.
I will now extract Beaulieu's treatise on algebra, entire.
"L'Algebre est la science curieuse des Sçavans et specialement d'un General
d'Armée ou Capitaine, pour promptement ranger une Armée en bataille, et
nombre de Mousquetaires et Piquiers qui composent les bataillons d'icelle,
outre les figures de l'Arithmetique. Cette science a 5 figures particulieres en
cette sorte. P signifie plus au commerce, et à l'Armée Piquiers. M signifie
moins, et Mousquetaire en l'Art des bataillons. [It is quite true that P and M
were used for plus and minus in a great many old works.] R signifie racine
en la mesure du Cube, et en l'Armée rang. Q signifie quaré en l'un et l'autre
usage. C signifie cube en la mesure, et Cavallerie en la composition des
bataillons et escadrons. Quant à l'operation de cette science, c'est
d'additionner un plus d'avec plus, la somme sera plus, et moins d'avec plus,
on soustrait le moindre du plus, et la reste est la somme requise ou nombre
trouvé. Je dis seulement cecy en passant pour ceux qui n'en sçavent rien du
tout."[240]
This is the algebra of the Royal Household, seventy-three years after the
death of Vieta. Quære, is it possible that the fame of Vieta, who himself
held very high stations in the household all his life, could have given people
the notion that when such an officer chose to declare himself an algebraist,
he must be one indeed? This would explain Beaugrand, Beaulieu, and all
the beaux. Beaugrand—not only secretary to the king, but "mathematician"
to the Duke of Orleans—I wonder what his "fool" could have been like, if
indeed he kept the offices separate,—would have been in my list if I had
possessed his Geostatique, published about 1638.[241] He makes bodies
diminish in weight as they approach the earth, because the effect of a
weight on a lever is less as it approaches the fulcrum.

SIR MATTHEW HALE.

Remarks upon two late ingenious discourses.... By Dr. Henry
More.[242] London, 1676, 8vo.

In 1673 and 1675, Matthew Hale,[243] then Chief Justice, published two
tracts, an "Essay touching Gravitation," and "Difficiles Nugæ" on the
Torricellian experiment. Here are the answers by the learned and
voluminous Henry More. The whole would be useful to any one engaged in
research about ante-Newtonian notions of gravitation.

Observations touching the principles of natural motions; and
especially touching rarefaction and condensation.... By the author
of Difficiles Nugæ. London, 1677, 8vo.

This is another tract of Chief Justice Hale, published the year after his
death. The reader will remember that motion, in old philosophy, meant any
change from state to state: what we now describe as motion was local
motion. This is a very philosophical book, about flux and materia prima,
virtus activa and essentialis, and other fundamentals. I think Stephen Hales,
the author of the "Vegetable Statics," has the writings of the Chief Justice
sometimes attributed to him, which is very puny justice indeed.[244]
Matthew Hale died in 1676, and from his devotion to science it probably
arose that his famous Pleas of the Crown[245] and other law works did not
appear until after his death. One of his contemporaries was the astronomer
Thomas Street, whose Caroline Tables[246] were several times printed:
another contemporary was his brother judge, Sir Thomas Street.[247] But of
the astronomer absolutely nothing is known: it is very unlikely that he and
the judge were the same person, but there is not a bit of positive evidence
either for or against, so far as can be ascertained. Halley[248]—no less a
person—published two editions of the Caroline Tables, no doubt after the
death of the author: strange indeed that neither Halley nor any one else
should leave evidence that Street was born or died.

Matthew Hale gave rise to an instance of the lengths a lawyer will go when
before a jury who cannot detect him. Sir Samuel Shepherd,[249] the Attorney
General, in opening Hone's[250] first trial, calls him "one who was the most
learned man that ever adorned the Bench, the most even man that ever
blessed domestic life, the most eminent man that ever advanced the
progress of science, and one of the [very moderate] best and most purely
religious men that ever lived."

ON THE DISCOVERY OF ANTIMONY.

Basil Valentine his triumphant Chariot of Antimony, with
annotations of Theodore Kirkringius, M.D. With the true book of
the learned Synesius, a Greek abbot, taken out of the Emperour's
library, concerning the Philosopher's Stone. London, 1678, 8vo.
[251]

There are said to be three Hamburg editions of the collected works of
Valentine, who discovered the common antimony, and is said to have given
the name antimoine, in a curious way. Finding that the pigs of his convent
throve upon it, he gave it to his brethren, who died of it.[252] The impulse
given to chemistry by R. Boyle[253] seems to have brought out a vast
number of translations, as in the following tract:

ON ALCHEMY.

Collectanea Chymica: A collection of ten several treatises in
chymistry, concerning the liquor Alkehest, the Mercury of
Philosophers, and other curiosities worthy the perusal. Written by
Eir. Philaletha,[254] Anonymus, J. B. Van-Helmont,[255] Dr. Fr.
Antonie,[256] Bernhard Earl of Trevisan,[257] Sir Geo. Ripley,[258]
Rog. Bacon,[259] Geo. Starkie,[260] Sir Hugh Platt,[261] and the
Tomb of Semiramis. See more in the contents. London, 1684,
8vo.

In the advertisements at the ends of these tracts there are upwards of a
hundred English tracts, nearly all of the period, and most of them
translations. Alchemy looks up since the chemists have found perfectly
different substances composed of the same elements and proportions. It is
true the chemists cannot yet transmute; but they may in time: they poke
about most assiduously. It seems, then, that the conviction that alchemy
must be impossible was a delusion: but we do not mention it.
The astrologers and the alchemists caught it in company in the following, of
which I have an unreferenced note.
"Mendacem et futilem hominem nominare qui volunt, calendariographum
dicunt; at qui sceleratum simul ac impostorem, chimicum.[262]

"Crede ratem ventis corpus ne crede chimistis;
Est quævis chimica tutior aura fide."[263]

Among the smaller paradoxes of the day is that of the Times newspaper,
which always spells it chymistry: but so, I believe, do Johnson, Walker, and
others. The Arabic work is very likely formed from the Greek: but it may be
connected either with χημεια or with χυμεια.

Lettre d'un gentil-homme de province à une dame de qualité, sur
le sujet de la Comète. Paris, 1681, 4to.

An opponent of astrology, whom I strongly suspect to have been one of the
members of the Academy of Sciences under the name of a country
gentleman,[264] writes very good sense on the tremors excited by comets.

The Petitioning-Comet: or a brief Chronology of all the famous
Comets and their events, that have happened from the birth of
Christ to this very day. Together with a modest enquiry into this
present comet, London, 1681, 4to.

A satirical tract against the cometic prophecy:

"This present comet (it's true) is of a menacing aspect, but if the new
parliament (for whose convention so many good men pray) continue long
to sit, I fear not but the star will lose its virulence and malignancy, or at
least its portent be averted from this our nation; which being the humble
request to God of all good men, makes me thus entitle it, a Petitioning-
Comet."
The following anecdote is new to me:
"Queen Elizabeth (1558) being then at Richmond, and being disswaded
from looking on a comet which did then appear, made answer, jacta est
alea, the dice are thrown; thereby intimating that the pre-order'd providence
of God was above the influence of any star or comet."
The argument was worth nothing: for the comet might have been on the
dice with the event; the astrologers said no more, at least the more rational
ones, who were about half of the whole.

An astrological and theological discourse upon this present great
conjunction (the like whereof hath not (likely) been in some ages)
ushered in by a great comet. London, 1682, 4to. By C. N.[265]

The author foretells the approaching "sabbatical jubilee," but will not fix the
date: he recounts the failures of his predecessors.

A judgment of the comet which became first generally visible to
us in Dublin, December 13, about 15 minutes before 5 in the
evening, A.D. 1680. By a person of quality. Dublin, 1682, 4to.

The author argues against cometic astrology with great ability.

A prophecy on the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in this
present year 1682. With some prophetical predictions of what is

likely to ensue therefrom in the year 1684. By John Case, Student
in physic and astrology.[266] London, 1682, 4to.

According to this writer, great conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occur "in
the fiery trigon," about once in 800 years. Of these there are to be seven: six
happened in the several times of Enoch, Noah, Moses, Solomon, Christ,
Charlemagne. The seventh, which is to happen at "the lamb's marriage with
the bride," seems to be that of 1682; but this is only vaguely hinted.

De Quadrature van de Circkel. By Jacob Marcelis. Amsterdam,
1698, 4to.
Ampliatie en demonstratie wegens de Quadrature ... By Jacob
Marcelis. Amsterdam, 1699, 4to.
Eenvoudig vertoog briev-wys geschrevem am J. Marcelis ...
Amsterdam, 1702, 4to.
De sleutel en openinge van de quadrature ... Amsterdam, 1704,
4to.

Who shall contradict Jacob Marcelis?[267] He says the circumference
contains the diameter exactly times

1008449087377541679894282184894
3 ————————————————
6997183637540819440035239271702

But he does not come very near, as the young arithmetician will find.

MATHEMATICAL THEOLOGY.

Theologiæ Christianæ Principia Mathematica. Auctore Johanne
Craig.[268] London, 1699, 4to.

This is a celebrated speculation, and has been reprinted abroad, and
seriously answered. Craig is known in the early history of fluxions, and was
a good mathematician. He professed to calculate, on the hypothesis that the
suspicions against historical evidence increase with the square of the time,
how long it will take the evidence of Christianity to die out. He finds, by
formulæ, that had it been oral only, it would have gone out A.D. 800; but,
by aid of the written evidence, it will last till A.D. 3150. At this period he
places the second coming, which is deferred until the extinction of
evidence, on the authority of the question "When the Son of Man cometh,
shall he find faith on the earth?" It is a pity that Craig's theory was not
adopted: it would have spared a hundred treatises on the end of the world,
founded on no better knowledge than his, and many of them falsified by the
event. The most recent (October, 1863) is a tract in proof of Louis Napoleon
being Antichrist, the Beast, the eighth Head, etc.; and the present
dispensation is to close soon after 1864.
In order rightly to judge Craig, who added speculations on the variations of
pleasure and pain treated as functions of time, it is necessary to remember
that in Newton's day the idea of force, as a quantity to be measured, and as
following a law of variation, was very new: so likewise was that of
probability, or belief, as an object of measurement.[269] The success of the
Principia of Newton put it into many heads to speculate about applying
notions of quantity to other things not then brought under measurement.
Craig imitated Newton's title, and evidently thought he was making a step
in advance: but it is not every one who can plough with Samson's heifer.
It is likely enough that Craig took a hint, directly or indirectly, from
Mohammedan writers, who make a reply to the argument that the Koran has
not the evidence derived from miracles. They say that, as evidence of
Christian miracles is daily becoming weaker, a time must at last arrive when
it will fail of affording assurance that they were miracles at all: whence
would arise the necessity of another prophet and other miracles. Lee,[270]
the Cambridge Orientalist, from whom the above words are taken, almost
certainly never heard of Craig or his theory.

THE ARISTOCRAT AS A SCIENTIST.

Copernicans of all sorts convicted ... to which is added a Treatise
of the Magnet. By the Hon. Edw. Howard, of Berks. London,
1705, 8vo.

Not all the blood of all the Howards will gain respect for a writer who
maintains that eclipses admit no possible explanation under the Copernican
hypothesis, and who asks how a man can "go 200 yards to any place if the
moving superficies of the earth does carry it from him?" Horace Walpole, at
the beginning of his Royal and Noble Authors, has mottoed his book with
the Cardinal's address to Ariosto, "Dove diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete
pigliato tante coglionerie?"[271] Walter Scott says you could hardly pick out,
on any principle of selection—except badness itself, he means of course—
the same number of plebeian authors whose works are so bad. But his
implied satire on aristocratic writing forgets two points. First, during a large
period of our history, when persons of rank condescended to write, they
veiled themselves under "a person of honor," "a person of quality," and the
like, when not wholly undescribed. Not one of these has Walpole got; he
omits, for instance, Lord Brounker's[272] translation of Descartes on Music.
Secondly, Walpole only takes the heads of houses: this cuts both ways; he
equally eliminates the Hon. Robert Boyle and the precious Edward Howard.
The last writer is hardly out of the time in which aristocracy suppressed its
names; the avowal was then usually meant to make the author's greatness
useful to the book. In our day, literary peers and honorables are very
favorably known, and contain an eminent class.[273] They rough it like
others, and if such a specimen as Edw. Howard were now to appear, he
would be greeted with

"Hereditary noodle! knowest thou not
Who would be wise, himself must make him so?"

THE LONGITUDE PROBLEM.

A new and easy method to find the longitude at land or sea.
London, 1710, 4to.

This tract is a little earlier than the great epoch of such publications (1714),
and professes to find the longitude by the observed altitudes of the moon
and two stars.[274]

A new method for discovering the longitude both at sea and land,
humbly proposed to the consideration of the public.[275] By Wm.
Whiston[276] and Humphry Ditton.[277] London, 1714, 8vo.

This is the celebrated tract, written by the two Arian heretics. Swift, whose
orthodoxy was as undoubted as his meekness, wrote upon it the epigram—
if, indeed, that be epigram of which the point is pious wish—which has
been so often recited for the purity of its style, a purity which transcends
modern printing. Perhaps some readers may think that Swift cared little for
Whiston and Ditton, except as a chance hearing of their plan pointed them
out as good marks. But it was not so: the clique had their eye on the guilty
pair before the publication of the tract. The preface is dated July 7; and ten
days afterwards Arbuthnot[278] writes as follows to Swift:
"Whiston has at last published his project of the longitude; the most
ridiculous thing that ever was thought on. But a pox on him! he has spoiled
one of my papers of Scriblerus, which was a proposition for the longitude
not very unlike his, to this purpose; that since there was no pole for east and
west, that all the princes of Europe should join and build two prodigious
poles, upon high mountains, with a vast lighthouse to serve for a polestar. I
was thinking of a calculation of the time, charges, and dimensions. Now
you must understand his project is by lighthouses, and explosion of bombs
at a certain hour."
The plan was certainly impracticable; but Whiston and Ditton might have
retorted that they were nearer to the longitude than their satirist to the
kingdom of heaven, or even to a bishopric. Arbuthnot, I think, here and
elsewhere, reveals himself as the calculator who kept Swift right in his
proportions in the matter of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, etc. Swift
was very ignorant about things connected with number. He writes to Stella
that he has discovered that leap-year comes every four years, and that all his
life he had thought it came every three years. Did he begin with the mistake

of Cæsar's priests? Whether or no, when I find the person who did not
understand leap-year inventing satellites of Mars in correct accordance with
Kepler's third law, I feel sure he must have had help.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

An essay concerning the late apparition in the heavens on the 6th
of March. Proving by mathematical, logical, and moral
arguments, that it cou'd not have been produced meerly by the
ordinary course of nature, but must of necessity be a prodigy.
Humbly offered to the consideration of the Royal Society.
London, 1716, 8vo.

The prodigy, as described, was what we should call a very decided and
unusual aurora borealis. The inference was, that men's sins were bringing
on the end of the world. The author thinks that if one of the old "threatening
prophets" were then alive, he would give "something like the following." I
quote a few sentences of the notion which the author had of the way in
which Ezekiel, for instance, would have addressed his Maker in the reign of
George the First:
"Begin! Begin! O Sovereign, for once, with an effectual clap of thunder....
O Deity! either thunder to us no more, or when you thunder, do it home,
and strike with vengeance to the mark.... 'Tis not enough to raise a storm,
unless you follow it with a blow, and the thunder without the bolt, signifies
just nothing at all.... Are then your lightnings of so short a sight, that they
don't know how to hit, unless a mountain stands like a barrier in their way?
Or perhaps so many eyes open in the firmament make you lose your aim
when you shoot the arrow? Is it this? No! but, my dear Lord, it is your
custom never to take hold of your arms till you have first bound round your
majestic countenance with gathered mists and clouds."

The principles of the Philosophy of the Expansive and
Contractive Forces ... By Robert Greene,[279] M.A., Fellow of
Clare Hall. Cambridge, 1727, folio.

Sanderson[280] writes to Jones,[281] "The gentleman has been reputed mad
for these two years last past, but never gave the world such ample testimony
of it before." This was said of a former work of Greene's, on solid geometry,
published in 1712, in which he gives a quadrature.[282] He gives the same or
another, I do not know which, in the present work, in which the circle is 3-
1/5 diameters. This volume is of 981 good folio pages, and treats of all
things, mental and material. The author is not at all mad, only wrong on
many points. It is the weakness of the orthodox follower of any received
system to impute insanity to the solitary dissentient: which is voted (in due
time) a very wrong opinion about Copernicus, Columbus, or Galileo, but
quite right about Robert Greene. If misconceptions, acted on by too much
self-opinion, be sufficient evidence of madness, it would be a curious
inquiry what is the least per-centage of the reigning school which has been
insane at any one time. Greene is one of the sources for Newton being led
to think of gravitation by the fall of an apple: his authority is the gossip of
Martin Folkes.[283] Probably Folkes had it from Newton's niece, Mrs.
Conduitt, whom Voltaire acknowledges as his authority.[284] It is in the draft
found among Conduitt's papers of memoranda to be sent to Fontenelle. But
Fontenelle, though a great retailer of anecdote, does not mention it in his
éloge of Newton; whence it may be suspected that it was left out in the copy
forwarded to France. D'Israeli has got an improvement on the story: the
apple "struck him a smart blow on the head": no doubt taking him just on
the organ of causality. He was "surprised at the force of the stroke" from so
small an apple: but then the apple had a mission; Homer would have said it
was Minerva in the form of an apple. "This led him to consider the
accelerating motion of falling bodies," which Galileo had settled long
before: "from whence he deduced the principle of gravity," which many had
considered before him, but no one had deduced anything from it. I cannot
imagine whence D'Israeli got the rap on the head, I mean got it for Newton:
this is very unlike his usual accounts of things. The story is pleasant and
possible: its only defect is that various writings, well known to Newton, a
very learned mathematician, had given more suggestion than a whole sack
of apples could have done, if they had tumbled on that mighty head all at
once. And Pemberton, speaking from Newton himself, says nothing more
than that the idea of the moon being retained by the same force which
causes the fall of bodies struck him for the first time while meditating in a
garden. One particular tree at Woolsthorpe has been selected as the gallows

of the appleshaped goddess: it died in 1820, and Mr. Turnor[285] kept the
wood; but Sir D. Brewster[286] brought away a bit of root in 1814, and must
have had it on his conscience for 43 years that he may have killed the tree.
Kepler's suggestion of gravitation with the inverse distance, and Bouillaud's
proposed substitution of the inverse square of the distance, are things which
Newton knew better than his modern readers. I discovered two anagrams on
his name, which are quite conclusive; the notion of gravitation was not new;
but Newton went on. Some wandering spirit, probably whose business it
was to resent any liberty taken with Newton's name, put into the head of a
friend of mine eighty-one anagrams on my own pair, some of which hit
harder than any apple.

DE MORGAN ANAGRAMS.
This friend, whom I must not name, has since made it up to about 800
anagrams on my name, of which I have seen about 650. Two of them I have
joined in the title-page: the reader may find the sense. A few of the others
are personal remarks.

"Great gun! do us a sum!"

is a sneer at my pursuits: but,

"Go! great sum! ∫a un du"

is more dignified.

"Sunt agro! gaudemus,"[287]

is happy as applied to one of whom it may be said:

"Ne'er out of town; 'tis such a horrid life;
But duly sends his family and wife."

"Adsum, nugator, suge!"[288]

is addressed to a student who continues talking after the lecture has
commenced: oh! the rascal!

"Graduatus sum! nego"[289]

applies to one who declined to subscribe for an M.A. degree.

"Usage mounts guard"

symbolizes a person of very fixed habits.

"Gus! Gus! a mature don!
August man! sure, god!
And Gus must argue, O!
Snug as mud to argue,
Must argue on gauds.
A mad rogue stung us.
Gag a numerous stud
Go! turn us! damage us!
Tug us! O drag us! Amen.
Grudge us! moan at us!
Daunt us! gag us more!
Dog-ear us, man! gut us!
D—— us! a rogue tugs!"

are addressed to me by the circle-squarers; and,

"O! Gus! tug a mean surd!"

is smart upon my preference of an incommensurable value of π to 3-1/5, or
some such simple substitute. While,

"Gus! Gus! at 'em a' round!"

ought to be the backing of the scientific world to the author of the Budget of
Paradoxes.
The whole collection commenced existence in the head of a powerful
mathematician during some sleepless nights. Seeing how large a number

was practicable, he amused himself by inventing a digested plan of finding
more.
Is there any one whose name cannot be twisted into either praise or satire? I
have had given to me,

"Thomas Babington Macaulay
Mouths big: a Cantab anomaly."

NEWTON'S DE MUNDI SYSTEMATE LIBER.

A treatise of the system of the world. By Sir Isaac Newton.
Translated into English. London, 1728, 8vo.

I think I have a right to one little paradox of my own: I greatly doubt that
Newton wrote this book. Castiglione,[290] in his Newtoni Opuscula,[291]
gives it in the Latin which appeared in 1731,[292] not for the first time; he
says Angli omnes Newtono tribuunt.[293] It appeared just after Newton's
death, without the name of any editor, or any allusion to Newton's recent
departure, purporting to be that popular treatise which Newton, at the
beginning of the third book of the Principia, says he wrote, intending it to
be the third book. It is very possible that some observant turnpenny might
construct such a treatise as this from the third book, that it might be ready
for publication the moment Newton could not disown it. It has been treated
with singular silence: the name of the editor has never been given.
Rigaud[294] mentions it without a word: I cannot find it in Brewster's
Newton, nor in the Biographia Britannica. There is no copy in the
Catalogue of the Royal Society's Library, either in English or Latin, except
in Castiglione. I am open to correction; but I think nothing from Newton's
acknowledged works will prove—as laid down in the suspected work—that
he took Numa's temple of Vesta, with a central fire, to be intended to
symbolize the sun as the center of our system, in the Copernican sense.[295]
Mr. Edleston[296] gives an account of the lectures "de motu corporum," and
gives the corresponding pages of the Latin "De Systemate Mundi" of 1731.
But no one mentions the English of 1728. This English seems to agree with

the Latin; but there is a mystery about it. The preface says, "That this work
as here published is genuine will so clearly appear by the intrinsic marks it
bears, that it will be but losing words and the reader's time to take pains in
giving him any other satisfaction." Surely fewer words would have been
lost if the prefator had said at once that the work was from the manuscript
preserved at Cambridge. Perhaps it was a mangled copy clandestinely taken
and interpreted.

A BACONIAN CONTROVERSY.

Lord Bacon not the author of "The Christian Paradoxes," being a
reprint of "Memorials of Godliness and Christianity," by Herbert
Palmer, B.D.[297] With Introduction, Memoir, and Notes, by the
Rev. Alexander B. Grosart,[298] Kenross. (Private circulation,
1864).

I insert the above in this place on account of a slight connection with the
last. Bacon's Paradoxes,—so attributed—were first published as his in some
asserted "Remains," 1648.[299] They were admitted into his works in 1730,
and remain there to this day. The title is "The Character of a believing
Christian, set forth in paradoxes and seeming contradictions." The
following is a specimen:
"He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be older
than his son; a son to be equal with his father; and one proceeding from
both to be equal with both: he believes three persons in one nature, and two
natures in one person.... He believes the God of all grace to have been angry
with one that never offended Him; and that God that hates sin to be
reconciled to himself though sinning continually, and never making or
being able to make Him any satisfaction. He believes a most just God to
have punished a most just person, and to have justified himself, though a
most ungodly sinner. He believes himself freely pardoned, and yet a
sufficient satisfaction was made for him."
Who can doubt that if Bacon had written this it must have been wrong?
Many writers, especially on the Continent, have taken him as sneering at

(Athanasian) Christianity right and left. Many Englishmen have taken him
to be quite in earnest, and to have produced a body of edifying doctrine.
More than a century ago the Paradoxes were published as a penny tract;
and, again, at the same price, in the Penny Sunday Reader, vol. vi, No. 148,
a few passages were omitted, as too strong. But all did not agree: in my
copy of Peter Shaw's [300] edition (vol. ii, p. 283) the Paradoxes have been
cut out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never had the
curiosity to see whether other copies of the edition have been served in the
same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them recently in
Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon, (no date; bad plan; about 1863,
I suppose). No omissions were made, so far as I find.
I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his sparkle nor
his idiom. I stated my doubts even before I heard that Mr. Spedding, one of
Bacon's editors, was of the same mind. (Athenæum, July 16, 1864). I was
little moved by the wide consent of orthodox men: for I knew how Bacon,
Milton, Newton, Locke, etc., were always claimed as orthodox until almost
the present day. Of this there is a remarkable instance.

LOCKE AND SOCINIANISM.
Among the books which in my younger day were in some orthodox
publication lists—I think in the list of the Christian Knowledge Society, but
I am not sure—was Locke's [301] "Reasonableness of Christianity." It seems
to have come down from the eighteenth century, when the battle was belief
in Christ against unbelief, simpliciter, as the logicians say. Now, if ever
there was a Socinian[302] book in the world, it is this work of Locke. "These
two," says Locke, "faith and repentance, i.e., believing Jesus to be the
Messiah, and a good life, are the indispensable conditions of the new
covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life." All
the book is amplification of this doctrine. Locke, in this and many other
things, followed Hobbes, whose doctrine, in the Leviathan, is fidem, quanta
ad salutem necessaria est, contineri in hoc articulo, Jesus est Christus.[303]
For this Hobbes was called an atheist, which many still believe him to have
been: some of his contemporaries called him, rightly, a Socinian. Locke was
known for a Socinian as soon as his work appeared: Dr. John Edwards,[304]

his assailant, says he is "Socinianized all over." Locke, in his reply, says
"there is not one word of Socinianism in it:" and he was right: the positive
Socinian doctrine has not one word of Socinianism in it; Socinianism
consists in omissions. Locke and Hobbes did not dare deny the Trinity: for
such a thing Hobbes might have been roasted, and Locke might have been
strangled. Accordingly, the well-known way of teaching Unitarian doctrine
was the collection of the asserted essentials of Christianity, without naming
the Trinity, etc. This is the plan Newton followed, in the papers which have
at last been published.[305]
So I, for one, thought little about the general tendency of orthodox writers
to claim Bacon by means of the Paradoxes. I knew that, in his "Confession
of Faith"[306] he is a Trinitarian of a heterodox stamp. His second Person
takes human nature before he took flesh, not for redemption, but as a
condition precedent of creation. "God is so holy, pure, and jealous, that it is
impossible for him to be pleased in any creature, though the work of his
own hands.... [Gen. i. 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31, freely rendered]. But—
purposing to become a Creator, and to communicate to his creatures, he
ordained in his eternal counsel that one person of the Godhead should be
united to one nature, and to one particular of his creatures; that so, in the
person of the Mediator, the true ladder might be fixed, whereby God might
descend to his creatures and his creatures might ascend to God...."
This is republished by the Religious Tract Society, and seems to suit their
theology, for they confess to having omitted some things of which they
disapprove.
In 1864, Mr. Grosart published his discovery that the Paradoxes are by
Herbert Palmer; that they were first published surreptitiously, and
immediately afterwards by himself, both in 1645; that the "Remains" of
Bacon did not appear until 1648; that from 1645 to 1708, thirteen editions
of the "Memorials" were published, all containing the Paradoxes. In spite of
this, the Paradoxes were introduced into Bacon's works in 1730, where they
have remained.
Herbert Palmer was of good descent, and educated as a Puritan. He was an
accomplished man, one of the few of his day who could speak French as
well as English. He went into the Church, and was beneficed by Laud,[307]

in spite of his puritanism; he sat in the Assembly of Divines, and was finally
President of Queens' College, Cambridge, in which post he died, August 13,
1647, in the 46th year of his age.
Mr. Grosart says, speaking of Bacon's "Remains," "All who have had
occasion to examine our early literature are aware that it was a common
trick to issue imperfect, false, and unauthorized writings under any recently
deceased name that might be expected to take. The Puritans, down to John
Bunyan, were perpetually expostulating and protesting against such
procedure." I have met with instances of all this; but I did not know that
there was so much of it: a good collection would be very useful. The work
of 1728, attributed to Newton, is likely enough to be one of the class.

Demonstration de l'immobilitez de la Terre.... Par M. de la
Jonchere,[308] Ingénieur Français. Londres, 1728, 8vo.

A synopsis which is of a line of argument belonging to the beginning of the
preceding century.

TWO FORGOTTEN CIRCLE SQUARERS.

The Circle squared; together with the Ellipsis and several
reflections on it. The finding two geometrical mean proportionals,
or doubling the cube geometrically. By Richard Locke[309]....
London, no date, probably about 1730, 8vo.

According to Mr. Locke, the circumference is three diameters, three-fourths
the difference of the diameter and the side of the inscribed equilateral
triangle, and three-fourths the difference between seven-eighths of the
diameter and the side of the same triangle. This gives, he says, 3.18897.
There is an addition to this tract, being an appendix to a book on the
longitude.

The Circle squar'd. By Thos. Baxter, Crathorn, Cleaveland,
Yorkshire. London, 1732, 8vo.

Here π = 3.0625. No proof is offered.[310]

The longitude discovered by the Eclipses, Occultations, and
Conjunctions of Jupiter's planets. By William Whiston. London,
1738.

This tract has, in some copies, the celebrated preface containing the account
of Newton's appearance before the Parliamentary Committee on the
longitude question, in 1714 (Brewster, ii. 257-266). This "historical
preface," is an insertion and is dated April 28, 1741, with four additional
pages dated August 10, 1741. The short "preface" is by the publisher, John
Whiston,[311] the author's son.

THE STEAMSHIP SUGGESTED.

A description and draught of a new-invented machine for carrying
vessels or ships out of, or into any harbour, port, or river, against
wind and tide, or in a calm. For which, His Majesty has granted
letters patent, for the sole benefit of the author, for the space of
fourteen years. By Jonathan Hulls.[312] London: printed for the
author, 1737. Price sixpence (folding plate and pp. 48, beginning
from title).

(I ought to have entered this tract in its place. It is so rare that its existence
was once doubted. It is the earliest description of steam-power applied to
navigation. The plate shows a barge, with smoking funnel, and paddles at
the stem, towing a ship of war. The engine, as described, is Newcomen's.
[313]

In 1855, John Sheepshanks,[314] so well known as a friend of Art and a
public donor, reprinted this tract, in fac-simile, from his own copy; twenty-

seven copies of the original 12mo size, and twelve on old paper, small 4to. I
have an original copy, wanting the plate, and with "Price sixpence"
carefully erased, to the honor of the book.[315]

It is not known whether Hulls actually constructed a boat.[316] In all
probability his tract suggested to Symington, as Symington[317] did to
Fulton.)

THE NEWTONIANS ATTACKED.

Le vrai système de physique générale de M. Isaac Newton exposé
et analysé en parallèle avec celui de Descartes. By Louis
Castel[318] [Jesuit and F.R.S.] Paris, 1743, 4to.

This is an elaborate correction of Newton's followers, and of Newton
himself, who it seems did not give his own views with perfect fidelity.
Father Castel, for instance, assures us that Newton placed the sun at rest in
the center of the system. Newton left the sun to arrange that matter with the
planets and the rest of the universe. In this volume of 500 pages there is
right and wrong, both clever.

A dissertation on the Æther of Sir Isaac Newton. By Bryan
Robinson,[319] M.D. Dublin, 1743, 8vo.[320]

A mathematical work professing to prove that the assumed ether causes
gravitation.

MATHEMATICAL THEOLOGY.

Mathematical principles of theology, or the existence of God
geometrically demonstrated. By Richard Jack, teacher of
Mathematics. London, 1747, 8vo.[321]

Propositions arranged after the manner of Euclid, with beings represented
by circles and squares. But these circles and squares are logical symbols,
not geometrical ones. I brought this book forward to the Royal Commission
on the British Museum as an instance of the absurdity of attempting a
classed catalogue from the titles of books. The title of this book sends it
either to theology or geometry: when, in fact, it is a logical vagary. Some of
the houses which Jack built were destroyed by the fortune of war in 1745, at
Edinburgh: who will say the rebels did no good whatever? I suspect that
Jack copied the ideas of J.B. Morinus, "Quod Deus sit," Paris, 1636,[322]
4to, containing an attempt of the same kind, but not stultified with
diagrams.

TWO MODEL INDORSEMENTS.

Dissertation, découverte, et démonstrations de la quadrature
mathématique du cercle. Par M. de Fauré, géomètre. [s. l.,
probably Geneva] 1747, 8vo.
Analyse de la Quadrature du Cercle. Par M. de Fauré,
Gentilhomme Suisse. Hague, 1749,[323] 4to.

According to this octavo geometer and quarto gentleman, a diameter of 81
gives a circumference of 256. There is an amusing circumstance about the
quarto which has been overlooked, if indeed the book has ever been
examined. John Bernoulli (the one of the day)[324] and Koenig[325] have
both given an attestation: my mathematical readers may stare as they
please, such is the fact. But, on examination, there will be reason to think
the two sly Swiss played their countryman the same trick as the medical
man played Miss Pickle, in the novel of that name. The lady only wanted to
get his authority against sousing her little nephew, and said, "Pray, doctor, is
it not both dangerous and cruel to be the means of letting a poor tender
infant perish by sousing it in water as cold as ice?"—"Downright murder, I
affirm," said the doctor; and certified accordingly. De Fauré had built a
tremendous scaffolding of equations, quite out of place, and feeling cock-
sure that his solutions, if correct, would square the circle, applied to
Bernoulli and Koenig—who after his tract of two years before, must have

known what he was at—for their approbation of the solutions. And he got it,
as follows, well guarded:

"Suivant les suppositions posées dans ce Mémoire, il est si
évident que t doit être = 34, y = 1, et z = 1, que cela n'a besoin ni
de preuve ni d'autorité pour être reconnu par tout le monde.[326]
"à Basle le 7e Mai 1749. Jean Bernoulli."
"Je souscris au jugement de Mr. Bernoulli, en conséquence de ces
suppositions.[327]
"à la Haye le 21 Juin 1749. S. Koenig."

On which de Fauré remarks with triumph—as I have no doubt it was
intended he should do—"il conste clairement par ma présente Analyse et
Démonstration, qu'ils y ont déja reconnu et approuvé parfaitement que la
quadrature du cercle est mathématiquement démontrée."[328] It should seem
that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.

An attempt to demonstrate that all the Phenomena in Nature may
be explained by two simple active principles, Attraction and
Repulsion, wherein the attraction of Cohesion, Gravity and
Magnetism are shown to be one the same. By Gowin Knight.
London, 1748, 4to.

Dr. Knight[329] was Mr. Panizzi's[330] archetype, the first Principal Librarian
of the British Museum. He was celebrated for his magnetical experiments.
This work was long neglected; but is now recognized as of remarkable
resemblance to modern speculations.

THOMAS WRIGHT OF DURHAM.

An original theory or Hypothesis of the Universe. By Thomas
Wright[331] of Durham. London, 4to, 1750.

Wright is a speculator whose thoughts are now part of our current
astronomy. He took that view—or most of it—of the milky way which
afterwards suggested itself to William Herschel. I have given an account of
him and his work in the Philosophical Magazine for April, 1848.
Wright was mathematical instrument maker to the King, and kept a shop in
Fleet Street. Is the celebrated business of Troughton & Simms, also in Fleet
Street, a lineal descendant of that of Wright? It is likely enough, more likely
that that—as I find him reported to have affirmed—Prester John was the
descendant of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Having settled it thus, it
struck me that I might apply to Mr. Simms, and he informs me that it is as I
thought, the line of descent being Wright, Cole, John Troughton, Edward
Troughton,[332] Troughton & Simms.[333]

BISHOP HORNE ON NEWTON.

The theology and philosophy in Cicero's Somnium Scipionis
explained. Or, a brief attempt to demonstrate, that the Newtonian
system is perfectly agreeable to the notions of the wisest ancients:
and that mathematical principles are the only sure ones. [By
Bishop Horne,[334] at the age of nineteen.] London, 1751, 8vo.

This tract, which was not printed in the collected works, and is now
excessively rare, is mentioned in Notes and Queries, 1st S., v, 490, 573; 2d
S., ix, 15. The boyish satire on Newton is amusing. Speaking of old
Benjamin Martin,[335] he goes on as follows:
"But the most elegant account of the matter [attraction] is by that
hominiform animal, Mr. Benjamin Martin, who having attended Dr.
Desaguliers'[336] fine, raree, gallanty shew for some years [Desaguliers was
one of the first who gave public experimental lectures, before the saucy boy
was born] in the capacity of a turnspit, has, it seems, taken it into his head
to set up for a philosopher."
Thus is preserved the fact, unknown to his biographers, that Benj. Martin
was an assistant to Desaguliers in his lectures. Hutton[337] says of him, that

"he was well skilled in the whole circle of the mathematical and
philosophical sciences, and wrote useful books on every one of them": this
is quite true; and even at this day he is read by twenty where Horne is read
by one; see the stalls, passim. All that I say of him, indeed my knowledge of
the tract, is due to this contemptuous mention of a more durable man than
himself. My assistant secretary at the Astronomical Society, the late Mr.
Epps,[338] bought the copy at a stall because his eye was caught by the
notice of "Old Ben Martin," of whom he was a great reader. Old Ben could
not be a Fellow of the Royal Society, because he kept a shop: even though
the shop sold nothing but philosophical instruments. Thomas Wright,
similarly situated as to shop and goods, never was a Fellow. The Society of
our day has greatly degenerated: those of the old time would be pleased, no
doubt, that the glories of their day should be commemorated. In the early
days of the Society, there was a similar difficulty about Graunt, the author
of the celebrated work on mortality. But their royal patron, "who never said
a foolish thing," sent them a sharp message, and charged them if they found
any more such tradesmen, they should "elect them without more ado."
Horne's first pamphlet was published when he was but twenty-one years
old. Two years afterwards, being then a Fellow of his college, and having
seen more of the world, he seems to have felt that his manner was a little
too pert. He endeavored, it is said, to suppress his first tract: and copies are
certainly of extreme rarity. He published the following as his maturer view:

A fair, candid, and impartial state of the case between Sir Isaac
Newton and Mr. Hutchinson.[339] In which is shown how far a
system of physics is capable of mathematical demonstration; how
far Sir Isaac's, as such a system, has that demonstration; and
consequently, what regard Mr. Hutchinson's claim may deserve to
have paid to it. By George Horne, M.A. Oxford, 1753, 8vo.

It must be remembered that the successors of Newton were very apt to
declare that Newton had demonstrated attraction as a physical cause: he had
taken reasonable pains to show that he did not pretend to this. If any one
had said to Newton, I hold that every particle of matter is a responsible
being of vast intellect, ordered by the Creator to move as it would do if
every other particle attracted it, and gifted with power to make its way in

true accordance with that law, as easily as a lady picks her way across the
street; what have you to say against it?—Newton must have replied, Sir! if
you really undertake to maintain this as demonstrable, your soul had better
borrow a little power from the particles of which your body is made: if you
merely ask me to refute it, I tell you that I neither can nor need do it; for
whether attraction comes in this way or in any other, it comes, and that is all
I have to do with it.
The reader should remember that the word attraction, as used by Newton
and the best of his followers, only meant a drawing towards, without any
implication as to the cause. Thus whether they said that matter attracts
matter, or that young lady attracts young gentleman, they were using one
word in one sense. Newton found that the law of the first is the inverse
square of the distance: I am not aware that the law of the second has been
discovered; if there be any chance, we shall see it at the year 1856 in this
list.
In this point young Horne made a hit. He justly censures those who fixed
upon Newton a more positive knowledge of what attraction is than he
pretended to have. "He has owned over and over he did not know what he
meant by it—it might be this, or it might be that, or it might be anything, or
it might be nothing." With the exception of the nothing clause, this is true,
though Newton might have answered Horne by "Thou hast said it."
(I thought everybody knew the meaning of "Thou hast said it": but I was
mistaken. In three of the evangelists Σὺ λέγεις is the answer to "Art thou a
king?" The force of this answer, as always understood, is "That is your way
of putting it." The Puritans, who lived in Bible phrases, so understood it:
and Walter Scott, who caught all peculiarities of language with great effect,
makes a marked instance, "Were you armed?—I was not—I went in my
calling, as a preacher of God's word, to encourage them that drew the sword
in His cause. In other words, to aid and abet the rebels, said the Duke. Thou
hast spoken it, replied the prisoner.")

Again, Horne quotes Rowning[340] as follows:
"Mr. Rowning, pt. 2, p. 5 in a note, has a very pretty conceit upon this same
subject of attraction, about every particle of a fluid being intrenched in three
spheres of attraction and repulsion, one within another, 'the innermost of

which (he says) is a sphere of repulsion, which keeps them from
approaching into contact; the next, a sphere of attraction, diffused around
this of repulsion, by which the particles are disposed to run together into
drops; and the outermost of all, a sphere of repulsion, whereby they repel
each other, when removed out of the attraction.' So that between the
urgings, and solicitations, of one and t'other, a poor unhappy particle must
ever be at his wit's end, not knowing which way to turn, or whom to obey
first."

Rowning has here started the notion which Boscovich[341] afterwards
developed.

I may add to what precedes that it cannot be settled that, as Granger[342]
says, Desaguliers was the first who gave experimental lectures in London.
William Whiston gave some, and Francis Hauksbee[343] made the
experiments. The prospectus, as we should now call it, is extant, a quarto
tract of plates and descriptions, without date. Whiston, in his life, gives
1714 as the first date of publication, and therefore, no doubt, of the lectures.
Desaguliers removed to London soon after 1712, and commenced his
lectures soon after that. It will be rather a nice point to settle which lectured
first; probabilities seem to go in favor of Whiston.

FALLACIES IN A THEORY OF ANNUITIES.

An Essay to ascertain the value of leases, and annuities for years
and lives. By W[eyman] L[ee]. London, 1737, 8vo.
A valuation of Annuities and Leases certain, for a single life. By
Weyman Lee, Esq. of the Inner Temple. London, 1751, 8vo. Third
edition, 1773.

Every branch of exact science has its paradoxer. The world at large cannot
tell with certainty who is right in such questions as squaring the circle, etc.
Mr. Weyman Lee[344] was the assailant of what all who had studied called
demonstration in the question of annuities. He can be exposed to the world:

for his error arose out of his not being able to see that the whole is the sum
of all its parts.
By an annuity, say of £100, now bought, is meant that the buyer is to have
for his money £100 in a year, if he be then alive, £100 at the end of two
years, if then alive, and so on. It is clear that he would buy a life annuity if
he should buy the first £100 in one office, the second in another, and so on.
All the difference between buying the whole from one office and buying all
the separate contingent payments at different offices, is immaterial to
calculation. Mr. Lee would have agreed with the rest of the world about the
payments to be made to the several different offices, in consideration of
their several contracts: but he differed from every one else about the sum to
be paid to one office. He contended that the way to value an annuity is to
find out the term of years which the individual has an even chance of
surviving, and to charge for the life annuity the value of an annuity certain
for that term.
It is very common to say that Lee took the average life, or expectation, as it
is wrongly called, for his term: and this I have done myself, taking the
common story. Having exposed the absurdity of this second supposition,
taking it for Lee's, in my Formal Logic,[345] I will now do the same with the
first.
A mathematical truth is true in its extreme cases. Lee's principle is that an
annuity on a life is the annuity made certain for the term within which it is
an even chance the life drops. If, then, of a thousand persons, 500 be sure to
die within a year, and the other 500 be immortal, Lee's price of an annuity
to any one of these persons is the present value of one payment: for one
year is the term which each one has an even chance of surviving and not
surviving. But the true value is obviously half that of a perpetual annuity: so
that at 5 percent Lee's rule would give less than the tenth of the true value.
It must be said for the poor circle-squarers, that they never err so much as
this.
Lee would have said, if alive, that I have put an extreme case: but any
universal truth is true in its extreme cases. It is not fair to bring forward an
extreme case against a person who is speaking as of usual occurrences: but
it is quite fair when, as frequently happens, the proposer insists upon a

perfectly general acceptance of his assertion. And yet many who go the
whole hog protest against being tickled with the tail. Counsel in court are
good instances: they are paradoxers by trade. June 13, 1849, at Hertford,
there was an action about a ship, insured against a total loss: some planks
were saved, and the underwriters refused to pay. Mr. Z. (for deft.) "There
can be no degrees of totality; and some timbers were saved."—L. C. B.
"Then if the vessel were burned to the water's edge, and some rope saved in
the boat, there would be no total loss."—Mr. Z. "This is putting a very
extreme case."—L. C. B. "The argument would go that length." What
would Judge Z.—as he now is—say to the extreme case beginning
somewhere between six planks and a bit of rope?

MONTUCLA'S WORK ON THE QUADRATURE.

Histoire des recherches sur la quadrature du cercle ... avec une
addition concernant les problèmes de la duplication du cube et de
la trisection de l'angle. Paris, 1754, 12mo. [By Montucla.]

This is the history of the subject.[346] It was a little episode to the great
history of mathematics by Montucla, of which the first edition appeared in
1758. There was much addition at the end of the fourth volume of the
second edition; this is clearly by Montucla, though the bulk of the volume is
put together, with help from Montucla's papers, by Lalande.[347] There is
also a second edition of the history of the quadrature, Paris, 1831, 8vo,
edited, I think, by Lacroix; of which it is the great fault that it makes hardly
any use of the additional matter just mentioned.
Montucla is an admirable historian when he is writing from his own direct
knowledge: it is a sad pity that he did not tell us when he was depending on
others. We are not to trust a quarter of his book, and we must read many
other books to know which quarter. The fault is common enough, but
Montucla's good three-quarters is so good that the fault is greater in him
than in most others: I mean the fault of not acknowledging; for an historian
cannot read everything. But it must be said that mankind give little
encouragement to candor on this point. Hallam, in his History of Literature,
states with his own usual instinct of honesty every case in which he depends

upon others: Montucla does not. And what is the consequence?—Montucla
is trusted, and believed in, and cried up in the bulk; while the smallest talker
can lament that Hallam should be so unequal and apt to depend on others,
without remembering to mention that Hallam himself gives the information.
As to a universal history of any great subject being written entirely upon
primary knowledge, it is a thing of which the possibility is not yet proved
by an example. Delambre attempted it with astronomy, and was removed by
death before it was finished,[348] to say nothing of the gaps he left.
Montucla was nothing of a bibliographer, and his descriptions of books in
the first edition were insufficient. The Abbé Rive[349] fell foul of him, and
as the phrase is, gave it him. Montucla took it with great good humor, tried
to mend, and, in his second edition, wished his critic had lived to see the
vernis de bibliographe which he had given himself.
I have seen Montucla set down as an esprit fort, more than once: wrongly, I
think. When he mentions Barrow's[350] address to the Almighty, he adds,
"On voit, au reste, par là, que Barrow étoit un pauvre philosophe; car il
croyait en l'immortalité de l'âme, et en une Divinité autre que la nature
universelle."[351] This is irony, not an expression of opinion. In the book of
mathematical recreations which Montucla constructed upon that of
Ozanam,[352] and Ozanam upon that of Van Etten,[353] now best known in
England by Hutton's similar treatment of Montucla, there is an amusing
chapter on the quadrators. Montucla refers to his own anonymous book of
1754 as a curious book published by Jombert.[354] He seems to have been a
little ashamed of writing about circle-squarers: what a slap on the face for
an unborn Budgeteer!
Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three notions prevalent
among the cyclometers: (1) that there is a large reward offered for success;
(2) that the longitude problem depends on that success; (3) that the solution
is the great end and object of geometry. The same three notions are equally
prevalent among the same class in England. No reward has ever been
offered by the government of either country. The longitude problem in no
way depends upon perfect solution; existing approximations are sufficient
to a point of accuracy far beyond what can be wanted.[355] And geometry,
content with what exists, has long passed on to other matters. Sometimes a

cyclometer persuades a skipper who has made land in the wrong place that
the astronomers are in fault, for using a wrong measure of the circle; and
the skipper thinks it a very comfortable solution! And this is the utmost that
the problem ever has to do with longitude.

ANTINEWTONIANISMUS.

Antinewtonianismus.[356] By Cælestino Cominale,[357] M.D.
Naples, 1754 and 1756, 2 vols. 4to.

The first volume upsets the theory of light; the second vacuum, vis inertiæ,
gravitation, and attraction. I confess I never attempted these big Latin
volumes, numbering 450 closely-printed quarto pages. The man who slays
Newton in a pamphlet is the man for me. But I will lend them to anybody
who will give security, himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each, that
he will read them through, and give a full abstract; and I will not exact
security for their return. I have never seen any mention of this book: it has a
printer, but not a publisher, as happens with so many unrecorded books.

OFFICIAL BLOW TO CIRCLE SQUARERS.
1755. The French Academy of Sciences came to the determination not to
examine any more quadratures or kindred problems. This was the
consequence, no doubt, of the publication of Montucla's book: the time was
well chosen; for that book was a full justification of the resolution. The
Royal Society followed the same course, I believe, a few years afterwards.
When our Board of Longitude was in existence, most of its time was
consumed in listening to schemes, many of which included the quadrature
of the circle. It is certain that many quadrators have imagined the longitude
problem to be connected with theirs: and no doubt the notion of a reward
offered by Government for a true quadrature is a result of the reward
offered for the longitude. Let it also be noted that this longitude reward was
not a premium upon excogitation of a mysterious difficulty. The legislature
was made to know that the rational hopes of the problem were centered in
the improvement of the lunar tables and the improvement of chronometers.

To these objects alone, and by name, the offer was directed: several persons
gained rewards for both; and the offer was finally repealed.

AN INTERESTING HOAX.

Fundamentalis Figura Geometrica, primas tantum lineas circuli
quadraturæ possibilitatis ostendens. By Niels Erichsen (Nicolaus
Ericius), shipbuilder, of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, 1755, 12mo.

This was a gift from my oldest friend who was not a relative, Dr. Samuel
Maitland of the "Dark Ages."[358] He found it among his books, and could
not imagine how he came by it: I could have told him. He once collected
interpretations of the Apocalypse: and auction lots of such books often
contain quadratures. The wonder is he never found more than one.
The quadrature is not worth notice. Erichsen is the only squarer I have met
with who has distinctly asserted the particulars of that reward which has
been so frequently thought to have been offered in England. He says that in
1747 the Royal Society on the 2d of June, offered to give a large reward for
the quadrature of the circle and a true explanation of magnetism, in addition
to £30,000 previously promised for the same. I need hardly say that the
Royal Society had not £30,000 at that time, and would not, if it had had
such a sum, have spent it on the circle, nor on magnetic theory; nor would it
have coupled the two things. On this book, see Notes and Queries, 1st S.,
xii, 306. Perhaps Erichsen meant that the £30,000 had been promised by the
Government, and the addition by the Royal Society.
October 8, 1866. I receive a letter from a cyclometer who understands that a
reward is offered to any one who will square the circle, and that all
competitors are to send their plans to me. The hoaxers have not yet failed
out of the land.

TWO JESUIT CONTRIBUTIONS.

Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in
natura existentium. Editio Veneta prima. By Roger Joseph
Boscovich. Venice, 1763, 4to.

The first edition is said to be of Vienna, 1758.[359] This is a celebrated work
on the molecular theory of matter, grounded on the hypothesis of spheres of
alternate attraction and repulsion. Boscovich was a Jesuit of varied pursuit.
During his measurement of a degree of the meridian, while on horseback or
waiting for his observations, he composed a Latin poem of about five
thousand verses on eclipses, with notes, which he dedicated to the Royal
Society: De Solis et Lunæ defectibus,[360] London, Millar and Dodsley,
1760, 4to.

Traité de paix entre Des Cartes et Newton, précédé des vies
littéraires de ces deux chefs de la physique moderne.... By Aimé
Henri Paulian.[361] Avignon, 1763, 12mo.

I have had these books for many years without feeling the least desire to see
how a lettered Jesuit would atone Descartes and Newton. On looking at my
two volumes, I find that one contains nothing but the literary life of
Descartes; the other nothing but the literary life of Newton. The preface
indicates more: and Watt mentions three volumes.[362] I dare say the first
two contain all that is valuable. On looking more attentively at the two
volumes, I find them both readable and instructive; the account of Newton
is far above that of Voltaire, but not so popular. But he should not have said
that Newton's family came from Newton in Ireland. Sir Rowland Hill gives
fourteen Newtons in Ireland;[363] twice the number of the cities that
contended for the birth of Homer may now contend for the origin of
Newton, on the word of Father Paulian.

Philosophical Essays, in three parts. By R. Lovett, Lay Clerk of
the Cathedral Church of Worcester. Worcester, 1766, 8vo.

The Electrical Philosopher: containing a new system of physics
founded upon the principle of an universal Plenum of elementary
fire.... By R. Lovett, Worcester, 1774, 8vo.

Mr. Lovett[364] was one of those ether philosophers who bring in elastic
fluid as an explanation by imposition of words, without deducing any one
phenomenon from what we know of it. And yet he says that attraction has
received no support from geometry; though geometry, applied to a
particular law of attraction, had shown how to predict the motions of the
bodies of the solar system. He, and many of his stamp, have not the least
idea of the confirmation of a theory by accordance of deduced results with
observation posterior to the theory.

BAILLY'S EXAGGERATED VIEW OF ASTRONOMY.

Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon, et sur l'ancien Histoire de l'Asie,
pour servir de suite aux lettres sur l'origine des Sciences,
adressées à M. de Voltaire, par M. Bailly.[365] London and Paris,
1779, 8vo.

I might enter here all Bailly's histories of astronomy.[366] The paradox
which runs through them all more or less, is the doctrine that astronomy is
of immense antiquity, coming from some forgotten source, probably the
drowned island of Plato, peopled by a race whom Bailly makes, as has been
said, to teach us everything except their existence and their name. These
books, the first scientific histories which belong to readable literature, made
a great impression by power of style: Delambre created a strong reaction, of
injurious amount, in favor of history founded on contemporary documents,
which early astronomy cannot furnish. These letters are addressed to
Voltaire, and continue the discussion. There is one letter of Voltaire, being
the fourth, dated Feb. 27, 1777, and signed "le vieux malade de Ferney, V.
puer centum annorum."[367] Then begin Bailly's letters, from January 16 to
May 12, 1778. From some ambiguous expressions in the Preface, it would
seem that these are fictitious letters, supposed to be addressed to Voltaire at
their dates. Voltaire went to Paris February 10, 1778, and died there May

30. Nearly all this interval was his closing scene, and it is very unlikely that
Bailly would have troubled him with these letters.[368]

An inquiry into the cause of motion, or a general theory of
physics. By S. Miller. London, 1781, 4to

Newton all wrong: matter consists of two kinds of particles, one inert, the
other elastic and capable of expanding themselves ad infinitum.

SAINT-MARTIN ON ERRORS AND TRUTH.

Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, ou les hommes rappelés au principe
universel de la science; ouvrage dans lequel, en faisant remarquer
aux observateurs l'incertitude de leurs recherches, et leurs
méprises continuelles, on leur indique la route qu'ils auroient dû
suivre, pour acquérir l'évidence physique sur l'origine du bien et
du mal, sur l'homme, sur la nature matérielle, et la nature sacrée;
sur la base des gouvernements politiques, sur l'autorité des
souverains, sur la justice civile et criminelle, sur les sciences, les
langues, et les arts. Par un Ph.... Inc.... A Edimbourg. 1782.[369]
Two vols. 8vo.

This is the famous work of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin[370] (1743-1803),
for whose other works, vagaries included, the reader must look elsewhere:
among other things, he was a translator of Jacob Behmen.[371] The title
promises much, and the writer has smart thoughts now and then; but the
whole is the wearisome omniscience of the author's day and country, which
no reader of our time can tolerate. Not that we dislike omniscience; but we
have it of our own country, both home-made and imported; and fashions
vary. But surely there can be but one omniscience? Must a man have but
one wife? Nay, may not a man have a new wife while the old one is living?
There was a famous instrumental professor forty years ago, who presented a
friend to Madame ——. The friend started, and looked surprised; for, not
many weeks before, he had been presented to another lady, with the same

title, at Paris. The musician observed his surprise, and quietly said, "Celle-ci
est Madame —— de Londres." In like manner we have a London
omniscience now current, which would make any one start who only knew
the old French article.
The book was printed at Lyons, but it was a trick of French authors to
pretend to be afraid of prosecution: it made a book look wicked-like to have
a feigned place of printing, and stimulated readers. A Government which
had undergone Voltaire would never have drawn its sword upon quiet Saint-
Martin. To make himself look still worse, he was only ph[ilosophe] Inc....,
which is generally read Inconnu[372] but sometimes Incrédule; [373] most
likely the ambiguity was intended. There is an awful paradox about the
book, which explains, in part, its leaden sameness. It is all about l'homme,
l'homme, l'homme,[374] except as much as treats of les hommes, les hommes,
les hommes;[375] but not one single man is mentioned by name in its 500
pages. It reminds one of

"Water, water everywhere,
And not a drop to drink."

Not one opinion of any other man is referred to, in the way of agreement or
of opposition. Not even a town is mentioned: there is nothing which brings
a capital letter into the middle of a sentence, except, by the rarest accident,
such a personification as Justice. A likely book to want an Edimbourg
godfather!
Saint-Martin is great in mathematics. The number four essentially belongs
to straight lines, and nine to curves. The object of a straight line is to
perpetuate ad infinitum the production of a point from which it emanates. A
circle bounds the production of all its radii, tends to destroy them, and is
in some sort their enemy. How is it possible that things so distinct should
not be distinguished in their number as well as in their action? If this
important observation had been made earlier, immense trouble would have
been saved to the mathematicians, who would have been prevented from
searching for a common measure to lines which have nothing in common.
But, though all straight lines have the number four, it must not be supposed
that they are all equal, for a line is the result of its law and its number; but
though both are the same for all lines of a sort, they act differently, as to

force, energy, and duration, in different individuals; which explains all
differences of length, etc. I congratulate the reader who understands this;
and I do not pity the one who does not.
Saint-Martin and his works are now as completely forgotten as if they had
never been born, except so far as this, that some one may take up one of the
works as of heretical character, and lay it down in disappointment, with the
reflection that it is as dull as orthodoxy. For a person who was once in some
vogue, it would be difficult to pick out a more fossil writer, from Aa to
Zypœus, except,—though it is unusual for (,—) to represent an interval of
more than a year—his unknown opponent. This opponent, in the very year
of the Des Erreurs ... published a book in two parts with the same fictitious
place of printing;

Tableau Naturel des Rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'Homme,
et l'Univers. A Edimbourg, 1782, 8vo.[376]

There is a motto from the Des Erreurs itself, "Expliquer les choses par
l'homme, et non l'homme par les choses. Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, par un
PH.... INC...., p. 9."[377] This work is set down in various catalogues and
biographies as written by the PH.... INC.... himself. But it is not usual for a
writer to publish two works in the same year, one of which takes a motto
from the other. And the second work is profuse in capitals and italics, and
uses Hebrew learning: its style differs much from the first work. The first
work sets out from man, and has nothing to do with God: the second is
religious and raps the knuckles of the first as follows: "Si nous voulons
nous préserver de toutes les illusions, et surtout des amorces de l'orgueil par
lesquelles l'homme est si souvent séduit, ne prenons jamais les hommes,
mais toujours Dieu pour notre terme de comparaison."[378] The first uses
four and nine in various ways, of which I have quoted one: the second says,
"Et ici se trouve déjà une explication des nombres quatre et neuf, qui ont
peu embarrassé dans l'ouvrage déjà cité. L'homme s'est égaré en allant de
quatre à neuf...."[379] The work cited is the Erreurs, etc., and the citation is
in the motto, which is the text of the opposition sermon.

A FORERUNNER OF THE METRIC SYSTEM.

Method to discover the difference of the earth's diameters;
proving its true ratio to be not less variable than as 45 is to 46,
and shortest in its pole's axis 174 miles.... likewise a method for
fixing an universal standard for weights and measures. By
Thomas Williams.[380] London, 1788, 8vo.

Mr. Williams was a paradoxer in his day, and proposed what was, no doubt,
laughed at by some. He proposed the sort of plan which the French—
independently of course—carried into effect a few years after. He would
have the 52d degree of latitude divided into 100,000 parts and each part a
geographical yard. The geographical ton was to be the cube of a
geographical yard filled with sea-water taken some leagues from land. All
multiples and sub-divisions were to be decimal.
I was beginning to look up those who had made similar proposals, when a
learned article on the proposal of a metrical system came under my eye in
the Times of Sept. 15, 1863. The author cites Mouton,[381] who would have
the minute of a degree divided into 10,000 virgulæ; James Cassini,[382]
whose foot was to be six thousandths of a minute; and Paucton,[383] whose
foot was the 400,000th of a degree. I have verified the first and third
statements; surely the second ought to be the six-thousandth.

An inquiry into the Copernican system ... wherein it is proved, in
the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion ...
with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind
can receive any real benefit from the study of the heavenly
bodies. By John Cunningham.[384] London, 1789, 8vo.

The "true way" appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as
emblematical of the Trinity.

Cosmology. An inquiry into the cause of what is called gravitation
or attraction, in which the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the
preservation and operations of all nature, are deduced from an

universal principle of efflux and reflux. By T. Vivian,[385] vicar of
Cornwood, Devon. Bath, 1792, 12mo.

Attraction, an influx of matter to the sun; centrifugal force, the solar rays;
cohesion, the pressure of the atmosphere. The confusion about centrifugal
force, so called, as demanding an external agent, is very common.

THOMAS PAINE'S RIGHTS OF MAN.

The rights of Man, being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the
French Revolution.[386] By Thomas Paine.[387] In two parts. 1791-
1792. 8vo. (Various editions.)[388]
A vindication of the rights of Woman, with strictures on political
and moral subjects. By Mary Wollstonecraft.[389] 1792. 8vo.
A sketch of the rights of Boys and Girls. By Launcelot Light, of
Westminster School; and Lætitia Lookabout, of Queen's Square,
Bloomsbury. [By the Rev. Samuel Parr,[390] LL.D.] 1792. 8vo.
(pp.64).

When did we three meet before? The first work has sunk into oblivion: had
it merited its title, it might have lived. It is what the French call a pièce de
circonstance; it belongs in time to the French Revolution, and in matter to
Burke's opinion of that movement. Those who only know its name think it
was really an attempt to write a philosophical treatise on what we now call
socialism. Silly government prosecutions gave it what it never could have
got for itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft seldom has her name spelled right. I suppose the O! O!
character she got made her Woolstonecraft. Watt gives double insinuation,
for his cross-reference sends us to Goodwin.[391] No doubt the title of the
book was an act of discipleship to Paine's Rights of Man; but this title is
very badly chosen. The book was marred by it, especially when the
authoress and her husband assumed the right of dispensing with legal
sanction until the approach of offspring brought them to a sense of their

child's interest.[392] Not a hint of such a claim is found in the book, which is
mostly about female education. The right claimed for woman is to have the
education of a rational human being, and not to be considered as nothing
but woman throughout youthful training. The maxims of Mary
Wollstonecraft are now, though not derived from her, largely followed in
the education of girls, especially in home education: just as many of the
political principles of Tom Paine, again not derived from him, are the
guides of our actual legislation. I remember, forty years ago, an old lady
used to declare that she disliked girls from the age of sixteen to five-and-
twenty. "They are full," said she, "of femalities." She spoke of their
behavior to women as well as to men. She would have been shocked to
know that she was a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft, and had packed half
her book into one sentence.
The third work is a satirical attack on Mary Wollstonecraft and Tom Paine.
The details of the attack would convince any one that neither has anything
which would now excite reprobation. It is utterly unworthy of Dr. Parr, and
has quite disappeared from lists of his works, if it were ever there. That it
was written by him I take to be evident, as follows. Nichols,[393] who could
not fail to know, says (Anecd., vol. ix, p. 120): "This is a playful essay by a
first-rate scholar, who is elsewhere noticed in this volume, but whose name
I shall not bring forward on so trifling an occasion." Who the scholar was is
made obvious by Master Launcelot being made to talk of Bellendenus.[394]
Further, the same boy is made to say, "Let Dr. Parr lay his hand upon his
heart, if his conscience will let him, and ask himself how many thousands
of wagon-loads of this article [birch] he has cruelly misapplied." How could
this apply to Parr, with his handful of private pupils,[395] and no reputation
for severity? Any one except himself would have called on the head-master
of Westminster or Eton. I doubt whether the name of Parr could be
connected with the rod by anything in print, except the above and an
anecdote of his pupil, Tom Sheridan.[396] The Doctor had dressed for a
dinner visit, and was ready a quarter of an hour too soon to set off. "Tom,"
said he, "I think I had better whip you now; you are sure to do something
while I am out."—"I wish you would, sir!" said the boy; "it would be a
letter of licence for the whole evening." The Doctor saw the force of the
retort: my two tutelaries will see it by this time. They paid in advance; and I
have given liberal interpretation to the order.

The following story of Dr. Parr was told me and others, about 1829, by the
late Leonard Horner,[397] who knew him intimately. Parr was staying in a
house full of company, I think in the north of England. Some gentlemen
from America were among the guests, and after dinner they disputed some
of Parr's assertions or arguments. So the Doctor broke out with "Do you
know what country you come from? You come from the place to which we
used to send our thieves!" This made the host angry, and he gave Parr such
a severe rebuke as sent him from the room in ill-humor. The rest walked on
the lawn, amusing the Americans with sketches of the Doctor. There was a
dark cloud overhead, and from that cloud presently came a voice which
called Tham (Parr-lisp for Sam). The company were astonished for a
moment, but thought the Doctor was calling his servant in the house, and
that the apparent direction was an illusion arising out of inattention. But
presently the sound was repeated, certainly from the cloud,

"And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before."

There was now a little alarm: where could the Doctor have got to? They ran
to his bedroom, and there they discovered a sufficient rather than
satisfactory explanation. The Doctor had taken his pipe into his bedroom,
and had seated himself, in sulky mood, upon the higher bar of a large and
deep old-fashioned grate with a high mantelshelf. Here he had tumbled
backwards, and doubled himself up between the bars and the back of the
grate. He was fixed tight, and when he called for help, he could only throw
his voice up the chimney. The echo from the cloud was the warning which
brought his friends to the rescue.

ATTACKS ON RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS.

Days of political paradox were coming, at which we now stare. Cobbett[398]
said, about 1830, in earnest, that in the country every man who did not take
off his hat to the clergyman was suspected, and ran a fair chance of having
something brought against him. I heard this assertion canvassed, when it
was made, in a party of elderly persons. The Radicals backed it, the old
Tories rather denied it, but in a way which satisfied me they ought to have
denied it less if they could not deny it more. But it must be said that the

Governments stopped far short of what their partisans would have had them
do. All who know Robert Robinson's[399] very quiet assault on church-made
festivals in his History and Mystery of Good Friday (1777)[400] will hear or
remember with surprise that the British Critic pronounced it a direct,
unprovoked, and malicious libel on the most sacred institutions of the
national Church. It was reprinted again and again: in 1811 it was in a cheap
form at 6s. 6d. a hundred. When the Jacobin day came, the State was really
in a fright: people thought twice before they published what would now be
quite disregarded. I examined a quantity of letters addressed to George
Dyer[401] (Charles Lamb's G.D.) and what between the autographs of
Thelwall, Hardy, Horne Tooke, and all the rebels,[402] put together a packet
which produced five guineas, or thereabouts, for the widow. Among them
were the following verses, sent by the author—who would not put his
name, even in a private letter, for fear of accidents—for consultation
whether they could safely be sent to an editor: and they were not sent. The
occasion was the public thanksgiving at St. Paul's for the naval victories,
December 19, 1797.

"God bless me! what a thing!
Have you heard that the King
Goes to St. Paul's?
Good Lord! and when he's there,
He'll roll his eyes in prayer,
To make poor Johnny stare
At this fine thing.

"No doubt the plan is wise
To blind poor Johnny's eyes
By this grand show;
For should he once suppose
That he's led by the nose,
Down the whole fabric goes,
Church, lords, and king.

"As he shouts Duncan's[403] praise,
Mind how supplies they'll raise
In wondrous haste.
For while upon the sea
We gain one victory,
John still a dupe will be
And taxes pay.

"Till from his little store
Three-fourths or even more
Goes to the Crown.
Ah, John! you little think
How fast we downward sink
And touch the fatal brink
At which we're slaves."

I would have indicted the author for not making his thirds and sevenths
rhyme. As to the rhythm, it is not much better than what the French sang in
the Calais theater when the Duke of Clarence[404] took over Louis XVIII in
1814.

"God save noble Clarence,
Who brings our king to France;
God save Clarence!
He maintains the glory
Of the British navy,
etc., etc."

Perhaps had this been published, the Government would have assailed it as
a libel on the church service. They got into the way of defending themselves
by making libels on the Church, of what were libels, if on anything, on the
rulers of the State; until the celebrated trials of Hone settled the point for
ever, and established that juries will not convict for one offence, even
though it have been committed, when they know the prosecution is directed
at another offence and another intent.

HONE'S FAMOUS TRIALS.
The results of Hone's trials (William Hone, 1779-1842) are among the
important constitutional victories of our century. He published parodies on
the Creeds, the Lord's Prayer, the Catechism, etc., with intent to bring the
Ministry into contempt: everybody knew that was his purpose. The
Government indicted him for impious, profane, blasphemous intent, but not
for seditious intent. They hoped to wear him out by proceeding day by day.
December 18, 1817, they hid themselves under the Lord's Prayer, the Creed,
and the Commandments; December 19, under the Litany; December 20,
under the Athanasian Creed, an odd place for shelter when they could not
find it in the previous places. Hone defended himself for six, seven, and
eight hours on the several days: and the jury acquitted him in 15, 105, and
20 minutes. In the second trial the offense was laid both as profanity and as
sedition, which seems to have made the jury hesitate. And they probably
came to think that the second count was false pretence: but the length of
their deliberation is a satisfactory addition to the value of the whole. In the
first trial the Attorney-General (Shepherd) had the impudence to say that the
libel had nothing of a political tendency about it, but was avowedly set off
against the religion and worship of the Church of England. The whole is
political in every sentence; neither more nor less political than the

following, which is part of the parody on the Catechism: "What is thy duty
towards the Minister? My duty towards the Minister is, to trust him as much
as I can; to honor him with all my words, with all my bows, with all my
scrapes, and with all my cringes; to flatter him; to give him thanks; to give
up my whole soul to him; to idolize his name, and obey his word, and serve
him blindly all the days of his political life." And the parody on the Creed
begins, "I believe in George, the Regent almighty, maker of new streets and
Knights of the Bath." This is what the Attorney-General said had nothing of
a political tendency about it. But this was on the first trial: Hone was not
known. The first day's trial was under Justice Abbott (afterwards C. J.
Tenterden).[405] It was perfectly understood, when Chief Justice
Ellenborough[406] appeared in Court on the second day, that he was very
angry at the first result, and put his junior aside to try his own rougher
dealing. But Hone tamed the lion. An eye-witness told me that when he
implored of Hone not to detail his own father Bishop Law's[407] views on
the Athanasian Creed, which humble petition Hone kindly granted, he held
by the desk for support. And the same when—which is not reported—the
Attorney-General appealed to the Court for protection against a stinging
attack which Hone made on the Bar: he held on, and said, "Mr. Attorney,
what can I do!" I was a boy of twelve years old, but so strong was the
feeling of exultation at the verdicts that boys at school were not prohibited
from seeing the parodies, which would have been held at any other time
quite unfit to meet their eyes. I was not able to comprehend all about the
Lord Chief Justice until I read and heard again in after years. In the
meantime, Joe Miller had given me the story of the leopard which was sent
home on board a ship of war, and was in two days made as docile as a cat
by the sailors.[408] "You have got that fellow well under," said an officer.
"Lord bless your Honor!" said Jack, "if the Emperor of Marocky would
send us a cock rhinoceros, we'd bring him to his bearings in no time!"
When I came to the subject again, it pleased me to entertain the question
whether, if the Emperor had sent a cock rhinoceros to preside on the third
day in the King's Bench, Hone would have mastered him: I forget how I
settled it. There grew up a story that Hone caused Lord Ellenborough's
death, but this could not have been true. Lord Ellenborough resigned his
seat in a few months, and died just a year after the trials; but sixty-eight
years may have had more to do with it than his defeat.

A large subscription was raised for Hone, headed by the Duke of
Bedford[409] for £105. Many of the leading anti-ministerialists joined: but
there were many of the other side who avowed their disapprobation of the
false pretense. Many could not venture their names. In the list I find: A
member of the House of Lords, an enemy to persecution, and especially to
religious persecution employed for political purposes—No parodist, but an
enemy to persecution—A juryman on the third day's trial—Ellen Borough
—My name would ruin me—Oh! minions of Pitt—Oil for the Hone—The
Ghosts of Jeffries[410] and Sir William Roy [Ghosts of Jeffries in
abundance]—A conscientious Jury and a conscientious Attorney, £1 6s. 8d.
—To Mr. Hone, for defending in his own person the freedom of the press,
attacked for a political object, under the old pretense of supporting Religion
—A cut at corruption—An Earldom for myself and a translation for my
brother—One who disapproves of parodies, but abhors persecution—From
a schoolboy who wishes Mr. Hone to have a very grand subscription—"For
delicacy's sake forbear," and "Felix trembled"—"I will go myself to-
morrow"—Judge Jeffries' works rebound in calf by Law—Keep us from
Law, and from the Shepherd's paw—I must not give you my name, but God
bless you!—As much like Judge Jeffries as the present times will permit—
May Jeffries' fame and Jeffries' fate on every modern Jeffries wait—No
parodist, but an admirer of the man who has proved the fallacy of the
Lawyer's Law, that when a man is his own advocate he has a fool for his
client—A Mussulman who thinks it would not be an impious libel to parody
the Koran—May the suspenders of the Habeas Corpus Act be speedily
suspended—Three times twelve for thrice-tried Hone, who cleared the
cases himself alone, and won three heats by twelve to one, £1 16s.—A
conscientious attorney, £1 6s. 8d.—Rev. T. B. Morris, rector of Shelfanger,
who disapproves of the parodies, but abhors the making an affected zeal for
religion the pretext for political persecution—A Lawyer opposed in
principle to Law—For the Hone that set the razor that shaved the rats—Rev.
Dr. Samuel Parr, who most seriously disapproves of all parodies upon the
hallowed language of Scripture and the contents of the Prayer-book, but
acquits Mr. Hone of intentional impiety, admires his talents and fortitude,
and applauds the good sense and integrity of his juries—Religion without
hypocrisy, and Law without impartiality—O Law! O Law! O Law!

These are specimens of a great many allusive mottoes. The subscription was
very large, and would have bought a handsome annuity, but Hone employed
it in the bookselling trade, and did not thrive. His Everyday Book[411] and
his Apocryphal New Testament,[412] are useful books. On an annuity he
would have thriven as an antiquarian writer and collector. It is well that the
attack upon the right to ridicule Ministers roused a dormant power which
was equal to the occasion. Hone declared, on his honor, that he had never
addressed a meeting in his life, nor spoken a word before more than twelve
persons. Had he—which however could not then be done—employed
counsel and had a guilty defense made for him, he would very likely have
been convicted, and the work would have been left to be done by another.
No question that the parodies disgusted all who reverenced Christianity, and
who could not separate the serious and the ludicrous, and prevent their
existence in combination.
My extracts, etc., are from the nineteenth, seventeenth, and sixteenth
editions of the three trials, which seem to have been contemporaneous (all
in 1818) as they are made up into one book, with additional title over all,
and the motto "Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd." They are published by
Hone himself, who I should have said was a publisher as well as was to be.
And though the trials only ended Dec. 20, 1817, the preface attached to this
common title is dated Jan. 23, 1818.[413]
The spirit which was roused against the false dealing of the Government,
i.e., the pretense of prosecuting for impiety when all the world knew the
real offense was, if anything, sedition—was not got up at the moment: there
had been previous exhibitions of it. For example, in the spring of 1818 Mr.
Russell, a little printer in Birmingham, was indicted for publishing the
Political Litany[414] on which Hone was afterwards tried. He took his
witnesses to the summer Warwick assizes, and was told that the indictment
had been removed by certiorari into the King's Bench. He had notice of trial
for the spring assizes at Warwick: he took his witnesses there, and the trial
was postponed by the Crown. He then had notice for the summer assizes at
Warwick; and so on. The policy seems to have been to wear out the
obnoxious parties, either by delays or by heaping on trials. The Government
was odious, and knew it could not get verdicts against ridicule, and could
get verdicts against impiety. No difficulty was found in convicting the

sellers of Paine's works, and the like. When Hone was held to bail it was
seen that a crisis was at hand. All parties in politics furnished him with
parodies in proof of religious persons having made instruments of them.
The parodies by Addison and Luther were contributed by a Tory lawyer,
who was afterwards a judge.
Hone had published, in 1817, tracts of purely political ridicule: Official
Account of the Noble Lord's Bite,[415] Trial of the Dog for Biting the Noble
Lord, etc. These were not touched. After the trials, it is manifest that Hone
was to be unassailed, do what he might. The Political House that Jack built,
in 1819; The Man in the Moon, 1820; The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder,
Non mi ricordo, The R—l Fowls, 1820; The Political Showman at Home,
with plates by G. Cruickshank,[416] 1821 [he did all the plates]; The Spirit of
Despotism, 1821—would have been legitimate marks for prosecution in
previous years. The biting caricature of several of these works are
remembered to this day. The Spirit of Despotism was a tract of 1795, of
which a few copies had been privately circulated with great secrecy. Hone
reprinted it, and prefixed the following address to "Robert Stewart, alias
Lord Castlereagh"[417]: "It appears to me that if, unhappily, your counsels
are allowed much longer to prevail in the Brunswick Cabinet, they will
bring on a crisis, in which the king may be dethroned or the people
enslaved. Experience has shown that the people will not be enslaved—the
alternative is the affair of your employers." Hone might say this without
notice.

In 1819 Mr. Murray[418] published Lord Byron's Don Juan,[419] and Hone
followed it with Don John, or Don Juan Unmasked, a little account of what
the publisher to the Admiralty was allowed to issue without prosecution.
The parody on the Commandments was a case very much in point: and
Hone makes a stinging allusion to the use of the "unutterable Name, with a
profane levity unsurpassed by any other two lines in the English language."
The lines are

"'Tis strange—the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,'
The English always use to govern d——n."

Hone ends with: "Lord Byron's dedication of 'Don Juan' to Lord
Castlereagh was suppressed by Mr. Murray from delicacy to Ministers. Q.

Why did not Mr. Murray suppress Lord Byron's parody on the Ten
Commandments? A. Because it contains nothing in ridicule of Ministers,
and therefore nothing that they could suppose would lead to the displeasure
of Almighty God."
The little matters on which I have dwelt will never appear in history from
their political importance, except in a few words of result. As a mode of
thought, silly evasions of all kinds belong to such a work as the present.
Ignorance, which seats itself in the chair of knowledge, is a mother of
revolutions in politics, and of unread pamphlets in circle-squaring. From
1815 to 1830 the question of revolution or no revolution lurked in all our
English discussions. The high classes must govern; the high classes shall
not govern; and thereupon issue was to be joined. In 1828-33 the question
came to issue; and it was, Revolution with or without civil war; choose. The
choice was wisely made; and the Reform Bill started a new system so well
dovetailed into the old that the joinings are hardly visible. And now, in
1867, the thing is repeated with a marked subsidence of symptoms; and the
party which has taken the place of the extinct Tories is carrying through
Parliament a wider extension of the franchise than their opponents would
have ventured. Napoleon used to say that a decided nose was a sign of
power: on which it has been remarked that he had good reason to say so
before the play was done. And so had our country; it was saved from a
religious war, and from a civil war, by the power of that nose over its
colleagues.

THOMAS TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST.

The Commentaries of Proclus.[420] Translated by Thomas Taylor.
[421]
London, 1792, 2 vols. 4to.[422]

The reputation of "the Platonist" begins to grow, and will continue to grow.
The most authentic account is in the Penny Cyclopædia, written by one of
the few persons who knew him well, and one of the fewer who possess all
his works. At page lvi of the Introduction is Taylor's notion of the way to
find the circumference. It is not geometrical, for it proceeds on the motion
of a point: the words "on account of the simplicity of the impulsive motion,

such a line must be either straight or circular" will suffice to show how
Platonic it is. Taylor certainly professed a kind of heathenism. D'lsraeli said,
"Mr. T. Taylor, the Platonic philosopher and the modern Plethon,[423]
consonant to that philosophy, professes polytheism." Taylor printed this in
large type, in a page by itself after the dedication, without any disavowal. I
have seen the following, Greek and translation both, in his handwriting:
"Πᾶς ἀγαθὸς ᾗ ἀγαθὸς ἐθνικός· καὶ πᾶς χριστιανὸς ᾗ χριστιανὸς
κακός. Every good man, so far as he is a good man, is a heathen; and every
Christian, so far as he is a Christian, is a bad man." Whether Taylor had in
his head the Christian of the New Testament, or whether he drew from those
members of the "religious world" who make manifest the religious flesh
and the religious devil, cannot be decided by us, and perhaps was not
known to himself. If a heathen, he was a virtuous one.

A NEW ERA IN FICTION.
(1795.) This is the date of a very remarkable paradox. The religious world
—to use a name claimed by a doctrinal sect—had long set its face against
amusing literature, and all works of imagination. Bunyan, Milton, and a few
others were irresistible; but a long face was pulled at every attempt to
produce something readable for poor people and poor children. In 1795, a
benevolent association began to circulate the works of a lady who had been
herself a dramatist, and had nourished a pleasant vein of satire in the society
of Garrick and his friends; all which is carefully suppressed in some
biographies. Hannah More's[424] Cheap Repository Tracts,[425] which were
bought by millions of copies, destroyed the vicious publications with which
the hawkers deluged the country, by the simple process of furnishing the
hawkers with something more saleable.
Dramatic fiction, in which the characters are drawn by themselves, was, at
the middle of the last century, the monopoly of writers who required
indecorum, such as Fielding and Smollett. All, or nearly all, which could be
permitted to the young, was dry narrative, written by people who could not
make their personages talk character; they all spoke alike. The author of the
Rambler[426] is ridiculed, because his young ladies talk Johnsonese; but the
satirists forget that all the presentable novel-writers were equally

incompetent; even the author of Zeluco (1789)[427] is the strongest possible
case in point.

Dr. Moore,[428] the father of the hero of Corunna,[429] with good narrative
power, some sly humor, and much observation of character, would have
been, in our day, a writer of the Peacock[430] family. Nevertheless, to one
who is accustomed to our style of things, it is comic to read the dialogue of
a jealous husband, a suspected wife, a faithless maid-servant, a tool of a
nurse, a wrong-headed pomposity of a priest, and a sensible physician, all
talking Dr. Moore through their masks. Certainly an Irish soldier does say
"by Jasus," and a cockney footman "this here" and "that there"; and this and
the like is all the painting of characters which is effected out of the mouths
of the bearers by a narrator of great power. I suspect that some novelists
repressed their power under a rule that a narrative should narrate, and that
the dramatic should be confined to the drama.

I make no exception in favor of Miss Burney;[431] though she was the
forerunner of a new era. Suppose a country in which dress is always of one
color; suppose an importer who brings in cargoes of blue stuff, red stuff,
green stuff, etc., and exhibits dresses of these several colors, that person is
the similitude of Miss Burney. It would be a delightful change from a
universal dull brown, to see one person all red, another all blue, etc.; but the
real inventor of pleasant dress would be the one who could mix his colors
and keep down the bright and gaudy. Miss Burney's introduction was so
charming, by contrast, that she nailed such men as Johnson, Burke, Garrick,
etc., to her books. But when a person who has read them with keen pleasure
in boyhood, as I did, comes back to them after a long period, during which
he has made acquaintance with the great novelists of our century, three-
quarters of the pleasure is replaced by wonder that he had not seen he was
at a puppet-show, not at a drama. Take some labeled characters out of our
humorists, let them be put together into one piece, to speak only as labeled:
let there be a Dominie with nothing but "Prodigious!" a Dick Swiveller with
nothing but adapted quotations; a Dr. Folliott with nothing but sneers at
Lord Brougham;[432] and the whole will pack up into one of Miss Burney's
novels.

Maria Edgeworth,[433] Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan),[434] Jane Austen,
[435]
Walter Scott,[436] etc., are all of our century; as are, I believe, all the
Minerva Press novels, as they were called, which show some of the power
in question. Perhaps dramatic talent found its best encouragement in the
drama itself. But I cannot ascertain that any such power was directed at the
multitude, whether educated or uneducated, with natural mixture of
character, under the restraints of decorum, until the use of it by two
religious writers of the school called "evangelical," Hannah More and
Rowland Hill.[437] The Village Dialogues, though not equal to the
Repository Tracts, are in many parts an approach, and perhaps a copy; there
is frequently humorous satire, in that most effective form, self-display. They
were published in 1800, and, partly at least, by the Religious Tract Society,
the lineal successor of the Repository association, though knowing nothing
about its predecessor. I think it right to add that Rowland Hill here
mentioned is not the regenerator of the Post Office.[438] Some do not
distinguish accurately; I have heard of more than one who took me to have
had a logical controversy with a diplomatist who died some years before I
was born.

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY.
A few years ago, an attempt was made by myself and others to collect some
information about the Cheap Repository (see Notes and Queries, 3d Series,
vi. 241, 290, 353; Christian Observer, Dec. 1864, pp. 944-49). It appeared
that after the Religious Tract Society had existed more than fifty years, a
friend presented it with a copy of the original prospectus of the Repository,
a thing the existence of which was not known. In this prospectus it is
announced that from the plan "will be carefully excluded whatever is
enthusiastic, absurd, or superstitious." The "evangelical" party had, from the
foundation of the Religious Tract Society, regretted that the Repository
Tracts "did not contain a fuller statement of the great evangelical
principles"; while in the prospectus it is also stated that "no cause of any
particular party is intended to be served by it, but general Christianity will
be promoted upon practical principles." This explains what has often been
noticed, that the tracts contain a mild form of "evangelical" doctrine, free

from that more fervid dogmatism which appears in the Village Dialogues;
and such as H. More's friend, Bishop Porteus[439]—a great promoter of the
scheme—might approve. The Religious Tract Society (in 1863) republished
some of H. More's tracts, with alterations, additions, and omissions ad
libitum. This is an improper way of dealing with the works of the dead;
especially when the reprints are of popular works. A small type addition to
the preface contains: "Some alterations and abridgements have been made
to adapt them to the present times and the aim of the Religious Tract
Society." I think every publicity ought to be given to the existence of such a
practice; and I reprint what I said on the subject in Notes and Queries.
Alterations in works which the Society republishes are a necessary part of
their plan, though such notes as they should judge to be corrective would be
the best way of proceeding. But the fact of alteration should be very
distinctly announced on the title of the work itself, not left to a little bit of
small type at the end of the preface, in the place where trade
advertisements, or directions to the binder, are often found. And the places
in which alteration has been made should be pointed out, either by marks of
omission, when omission is the alteration, or by putting the altered
sentences in brackets, when change has been made. May any one alter the
works of the dead at his own discretion? We all know that readers in general
will take each sentence to be that of the author whose name is on the title;
so that a correcting republisher makes use of his author's name to teach his
own variation. The tortuous logic of "the trade," which is content when "the
world" is satisfied, is not easily answered, any more than an eel is easily
caught; but the Religious Tract Society may be convinced [in the old sense]
in a sentence. On which course would they feel most safe in giving their
account to the God of truth? "In your own conscience, now?"
I have tracked out a good many of the variations made by the Religious
Tract Society in the recently published volume of Repository Tracts. Most
of them are doctrinal insertions or amplifications, to the matter of which
Hannah More would not have objected—all that can be brought against
them is the want of notice. But I have found two which the respect I have
for the Religious Tract Society, in spite of much difference on various
points, must not prevent my designating as paltry. In the story of Mary
Wood, a kind-hearted clergyman converses with the poor girl who has
ruined herself by lying. In the original, he "assisted her in the great work of

repentance;" in the reprint it is to be shown in some detail how he did this.
He is to begin by pointing out that "the heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked." Now the clergyman's name is Heartwell: so to
prevent his name from contradicting his doctrine, he is actually cut down to
Harwell. Hannah Moore meant this good man for one of those described in
Acts xv. 8, 9, and his name was appropriate.
Again, Mr. Flatterwell, in persuasion of Parley the porter to let him into the
castle, declares that the worst he will do is to "play an innocent game of
cards just to keep you awake, or sing a cheerful song with the maids." Oh
fie! Miss Hannah More! and you a single lady too, and a contemporary of
the virtuous Bowdler![440] Though Flatterwell be an allegory of the devil,
this is really too indecorous, even for him. Out with the three last words!
and out it is.
The Society cuts a poor figure before a literary tribunal. Nothing was
wanted except an admission that the remarks made by me were
unanswerable, and this was immediately furnished by the Secretary (N. and
Q., 3d S., vi. 290). In a reply of which six parts out of seven are a very
amplified statement that the Society did not intend to reprint all Hannah
More's tracts, the remaining seventh is as follows:
"I am not careful [perhaps this should be careful not] to notice Professor De
Morgan's objections to the changes in 'Mary Wood' or 'Parley the Porter,'
but would merely reiterate that the tracts were neither designed nor
announced to be 'reprints' of the originals [design is only known to the
designers; as to announcement, the title is ''Tis all for the best, The
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and other narratives by Hannah More']; and
much less [this must be careful not; further removed from answer than not
careful] can I occupy your space by a treatise on the Professor's question:
'May any one alter the works of the dead at his own discretion?'"
To which I say: Thanks for help!
I predict that Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts will somewhat
resemble the Pilgrim's Progress in their fate. Written for the cottage, and
long remaining in their original position, they will become classical works
of their kind. Most assuredly this will happen if my assertion cannot be
upset, namely, that they contain the first specimens of fiction addressed to

the world at large, and widely circulated, in which dramatic—as
distinguished from puppet—power is shown, and without indecorum.
According to some statements I have seen, but which I have not verified,
other publishing bodies, such as the Christian Knowledge Society, have
taken the same liberty with the names of the dead as the Religious Tract
Society. If it be so, the impropriety is the work of the smaller spirits who
have not been sufficiently overlooked. There must be an overwhelming
majority in the higher councils to feel that, whenever altered works are
published, the fact of alteration should be made as prominent as the name
of the author. Everything short of this is suppression of truth, and will
ultimately destroy the credit of the Society. Equally necessary is it that the
alterations should be noted. When it comes to be known that the author
before him is altered, he knows not where nor how nor by whom, the lowest
reader will lose his interest.

A TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM FREND.

The principles of Algebra. By William Frend.[441] London, 1796,
8vo. Second Part, 1799.

This Algebra, says Dr. Peacock,[442] shows "great distrust of the results of
algebraical science which were in existence at the time when it was
written." Truly it does; for, as Dr. Peacock had shown by full citation, it
makes war of extermination upon all that distinguishes algebra from
arithmetic. Robert Simson[443] and Baron Maseres[444] were Mr. Frend's
predecessors in this opinion.
The genuine respect which I entertained for my father-in-law did not
prevent my canvassing with perfect freedom his anti-algebraical and anti-
Newtonian opinions, in a long obituary memoir read at the Astronomical
Society in February 1842, which was written by me. It was copied into the
Athenæum of March 19. It must be said that if the manner in which algebra
was presented to the learner had been true algebra, he would have been
right: and if he had confined himself to protesting against the imposition of
attraction as a fundamental part of the existence of matter, he would have

been in unity with a great many, including Newton himself. I wish he had
preferred amendment to rejection when he was a college tutor: he wrote and
spoke English with a clearness which is seldom equaled.
His anti-Newtonian discussions are confined to the preliminary chapters of
his Evening Amusements,[445] a series of astronomical lessons in nineteen
volumes, following the moon through a period of the golden numbers.
There is a mistake about him which can never be destroyed. It is constantly
said that, at his celebrated trial in 1792, for sedition and opposition to the
Liturgy, etc., he was expelled from the University. He was banished. People
cannot see the difference; but it made all the difference to Mr. Frend. He
held his fellowship and its profits till his marriage in 1808, and was a
member of the University and of its Senate till his death in 1841, as any
Cambridge Calendar up to 1841 will show. That they would have expelled
him if they could, is perfectly true; and there is a funny story—also
perfectly true—about their first proceedings being under a statute which
would have given the power, had it not been discovered during the
proceedings that the statute did not exist. It had come so near to existence as
to be entered into the Vice-Chancellor's book for his signature, which it
wanted, as was not seen till Mr. Frend exposed it: in fact, the statute had
never actually passed.

There is an absurd mistake in Gunning's[446] Reminiscences of Cambridge.
In quoting a passage of Mr. Frend's pamphlet, which was very obnoxious to
the existing Government, it is printed that the poor market-women
complained that they were to be scotched a quarter of their wages by
taxation; and attention is called to the word by its being three times printed
in italics. In the pamphlet it is "sconced"; that very common old word for
fined or mulcted.

Lord Lyndhurst,[447] who has [1863] just passed away under a load of years
and honors, was Mr. Frend's private pupil at Cambridge. At the time of the
celebrated trial, he and two others amused themselves, and vented the
feeling which was very strong among the undergraduates, by chalking the
walls of Cambridge with "Frend for ever!" While thus engaged in what,
using the term legally, we are probably to call his first publication, he and
his friends were surprised by the proctors. Flight and chase followed of

course: Copley and one of the others, Serjeant Rough,[448] escaped: the
third, whose name I forget, but who afterwards, I have been told was a
bishop,[449] being lame, was captured and impositioned. Looking at the
Cambridge Calendar to verify the fact that Copley was an undergraduate at
the time, I find that there are but two other men in the list of honors of his
year whose names are now widely remembered. And they were both
celebrated schoolmasters; Butler[450] of Harrow, and Tate[451] of Richmond.
But Mr. Frend had another noted pupil. I once had a conversation with a
very remarkable man, who was generally called "Place,[452] the tailor," but
who was politician, political economist, etc., etc. He sat in the room above
his shop—he was then a thriving master tailor at Charing Cross—
surrounded by books enough for nine, to shame a proverb. The blue books
alone, cut up into strips, would have measured Great Britain for oh-no-we-
never-mention-'ems, the Highlands included. I cannot find a biography of
this worthy and able man. I happened to mention William Frend, and he
said, "Ah! my old master, as I always call him. Many and many a time, and
year after year, did he come in every now and then to give me instruction,
while I was sitting on the board, working for my living, you know."
Place, who really was a sound economist, is joined with Cobbett, because
they were together at one time, and because he was, in 1800, etc., a great
Radical. But for Cobbett he had a great contempt. He told me the following
story. He and others were advising with Cobbett about the defense he was
to make on a trial for seditious libel which was coming on. Said Place, "You
must put in the letters you have received from Ministers, members of the
Commons from the Speaker downwards, etc., about your Register, and their
wish to have subjects noted. You must then ask the jury whether a person so
addressed must be considered as a common sower of sedition, etc. You will
be acquitted; nay, if your intention should get about, very likely they will
manage to stop proceedings." Cobbett was too much disturbed to listen; he
walked about the room ejaculating "D—— the prison!" and the like. He had
not the sense to follow the advice, and was convicted.
Cobbett, to go on with the chain, was a political acrobat, ready for any kind
of posture. A friend of mine gave me several times an account of a mission
to him. A Tory member—those who know the old Tory world may look for
his initials in initials of two consecutive words of "Pay his money with

interest"—who was, of course, a political opponent, thought Cobbett had
been hardly used, and determined to subscribe handsomely towards the
expenses he was incurring as a candidate. My friend was commissioned to
hand over the money—a bag of sovereigns, that notes might not be traced.
He went into Cobbett's committee-room, told the patriot his errand, and put
the money on the table. "And to whom, sir, am I indebted?" said Cobbett.
"The donor," was the answer, "is Mr. Andrew Theophilus Smith," or some
such unlikely pair of baptismals. "Ah!" said Cobbett, "I have known Mr.
A. T. S. a long time! he was always a true friend of his country!"
To return to Place. He is a noted instance of the advantage of our jury
system, which never asks a man's politics, etc. The late King of Hanover,
when Duke of Cumberland, being unpopular, was brought under unjust
suspicions by the suicide of his valet: he must have seduced the wife and
murdered the husband. The charges were as absurd as those brought against
the Englishman in the Frenchman's attempt at satirical verses upon him:

"The Englishman is a very bad man;
He drink the beer and he steal the can:
He kiss the wife and he beat the man;
And the Englishman is a very G—— d——."

The charges were revived in a much later day, and the defense might have
given some trouble. But Place, who had been the foreman at the inquest,
came forward, and settled the question in a few lines. Every one knew that
the old Radical was quite free of all disposition to suppress truth from wish
to curry favor with royalty.

John Speed,[453] the author of the English History,[454] (1632) which Bishop
Nicolson[455] calls the best chronicle extant, was a man, like Place, of no
education, but what he gave himself. The bishop says he would have done
better if he had a better training: but what, he adds, could have been
expected from a tailor! This Speed was, as well as Place. But he was
released from manual labor by Sir Fulk Grevil,[456] who enabled him to
study.

A STORY ON SIMSON.
I have elsewhere noticed that those who oppose the mysteries of algebra do
not ridicule them; this I want the cyclometers to do. Of the three who wrote
against the great point, the negative quantity, and the uses of 0 which are
connected with it, only one could fire a squib. That Robert Simson[457]
should do such a thing will be judged impossible by all who admit tradition.
I do not vouch for the following; I give it as a proof of the impression
which prevailed about him:
He used to sit at his open window on the ground floor, as deep in geometry
as a Robert Simson ought to be. Here he would be accosted by beggars, to
whom he generally gave a trifle, he roused himself to hear a few words of
the story, made his donation, and instantly dropped down into his depths.
Some wags one day stopped a mendicant who was on his way to the
window with "Now, my man, do as we tell you, and you will get something
from that gentleman, and a shilling from us besides. You will go and say
you are in distress, he will ask you who you are, and you will say you are
Robert Simson, son of John Simson of Kirktonhill." The man did as he was
told; Simson quietly gave him a coin, and dropped off. The wags watched a
little, and saw him rouse himself again, and exclaim "Robert Simson, son of
John Simson of Kirktonhill! why, that is myself. That man must be an
impostor." Lord Brougham tells the same story, with some difference of
details.

BARON MASERES.

Baron Maseres[458] was, as a writer, dry; those who knew his writings will
feel that he seldom could have taken in a joke or issued a pun. Maseres was
the fourth wrangler of 1752, and first Chancellor's medallist (or highest in
classics); his second was Porteus[459] (afterward Bishop of London).
Waring[460] came five years after him: he could not get Maseres through the
second page of his first book on algebra; a negative quantity stood like a
lion in the way. In 1758 he published his Dissertation on the Use of the
Negative Sign,[461] 4to. There are some who care little about + and -, who

would give it house-room for the sake of the four words "Printed by Samuel
Richardson."
Maseres speaks as follows: "A single quantity can never be marked with
either of those signs, or considered as either affirmative or negative; for if
any single quantity, as b, is marked either with the sign + or with the sign -
without assigning some other quantity, as a, to which it is to be added, or
from which it is to be subtracted, the mark will have no meaning or
signification: thus if it be said that the square of -5, or the product of -5 into
-5, is equal to +25, such an assertion must either signify no more than that 5
times 5 is equal to 25 without any regard to the signs, or it must be mere
nonsense and unintelligible jargon. I speak according to the foregoing
definition, by which the affirmativeness or negativeness of any quantity
implies a relation to another quantity of the same kind to which it is added,
or from which it is subtracted; for it may perhaps be very clear and
intelligible to those who have formed to themselves some other idea of
affirmative and negative quantities different from that above defined."
Nothing can be more correct, or more identically logical: +5 and -5,
standing alone, are jargon if +5 and -5 are to be understood as without
reference to another quantity. But those who have "formed to themselves
some other idea" see meaning enough. The great difficulty of the opponents
of algebra lay in want of power or will to see extension of terms. Maseres is
right when he implies that extension, accompanied by its refusal, makes
jargon. One of my paradoxers was present at a meeting of the Royal Society
(in 1864, I think) and asked permission to make some remarks upon a
paper. He rambled into other things, and, naming me, said that I had written
a book in which two sides of a triangle are pronounced equal to the third.
[462] So they are, in the sense in which the word is used in complete algebra;

in which A + B = C makes A, B, C, three sides of a triangle, and declares
that going over A and B, one after the other, is equivalent, in change of
place, to going over C at once. My critic, who might, if he pleased, have
objected to extension, insisted upon reading me in unextended meaning.
On the other hand, it must be said that those who wrote on the other idea
wrote very obscurely about it and justified Des Cartes (De Methodo)[463]
when he said: "Algebram vero, ut solet doceri, animadverti certis regulis et
numerandi formulis ita esse contentam, ut videatur potius ars quædam

confusa, cujus usu ingenium quodam modo turbatur et obscuratur, quam
scientia qua excolatur et perspicacius reddatur."[464] Maseres wrote this
sentence on the title of his own work, now before me; he would have made
it his motto if he had found it earlier.

There is, I believe, in Cobbett's Annual Register,[465] an account of an
interview between Maseres and Cobbett when in prison.
The conversation of Maseres was lively, and full of serious anecdote: but
only one attempt at humorous satire is recorded of him; it is an instructive
one. He was born in 1731 (Dec. 15), and his father was a refugee. French
was the language of the house, with the pronunciation of the time of Louis
XIV. He lived until 1824 (May 19), and saw the race of refugees who were
driven out by the first Revolution. Their pronunciation differed greatly from
his own; and he used to amuse himself by mimicking them. Those who
heard him and them had the two schools of pronunciation before them at
once; a thing which seldom happens. It might even yet be worth while to
examine the Canadian pronunciation.
Maseres went as Attorney-General to Quebec; and was appointed Cursitor
Baron of our Exchequer in 1773. There is a curious story about his mission
to Canada, which I have heard as good tradition, but have never seen in
print. The reader shall have it as cheap as I; and I confess I rather believe it.
Maseres was inveterately honest; he could not, at the bar, bear to see his
own client victorious, when he knew his cause was a bad one. On a certain
occasion he was in a cause which he knew would go against him if a certain
case were quoted. Neither the judge nor the opposite counsel seemed to
remember this case, and Maseres could not help dropping an allusion which
brought it out. His business as a barrister fell off, of course. Some time
after, Mr. Pitt (Chatham) wanted a lawyer to send to Canada on a private
mission, and wanted a very honest man. Some one mentioned Maseres, and
told the above story: Pitt saw that he had got the man he wanted. The
mission was satisfactorily performed, and Maseres remained as Attorney-
General.

The Doctrine of Life Annuities[466] (4to, 726 pages, 1783) is a strange
paradox. Its size, the heavy dissertations on the national debt, and the depth
of algebra supposed known, put it out of the question as an elementary

work, and it is unfitted for the higher student by its elaborate attempt at
elementary character, shown in its rejection of forms derived from chances
in favor of the average, and its exhibition of the separate values of the years
of an annuity, as arithmetical illustrations. It is a climax of unsaleability,
unreadability, and inutility. For intrinsic nullity of interest, and dilution of
little matter with much ink, I can compare this book to nothing but that of
Claude de St. Martin, elsewhere mentioned, or the lectures On the Nature
and Properties of Logarithms, by James Little,[467] Dublin, 1830, 8vo. (254
heavy pages of many words and few symbols), a wonderful weight of
weariness.
The stock of this work on annuities, very little diminished, was given by the
author to William Frend, who paid warehouse room for it until about 1835,
when he consulted me as to its disposal. As no publisher could be found
who would take it as a gift, for any purpose of sale, it was consigned, all but
a few copies, to a buyer of waste paper.
Baron Maseres's republications are well known: the Scriptores
Logarithmici[468] is a set of valuable reprints, mixed with much which
might better have entered into another collection. It is not so well known
that there is a volume of optical reprints, Scriptores Optici, London, 1823,
4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469] at twenty-nine.
This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes, Halley, Barrow,
and the optical writings of Huyghens, the Principia of the undulatory
theory. It also contains, by the sort of whim in which such men as Maseres,
myself, and some others are apt to indulge, a reprint of "The great new Art
of weighing Vanity,"[470] by M. Patrick Mathers, Arch-Bedel to the
University of St. Andrews, Glasgow, 1672. Professor Sinclair,[471] of
Glasgow, a good man at clearing mines of the water which they did not
want, and furnishing cities with water which they did want, seems to have
written absurdly about hydrostatics, and to have attacked a certain Sanders,
[472] M.A. So Sanders, assisted by James Gregory, published a heavy bit of

jocosity about him. This story of the authorship rested on a note made in his
copy by Robert Gray, M.D.; but it has since been fully confirmed by a letter
of James Gregory to Collins, in the Macclesfield Correspondence. "There is
one Master Sinclair, who did write the Ars Magna et Nova,[473] a pitiful
ignorant fellow, who hath lately written horrid nonsense in the hydrostatics,

and hath abused a master in the University, one Mr. Sanders, in print. This
Mr. Sanders ... is resolved to cause the Bedel of the University to write
against him.... We resolve to make excellent sport with him."
On this I make two remarks: First, I have learned from experience that old
notes, made in books by their possessors, are statements of high authority:
they are almost always confirmed. I do not receive them without hesitation;
but I believe that of all the statements about books which rest on one
authority, there is a larger percentage of truth in the written word than in the
printed word. Secondly, I mourn to think that when the New Zealander
picks up his old copy of this book, and reads it by the associations of his
own day, he may, in spite of the many assurances I have received that my
Athenæum Budget was amusing, feel me to be as heavy as I feel James
Gregory and Sanders. But he will see that I knew what was coming, which
Gregory did not.

MR. FREND'S BURLESQUE.
It was left for Mr. Frend to prove that an impugner of algebra could attempt
ridicule. He was, in 1803, editor of a periodical The Gentleman's Monthly
Miscellany, which lasted a few months.[474] To this, among other things, he
contributed the following, in burlesque of the use made of 0, to which he
objected.[475] The imitation of Rabelais, a writer in whom he delighted, is
good: to those who have never dipped, it may give such a notion as they
would not easily get elsewhere. The point of the satire is not so good. But in
truth it is not easy to make pungent scoffs upon what is common sense to all
mankind. Who can laugh with effect at six times nothing is nothing, as false
or unintelligible? In an article intended for that undistinguishing know-0 the
"general reader," there would have been no force of satire, if division by 0
had been separated from multiplication by the same.
I have followed the above by another squib, by the same author, on the
English language. The satire is covertly aimed at theological phraseology;
and any one who watches this subject will see that it is a very just
observation that the Greek words are not boiled enough.

Pantagruel's Decision of the Question about Nothing.
"Pantagruel determined to have a snug afternoon with Epistemon and
Panurge. Dinner was ordered to be set in a small parlor, and a particular
batch of Hermitage with some choice Burgundy to be drawn from a remote
corner of the cellar upon the occasion. By way of lunch, about an hour
before dinner, Pantagruel was composing his stomach with German
sausages, reindeer's tongues, oysters, brawn, and half a dozen different sorts
of English beer just come into fashion, when a most thundering knocking
was heard at the great gate, and from the noise they expected it to announce
the arrival at least of the First Consul, or king Gargantua. Panurge was sent
to reconnoiter, and after a quarter of an hour's absence, returned with the
news that the University of Pontemaca was waiting his highness's leisure in
the great hall, to propound a question which had turned the brains of thirty-
nine students, and had flung twenty-seven more into a high fever. With all
my heart, says Pantagruel, and swallowed down three quarts of Burton ale;
but remember, it wants but an hour of dinner time, and the question must be
asked in as few words as possible; for I cannot deprive myself of the
pleasure I expected to enjoy in the company of my good friends for a set of
mad-headed masters. I wish brother John was here to settle these matters
with the black gentry.
"Having said or rather growled this, he proceeded to the hall of ceremony,
and mounted his throne; Epistemon and Panurge standing on each side, but
two steps below him. Then advanced to the throne the three beadles of the
University of Pontemaca with their silver staves on their shoulders, and
velvet caps on their heads, and they were followed by three times three
doctors, and thrice three times three masters of art; for everything was done
in Pontemaca by the number three, and on this account the address was
written on parchment, one foot in breadth, and thrice three times thrice
three feet in length. The beadles struck the ground with their heads and their
staves three times in approaching the throne; the doctors struck the ground
with their heads thrice three times, and the masters did the same thrice each
time, beating the ground with their heads thrice three times. This was the
accustomed form of approaching the throne, time out of mind, and it was
said to be emblematic of the usual prostration of science to the throne of
greatness.

"The mathematical professor, after having spit, and hawked, and cleared his
throat, and blown his nose on a handkerchief lent to him, for he had
forgotten to bring his own, began to read the address. In this he was assisted
by three masters of arts, one of whom, with a silver pen, pointed out the
stops; the second with a small stick rapped his knuckles when he was to
raise or lower his voice; and a third pulled his hair behind when he was to
look Pantagruel in the face. Pantagruel began to chafe like a lion: he turned
first on one side, then on the other: he listened and groaned, and groaned
and listened, and was in the utmost cogitabundity of cogitation. His
countenance began to brighten, when, at the end of an hour, the reader
stammered out these words:
"'It has therefore been most clearly proved that as all matter may be divided
into parts infinitely smaller than the infinitely smallest part of the
infinitesimal of nothing, so nothing has all the properties of something, and
may become, by just and lawful right, susceptible of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division, squaring, and cubing: that it is to all intents and
purposes as good as anything that has been, is, or can be taught in the nine
universities of the land, and to deprive it of its rights is a most cruel
innovation and usurpation, tending to destroy all just subordination in the
world, making all universities superfluous, leveling vice-chancellors,
doctors, and proctors, masters, bachelors, and scholars, to the mean and
contemptible state of butchers and tallow-chandlers, bricklayers and
chimney-sweepers, who, if it were not for these learned mysteries, might
think that they knew as much as their betters. Every one then, who has the
good of science at heart, must pray for the interference of his highness to
put a stop to all the disputes about nothing, and by his decision to convince
all gainsayers that the science of nothing is taught in the best manner in the
universities, to the great edification and improvement of all the youth in the
land.'
"Here Pantagruel whispered in the ear of Panurge, who nodded to
Epistemon, and they two left the assembly, and did not return for an hour,
till the orator had finished his task. The three beadles had thrice struck the
ground with their heads and staves, the doctors had finished their
compliments, and the masters were making their twenty-seven prostrations.
Epistemon and Panurge went up to Pantagruel, whom they found fast asleep
and snoring; nor could he be roused but by as many tugs as there had been

bowings from the corps of learning. At last he opened his eyes, gave a good
stretch, made half a dozen yawns, and called for a stoup of wine. I thank
you, my masters, says he; so sound a nap I have not had since I came from
the island of Priestfolly. Have you dined, my masters? They answered the
question by as many bows as at entrance; but his highness left them to the
care of Panurge, and retired to the little parlor with Epistemon, where they
burst into a fit of laughter, declaring that this learned Baragouin about
nothing was just as intelligible as the lawyer's Galimathias. Panurge
conducted the learned body into a large saloon, and each in his way hearing
a clattering of plates and glasses, congratulated himself on his approaching
good cheer. There they were left by Panurge, who took his chair by
Pantagruel just as the soup was removed, but he made up for the want of
that part of his dinner by a pint of champagne. The learning of the
university had whetted their appetites; what they each ate it is needless to
recite; good wine, good stories, and hearty laughs went round, and three
hours elapsed before one soul of them recollected the hungry students of
Pontemaca.
"Epistemon reminded them of the business in hand, and orders were given
for a fresh dozen of hermitage to be put upon table, and the royal attendants
to get ready. As soon as the dozen bottles were emptied, Pantagruel rose
from table, the royal trumpets sounded, and he was accompanied by the
great officers of his court into the large dining hall, where was a table with
forty-two covers. Pantagruel sat at the head, Epistemon at the bottom, and
Panurge in the middle, opposite an immense silver tureen, which would
hold fifty gallons of soup. The wise men of Pontemaca then took their seats
according to seniority. Every countenance glistened with delight; the music
struck up; the dishes were uncovered. Panurge had enough to do to handle
the immense silver ladle: Pantagruel and Epistemon had no time for eating,
they were fully employed in carving. The bill of fare announced the names
of a hundred different dishes. From Panurge's ladle came into the soup plate
as much as he took every time out of the tureen; and as it was the rule of the
court that every one should appear to eat, as long as he sat at table, there
was the clattering of nine and thirty spoons against the silver soup-plates for
a quarter of an hour. They were then removed, and knives and forks were in
motion for half an hour. Glasses were continually handed round in the mean
time, and then everything was removed, except the great tureen of soup.

The second course was now served up, in dispatching which half an hour
was consumed; and at the conclusion the wise men of Pontemaca had just
as much in their stomachs as Pantagruel in his head from their address: for
nothing was cooked up for them in every possible shape that Panurge could
devise.
"Wine-glasses, large decanters, fruit dishes, and plates were now set on.
Pantagruel and Epistemon alternately gave bumper toasts: the University of
Pontemaca, the eye of the world, the mother of taste and good sense and
universal learning, the patroness of utility, and the second only to
Pantagruel in wisdom and virtue (for these were her titles), was drank
standing with thrice three times three, and huzzas and clattering of glasses;
but to such wine the wise men of Pontemaca had not been accustomed; and
though Pantagruel did not suffer one to rise from table till the eighty-first
glass had been emptied, not even the weakest headed master of arts felt his
head in the least indisposed. The decanters indeed were often removed, but
they were brought back replenished, filled always with nothing.
"Silence was now proclaimed, and in a trice Panurge leaped into the large
silver tureen. Thence he made his bows to Pantagruel and the whole
company, and commenced an oration of signs, which lasted an hour and a
half, and in which he went over all the matter contained in the Pontemaca
address; and though the wise men looked very serious during the whole
time, Pantagruel himself and his whole court could not help indulging in
repeated bursts of laughter. It was universally acknowledged that he
excelled himself, and that the arguments by which he beat the English
masters of arts at Paris were nothing to the exquisite selection of attitudes
which he this day assumed. The greatest shouts of applause were excited
when he was running thrice round the tureen on its rim, with his left hand
holding his nose, and the other exercising itself nine and thirty times on his
back. In this attitude he concluded with his back to the professor of
mathematics; and at the instant he gave his last flap, by a sudden jump, and
turning heels over head in the air, he presented himself face to face to the
professor, and standing on his left leg, with his left hand holding his nose,
he presented to him, in a white satin bag, Pantagruel's royal decree. Then
advancing his right leg, he fixed it on the professor's head, and after three
turns, in which he clapped his sides with both hands thrice three times,

down he leaped, and Pantagruel, Epistemon, and himself took their leaves
of the wise men of Pontemaca.
"The wise men now retired, and by royal orders were accompanied by a
guard, and according to the etiquette of the court, no one having a royal
order could stop at any public house till it was delivered. The procession
arrived at Pontemaca at nine o'clock the next morning, and the sound of
bells from every church and college announced their arrival. The
congregation was assembled; the royal decree was saluted in the same
manner as if his highness had been there in person; and after the proper
ceremonies had been performed, the satin bag was opened exactly at twelve
o'clock. A finely emblazoned roll was drawn forth, and the public orator
read to the gaping assembly the following words:
"'They who can make something out of nothing shall have nothing to eat at
the court of—Pantagruel.'"

Origin of the English Language, related by a Swede.
"Some months ago in a party in Holland, consisting of natives of various
countries, the merit of their respective languages became a topic of
conversation. A Swede, who had been a great traveler, and could converse
in most of the modern languages of Europe, laughed very heartily at an
Englishman, who had ventured to speak in praise of the tongue of his dear
country. I never had any trouble, says he, in learning English. To my very
great surprise, the moment I sat foot on shore at Gravesend, I found out,
that I could understand, with very little trouble, every word that was said. It
was a mere jargon, made up of German, French, and Italian, with now and
then a word from the Spanish, Latin or Greek. I had only to bring my mouth
to their mode of speaking, which was done with ease in less than a week,
and I was everywhere taken for a true-born Englishman; a privilege by the
way of no small importance in a country, where each man, God knows why,
thinks his foggy island superior to any other part of the world: and though
his door is never free from some dun or other coming for a tax, and if he
steps out of it he is sure to be knocked down or to have his pocket picked,
yet he has the insolence to think every foreigner a miserable slave, and his
country the seat of everything wretched. They may talk of liberty as they
please, but Spain or Turkey for my money: barring the bowstring and the

inquisition, they are the most comfortable countries under heaven, and you
need not be afraid of either, if you do not talk of religion and politics. I do
not see much difference too in this respect in England, for when I was there,
one of their most eminent men for learning was put in prison for a couple of
years, and got his death for translating one of Æsop's fables into English,
which every child in Spain and Turkey is taught, as soon as he comes out of
his leading strings. Here all the company unanimously cried out against the
Swede, that it was impossible: for in England, the land of liberty, the only
thing its worst enemies could say against it, was, that they paid for their
liberty a much greater price than it was worth.—Every man there had a fair
trial according to laws, which everybody could understand; and the judges
were cool, patient, discerning men, who never took the part of the crown
against the prisoner, but gave him every assistance possible for his defense.
"The Swede was borne down, but not convinced; and he seemed determined
to spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that
the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in
a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was
related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind.
Here the company were all in unison again for the story.
"In ancient times, said the old hag, the English occupied a spot in Tartary,
where they lived sulkily by themselves, unknowing and unknown. By a
great convulsion that took place in China, the inhabitants of that and the
adjoining parts of Tartary were driven from their seats, and after various
wanderings took up their abode in Germany. During this time nobody could
understand the English, for they did not talk, but hissed like so many
snakes. The poor people felt uneasy under this circumstance, and in one of
their parliaments, or rather hissing meetings, it was determined to seek a
remedy: and an embassy was sent to some of our sisterhood then living on
Mount Hecla. They were put to a nonplus, and summoned the Devil to their
relief. To him the English presented their petitions, and explained their sad
case; and he, upon certain conditions, promised to befriend them, and to
give them a language. The poor Devil was little aware of what he had
promised; but he is, as all the world knows, a man of too much honor to
break his word. Up and down the world then he went in quest of this new
language: visited all the universities, and all the schools, and all the courts
of law, and all the play-houses, and all the prisons; never was poor devil so

fagged. It would have made your heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go
round the earth in every parallel of latitude; and at last, wearied and jaded
out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into
the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that
time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst
they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and
post ultimatums, the poor Devil, unable to assist them was groaning in a
corner and ruminating over his sad condition.
"On a sudden, a hellish joy overspread his countenance; up he jumped, and,
like Archimedes of old, ran like a madman amongst the throng, turning over
tables, and papers, and witches, roaring out for a full hour together nothing
else but 'tis found, 'tis found! Away were sent the sisterhood in every
direction, some to traverse all the corners of the earth, and others to prepare
a larger caldron than had ever yet been set upon Hecla. The affairs of
Europe were at a stand: its balance was thrown aside; prime ministers and
ambassadors were everywhere in the utmost confusion; and, by the way,
they have never been able to find the balance since that time, and all the
fine speeches upon the subject, with which your newspapers are every now
and then filled, are all mere hocus-pocus and rhodomontade. However, the
caldron was soon set on, and the air was darkened by witches riding on
broomsticks, bringing a couple of folios under each arm, and across each
shoulder. I remember the time exactly: it was just as the council of Nice had
broken up, so that they got books and papers there dog cheap; but it was a
bad thing for the poor English, as these were the worst materials that
entered into the caldron. Besides, as the Devil wanted some amusement,
and had not seen an account of the transactions of this famous council, he
had all the books brought from it laid before him, and split his sides almost
with laughing, whilst he was reading the speeches and decrees of so many
of his old friends and acquaintances. All this while the witches were
depositing their loads in the great caldron. There were books from the Dalai
Lama, and from China: there were books from the Hindoos, and tallies from
the Caffres: there were paintings from Mexico, and rocks of hieroglyphics
from Egypt: the last country supplied besides the swathings of two thousand
mummies, and four-fifths of the famed library of Alexandria. Bubble!
bubble! toil and trouble! never was a day of more labor and anxiety; and if
our good master had but flung in the Greek books at the proper time, they

would have made a complete job of it. He was a little too impatient: as the
caldron frothed up, he skimmed it off with a great ladle, and filled some
thousands of our wind-bags with the froth, which the English with great joy
carried back to their own country. These bags were sent to every district: the
chiefs first took their fill, and then the common people; hence they now
speak a language which no foreigner can understand, unless he has learned
half a dozen other languages; and the poor people, not one in ten,
understand a third part of what is said to them. The hissing, however, they
have not entirely got rid of, and every seven years, when the Devil,
according to agreement, pays them a visit, they entertain him at their
common halls and county meetings with their original language.
"The good-natured old hag told me several other circumstances, relative to
this curious transaction, which, as there is an Englishman in company, it
will be prudent to pass over in silence: but I cannot help mentioning one
thing which she told me as a very great secret. You know, says she to me,
that the English have more religions among them than any other nation in
Europe, and that there is more teaching and sermonizing with them than in
any other country. The fact is this; it matters not who gets up to teach them,
the hard words of the Greek were not sufficiently boiled, and whenever they
get into a sentence, the poor people's brains are turned, and they know no
more what the preacher is talking about, than if he harangued them in
Arabic. Take my word for it if you please; but if not, when you get to
England, desire the bettermost sort of people that you are acquainted with to
read to you an act of parliament, which of course is written in the clearest
and plainest style in which anything can be written, and you will find that
not one in ten will be able to make tolerable sense of it. The language would
have been an excellent language, if it had not been for the council of Nice,
and the words had been well boiled.
"Here the company burst out into a fit of laughter. The Englishman got up
and shook hands with the Swede: si non è vero, said he, è ben trovato.[476]
But, however I may laugh at it here, I would not advise you to tell this story
on the other side of the water. So here's a bumper to Old England for ever,
and God save the king."

ON YOUTHFUL PRODIGIES.
The accounts given of extraordinary children and adolescents frequently
defy credence.[477] I will give two well-attested instances.

The celebrated mathematician Alexis Claude Clairault (now Clairaut)[478]
was certainly born in May, 1713. His treatise on curves of double curvature
(printed in 1731)[479] received the approbation of the Academy of Sciences,
August 23, 1729. Fontenelle, in his certificate of this, calls the author
sixteen years of age, and does not strive to exaggerate the wonder, as he
might have done, by reminding his readers that this work, of original and
sustained mathematical investigation, must have been coming from the pen
at the ages of fourteen and fifteen. The truth was, as attested by De
Molières,[480] Clairaut had given public proofs of his power at twelve years
old. His age being thus publicly certified, all doubt is removed: say he had
been—though great wonder would still have been left—twenty-one instead
of sixteen, his appearance, and the remembrances of his friends,
schoolfellows, etc., would have made it utterly hopeless to knock off five
years of that age while he was on view in Paris as a young lion. De
Molières, who examined the work officially for the Garde des Sceaux, is
transported beyond the bounds of official gravity, and says that it "ne mérite
pas seulement d'être imprimé, mais d'être admiré comme un prodige
d'imagination, de conception, et de capacité."[481]
That Blaise Pascal was born in June, 1623, is perfectly well established and
uncontested.[482] That he wrote his conic sections at the age of sixteen
might be difficult to establish, though tolerably well attested, if it were not
for one circumstance, for the book was not published. The celebrated
theorem, "Pascal's hexagram,"[483] makes all the rest come very easy. Now
Curabelle,[484] in a work published in 1644, sneers at Desargues,[485] whom
he quotes, for having, in 1642, deferred a discussion until "cette grande
proposition nommée le Pascale verra le jour."[486] That is, by the time
Pascal was nineteen, the hexagram was circulating under a name derived
from the author. The common story about Pascal, given by his sister,[487] is
an absurdity which no doubt has prejudiced many against tales of early
proficiency. He is made, when quite a boy, to invent geometry in the order
of Euclid's propositions: as if that order were natural sequence of

investigation. The hexagram at ten years old would be a hundred times less
unlikely.
The instances named are painfully astonishing: I give one which has fallen
out of sight, because it will preserve an imperfect biography. John
Wilson[488] is Wilson of that Ilk, that is, of "Wilson's Theorem." It is this: if
p be a prime number, the product of all the numbers up to p-1, increased by
1, is divisible without remainder by p. All mathematicians know this as
Wilson's theorem, but few know who Wilson was. He was born August 6,
1741, at the Howe in Applethwaite, and he was heir to a small estate at
Troutbeck in Westmoreland. He was sent to Peterhouse, at Cambridge, and
while an undergraduate was considered stronger in algebra than any one in
the University, except Professor Waring, one of the most powerful
algebraists of the century.[489] He was the senior wrangler of 1761, and was
then for some time a private tutor. When Paley,[490] then in his third year,
determined to make a push for the senior wranglership, which he got,
Wilson was recommended to him as a tutor. Both were ardent in their work,
except that sometimes Paley, when he came for his lesson, would find
"Gone a fishing" written on his tutor's outer door: which was insult added to
injury, for Paley was very fond of fishing. Wilson soon left Cambridge, and
went to the bar. He practised on the northern circuit with great success; and,
one day, while passing his vacation on his little property at Troutbeck, he
received information, to his great surprise, that Lord Thurlow,[491] with
whom he had no acquaintance, had recommended him to be a Judge of the
Court of Common Pleas. He died, Oct. 18, 1793, with a very high
reputation as a lawyer and a Judge. These facts are partly from Meadley's
Life of Paley,[492] no doubt from Paley himself, partly from the Gentleman's
Magazine, and from an epitaph written by Bishop Watson.[493] Wilson did
not publish anything: the theorem by which he has cut his name in the
theory of numbers was communicated to Waring, by whom it was
published. He married, in 1788, a daughter of Serjeant Adair,[494] and left
issue. Had a family, many will say: but a man and his wife are a family,
even without children. An actuary may be allowed to be accurate in this
matter, of which I was reminded by what an actuary wrote of another
actuary. William Morgan,[495] in the life of his uncle Dr. Richard Price,[496]
says that the Doctor and his wife were "never blessed with an addition to

their family." I never met with such accuracy elsewhere. Of William
Morgan I add that my surname and pursuits have sometimes, to my credit
be it said, made a confusion between him and me. Dates are nothing to the
mistaken; the last three years of Morgan's life were the first three years of
my actuary-life (1830-33). The mistake was to my advantage as well as to
my credit. I owe to it the acquaintance of one of the noblest of the human
race, I mean Elizabeth Fry,[497] who came to me for advice about a
philanthropic design, which involved life questions, under a general
impression that some Morgan had attended to such things.[498]

NEWTON AGAIN OVERTHROWN.

A treatise on the sublime science of heliography, satisfactorily
demonstrating our great orb of light, the sun, to be absolutely no
other than a body of ice! Overturning all the received systems of
the universe hitherto extant; proving the celebrated and
indefatigable Sir Isaac Newton, in his theory of the solar system,
to be as far distant from the truth, as many of the heathen authors
of Greece and Rome. By Charles Palmer,[499] Gent. London,
1798, 8vo.

Mr. Palmer burned some tobacco with a burning glass, saw that a lens of ice
would do as well, and then says:
"If we admit that the sun could be removed, and a terrestrial body of ice
placed in its stead, it would produce the same effect. The sun is a crystaline
body receiving the radiance of God, and operates on this earth in a similar
manner as the light of the sun does when applied to a convex mirror or
glass."

Nov. 10, 1801. The Rev. Thomas Cormouls,[500] minister of Tettenhall,
addressed a letter to Sir Wm. Herschel, from which I extract the following:
"Here it may be asked, then, how came the doctrines of Newton to solve all
astronomic Phenomina, and all problems concerning the same, both a parte
ante and a parte post.[501] It is answered that he certainly wrought the

principles he made use of into strickt analogy with the real Phenomina of
the heavens, and that the rules and results arizing from them agree with
them and resolve accurately all questions concerning them. Though they are
not fact and true, or nature, but analogous to it, in the manner of the
artificial numbers of logarithms, sines, &c. A very important question arises
here, Did Newton mean to impose upon the world? By no means: he
received and used the doctrines reddy formed; he did a little extend and
contract his principles when wanted, and commit a few oversights of
consequences. But when he was very much advanced in life, he suspected
the fundamental nullity of them: but I have from a certain anecdote strong
ground to believe that he knew it before his decease and intended to have
retracted his error. But, however, somebody did deceive, if not wilfully,
negligently at least. That was a man to whom the world has great
obligations too. It was no less a philosopher than Galileo."
That Newton wanted to retract before his death, is a notion not uncommon
among paradoxers. Nevertheless, there is no retraction in the third edition of
the Principia, published when Newton was eighty-four years old! The
moral of the above is, that a gentleman who prefers instructing William
Herschel to learning how to spell, may find a proper niche in a proper place,
for warning to others. It seems that gravitation is not truth, but only the
logarithm of it.

BISHOPS AS PARADOXERS.

The mathematical and philosophical works of the Right Rev. John
Wilkins[502].... In two volumes. London, 1802, 8vo.

This work, or at least part of the edition—all for aught I know—is printed
on wood; that is, on paper made from wood-pulp. It has a rough surface;
and when held before a candle is of very unequal transparency. There is in it
a reprint of the works on the earth and moon. The discourse on the
possibility of going to the moon, in this and the edition of 1640, is
incorporated: but from the account in the life prefixed, and a mention by
D'Israeli, I should suppose that it had originally a separate title-page, and
some circulation as a separate tract. Wilkins treats this subject half

seriously, half jocosely; he has evidently not quite made up his mind. He is
clear that "arts are not yet come to their solstice," and that posterity will
bring hidden things to light. As to the difficulty of carrying food, he thinks,
scoffing Puritan that he is, the Papists may be trained to fast the voyage, or
may find the bread of their Eucharist "serve well enough for their viaticum."
[503] He also puts the case that the story of Domingo Gonsales may be

realized, namely, that wild geese find their way to the moon. It will be
remembered—to use the usual substitute for, It has been forgotten—that the
posthumous work of Bishop Francis Godwin[504] of Llandaff was published
in 1638, the very year of Wilkins's first edition, in time for him to mention it
at the end. Godwin makes Domingo Gonsales get to the moon in a chariot
drawn by wild geese, and, as old books would say, discourses fully on that
head. It is not a little amusing that Wilkins should have been seriously
accused of plagiarizing Godwin, Wilkins writing in earnest, or nearly so,
and Godwin writing fiction. It may serve to show philosophers how very
near pure speculation comes to fable. From the sublime to the ridiculous is
but a step: which is the sublime, and which the ridiculous, every one must
settle for himself. With me, good fiction is the sublime, and bad speculation
the ridiculous. The number of bishops in my list is small. I might, had I
possessed the book, have opened the list of quadrators with an Archbishop
of Canterbury, or at least with a divine who was not wholly not archbishop.
Thomas Bradwardine[505] (Bragvardinus, Bragadinus) was elected in 1348;
the Pope put in another, who died unconsecrated; and Bradwardine was
again elected in 1349, and lived five weeks longer, dying, I suppose,
unconfirmed and unconsecrated.[506] Leland says he held the see a year,
unus tantum annulus,[507] which seems to be a confusion: the whole
business, from the first election, took about a year. He squared the circle,
and his performance was printed at Paris in 1494. I have never seen it, nor
any work of the author, except a tract on proportion.
As Bradwardine's works are very scarce indeed, I give two titles from one
of the Libri catalogues.

"Arithmetic. Brauardini (Thomæ) Arithmetica speculativa revisa
et correcta a Petro Sanchez Ciruelo Aragonesi, black letter,
elegant woodcut title-page, VERY RARE, folio. Parisiis, per
Thomam Anguelast (pro Olivier Senant), s. a. circa 1510.[508]

"This book, by Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury must be
exceedingly scarce as it has escaped the notice of Professor De Morgan,
who, in his Arithmetical Books, speaks of a treatise of the same author on
proportions,[509] printed at Vienna in 1515, but does not mention the present
work.

"Bradwardine (Archbp. T.). Brauardini (Thomæ) Geometria
speculativa, com Tractato de Quadratura Circuli bene revisa a
Petro Sanchez Ciruelo, SCARCE, folio. Parisiis, J. Petit, 1511.[510]

"In this work we find the polygones étoilés,[511] see Chasles (Aperçu, pp.
480, 487, 521, 523, &c.) on the merit of the discoveries of this English
mathematician, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the XIVth Century
(tempore Edward III. A.D. 1349); and who applied geometry to theology. M.
Chasles says that the present work of Bradwardine contains 'Une théorie
nouvelle qui doit faire honneur au XIVe Siècle.'"[512]
The titles do not make it quite sure that Bradwardine is the quadrator; it
may be Peter Sanchez after all.[513]

THE QUESTION OF PARALLELS.

Nouvelle théorie des parallèles. Par Adolphe Kircher[514] [so
signed at the end of the appendix]. Paris, 1803, 8vo.

An alleged emendation of Legendre.[515] The author refers to attempts by
Hoffman,[516] 1801, by Hauff,[517] 1799, and to a work of Karsten,[518] or at
least a theory of Karsten, contained in "Tentamen novæ parallelarum
theoriæ notione situs fundatæ; auctore G. C. Schwal,[519] Stuttgardæ, 1801,
en 8 volumes." Surely this is a misprint; eight volumes on the theory of
parallels? If there be such a work, I trust I and it may never meet, though
ever so far produced.

Soluzione ... della quadratura del Circolo. By Gaetano Rossi.[520]
London, 1804, 8vo.

The three remarkable points of this book are, that the household of the
Prince of Wales took ten copies, Signora Grassini[521] sixteen, and that the
circumference is 3-1/5 diameters. That is, the appetite of Grassini for
quadrature exceeded that of the whole household (loggia) of the Prince of
Wales in the ratio in which the semi-circumference exceeds the diameter.
And these are the first two in the list of subscribers. Did the author see this
theorem?

A PATRIOTIC PARADOX.

Britain independent of commerce; or proofs, deduced from an
investigation into the true cause of the wealth of nations, that our
riches, prosperity, and power are derived from sources inherent in
ourselves, and would not be affected, even though our commerce
were annihilated. By Wm. Spence.[522] 4th edition, 1808, 8vo.

A patriotic paradox, being in alleviation of the Commerce panic which the
measures of Napoleon I.—who felt our Commerce, while Mr. Spence only
saw it—had awakened. In this very month (August, 1866), the Pres. Brit.
Assoc. has applied a similar salve to the coal panic; it is fit that science,
which rubbed the sore, should find a plaster. We ought to have an iron panic
and a timber panic; and a solemn embassy to the Americans, to beg them
not to whittle, would be desirable. There was a gold panic beginning, before
the new fields were discovered. For myself, I am the unknown and unpitied
victim of a chronic gutta-percha panic: I never could get on without it; to
me, gutta percha and Rowland Hill are the great discoveries of our day; and
not unconnected either, gutta percha being to the submarine post what
Rowland Hill is to the superterrene. I should be sorry to lose cow-choke—I
gave up trying to spell it many years ago—but if gutta percha go, I go too. I
think, that perhaps when, five hundred years hence, the people say to the
Brit. Assoc. (if it then exist) "Pray gentlemen, is it not time for the coal to
be exhausted?" they will be answered out of Molière (who will certainly
then exist): "Cela était autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons changé tout cela."

[523] A great many people think that if the coal be used up, it will be

announced some unexpected morning by all the yards being shut up and
written notice outside, "Coal all gone!" just like the "Please, ma'am, there
ain't no more sugar," with which the maid servant damps her mistress just at
breakfast-time. But these persons should be informed that there is every
reason to think that there will be time, as the city gentleman said, to venienti
the occurrite morbo.[524]

SOME SCIENTIFIC PARADOXES.

An appeal to the republic of letters in behalf of injured science,
from the opinions and proceedings of some modern authors of
elements of geometry. By George Douglas.[525] Edinburgh, 1810,
8vo.

Mr. Douglas was the author of a very good set of mathematical tables, and
of other works. He criticizes Simson,[526] Playfair,[527] and others,—
sometimes, I think, very justly. There is a curious phrase which occurs more
than once. When he wants to say that something or other was done before
Simson or another was born, he says "before he existed, at least as an
author." He seems to reserve the possibility of Simson's pre-existence, but at
the same time to assume that he never wrote anything in his previous state.
Tell me that Simson pre-existed in any other way than as editor of some
pre-existent Euclid? Tell Apella![528]
1810. In this year Jean Wood, Professor of Mathematics in the University of
Virginia (Richmond),[529] addressed a printed circular to "Dr. Herschel,
Astronomer, Greenwich Observatory." No mistake was more common than
the natural one of imagining that the Private Astronomer of the king was the
Astronomer Royal. The letter was on the difference of velocities of the two
sides of the earth, arising from the composition of the rotation and the
orbital motion. The paradox is a fair one, and deserving of investigation;
but, perhaps it would not be easy to deduce from it tides, trade-winds,
aerolithes, &c., as Mr. Wood thought he had done in a work from which he
gives an extract, and which he describes as published. The composition of

rotations, &c., is not for the world at large: the paradox of the non-rotation
of the moon about her axis is an instance. How many persons know that
when a wheel rolls on the ground, the lowest point is moving upwards, the
highest point forwards, and the intermediate points in all degrees of betwixt
and between? This is too short an explanation, with some good difficulties.

The Elements of Geometry. In 2 vols. [By the Rev. J. Dobson,[530]
B.D.] Cambridge, 1815. 4to.

Of this unpunctuating paradoxer I shall give an account in his own way: he
would not stop for any one; why should I stop for him? It is worth while to
try how unpunctuated sentences will read.
The reverend J Dobson BD late fellow of saint Johns college Cambridge
was rector of Brandesburton in Yorkshire he was seventh wrangler in 1798
and died in 1847 he was of that sort of eccentricity which permits account
of his private life if we may not rather say that in such cases private life
becomes public there is a tradition that he was called Death Dobson on
account of his head and aspect of countenance being not very unlike the
ordinary pictures of a human skull his mode of life is reported to have been
very singular whenever he visited Cambridge he was never known to go
twice to the same inn he never would sleep at the rectory with another
person in the house some ancient charwoman used to attend to the house
but never slept in it he has been known in the time of coach travelling to
have deferred his return to Yorkshire on account of his disinclination to
travel with a lady in the coach he continued his mathematical studies until
his death and till his executors sold the type all his tracts to the number of
five were kept in type at the university press none of these tracts had any
stops except full stops at the end of paragraphs only neither had they
capitals except one at the beginning of a paragraph so that a full stop was
generally followed by some white as there is not a single proper name in the
whole of the book I have I am not able to say whether he would have used
capitals before proper names I have inserted them as usual for which I hope
his spirit will forgive me if I be wrong he also published the elements of
geometry in two volumes quarto Cambridge 1815 this book had also no
stops except when a comma was wanted between letters as in the straight

lines AB, BC I should also say that though the title is unpunctuated in the
author's part it seems the publishers would not stand it in their imprint this
imprint is punctuated as usual and Deighton and Sons to prove the
completeness of their allegiance have managed that comma semicolon and
period shall all appear in it why could they not have contrived interrogation
and exclamation this is a good precedent to establish the separate right of
the publisher over the imprint it is said that only twenty of the tracts were
printed and very few indeed of the book on geometry it is doubtful whether
any were sold there is a copy of the geometry in the university library at
Cambridge and I have one myself the matter of the geometry differs entirely
from Euclid and is so fearfully prolix that I am sure no mortal except the
author ever read it the man went on without stops and without stop save for
a period at the end of a paragraph this is the unpunctuated account of the
unpunctuating geometer suum cuique tribuito[531] Mrs Thrale[532] would
have been amused at a Dobson who managed to come to a full stop without
either of the three warnings.
I do not find any difficulty in reading Dobson's geometry; and I have read
more of it to try reading without stops than I should have done had it been
printed in the usual way. Those who dip into the middle of my paragraph
may be surprised for a moment to see "on account of his disinclination to
travel with a lady in the coach he continued his mathematical studies until
his death and [further, of course] until his executors sold the type." But a
person reading straight through would hardly take it so. I should add that, in
order to give a fair trial, I did not compose as I wrote, but copied the words
of the correspondent who gave me the facts, so far as they went.

A RELIGIOUS PARADOX.

Philosophia Sacra, or the principles of natural Philosophy.
Extracted from Divine Revelation. By the Rev. Samuel Pike.[533]
Edited by the Rev. Samuel Kittle.[534] Edinburgh, 1815, 8vo.

This is a work of modified Hutchinsonianism, which I have seen cited by
several. Though rather dark on the subject, it seems not to contradict the
motion of the earth, or the doctrine of gravitation. Mr. Kittle gives a list of

some Hutchinsonians,—as Bishop Horne;[535] Dr. Stukeley;[536] the Rev. W.
Jones,[537] author of Physiological Disquisitions; Mr. Spearman,[538] author
of Letters on the Septuagint and editor of Hutchinson; Mr. Barker,[539]
author of Reflexions on Learning; Dr. Catcott,[540] author of a work on the
creation, &c.; Dr. Robertson,[541] author of a Treatise on the Hebrew
Language; Dr. Holloway,[542] author of Originals, Physical and
Theological; Dr. Walter Hodges,[543] author of a work on Elohim; Lord
President Forbes (ob. 1747).[544]
The Rev. William Jones, above mentioned (1726-1800), the friend and
biographer of Bishop Horne and his stout defender, is best known as
William Jones of Nayland, who (1757)[545] published the Catholic Doctrine
of the Trinity; he was also strong for the Hutchinsonian physical trinity of
fire, light, and spirit. This well-known work was generally recommended,
as the defence of the orthodox system, to those who could not go into the
learning of the subject. There is now a work more suited to our time: The
Rock of Ages, by the Rev. E. H. Bickersteth,[546] now published by the
Religious Tract Society, without date, answered by the Rev. Dr. Sadler,[547]
in a work (1859) entitled Gloria Patri, in which, says Mr. Bickersteth, "the
author has not even attempted to grapple with my main propositions." I
have read largely on the controversy, and I think I know what this means.
Moreover, when I see the note "There are two other passages to which
Unitarians sometimes refer, but the deduction they draw from them is, in
each case, refuted by the context"—I think I see why the two texts are not
named. Nevertheless, the author is a little more disposed to yield to
criticism than his foregoers; he does not insist on texts and readings which
the greatest editors have rejected. And he writes with courtesy, both direct
and oblique, towards his antagonists; which, on his side of this subject, is
like letting in fresh air. So that I suspect the two books will together make a
tolerably good introduction to the subject for those who cannot go deep. Mr.
Bickersteth's book is well arranged and indexed, which is a point of
superiority to Jones of Nayland. There is a point which I should gravely
recommend to writers on the orthodox side. The Unitarians in England have
frequently contended that the method of proving the divinity of Jesus Christ
from the New Testament would equally prove the divinity of Moses. I have
not fallen in the way of any orthodox answers specially directed at the

repeated tracts written by Unitarians in proof of their assertion. If there be
any, they should be more known; if there be none, some should be written.
Which ever side may be right, the treatment of this point would be indeed
coming to close quarters. The heterodox assertion was first supported, it is
said, by John Bidle or Biddle (1615-1662) of Magdalen College, Oxford,
the earliest of the English Unitarian writers, previously known by a
translation of part of Virgil and part of Juvenal.[548] But I cannot find that he
wrote on it.[549] It is the subject of "αἱρεσεων ἀναστασις, or a new way of
deciding old controversies. By Basanistes. Third edition, enlarged,"
London, 1815, 8vo.[550] It is the appendix to the amusing, "Six more letters
to Granville Sharp, Esq., ... By Gregory Blunt, Esq." London, 8vo., 1803.
[551] This much I can confidently say, that the study of these tracts would

prevent orthodox writers from some curious slips, which are slips obvious
to all sides of opinion. The lower defenders of orthodoxy frequently vex the
spirits of the higher ones.
Since writing the above I have procured Dr. Sadler's answer. I thought I
knew what the challenger meant when he said the respondent had not
grappled with his main propositions. I should say that he is clung on to from
beginning to end. But perhaps Mr. B. has his own meaning of logical terms,
such as "proposition": he certainly has his own meaning of "cumulative."
He says his evidence is cumulative; not a catena, the strength of which is in
its weakest part, but distinct and independent lines, each of which
corroborates the other. This is the very opposite of cumulative: it is
distributive. When different arguments are each necessary to a conclusion,
the evidence is cumulative; when any one will do, even though they
strengthen each other, it is distributive. The word "cumulative" is a
synonym of the law word "constructive"; a whole which will do made out
of parts which separately will not. Lord Strafford [552] opens his defence
with the use of both words: "They have invented a kind of accumulated or
constructive evidence; by which many actions, either totally innocent in
themselves, or criminal in a much inferior degree, shall, when united,
amount to treason." The conclusion is, that Mr. B. is a Cambridge man; the
Oxford men do not confuse the elementary terms of logic. O dear old
Cambridge! when the New Zealander comes let him find among the relics
of your later sons some proof of attention to the elementary laws of thought.
A little-go of logic, please!

Mr. B., though apparently not a Hutchinsonian, has a nibble at a physical
Trinity. "If, as we gaze on the sun shining in the firmament, we see any faint
adumbration of the doctrine of the Trinity in the fontal orb, the light ever
generated, and the heat proceeding from the sun and its beams—threefold
and yet one, the sun, its light, and its heat,—that luminous globe, and the
radiance ever flowing from it, are both evident to the eye; but the vital
warmth is felt, not seen, and is only manifested in the life it transfuses
through creation. The proof of its real existence is self-demonstrating."

We shall see how Revilo[553] illustrates orthodoxy by mathematics. It was
my duty to have found one of the many illustrations from physics; but
perhaps I should have forgotten it if this instance had not come in my way.
It is very bad physics. The sun, apart from its light, evident to the eye! Heat
more self-demonstrating than light, because felt! Heat only manifested by
the life it diffuses! Light implied not necessary to life! But the theology is
worse than Sabellianism[554]. To adumbrate—i.e., make a picture of—the
orthodox doctrine, the sun must be heavenly body, the light heavenly body,
the heat heavenly body; and yet, not three heavenly bodies, but one
heavenly body. The truth is, that this illustration and many others most
strikingly illustrate the Trinity of fundamental doctrine held by the
Unitarians, in all its differences from the Trinity of persons held by the
Orthodox. Be right which may, the right or wrong of the Unitarians shines
out in the comparison. Dr. Sadler confirms me—by which I mean that I
wrote the above before I saw what he says—in the following words: "The
sun is one object with two properties, and these properties have a parallel
not in the second and third persons of the Trinity, but in the attributes of
Deity."
The letting light alone, as self-evident, and making heat self-demonstrating,
because felt—i.e., perceptible now and then—has the character of the
Irishman's astronomy:

"Long life to the moon, for a dear noble cratur,
Which serves us for lamplight all night in the dark,
While the sun only shines in the day, which by natur,
Wants no light at all, as ye all may remark."

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS.

Sir Richard Phillips[555] (born 1768) was conspicuous in 1793, when he was
sentenced to a year's imprisonment[556] for selling Paine's Rights of Man;
and again when, in 1807[557], he was knighted as Sheriff of London. As a
bookseller, he was able to enforce his opinions in more ways than others.
For instance, in James Mitchell's[558] Dictionary of the Mathematical and
Physical Sciences, 1823, 12mo, which, though he was not technically a
publisher, was printed for him—a book I should recommend to the collector
of works of reference—there is a temperate description of his doctrines,
which one may almost swear was one of his conditions previous to
undertaking the work. Phillips himself was not only an anti-Newtonian, but
carried to a fearful excess the notion that statesmen and Newtonians were in
league to deceive the world. He saw this plot in Mrs. Airy's[559] pension,
and in Mrs. Somerville's[560]. In 1836, he did me the honor to attempt my
conversion. In his first letter he says:
"Sir Richard Phillips has an inveterate abhorrence of all the pretended
wisdom of philosophy derived from the monks and doctors of the middle
ages, and not less of those of higher name who merely sought to make the
monkish philosophy more plausible, or so to disguise it as to mystify the
mob of small thinkers."
So little did his writings show any knowledge of antiquity, that I strongly
suspect, if required to name one of the monkish doctors, he would have
answered—Aristotle. These schoolmen, and the "philosophical trinity of
gravitating force, projectile force, and void space," were the bogies of his
life.
I think he began to publish speculations in the Monthly Magazine (of which
he was editor) in July 1817: these he republished separately in 1818. In the
Preface, perhaps judging the feelings of others by his own, he says that he
"fully expects to be vilified, reviled, and anathematized, for many years to
come." Poor man! he was let alone. He appeals with confidence to the
"impartial decision of posterity"; but posterity does not appoint a hearing
for one per cent. of the appeals which are made; and it is much to be feared
that an article in such a work of reference as this will furnish nearly all her

materials fifty years hence. The following, addressed to M. Arago,[561] in
1835, will give posterity as good a notion as she will probably need:
"Even the present year has afforded EVER-MEMORABLE examples, paralleled
only by that of the Romish Conclave which persecuted Galileo. Policy has
adopted that maxim of Machiavel which teaches that it is more prudent to
reward partisans than to persecute opponents. Hence, a bigotted party had
influence enough with the late short-lived administration [I think he is
wrong as to the administration] of Wellington, Peel, &c., to confer
munificent royal pensions on three writers whose sole distinction was their
advocacy of the Newtonian philosophy. A Cambridge professor last year
published an elaborate volume in illustration of Gravitation, and on him has
been conferred a pension of 300l. per annum. A lady has written a light
popular view of the Newtonian Dogmas, and she has been complimented by
a pension of 200l. per annum. And another writer, who has recently
published a volume to prove that the only true philosophy is that of Moses,
has been endowed with a pension of 200l. per annum. Neither of them were
needy persons, and the political and ecclesiastical bearing of the whole was
indicated by another pension of 300l. bestowed on a political writer, the
advocate of all abuses and prejudices. Whether the conduct of the Romish
Conclave was more base for visiting with legal penalties the promulgation
of the doctrines that the Earth turns on its axis and revolves around the Sun;
or that of the British Court, for its craft in conferring pensions on the
opponents of the plain corollary, that all the motions of the Earth are 'part
and parcel' of these great motions, and those again and all like them
consecutive displays of still greater motions in equality of action and
reaction, is A QUESTION which must be reserved for the casuists of other
generations.... I cannot expect that on a sudden you and your friends will
come to my conclusion, that the present philosophy of the Schools and
Universities of Europe, based on faith in witchcraft, magic, &c., is a system
of execrable nonsense, by which quacks live on the faith of fools; but I
desire a free and fair examination of my Aphorisms, and if a few are
admitted to be true, merely as courteous concessions to arithmetic, my
purpose will be effected, for men will thus be led to think; and if they think,
then the fabric of false assumptions, and degrading superstitions will soon
tumble in ruins."

This for posterity. For the present time I ground the fame of Sir R. Phillips
on his having squared the circle without knowing it, or intending to do it. In
the Protest presently noted he discovered that "the force taken as 1 is equal
to the sum of all its fractions ... thus 1 = 1/4 + 1/9 + 1/16 + 1/25, &c.,
carried to infinity." This the mathematician instantly sees is equivalent to
the theorem that the circumference of any circle is double of the diagonal of
the cube on its diameter.[562]
I have examined the following works of Sir R. Phillips, and heard of many
others:

Essays on the proximate mechanical causes of the general
phenomena of the Universe, 1818, 12mo.[563]
Protest against the prevailing principles of natural philosophy,
with the development of a common sense system (no date, 8vo,
pp. 16).[564]
Four dialogues between an Oxford Tutor and a disciple of the
common-sense philosophy, relative to the proximate causes of
material phenomena. 8vo, 1824.
A century of original aphorisms on the proximate causes of the
phenomena of nature, 1835, 12mo.

Sir Richard Phillips had four valuable qualities; honesty, zeal, ability, and
courage. He applied them all to teaching matters about which he knew
nothing; and gained himself an uncomfortable life and a ridiculous memory.

Astronomy made plain; or only way the true perpendicular
distance of the Sun, Moon, or Stars, from this earth, can be
obtained. By Wm. Wood.[565] Chatham, 1819, 12mo.

If this theory be true, it will follow, of course, that this earth is the only one
God made, and that it does not whirl round the sun, but vice versa, the sun
round it.

WHATELY'S FAMOUS PARADOX.

Historic doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte. London, 1819,
8vo.

This tract has since been acknowledged by Archbishop Whately[566] and
reprinted. It is certainly a paradox: but differs from most of those in my list
as being a joke, and a satire upon the reasoning of those who cannot receive
narrative, no matter what the evidence, which is to them utterly improbable
a priori. But had it been serious earnest, it would not have been so absurd
as many of those which I have brought forward. The next on the list is not a
joke.

The idea of the satire is not new. Dr. King,[567] in the dispute on the
genuineness of Phalaris, proved with humor that Bentley did not write his
own dissertation. An attempt has lately been made, for the honor of Moses,
to prove, without humor, that Bishop Colenso did not write his own book.
This is intolerable: anybody who tries to use such a weapon without banter,
plenty and good, and of form suited to the subject, should get the drubbing
which the poor man got in the Oriental tale for striking the dervishes with
the wrong hand.
The excellent and distinguished author of this tract has ceased to live. I call
him the Paley of our day: with more learning and more purpose than his
predecessor; but perhaps they might have changed places if they had
changed centuries. The clever satire above named is not the only work
which he published without his name. The following was attributed to him,
I believe rightly: "Considerations on the Law of Libel, as relating to
Publications on the subject of Religion, by John Search." London, 1833,
8vo. This tract excited little attention: for those who should have answered,
could not. Moreover, it wanted a prosecution to call attention to it: the fear
of calling such attention may have prevented prosecutions. Those who have
read it will have seen why.
The theological review elsewhere mentioned attributes the pamphlet of
John Search on blasphemous libel to Lord Brougham. This is quite absurd:

the writer states points of law on credence where the judge must have
spoken with authority. Besides which, a hundred points of style are decisive
between the two. I think any one who knows Whately's writing will soon
arrive at my conclusion. Lord Brougham himself informs me that he has no
knowledge whatever of the pamphlet.
It is stated in Notes and Queries (3 S. xi. 511) that Search was answered by
the Bishop of Ferns[568] as S. N., with a rejoinder by Blanco White.[569]
These circumstances increase the probability that Whately was written
against and for.

VOLTAIRE A CHRISTIAN.
Voltaire Chrétien; preuves tirées de ses ouvrages. Paris, 1820,
12mo.

If Voltaire have not succeeded in proving himself a strong theist and a
strong anti-revelationist, who is to succeed in proving himself one thing or
the other in any matter whatsoever? By occasional confusion between
theism and Christianity; by taking advantage of the formal phrases of
adhesion to the Roman Church, which very often occur, and are often the
happiest bits of irony in an ironical production; by citations of his morality,
which is decidedly Christian, though often attributed to Brahmins; and so
on—the author makes a fair case for his paradox, in the eyes of those who
know no more than he tells them. If he had said that Voltaire was a better
Christian than himself knew of, towards all mankind except men of letters, I
for one should have agreed with him.
Christian! the word has degenerated into a synonym of man, in what are
called Christian countries. So we have the parrot who "swore for all the
world like a Christian," and the two dogs who "hated each other just like
Christians." When the Irish duellist of the last century, whose name may be
spared in consideration of its historic fame and the worthy people who bear
it, was (June 12, 1786) about to take the consequence of his last brutal
murder, the rope broke, and the criminal got up, and exclaimed, "By ——
Mr. Sheriff, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! this rope is not strong

enough to hang a dog, far less a Christian!" But such things as this are far
from the worst depravations. As to a word so defiled by usage, it is well to
know that there is a way of escape from it, without renouncing the New
Testament. I suppose any one may assume for himself what I have
sometimes heard contended for, that no New Testament word is to be used
in religion in any sense except that of the New Testament. This granted, the
question is settled. The word Christian, which occurs three times, is never
recognized as anything but a term of contempt from those without the pale
to those within. Thus, Herod Agrippa, who was deep in Jewish literature,
and a correspondent of Josephus, says to Paul (Acts xxvi. 28), "Almost thou
persuadest me to be (what I and other followers of the state religion despise
under the name) a Christian." Again (Acts xi. 26), "The disciples (as they
called themselves) were called (by the surrounding heathens) Christians first
in Antioch." Thirdly (1 Peter iv. 16), "Let none of you suffer as a
murderer.... But if as a Christian (as the heathen call it by whom the
suffering comes), let him not be ashamed." That is to say, no disciple ever
called himself a Christian, or applied the name, as from himself, to another
disciple, from one end of the New Testament to the other; and no disciple
need apply that name to himself in our day, if he dislike the associations
with which the conduct of Christians has clothed it.

WRONSKI ON THE LONGITUDE PROBLEM.

Address of M. Hoene Wronski to the British Board of Longitude,
upon the actual state of the mathematics, their reform, and upon
the new celestial mechanics, giving the definitive solution of the
problem of longitude.[570] London, 1820, 8vo.

M. Wronski[571] was the author of seven quartos on mathematics, showing
very great power of generalization. He was also deep in the transcendental
philosophy,[572] and had the Absolute at his fingers' ends. All this
knowledge was rendered useless by a persuasion that he had greatly
advanced beyond the whole world, with many hints that the Absolute would
not be forthcoming, unless prepaid. He was a man of the widest extremes.
At one time he desired people to see all possible mathematics in

Fx = A0Ω0 + A1Ω1 + A2Ω2 + A3Ω3 + &c.

which he did not explain, though there is meaning to it in the quartos. At
another time he was proposing the general solution of the[573] fifth degree
by help of 625 independent equations of one form and 125 of another. The
first separate memoir from any Transactions that I ever possessed was given
to me when at Cambridge; the refutation (1819) of this asserted solution,
presented to the Academy of Lisbon by Evangelista Torriano. I cannot say I
read it. The tract above is an attack on modern mathematicians in general,
and on the Board of Longitude, and Dr. Young.[574]

DR. MILNER'S PARADOXES.

1820. In this year died Dr. Isaac Milner,[575] President of Queens' College,
Cambridge, one of the class of rational paradoxers. Under this name I
include all who, in private life, and in matters which concern themselves,
take their own course, and suit their own notions, no matter what other
people may think of them. These men will put things to uses they were
never intended for, to the great distress and disgust of their gregarious
friends. I am one of the class, and I could write a little book of cases in
which I have incurred absolute reproach for not "doing as other people do."
I will name two of my atrocities: I took one of those butter-dishes which
have for a top a dome with holes in it, which is turned inward, out of reach
of accident, when not in use. Turning the dome inwards, I filled the dish
with water, and put a sponge in the dome: the holes let it fill with water, and
I had a penwiper, always moist, and worth its price five times over. "Why!
what do you mean? It was made to hold butter. You are always at some
queer thing or other!" I bought a leaden comb, intended to dye the hair, it
being supposed that the application of lead will have this effect. I did not
try: but I divided the comb into two, separated the part of closed prongs
from the other; and thus I had two ruling machines. The lead marks paper,
and by drawing the end of one of the machines along a ruler, I could rule
twenty lines at a time, quite fit to write on. I thought I should have killed a
friend to whom I explained it: he could not for the life of him understand
how leaden lines on paper would dye the hair.

But Dr. Milner went beyond me. He wanted a seat suited to his shape, and
he defied opinion to a fearful point. He spread a thick block of putty over a
wooden chair and sat in it until it had taken a ceroplast copy of the proper
seat. This he gave to a carpenter to be imitated in wood. One of the few now
living who knew him—my friend, General Perronet Thompson[576]—
answers for the wood, which was shown him by Milner himself; but he
does not vouch for the material being putty, which was in the story told me
at Cambridge; William Frend[577] also remembered it. Perhaps the Doctor
took off his great seal in green wax, like the Crown; but some soft material
he certainly adopted; and very comfortable he found the wooden copy.
The same gentleman vouches for Milner's lamp: but this had
visible science in it; the vulgar see no science in the construction
of the chair. A hollow semi-cylinder, but not with a circular
curve, revolved on pivots. The curve was calculated on the law
that, whatever quantity of oil might be in the lamp, the position
of equilibrium just brought the oil up to the edge of the cylinder,
at which a bit of wick was placed. As the wick exhausted the oil, the
cylinder slowly revolved about the pivots so as to keep the oil always
touching the wick.
Great discoveries are always laughed at; but it is very often not the laugh of
incredulity; it is a mode of distorting the sense of inferiority into a sense of
superiority, or a mimicry of superiority interposed between the laugher and
his feeling of inferiority. Two persons in conversation agreed that it was
often a nuisance not to be able to lay hands on a bit of paper to mark the
place in a book, every bit of paper on the table was sure to contain
something not to be spared. I very quietly said that I always had a stock of
bookmarkers ready cut, with a proper place for them: my readers owe many
of my anecdotes to this absurd practice. My two colloquials burst into a fit
of laughter; about what? Incredulity was out of the question; and there
could be nothing foolish in my taking measures to avoid what they knew
was an inconvenience. I was in this matter obviously their superior, and so
they laughed at me. Much more candid was the Royal Duke of the last
century, who was noted for slow ideas. "The rain comes into my mouth,"
said he, while riding. "Had not your Royal Highness better shut your
mouth?" said the equerry. The Prince did so, and ought, by rule, to have

laughed heartily at his adviser; instead of this, he said quietly, "It doesn't
come in now."

HERBART'S MATHEMATICAL PSYCHOLOGY.

De Attentionis mensura causisque primariis. By J. F. Herbart.[578]
Kœnigsberg, 1822, 4to.

This celebrated philosopher maintained that mathematics ought to be
applied to psychology, in a separate tract, published also in 1822: the one
above seems, therefore, to be his challenge on the subject. It is on attention,
and I think it will hardly support Herbart's thesis. As a specimen of his
formula, let t be the time elapsed since the consideration began, β the whole
perceptive intensity of the individual, φ the whole of his mental force, and z
the force given to a notion by attention during the time t. Then,

z = φ (1 - ε-βt)
Now for a test. There is a jactura, v, the meaning of which I do not
comprehend. If there be anything in it, my mathematical readers ought to
interpret it from the formula

v = πφβ/(1 - β)ε-βt + Cε-t
and to this task I leave them, wishing them better luck than mine. The time
may come when other manifestations of mind, besides belief, shall be
submitted to calculation: at that time, should it arrive, a final decision may
be passed upon Herbart.

ON THE WHIZGIG.

The theory of the Whizgig considered; in as much as it
mechanically exemplifies the three working properties of nature;
which are now set forth under the guise of this toy, for children of

all ages. London, 1822, 12mo (pp. 24, B. McMillan, Bow Street,
Covent Garden).

The toy called the whizgig will be remembered by many. The writer is a
follower of Jacob Behmen,[579] William Law,[580] Richard Clarke,[581] and
Eugenius Philalethes.[582] Jacob Behmen first announced the three working
properties of nature, which Newton stole, as described in the Gentleman's
Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig.
There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter
compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion.
The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue.
I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583] by
Laplace,[584] and Pythagoras by Copernicus,[585] and Epicurus by Dalton,
[586]
&c. I do not think this mention will revive Behmen; but it may the
whizgig, a very pretty toy, and philosophical withal, for few of those who
used it could explain it.

SOME MYTHOLOGICAL PARADOXES.

A Grammar of infinite forms; or the mathematical elements of
ancient philosophy and mythology. By Wm. Howison.[587]
Edinburgh, 1823, 8vo.

A curius combination of geometry and mythology. Perseus, for instance, is
treated under the head, "the evolution of diminishing hyperbolic branches."

The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients; part the second: or
the key of Urania, the words of which will unlock all the
mysteries of antiquity. Norwich, 1823, 12mo.
A Companion to the Mythological Astronomy, &c., containing
remarks on recent publications.... Norwich, 1824, 12mo.

A new Theory of the Earth and of planetary motion; in which it is
demonstrated that the Sun is vicegerent of his own system.
Norwich, 1825, 12mo.
The analyzation of the writings of the Jews, so far as they are
found to have any connection with the sublime science of
astronomy. [This is pp. 97-180 of some other work, being all I
have seen.]

These works are all by Sampson Arnold Mackey,[588] for whom see Notes
and Queries, 1st S. viii. 468, 565, ix. 89, 179. Had it not been for actual
quotations given by one correspondent only (1st S. viii. 565), that journal
would have handed him down as a man of some real learning. An
extraordinary man he certainly was: it is not one illiterate shoemaker in a
thousand who could work upon such a singular mass of Sanskrit and Greek
words, without showing evidence of being able to read a line in any
language but his own, or to spell that correctly. He was an uneducated
Godfrey Higgins.[589] A few extracts will put this in a strong light: one for
history of science, one for astronomy, and one for philology:
"Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that 'the atmosphere of the earth was the
sensory of God; by which he was enabled to see quite round the earth:'
which proves that Sir Isaac had no idea that God could see through the
earth.
"Sir Richard [Phillips] has given the most rational explanation of the cause
of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the
earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid
land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the
coincidence? It is what I taught in my attic twelve years before.
"Again, admitting that the Eloim were powerful and intelligent beings that
managed these things, we would accuse them of being the authors of all the
sufferings of Chrisna. And as they and the constellation of Leo were below
the horizon, and consequently cut off from the end of the zodiac, there were
but eleven constellations of the zodiac to be seen; the three at the end were
wanted, but those three would be accused of bringing Chrisna into the
troubles which at last ended in his death. All this would be expressed in the

Eastern language by saying that Chrisna was persecuted by those Judoth
Ishcarioth!!!!! [the five notes of exclamation are the author's]. But the
astronomy of those distant ages, when the sun was at the south pole in
winter, would leave five of those Decans cut off from our view, in the
latitude of twenty-eight degrees; hence Chrisna died of wounds from five
Decans, but the whole five may be included in Judoth Ishcarioth! for the
phrase means 'the men that are wanted at the extreme parts.' Ishcarioth is a
compound of ish, a man, and carat wanted or taken away, and oth the plural
termination, more ancient than im...."
I might show at length how Michael is the sun, and the D'-ev-'l in French
Di-ob-al, also 'L-evi-ath-an—the evi being the radical part both of devil and
leviathan—is the Nile, which the sun dried up for Moses to pass: a battle
celebrated by Jude. Also how Moses, the same name as Muses, is from
mesha, drawn out of the water, "and hence we called our land which is
saved from the water by the name of marsh." But it will be of more use to
collect the character of S. A. M. from such correspondents of Notes and
Queries as have written after superficial examination. Great astronomical
and philological attainments, much ability and learning; had evidently read
and studied deeply; remarkable for the originality of his views upon the
very abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited
great sagacity. Certainly his views were original; but their sagacity, if it be
allowable to copy his own mode of etymologizing, is of an ori-gin-ale cast,
resembling that of a person who puts to his mouth liquors both distilled and
fermented.

A KANTESIAN JEWELER.

Principles of the Kantesian, or transcendental philosophy. By
Thomas Wirgman.[590] London, 1824, 8vo.

Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology; but he was
cracky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's
Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-
shop in St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with
silver buckles. (Boswell, æt. 69). He would not have the ridiculous large

ones in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says
Boswell, in Italics, were the principles of the business: and I think this may
be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought down from
heaven to mix with men. However this may be, my Wirgman sold snuff-
boxes, among other things, and fifty years ago a fashionable snuff-boxer
would be under inducement, if not positively obliged, to have a stock with
very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman—by reason of a
trifle too much candor—came under the notice of the Suppression Society,
and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brougham was his counsel; and managed to
get him acquitted. Years and years after this, when Mr. Brougham was deep
in the formation of the London University (now University College), Mr.
Wirgman called on him. "What now?" said Mr. B. with his most sarcastic
look—a very perfect thing of its kind—"you're in a scrape again, I
suppose!" "No! indeed!" said W., "my present object is to ask your interest
for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University!" He had taken up
Kant!
Mr. Wirgman, an itinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to
convert me. "I assure you," said he, "I am nothing but an old brute of a
jeweler;" and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good
in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of that
class who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction.
"Now," said he, "I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes
in a glass bowl,—you understand? Well! I come with my cigar and go puff,
puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now, tell me,
what will the gold-fishes say to that?" "I should imagine," said I, "That they
would not know what to make of it." "By Jove! you're a Kantian;" said he,
and with this and the like, he left me, vowing that it was delightful to talk to
so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received
was from James Mill, who used to say he did not understand Kant. That
such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of
the jocose jeweler.
Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been
the first down-bringer of the word principles into common life; the best
answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never
happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which
are not old. Take the following from Nichols (Anecd. ix. 263): "Lord

Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures
them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's
carriage; least of all the circumstance of sending the head to Ormond
Street." Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a
movable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of it!
carriage is here conduct, and the head is a bust. The vehicles of the rich, at
the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, etc., never carriages, which were
rather carts. Gibbon has the word for baggage-wagons. In Jane Austen's
novels the word carriage is established.

WALSH'S DELUSIONS.

John Walsh,[591] of Cork (1786-1847). This discoverer has had the honor of
a biography from Professor Boole, who, at my request, collected
information about him on the scene of his labors. It is in the Philosophical
Magazine for November, 1851, and will, I hope, be transferred to some
biographical collection where it may find a larger class of readers. It is the
best biography of a single hero of the kind that I know. Mr. Walsh
introduced himself to me, as he did to many others, in the anterowlandian
days of the Post-office; his unpaid letters were double, treble, &c. They
contained his pamphlets, and cost their weight in silver: all have the name
of the author, and all are in octavo or in quarto letter-form: most are in four
pages, and all dated from Cork. I have the following by me:

The Geometric Base, 1825.—The theory of plane angles. 1827.—
Three Letters to Dr. Francis Sadleir. 1838.—The invention of
polar geometry. By Irelandus. 1839.—The theory of partial
functions. Letter to Lord Brougham. 1839.—On the invention of
polar geometry. 1839.—Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh
Review. 1840.—Irish Manufacture. A new method of tangents.
1841.—The normal diameter in curves. 1843.—Letter to Sir R.
Peel. 1845.—[Hints that Government should compel the
introduction of Walsh's Geometry into Universities.]—Solution of
Equations of the higher orders. 1845.

Besides these, there is a Metalogia, and I know not how many others.

Mr. Boole,[592] who has taken the moral and social features of Walsh's
delusions from the commiserating point of view, which makes ridicule out
of place, has been obliged to treat Walsh as Scott's Alan Fairford treated his
client Peter Peebles; namely, keep the scarecrow out of court while the case
was argued. My plan requires me to bring him in: and when he comes in at
the door, pity and sympathy fly out at the window. Let the reader remember
that he was not an ignoramus in mathematics: he might have won his spurs
if he could have first served as an esquire. Though so illiterate that even in
Ireland he never picked up anything more Latin than Irelandus, he was a
very pretty mathematician spoiled in the making by intense self-opinion.
This is part of a private letter to me at the back of a page of print: I had
never addressed a word to him:
"There are no limits in mathematics, and those that assert there are, are
infinite ruffians, ignorant, lying blackguards. There is no differential
calculus, no Taylor's theorem, no calculus of variations, &c. in
mathematics. There is no quackery whatever in mathematics; no % equal to
anything. What sheer ignorant blackguardism that!
"In mechanics the parallelogram of forces is quackery, and is dangerous; for
nothing is at rest, or in uniform, or in rectilinear motion, in the universe.
Variable motion is an essential property of matter. Laplace's demonstration
of the parallelogram of forces is a begging of the question; and the attempts
of them all to show that the difference of twenty minutes between the
sidereal and actual revolution of the earth round the sun arises from the
tugging of the Sun and Moon at the pot-belly of the earth, without being
sure even that the earth has a pot-belly at all, is perfect quackery. The said
difference arising from and demonstrating the revolution of the Sun itself
round some distant center."
In the letter to Lord Brougham we read as follows:
"I ask the Royal Society of London, I ask the Saxon crew of that crazy hulk,
where is the dogma of their philosophic god now?... When the Royal
Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, shall have read
this memorandum, how will they appear? Like two cur dogs in the paws of
the noblest beast of the forest.... Just as this note was going to press, a
volume lately published by you was put into my hands, wherein you

attempt to defend the fluxions and Principia of Newton. Man! what are you
about? You come forward now with your special pleading, and fraught with
national prejudice, to defend, like the philosopher Grassi,[593] the persecutor
of Galileo, principles and reasoning which, unless you are actually insane,
or an ignorant quack in mathematics, you know are mathematically false.
What a moral lesson this for the students of the University of London from
its head! Man! demonstrate corollary 3, in this note, by the lying dogma of
Newton, or turn your thoughts to something you understand.
"Walsh Irelandus."
Mr. Walsh—honor to his memory—once had the consideration to save me
postage by addressing a pamphlet under cover to a Member of Parliament,
with an explanatory letter. In that letter he gives a candid opinion of
himself:
(1838.) "Mr. Walsh takes leave to send the enclosed corrected copy to Mr.
Hutton as one of the Council of the University of London, and to save
postage for the Professor of Mathematics there. He will find in it geometry
more deep and subtle, and at the same time more simple and elegant, than it
was ever contemplated human genius could invent."
He then proceeds to set forth that a certain "tomfoolery lemma," with its
"tomfoolery" superstructure, "never had existence outside the shallow
brains of its inventor," Euclid. He then proceeds thus:
"The same spirit that animated those philosophers who sent Galileo to the
Inquisition animates all the philosophers of the present day without
exception. If anything can free them from the yoke of error, it is the [Walsh]
problem of double tangence. But free them it will, how deeply soever they
may be sunk into mental slavery—and God knows that is deeply enough;
and they bear it with an admirable grace; for none bear slavery with a better
grace than tyrants. The lads must adopt my theory.... It will be a sad reverse
for all our great professors to be compelled to become schoolboys in their
gray years. But the sore scratch is to be compelled, as they had before been
compelled one thousand years ago, to have recourse to Ireland for
instruction."
The following "Impromptu" is no doubt by Walsh himself: he was more of a
poet than of an astronomer:

"Through ages unfriended,
With sophistry blended,
Deep science in Chaos had slept;
Its limits were fettered,
Its voters unlettered,
Its students in movements but crept.
Till, despite of great foes,
Great Walsh first arose,
And with logical might did unravel
Those mazes of knowledge,
Ne'er known in a college,
Though sought for with unceasing travail.
With cheers we now hail him,
May success never fail him,
In Polar Geometrical mining;
Till his foes be as tamed
As his works are far-famed
For true philosophic refining."

Walsh's system is, that all mathematics and physics are wrong: there is
hardly one proposition in Euclid which is demonstrated. His example ought
to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was
not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than
many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the
famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, like
Brahma on the lotus-leaf.[594]

GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.
The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of my Athenæum list: that is,
so far as mere number of names mentioned is concerned. Freedom of
opinion, beyond a doubt, is gaining ground, for good or for evil, according
to what the speaker happens to think: admission of authority is no longer
made in the old way. If we take soul-cure and body-cure, divinity and
medicine, it is manifest that a change has come over us. Time was when it
was enough that dose or dogma should be certified by "Il a été ordonné,

Monsieur, il a été ordonné,"[595] as the apothecary said when he wanted to
operate upon poor de Porceaugnac. Very much changed: but whether for
good or for evil does not now matter; the question is, whether contempt of
demonstration such as our paradoxers show has augmented with the
rejection of dogmatic authority. It ought to be just the other way: for the
worship of reason is the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of
guidance ground their plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment
on this point is the best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first
that ever was made.
Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves nothing,
because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be come at. It
would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number of
paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us
turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have
published a list. The two collections are similarly circumstanced as to new
and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either;
the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books,
published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at
1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and allow
every year from 1847 to 1863 to add a year to 1735, we should say that the
arithmetical writers divide at 1751. This rough process may serve, with
sufficient certainty, to show that the proportion of paradoxes to books of
sober demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as much as the
proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So that divinity
and medicine may say to geometry, Don't you sneer: if rationalism,
homœopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us, your enemies
are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies—Dear friends, content
yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of heterodoxy within
your pales is not conclusive against you, taken alone; for it rises at the same
time within mine. Store within your garners the precious argument that you
are not proved wrong by increase of dissent; because there is increase of
dissent against exact science. But do not therefore even yourselves to me:
remember that you, Dame Divinity, have inflicted every kind of penalty,
from the stake to the stocks, in aid of your reasoning; remember that you,
Mother Medicine, have not many years ago applied to Parliament for
increase of forcible hindrance of antipharmacopœal drenches, pills, and

powders. Who ever heard of my asking the legislature to fine blundering
circle-squarers? Remember that the D in dogma is the D in decay; but the D
in demonstration is the D in durability.

THE STATUS OF MEDICINE.
I have known a medical man—a young one—who was seriously of the
opinion that the country ought to be divided into medical parishes, with a
practitioner appointed to each, and a penalty for calling in any but the
incumbent curer. How should people know how to choose? The hair-
dressers once petitioned Parliament for an act to compel people to wear
wigs. My own opinion is of the opposite extreme, as in the following letter
(Examiner, April 5, 1856); which, to my surprise, I saw reprinted in a
medical journal, as a plan not absolutely to be rejected. I am perfectly
satisfied that it would greatly promote true medical orthodoxy, the
predominance of well educated thinkers, and the development of their
desirable differences.

"Sir. The Medical Bill and the medical question generally is one on which
experience would teach, if people would be taught.
"The great soul question took three hundred years to settle: the little body
question might be settled in thirty years, if the decisions in the former
question were studied.
"Time was when the State believed, as honestly as ever it believed anything,
that it might, could, and should find out the true doctrine for the poor
ignorant community; to which, like a worthy honest state, it added would.
Accordingly, by the assistance of the Church, which undertook the physic,
the surgery, and the pharmacy of sound doctrine all by itself, it sent forth its
legally qualified teachers into every parish, and woe to the man who called
in any other. They burnt that man, they whipped him, they imprisoned him,
they did everything but what was Christian to him, all for his soul's health
and the amendment of his excesses.

"But men would not submit. To the argument that the State was a father to
the ignorant, they replied that it was at best the ignorant father of an
ignorant son, and that a blind man could find his way into a ditch without
another blind man to help him. And when the State said—But here we have
the Church, which knows all about it, the ignorant community declared that
it had a right to judge that question, and that it would judge it. It also said
that the Church was never one thing long, and that it progressed, on the
whole, rather more slowly than the ignorant community.
"The end of it was, in this country, that every one who chose taught all who
chose to let him teach, on condition only of an open and true registration.
The State was allowed to patronize one particular Church, so that no one
need trouble himself to choose a pastor from the mere necessity of
choosing. But every church is allowed its colleges, its studies, its diplomas;
and every man is allowed his choice. There is no proof that our souls are
worse off than in the sixteenth century; and, judging by fruits, there is much
reason to hope they are better off.
"Now the little body question is a perfect parallel to the great soul question
in all its circumstances. The only things in which the parallel fails are the
following: Every one who believes in a future state sees that the soul
question is incomparably more important than the body question, and every
one can try the body question by experiment to a larger extent than the soul
question. The proverb, which always has a spark of truth at the bottom, says
that every man of forty is either a fool or a physician; but did even the
proverb maker ever dare to say that every man is at any age either a fool or
a fit teacher of religion?
"Common sense points out the following settlement of the medical
question: and to this it will come sooner or later.
"Let every man who chooses—subject to one common law of manslaughter
for all the crass cases—doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him,
and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided
always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee
in a register to be republished every six months.
"Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of each
candidate—as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that college, hall,

university, &c., home or foreign. Let it be competent to any man to describe
himself as qualified by study in public schools without a diploma, or by
private study, or even by intuition or divine inspiration, if he please. But
whatever he holds his qualification to be, that let him declare. Let all
qualification which of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the
diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as
asserted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way.
"Let it be highly penal to assert to the patient any qualification which is not
in the register, and let the register be sold very cheap. Let the registrar give
each registered practitioner a copy of the register in his own case; let any
patient have the power to demand a sight of this copy; and let no money for
attendance be recoverable in any case in which there has been false
representation.
"Let any party in any suit have a right to produce what medical testimony
he pleases. Let the medical witness produce his register, and let his
evidence be for the jury, as is that of an engineer or a practitioner of any art
which is not attested by diplomas.
"Let any man who practises without venturing to put his name on the
register be liable to fine and imprisonment.
"The consequence would be that, as now, anybody who pleases might
practise; for the medical world is well aware that there is no power of
preventing what they call quacks from practising. But very different from
what is now, every man who practises would be obliged to tell the whole
world what his claim is, and would run a great risk if he dared to tell his
patient in private anything different from what he had told the whole world.
"The consequence would be that a real education in anatomy, physiology,
chemistry, surgery, and what is known of the thing called medicine, would
acquire more importance than it now has.
"It is curious to see how completely the medical man of the nineteenth
century squares with the priest of the sixteenth century. The clergy of all
sects are now better divines and better men than they ever were. They have
lost Bacon's reproach that they took a smaller measure of things than any
other educated men; and the physicians are now in this particular the

rearguard of the learned world; though it may be true that the rear in our
day is further on in the march than the van of Bacon's day. Nor will they
ever recover the lost position until medicine is as free as religion.
"To this it must come. To this the public, which will decide for itself, has
determined it shall come. To this the public has, in fact, brought it, but on a
plan which it is not desirable to make permanent. We will be as free to take
care of our bodies as of our souls and of our goods. This is the profession of
all who sign as I do, and the practice of most of those who would not like
the name
"Heteropath."

The motion of the Sun in the Ecliptic, proved to be uniform in a
circular orbit ... with preliminary observations on the fallacy of
the Solar System. By Bartholomew Prescott,[596] 1825, 8vo.

The author had published, in 1803, a Defence of the Divine System, which I
never saw; also, On the inverted scheme of Copernicus. The above work is
clever in its satire.

THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY.

Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, established Nov. 12,
1824. Twenty-four plain questions to honest men.

These are two broadsides of August and November, 1826, signed by Robert
Taylor,[597] A.B., Orator of the Christian Evidence Society. This gentleman
was a clergyman, and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he
suffered imprisonment, and got the name of the Devil's Chaplain. The
following are quotations:
"For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, but
Erasmus wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop Marsh,
[598] vol. i. p. 320."—"Is not God the author of your reason? Can he then be

the author of anything which is contrary to your reason? If reason be a

sufficient guide, why should God give you any other? if it be not a
sufficient guide, why has he given you that?"
I remember a votary of the Society being asked to substitute for reason "the
right leg," and for guide "support," and to answer the two last questions: he
said there must be a quibble, but he did not see what. It is pleasant to reflect
that the argumentum à carcere[599] is obsolete. One great defect of it was
that it did not go far enough: there should have been laws against
subscriptions for blasphemers, against dealing at their shops, and against
rich widows marrying them.
Had I taken in theology, I must have entered books against Christianity. I
mention the above, and Paine's Age of Reason, simply because they are the
only English modern works that ever came in my way without my asking
for them. The three parts of the Age of Reason were published in Paris
1793, Paris 1795, and New York 1807. Carlile's[600] edition is of London,
1818, 8vo. It must be republished when the time comes, to show what stuff
governments and clergy were afraid of at the beginning of this century. I
should never have seen the book, if it had not been prohibited: a bookseller
put it under my nose with a fearful look round him; and I could do no less,
in common curiosity, than buy a work which had been so complimented by
church and state. And when I had read it, I said in my mind to church and
state,—Confound you! you have taken me in worse than any reviewer I
ever met with. I forget what I gave for the book, but I ought to have been
able to claim compensation somewhere.

THE CABBALA.

Cabbala Algebraica. Auctore Gul. Lud. Christmann.[601]
Stuttgard, 1827, 4to.

Eighty closely printed pages of an attempt to solve equations of every
degree, which has a process called by the author cabbala. An anonymous
correspondent spells cabbala as follows, χαββαλλ, and makes 666 out of
its letters. This gentleman has sent me since my Budget commenced, a little
heap of satirical communications, each having a 666 or two; for instance,

alluding to my remarks on the spelling of chemistry, he finds the fated
number in χιμεια. With these are challenges to explain them, and hints
about the end of the world. All these letters have different fantastic seals;
one of them with the legend "keep your temper,"—another bearing "bank
token five pence." The only signature is a triangle with a little circle in it,
which I interpret to mean that the writer confesses himself to be the round
man stuck in the three-cornered hole, to be explained as in Sydney Smith's
joke.
There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the
numerals in words would do well to take up: it is the formation of sentences
which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No one has
done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr.
Whewell[602] and I amused ourselves, some years ago, with attempts. He
could not make sense, though he joined words: he gave me

Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quid.

I gave him the following, which he agreed was "admirable sense": I
certainly think the words would never have come together except in this
way:

I, quartz pyx, who fling muck beds.

I long thought that no human being could say this under any circumstances.
At last I happened to be reading a religious writer—as he thought himself—
who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday! came
into my head, this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And
then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone,
as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of
the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious vessels into mudholders, for
the benefit of those who will not see what he sees.
I can find no circumstances for the following, which I received from
another:

Fritz! quick! land! hew gypsum box.

From other quarters I have the following:

Dumpy quiz! whirl back fogs next.

This might be said in time of haze to the queer little figure in the Dutch
weather-toy, which comes out or goes in with the change in the atmosphere.
Again,

Export my fund! Quiz black whigs.

This Squire Western might have said, who was always afraid of the whigs
sending the sinking-fund over to Hanover. But the following is the best: it is
good advice to a young man, very well expressed under the circumstances:

Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck.

Which in more sober English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your
business. There is more edification, more religion in this than in all the 666-
interpretations put together.
Such things would make excellent writing copies, for they secure attention
to every letter; v and j might be placed at the end.

ON GODFREY HIGGINS.

The Celtic Druids. By Godfrey Higgins,[603] Esq. of Skellow
Grange, near Doncaster. London, 1827, 4to.
Anacalypsis, or an attempt to draw aside the veil of the Saitic Isis:
or an inquiry into the origin of languages, nations, and religions.
By Godfrey Higgins, &c..., London, 1836, 2 vols. 4to.

The first work had an additional preface and a new index in 1829. Possibly,
in future time, will be found bound up with copies of the second work two
sheets which Mr. Higgins circulated among his friends in 1831: the first a
"Recapitulation," the second "Book vi. ch. 1."
The system of these works is that—

"The Buddhists of Upper India (of whom the Phenician Canaanite,
Melchizedek, was a priest), who built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Carnac,
&c. will be shown to have founded all the ancient mythologies of the world,
which, however varied and corrupted in recent times, were originally one,
and that one founded on principles sublime, beautiful, and true."
These works contain an immense quantity of learning, very honestly put
together. I presume the enormous number of facts, and the goodness of the
index, to be the reasons why the Anacalypsis found a permanent place in
the old reading-room of the British Museum, even before the change which
greatly increased the number of books left free to the reader in that room.
Mr. Higgins, whom I knew well in the last six years of his life, and
respected as a good, learned, and (in his own way) pious man, was
thoroughly and completely the man of a system. He had that sort of mental
connection with his theory that made his statements of his authorities
trustworthy: for, besides perfect integrity, he had no bias towards alteration
of facts: he saw his system in the way the fact was presented to him by his
authority, be that what it might.
He was very sure of a fact which he got from any of his authorities: nothing
could shake him. Imagine a conversation between him and an Indian officer
who had paid long attention to Hindoo antiquities and their remains: a third
person was present, ego qui scribo. G. H. "You know that in the temples of
I-forget-who the Ceres is always sculptured precisely as in Greece." Col.
——, "I really do not remember it, and I have seen most of these temples."
G. H. "It is so, I assure you, especially at I-forget-where." Col. ——, "Well,
I am sure! I was encamped for six weeks at the gate of that very temple,
and, except a little shooting, had nothing to do but to examine its details,
which I did, day after day, and I found nothing of the kind." It was of no use
at all.
Godfrey Higgins began life by exposing and conquering, at the expense of
two years of his studies, some shocking abuses which existed in the York
Lunatic Asylum. This was a proceeding which called much attention to the
treatment of the insane, and produced much good effect. He was very
resolute and energetic. The magistracy of his time had such scruples about
using the severity of law to people of such station as well-to-do farmers,

&c.: they would allow a great deal of resistance, and endeavor to mollify
the rebels into obedience. A young farmer flatly refused to pay under an
order of affiliation made upon him by Godfrey Higgins. He was duly
warned; and persisted: he shortly found himself in gaol. He went there sure
to conquer the Justice, and the first thing he did was to demand to see his
lawyer. He was told, to his horror, that as soon as he had been cropped and
prison-dressed, he might see as many lawyers as he pleased, to be looked at,
laughed at, and advised that there was but one way out of the scrape.
Higgins was, in his speculations, a regular counterpart of Bailly; but the
celebrated Mayor of Paris had not his nerve. It was impossible to say, if
their characters had been changed, whether the unfortunate crisis in which
Bailly was not equal to the occasion would have led to very different results
if Higgins had been in his place: but assuredly constitutional liberty would
have had one chance more. There are two works of his by which he was
known, apart from his paradoxes. First, An apology for the life and
character of the celebrated prophet of Arabia, called Mohamed, or the
Illustrious. London, 8vo. 1829. The reader will look at this writing of our
English Buddhist with suspicious eye, but he will not be able to avoid
confessing that the Arabian prophet has some reparation to demand at the
hands of Christians. Next, Horæ Sabaticæ; or an attempt to correct certain
superstitions and vulgar errors respecting the Sabbath. Second edition,
with a large appendix. London, 12mo. 1833. This book was very heterodox
at the time, but it has furnished material for some of the clergy of our day.
I never could quite make out whether Godfrey Higgins took that system
which he traced to the Buddhists to have a Divine origin, or to be the result
of good men's meditations. Himself a strong theist, and believer in a future
state, one would suppose that he would refer a universal religion, spread in
different forms over the whole earth from one source, directly to the
universal Parent. And this I suspect he did, whether he knew it or not. The
external evidence is balanced. In his preface he says:
"I cannot help smiling when I consider that the priests have objected to
admit my former book, The Celtic Druids, into libraries, because it was
antichristian; and it has been attacked by Deists, because it was
superfluously religious. The learned Deist, the Rev. R. Taylor [already
mentioned], has designated me as the religious Mr. Higgins."

The time will come when some profound historian of literature will make
himself much clearer on the point than I am.

ON POPE'S DIPPING NEEDLE.

The triumphal Chariot of Friction: or a familiar elucidation of the
origin of magnetic attraction, &c. &c. By William Pope.[604]
London, 1829, 4to.

Part of this work is on a dipping-needle of the author's construction. It must
have been under the impression that a book of naval magnetism was
proposed, that a great many officers, the Royal Naval Club, etc. lent their
names to the subscription list. How must they have been surprised to find,
right opposite to the list of subscribers, the plate presenting "the three
emphatic letters, J. A. O." And how much more when they saw it set forth
that if a square be inscribed in a circle, a circle within that, then a square
again, &c., it is impossible to have more than fourteen circles, let the first
circle be as large as you please. From this the seven attributes of God are
unfolded; and further, that all matter was moral, until Lucifer churned it
into physical "as far as the third circle in Deity": this Lucifer, called
Leviathan in Job, being thus the moving cause of chaos. I shall say no more,
except that the friction of the air is the cause of magnetism.

Remarks on the Architecture, Sculpture, and Zodiac of Palmyra;
with a Key to the Inscriptions. By B. Prescot.[605] London, 1830,
8vo.

Mr. Prescot gives the signs of the zodiac a Hebrew origin.

THE JACOTOT METHOD.

Epitomé de mathématiques. Par F. Jacotot,[606] Avocat. 3ième
edition, Paris, 1830, 8vo. (pp. 18).

Méthode Jacotot. Choix de propositions mathématiques. Par P. Y.
Séprés.[607] 2nde édition. Paris, 1830, 8vo. (pp. 82).

Of Jacotot's method, which had some vogue in Paris, the principle was Tout
est dans tout,[608] and the process Apprendre quelque chose, et à y
rapporter tout le reste.[609] The first tract has a proposition in conic sections
and its preliminaries: the second has twenty exercises, of which the first is
finding the greatest common measure of two numbers, and the last is the
motion of a point on a surface, acted on by given forces. This is topped up
with the problem of sound in a tube, and a slice of Laplace's theory of the
tides. All to be studied until known by heart, and all the rest will come, or at
least join on easily when it comes. There is much truth in the assertion that
new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old, thoroughly mastered.
The day is coming when it will be found out that crammed erudition, got up
for examinations, does not cast out any hooks for more.

Lettre à MM. les Membres de l'Académie Royale des Sciences,
contenant un développement de la réfutation du système de la
gravitation universelle, qui leur a été présentée le 30 août, 1830.
Par Félix Passot.[610] Paris, 1830, 8vo.

Works of this sort are less common in France than in England. In France
there is only the Academy of Sciences to go to: in England there is a
reading public out of the Royal Society, &c.

A DISCOURSE ON PROBABILITY.
About 1830 was published, in the Library of Useful Knowledge, the tract on
Probability, the joint work of the late Sir John Lubbock[611] and Mr.
Drinkwater (Bethune).[612] It is one of the best elementary openings of the
subject. A binder put my name on the outside (the work was anonymous)
and the consequence was that nothing could drive out of people's heads that
it was written by me. I do not know how many denials I have made, from a
passage in one of my own works to a letter in the Times: and I am not sure

that I have succeeded in establishing the truth, even now. I accordingly note
the fact once more. But as a book has no right here unless it contain a
paradox—or thing counter to general opinion or practice—I will produce
two small ones. Sir John Lubbock, with whom lay the executive
arrangement, had a strong objection to the last word in "Theory of
Probabilities," he maintained that the singular probability, should be used;
and I hold him quite right.
The second case was this: My friend Sir J. L., with a large cluster of
intellectual qualities, and another of social qualities, had one point of
character which I will not call bad and cannot call good; he never used a
slang expression. To such a length did he carry his dislike, that he could not
bear head and tail, even in a work on games of chance: so he used obverse
and reverse. I stared when I first saw this: but, to my delight, I found that
the force of circumstances beat him at last. He was obliged to take an
example from the race-course, and the name of one of the horses was Bessy
Bedlam! And he did not put her down as Elizabeth Bethlehem, but forced
himself to follow the jockeys.

[Almanach Romain sur la Loterie Royale de France, ou les
Etrennes nécessaires aux Actionnaires et Receveurs de la dite
Loterie. Par M. Menut de St.-Mesmin. Paris, 1830. 12mo.

This book contains all the drawings of the French lottery (two or three, each
month) from 1758 to 1830. It is intended for those who thought they could
predict the future drawings from the past: and various sets of sympathetic
numbers are given to help them. The principle is, that anything which has
not happened for a long time must be soon to come. At rouge et noir, for
example, when the red has won five times running, sagacious gamblers
stake on the black, for they think the turn which must come at last is nearer
than it was. So it is: but observation would have shown that if a large
number of those cases had been registered which show a run of five for the
red, the next game would just as often have made the run into six as have
turned in favor of the black. But the gambling reasoner is incorrigible: if he
would but take to squaring the circle, what a load of misery would be saved.
A writer of 1823, who appeared to be thoroughly acquainted with the

gambling of Paris and London, says that the gamesters by profession are
haunted by a secret foreboding of their future destruction, and seem as if
they said to the banker at the table, as the gladiators said to the emperor,
Morituri te salutant.[613]
In the French lottery, five numbers out of ninety were drawn at a time. Any
person, in any part of the country, might stake any sum upon any event he
pleased, as that 27 should be drawn; that 42 and 81 should be drawn; that
42 and 81 should be drawn, and 42 first; and so on up to a quine déterminé,
if he chose, which is betting on five given numbers in a given order. Thus,
in July, 1821, one of the drawings was

8 46 16 64 13.

A gambler had actually predicted the five numbers (but not their order), and
won 131,350 francs on a trifling stake. M. Menut seems to insinuate that the
hint what numbers to choose was given at his own office. Another won
20,852 francs on the quaterne, 8, 16, 46, 64, in this very drawing. These
gains, of course, were widely advertised: of the multitudes who lost nothing
was said. The enormous number of those who played is proved to all who
have studied chances arithmetically by the numbers of simple quaternes
which were gained: in 1822, fourteen; in 1823, six; in 1824, sixteen; in
1825, nine, &c.
The paradoxes of what is called chance, or hazard, might themselves make
a small volume. All the world understands that there is a long run, a general
average; but great part of the world is surprised that this general average
should be computed and predicted. There are many remarkable cases of
verification; and one of them relates to the quadrature of the circle. I give
some account of this and another. Throw a penny time after time until head
arrives, which it will do before long: let this be called a set. Accordingly, H
is the smallest set, TH the next smallest, then TTH, &c. For abbreviation,
let a set in which seven tails occur before head turns up be T7H. In an
immense number of trials of sets, about half will be H; about a quarter TH;
about an eighth, T2H. Buffon[614] tried 2,048 sets; and several have
followed him. It will tend to illustrate the principle if I give all the results;
namely, that many trials will with moral certainty show an approach—and
the greater the greater the number of trials—to that average which sober

reasoning predicts. In the first column is the most likely number of the
theory: the next column gives Buffon's result; the three next are results
obtained from trial by correspondents of mine. In each case the number of
trials is 2,048.

H 1,024 1,061 1,048 1,017 1,039
TH 512 494 507 547 480
T 2H 256 232 248 235 267
T 3H 128 137 99 118 126
T 4H 64 56 71 72 67
T 5H 32 29 38 32 33
T 6H 16 25 17 10 19
T 7H 8 8 9 9 10
T 8H 4 6 5 3 3
T 9H 2 3 2 4
T10H 1 1 1
T11H 0 1
T12H 0 0
T13H 1 1 0
T14H 0 0
T15H 1 1
&c. 0 0
—— —— —— —— ——
2,048 2,048 2,048 2,048 2,048

In very many trials, then, we may depend upon something like the predicted
average. Conversely, from many trials we may form a guess at what the
average will be. Thus, in Buffon's experiment the 2,048 first throws of the
sets gave head in 1,061 cases: we have a right to infer that in the long run
something like 1,061 out of 2,048 is the proportion of heads, even before
we know the reasons for the equality of chance, which tell us that 1,024 out
of 2,048 is the real truth. I now come to the way in which such
considerations have led to a mode in which mere pitch-and-toss has given a

more accurate approach to the quadrature of the circle than has been
reached by some of my paradoxers. What would my friend[615] in No. 14
have said to this? The method is as follows: Suppose a planked floor of the
usual kind, with thin visible seams between the planks. Let there be a thin
straight rod, or wire, not so long as the breadth of the plank. This rod, being
tossed up at hazard, will either fall quite clear of the seams, or will lay
across one seam. Now Buffon, and after him Laplace, proved the following:
That in the long run the fraction of the whole number of trials in which a
seam is intersected will be the fraction which twice the length of the rod is
of the circumference of the circle having the breadth of a plank for its
diameter. In 1855 Mr. Ambrose Smith, of Aberdeen, made 3,204 trials with
a rod three-fifths of the distance between the planks: there were 1,213 clear
intersections, and 11 contacts on which it was difficult to decide. Divide
these contacts equally, and we have 1,218½ to 3,204 for the ratio of 6 to 5π,
presuming that the greatness of the number of trials gives something near to
the final average, or result in the long run: this gives π = 3.1553. If all the
11 contacts had been treated as intersections, the result would have been π
= 3.1412, exceedingly near. A pupil of mine made 600 trials with a rod of
the length between the seams, and got π = 3.137.
This method will hardly be believed until it has been repeated so often that
"there never could have been any doubt about it."
The first experiment strongly illustrates a truth of the theory, well
confirmed by practice: whatever can happen will happen if we make trials
enough. Who would undertake to throw tail eight times running?
Nevertheless, in the 8,192 sets tail 8 times running occurred 17 times; 9
times running, 9 times; 10 times running, twice; 11 times and 13 times, each
once; and 15 times twice.]

ON CURIOSITIES OF π.
1830. The celebrated interminable fraction 3.14159..., which the
mathematician calls π, is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. But
it is thousands of things besides. It is constantly turning up in mathematics:
and if arithmetic and algebra had been studied without geometry, π must

have come in somehow, though at what stage or under what name must
have depended upon the casualties of algebraical invention. This will
readily be seen when it is stated that π is nothing but four times the series

1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...

ad infinitum.[616] It would be wonderful if so simple a series had but one
kind of occurrence. As it is, our trigonometry being founded on the circle, π
first appears as the ratio stated. If, for instance, a deep study of probable
fluctuation from average had preceded, π might have emerged as a number
perfectly indispensable in such problems as: What is the chance of the
number of aces lying between a million + x and a million - x, when six
million of throws are made with a die? I have not gone into any detail of all
those cases in which the paradoxer finds out, by his unassisted acumen, that
results of mathematical investigation cannot be: in fact, this discovery is
only an accompaniment, though a necessary one, of his paradoxical
statement of that which must be. Logicians are beginning to see that the
notion of horse is inseparably connected with that of non-horse: that the
first without the second would be no notion at all. And it is clear that the
positive affirmation of that which contradicts mathematical demonstration
cannot but be accompanied by a declaration, mostly overtly made, that
demonstration is false. If the mathematician were interested in punishing
this indiscretion, he could make his denier ridiculous by inventing asserted
results which would completely take him in.
More than thirty years ago I had a friend, now long gone, who was a
mathematician, but not of the higher branches: he was, inter alia,
thoroughly up in all that relates to mortality, life assurance, &c. One day,
explaining to him how it should be ascertained what the chance is of the
survivors of a large number of persons now alive lying between given limits
of number at the end of a certain time, I came, of course upon the
introduction of π, which I could only describe as the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter. "Oh, my dear friend! that must be
a delusion; what can the circle have to do with the numbers alive at the end
of a given time?"—"I cannot demonstrate it to you; but it is
demonstrated."—"Oh! stuff! I think you can prove anything with your
differential calculus: figment, depend upon it." I said no more; but, a few
days afterwards, I went to him and very gravely told him that I had

discovered the law of human mortality in the Carlisle Table, of which he
thought very highly. I told him that the law was involved in this
circumstance. Take the table of expectation of life, choose any age, take its
expectation and make the nearest integer a new age, do the same with that,
and so on; begin at what age you like, you are sure to end at the place where
the age past is equal, or most nearly equal, to the expectation to come. "You
don't mean that this always happens?"—"Try it." He did try, again and
again; and found it as I said. "This is, indeed, a curious thing; this is a
discovery." I might have sent him about trumpeting the law of life: but I
contented myself with informing him that the same thing would happen
with any table whatsoever in which the first column goes up and the second
goes down; and that if a proficient in the higher mathematics chose to palm
a figment upon him, he could do without the circle: à corsaire, corsaire et
demi,[617] the French proverb says. "Oh!" it was remarked, "I see, this was
Milne!"[618] It was not Milne: I remember well showing the formula to him
some time afterwards. He raised no difficulty about π; he knew the forms
of Laplace's results, and he was much interested. Besides, Milne never said
stuff! and figment! And he would not have been taken in: he would have
quietly tried it with the Northampton and all the other tables, and would
have got at the truth.

EUCLID WITHOUT AXIOMS.

The first book of Euclid's Elements. With alterations and familiar
notes. Being an attempt to get rid of axioms altogether; and to
establish the theory of parallel lines, without the introduction of
any principle not common to other parts of the elements. By a
member of the University of Cambridge. Third edition. In usum
serenissimæ filiolæ. London, 1830.

The author was Lieut. Col. (now General) Perronet Thompson,[619] the
author of the "Catechism on the Corn Laws." I reviewed the fourth edition
—which had the name of "Geometry without Axioms," 1833—in the
quarterly Journal of Education for January, 1834. Col. Thompson, who then

was a contributor to—if not editor of—the Westminster Review, replied in
an article the authorship of which could not be mistaken.
Some more attempts upon the problem, by the same author, will be found in
the sequel. They are all of acute and legitimate speculation; but they do not
conquer the difficulty in the manner demanded by the conditions of the
problem. The paradox of parallels does not contribute much to my pages: its
cases are to be found for the most part in geometrical systems, or in notes to
them. Most of them consist in the proposal of additional postulates; some
are attempts to do without any new postulate. Gen. Perronet Thompson,
whose paradoxes are always constructed on much study of previous writers,
has collected in the work above named, a budget of attempts, the heads of
which are in the Penny and English Cyclopædias, at "Parallels." He has
given thirty instances, selected from what he had found.[620]

Lagrange,[621] in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had
overcome the difficulty. He went so far as to write a paper, which he took
with him to the Institute, and began to read it. But in the first paragraph
something struck him which he had not observed: he muttered Il faut que j'y
songe encore,[622] and put the paper in his pocket.

THE LUNAR CAUSTIC JOKE.
The following paragraph appeared in the Morning Post, May 4, 1831:
"We understand that although, owing to circumstances with which the
public are not concerned, Mr. Goulburn[623] declined becoming a candidate
for University honors, that his scientific attainments are far from
inconsiderable. He is well known to be the author of an essay in the
Philosophical Transactions on the accurate rectification of a circular arc,
and of an investigation of the equation of a lunar caustic—a problem likely
to become of great use in nautical astronomy."
This hoax—which would probably have succeeded with any journal—was
palmed upon the Morning Post, which supported Mr. Goulburn, by some
Cambridge wags who supported Mr. Lubbock, the other candidate for the
University of Cambridge. Putting on the usual concealment, I may say that I

always suspected Dr-nkw-t-r B-th-n-[624] of having a share in the matter.
The skill of the hoax lies in avoiding the words "quadrature of the circle,"
which all know, and speaking of "the accurate rectification of a circular
arc," which all do not know for its synonyme. The Morning Post next day
gave a reproof to hoaxers in general, without referring to any particular
case. It must be added, that although there are caustics in mathematics,
there is no lunar caustic.
So far as Mr. Goulburn was concerned, the above was poetic justice. He
was the minister who, in old time, told a deputation from the Astronomical
Society that the Government "did not care twopence for all the science in
the country." There may be some still alive who remember this: I heard it
from more than one of those who were present, and are now gone. Matters
are much changed. I was thirty years in office at the Astronomical Society;
and, to my certain knowledge, every Government of that period, Whig and
Tory, showed itself ready to help with influence when wanted, and with
money whenever there was an answer for the House of Commons. The
following correction subsequently appeared. Referring to the hoax about
Mr. Goulburn, Messrs. C. H. and Thompson Cooper[625] have corrected an
error, by stating that the election which gave rise to the hoax was that in
which Messrs. Goulburn and Yates Peel[626] defeated Lord Palmerston[627]
and Mr. Cavendish.[628] They add that Mr. Gunning, the well-known
Esquire Bedell of the University, attributed the hoax to the late Rev. R.
Sheepshanks, to whom, they state, are also attributed certain clever
fictitious biographies—of public men, as I understand it—which were
palmed upon the editor of the Cambridge Chronicle, who never suspected
their genuineness to the day of his death. Being in most confidential
intercourse with Mr. Sheepshanks,[629] both at the time and all the rest of
his life (twenty-five years), and never heard him allude to any such things—
which were not in his line, though he had satirical power of quite another
kind—I feel satisfied he had nothing to do with them. I may add that others,
his nearest friends, and also members of his family, never heard him allude
to these hoaxes as their author, and disbelieve his authorship as much as I
do myself. I say this not as imputing any blame to the true author, such
hoaxes being fair election jokes in all time, but merely to put the saddle off
the wrong horse, and to give one more instance of the insecurity of imputed
authorship. Had Mr. Sheepshanks ever told me that he had perpetrated the

hoax, I should have had no hesitation in giving it to him. I consider all
clever election squibs, free from bitterness and personal imputation, as
giving the multitude good channels for the vent of feelings which but for
them would certainly find bad ones.

[But I now suspect that Mr. Babbage[630] had some hand in the hoax. He
gives it in his "Passages, &c." and is evidently writing from memory, for he
gives the wrong year. But he has given the paragraph, though not
accurately, yet with such a recollection of the points as brings suspicion of
the authorship upon him, perhaps in conjunction with D. B.[631] Both were
on Cavendish's committee. Mr. Babbage adds, that "late one evening a cab
drove up in hot haste to the office of the Morning Post, delivered the copy
as coming from Mr. Goulburn's committee, and at the same time ordered
fifty extra copies of the Post to be sent next morning to their committee-
room." I think the man—the only one I ever heard of—who knew all about
the cab and the extra copies must have known more.]

ON M. DEMONVILLE.
Demonville.—A Frenchman's Christian name is his own secret, unless there
be two of the surname. M. Demonville is a very good instance of the
difference between a French and English discoverer. In England there is a
public to listen to discoveries in mathematical subjects made without
mathematics: a public which will hear, and wonder, and think it possible
that the pretensions of the discoverer have some foundation. The unnoticed
man may possibly be right: and the old country-town reputation which I
once heard of, attaching to a man who "had written a book about the signs
of the zodiac which all the philosophers in London could not answer," is
fame as far as it goes. Accordingly, we have plenty of discoverers who,
even in astronomy, pronounce the learned in error because of mathematics.
In France, beyond the sphere of influence of the Academy of Sciences,
there is no one to cast a thought upon the matter: all who take the least
interest repose entire faith in the Institute. Hence the French discoverer
turns all his thoughts to the Institute, and looks for his only hearing in that
quarter. He therefore throws no slur upon the means of knowledge, but
would say, with M. Demonville: "A l'égard de M. Poisson,[632] j'envie

loyalement la millième partie de ses connaissances mathématiques, pour
prouver mon systême d'astronomie aux plus incrédules."[633] This system is
that the only bodies of our system are the earth, the sun, and the moon; all
the others being illusions, caused by reflection of the sun and moon from
the ice of the polar regions. In mathematics, addition and subtraction are for
men; multiplication and division, which are in truth creation and
destruction, are prerogatives of deity. But nothing multiplied by nothing is
one. M. Demonville obtained an introduction to William the Fourth, who
desired the opinion of the Royal Society upon his system: the answer was
very brief. The King was quite right; so was the Society: the fault lay with
those who advised His Majesty on a matter they knew nothing about. The
writings of M. Demonville in my possession are as follows.[634] The dates
—which were only on covers torn off in binding—were about 1831-34:

Petit cours d'astronomie[635] followed by Sur l'unité mathématique.—
Principes de la physique de la création implicitement admis dans la notice
sur le tonnerre par M. Arago.—Question de longitude sur mer.[636]—Vrai
système du monde[637] (pp. 92). Same title, four pages, small type. Same
title, four pages, addressed to the British Association. Same title, four
pages, addressed to M. Mathieu. Same title, four pages, on M. Bouvard's
report.—Résumé de la physique de la création; troisième partie du vrai
système du monde.[638]

PARSEY'S PARADOX.

The quadrature of the circle discovered, by Arthur Parsey,[639]
author of the 'art of miniature painting.' Submitted to the
consideration of the Royal Society, on whose protection the
author humbly throws himself. London, 1832, 8vo.

Mr. Parsey was an artist, who also made himself conspicuous by a new
view of perspective. Seeing that the sides of a tower, for instance, would
appear to meet in a point if the tower were high enough, he thought that
these sides ought to slope to one another in the picture. On this theory he
published a small work, of which I have not the title, with a Grecian temple

in the frontispiece, stated, if I remember rightly, to be the first picture which
had ever been drawn in true perspective. Of course the building looked very
Egyptian, with its sloping sides. The answer to his notion is easy enough.
What is called the picture is not the picture from which the mind takes its
perception; that picture is on the retina. The intermediate picture, as it may
be called—the human artist's work—is itself seen perspectively. If the tower
were so high that the sides, though parallel, appeared to meet in a point, the
picture must also be so high that the picture-sides, though parallel, would
appear to meet in a point. I never saw this answer given, though I have seen
and heard the remarks of artists on Mr. Parsey's work. I am inclined to think
it is commonly supposed that the artist's picture is the representation which
comes before the mind: this is not true; we might as well say the same of
the object itself. In July 1831, reading an article on squaring the circle, and
finding that there was a difficulty, he set to work, got a light denied to all
mathematicians in—some would say through—a crack, and advertised in
the Times that he had done the trick. He then prepared this work, in which,
those who read it will see how, he showed that 3.14159... should be 3.0625.
He might have found out his error by stepping a draughtsman's circle with
the compasses.
Perspective has not had many paradoxes. The only other one I remember is
that of a writer on perspective, whose name I forget, and whose four pages I
do not possess. He circulated remarks on my notes on the subject, published
in the Athenæum, in which he denies that the stereographic projection is a
case of perspective, the reason being that the whole hemisphere makes too
large a picture for the eye conveniently to grasp at once. That is to say, it is
no perspective because there is too much perspective.

ON A COUPLE OF GEOMETRIES.

Principles of Geometry familiarly illustrated. By the Rev. W.
Ritchie,[640] LL.D. London, 1833, 12mo.
A new Exposition of the system of Euclid's Elements, being an
attempt to establish his work on a different basis. By Alfred Day,
[641]
LL.D. London, 1839, 12mo.

These works belong to a small class which have the peculiarity of insisting
that in the general propositions of geometry a proposition gives its
converse: that "Every B is A" follows from "Every A is B." Dr. Ritchie says,
"If it be proved that the equality of two of the angles of a triangle depends
essentially upon the equality of the opposite sides, it follows that the
equality of opposite sides depends essentially on the equality of the angles."
Dr. Day puts it as follows:
"That the converses of Euclid, so called, where no particular limitation is
specified or implied in the leading proposition, more than in the converse,
must be necessarily true; for as by the nature of the reasoning the leading
proposition must be universally true, should the converse be not so, it
cannot be so universally, but has at least all the exceptions conveyed in the
leading proposition, and the case is therefore unadapted to geometric
reasoning; or, what is the same thing, by the very nature of geometric
reasoning, the particular exceptions to the extended converse must be
identical with some one or other of the cases under the universal affirmative
proposition with which we set forth, which is absurd."
On this I cannot help transferring to my reader the words of the Pacha when
he orders the bastinado,—May it do you good! A rational study of logic is
much wanted to show many mathematicians, of all degrees of proficiency,
that there is nothing in the reasoning of mathematics which differs from
other reasoning. Dr. Day repeated his argument in A Treatise on Proportion,
London, 1840, 8vo. Dr. Ritchie was a very clear-headed man. He published,
in 1818, a work on arithmetic, with rational explanations. This was too
early for such an improvement, and nearly the whole of his excellent work
was sold as waste paper. His elementary introduction to the Differential
Calculus was drawn up while he was learning the subject late in life. Books
of this sort are often very effective on points of difficulty.

NEWTON AGAIN OBLITERATED.

Letter to the Royal Astronomical Society in refutation of
Mistaken Notions held in common, by the Society, and by all the

Newtonian philosophers. By Capt. Forman,[642] R.N. Shepton-
Mallet, 1833, 8vo.

Capt. Forman wrote against the whole system of gravitation, and got no
notice. He then wrote to Lord Brougham, Sir J. Herschel, and others I
suppose, desiring them to procure notice of his books in the reviews: this
not being acceded to, he wrote (in print) to Lord John Russell[643] to
complain of their "dishonest" conduct. He then sent a manuscript letter to
the Astronomical Society, inviting controversy: he was answered by a
recommendation to study dynamics. The above pamphlet was the
consequence, in which, calling the Council of the Society "craven dunghill
cocks," he set them right about their doctrines. From all I can learn, the life
of a worthy man and a creditable officer was completely embittered by his
want of power to see that no person is bound in reason to enter into
controversy with every one who chooses to invite him to the field. This
mistake is not peculiar to philosophers, whether of orthodoxy or paradoxy;
a majority of educated persons imply, by their modes of proceeding, that no
one has a right to any opinion which he is not prepared to defend against all
comers.

David and Goliath, or an attempt to prove that the Newtonian
system of Astronomy is directly opposed to the Scriptures. By
Wm. Lauder,[644] Sen., Mere, Wilts. Mere, 1833, 12mo.

Newton is Goliath; Mr. Lauder is David. David took five pebbles; Mr.
Lauder takes five arguments. He expects opposition; for Paul and Jesus both
met with it.
Mr. Lauder, in his comparison, seems to put himself in the divinely inspired
class. This would not be a fair inference in every case; but we know not
what to think when we remember that a tolerable number of cyclometers
have attributed their knowledge to direct revelation. The works of this class
are very scarce; I can only mention one or two from Montucla.[645]
Alphonso Cano de Molina,[646] in the last century, upset all Euclid, and
squared the circle upon the ruins; he found a follower, Janson, who
translated him from Spanish into Latin. He declared that he believed in

Euclid, until God, who humbles the proud, taught him better. One Paul
Yvon, called from his estate de la Leu, a merchant at Rochelle, supported by
his book-keeper, M. Pujos, and a Scotchman, John Dunbar, solved the
problem by divine grace, in a manner which was to convert all Jews,
Infidels, etc. There seem to have been editions of his work in 1619 and
1628, and a controversial "Examen" in 1630, by Robert Sara. There was a
noted discussion, in which Mydorge,[647] Hardy,[648] and others took part
against de la Leu. I cannot find this name either in Lipenius[649] or Murhard,
[650] and I should not have known the dates if it had not been for one of the

keenest bibliographers of any time, my friend Prince Balthasar
Boncompagni,[651] who is trying to find copies of the works, and has
managed to find copies of the titles. In 1750, Henry Sullamar, an
Englishman, squared the circle by the number of the Beast: he published a
pamphlet every two or three years; but I cannot find any mention of him in
English works.[652] In France, in 1753, M. de Causans,[653] of the Guards,
cut a circular piece of turf, squared it, and deduced original sin and the
Trinity. He found out that the circle was equal to the square in which it is
inscribed; and he offered a reward for detection of any error, and actually
deposited 10,000 francs as earnest of 300,000. But the courts would not
allow any one to recover.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

1834. In this year Sir John Herschel[654] set up his telescope at Feldhausen,
Cape of Good Hope. He did much for astronomy, but not much for the
Budget of Paradoxes. He gives me, however, the following story. He
showed a resident a remarkable blood-red star, and some little time after he
heard of a sermon preached in those parts in which it was asserted that the
statements of the Bible must be true, for that Sir J. H. had seen in his
telescope "the very place where wicked people go."
But red is not always the color. Sir J. Herschel has in his possession a letter
written to his father, Sir W. H.,[655] dated April 3, 1787, and signed "Eliza
Cumyns," begging to know if any of the stars be indigo in color, "because,
if there be, I think it may be deemed a strong conjectural illustration of the

expression, so often used by our Saviour in the Holy Gospels, that 'the
disobedient shall be cast into outer darkness'; for as the Almighty Being can
doubtless confine any of his creatures, whether corporeal or spiritual, to
what part of his creation He pleases, if therefore any of the stars (which are
beyond all doubt so many suns to other systems) be of so dark a color as
that above mentioned, they may be calculated to give the most insufferable
heat to those dolorous systems dependent upon them (and to reprobate
spirits placed there), without one ray of cheerful light; and may therefore be
the scenes of future punishments." This letter is addressed to Dr. Heirschel
at Slow. Some have placed the infernal regions inside the earth, but others
have filled this internal cavity—for cavity they will have—with refulgent
light, and made it the abode of the blessed. It is difficult to build without
knowing the number to be provided for. A friend of mine heard the
following (part) dialogue between two strong Scotch Calvinists: "Noo! hoo
manny d'ye thank there are of the alact on the arth at this moment?—Eh!
mabbee a doozen—Hoot! mon! nae so mony as thot!"

THE NAUTICAL ALMANAC.
1834. From 1769 to 1834 the Nautical Almanac was published on a plan
which gradually fell behind what was wanted. In 1834 the new series
began, under a new superintendent (Lieut. W. S. Stratford).[656] There had
been a long scientific controversy, which would not be generally
intelligible. To set some of the points before the reader, I reprint a cutting
which I have by me. It is from the Nautical Magazine, but I did hear that
some had an idea that it was in the Nautical Almanac itself. It certainly was
not, and I feel satisfied the Lords of the Admiralty would not have
permitted the insertion; they are never in advance of their age. The Almanac
for 1834 was published in July 1833.

The New Nautical Almanac—Extract from the 'Primum Mobile,'
and 'Milky Way Gazette.' Communicated by Aerolith.

A meeting of the different bodies composing the Solar System was this day
held at the Dragon's Tail, for the purpose of taking into consideration the
alterations and amendments introduced into the New Nautical Almanac.

The honorable luminaries had been individually summoned by fast-sailing
comets, and there was a remarkably full attendance. Among the visitors we
observed several nebulæ, and almost all the stars whose proper motions
would admit of their being present.
The Sun was unanimously called to the focus. The small planets took the
oaths, and their places, after a short discussion, in which it was decided that
the places should be those of the Almanac itself, with leave reserved to
move for corrections.
Petitions were presented from α and δ Ursæ Minoris, complaining of being
put on daily duty, and praying for an increase of salary.—Laid on the plane
of the ecliptic.

The trustees of the eccentricity[657] and inclination funds reported a balance
of .00001 in the former, and a deficit of 0".009 in the latter. This
announcement caused considerable surprise, and a committee was moved
for, to ascertain which of the bodies had more or less than his share. After
some discussion, in which the small planets offered to consent to a
reduction, if necessary, the motion was carried.
The Focal Body then rose to address the meeting. He remarked that the
subject on which they were assembled was one of great importance to the
routes and revolutions of the heavenly bodies. For himself, though a private
arrangement between two of his honourable neighbours (here he looked
hard at the Earth and Venus) had prevented his hitherto paying that close
attention to the predictions of the Nautical Almanac which he declared he
always had wished to do; yet he felt consoled by knowing that the
conductors of that work had every disposition to take his peculiar
circumstances into consideration. He declared that he had never passed the
wires of a transit without deeply feeling his inability to adapt himself to the
present state of his theory; a feeling which he was afraid had sometimes
caused a slight tremor in his limb. Before he sat down, he expressed a hope
that honourable luminaries would refrain as much as possible from
eclipsing each other, or causing mutual perturbations. Indeed, he should be
very sorry to see any interruption of the harmony of the spheres.
(Applause.)

The several articles of the New Nautical Almanac were then read over
without any comment; only we observed that Saturn shook his ring at every
novelty, and Jupiter gave his belt a hitch, and winked at the satellites at
page 21 of each month.
The Moon rose to propose a resolution. No one, he said, would be surprised
at his bringing this matter forward in the way he did, when it was
considered in how complete and satisfactory a manner his motions were
now represented. He must own he had trembled when the Lords of the
Admiralty dissolved the Board of Longitude, but his tranquillity was more
than reestablished by the adoption of the new system. He did not know but
that any little assistance he could give in Nautical Astronomy was becoming
of less and less value every day, owing to the improvement of
chronometers. But there was one thing, of which nothing could deprive him
—he meant the regulation of the tides. And, perhaps, when his attention was
not occupied by more than the latter, he should be able to introduce a little
more regularity into the phenomena. (Here the honourable luminary gave a
sort of modest libration, which convulsed the meeting with laughter.) They
might laugh at his natural infirmity if they pleased, but he could assure
them it arose only from the necessity he was under, when young, of
watching the motions of his worthy primary. He then moved a resolution
highly laudatory of the alterations which appeared in the New Nautical
Almanac.
The Earth rose, to second the motion. His honourable satellite had fully
expressed his opinions on the subject. He joined his honourable friend in
the focus in wishing to pay every attention to the Nautical Almanac, but,
really, when so important an alteration had taken place in his magnetic
pole[658] (hear) and there might, for aught he knew, be a successful attempt
to reach his pole of rotation, he thought he could not answer for the
preservation of the precession in its present state. (Here the hon. luminary,
scratching his side, exclaimed, as he sat down, "More steamboats—
confound 'em!")
An honourable satellite (whose name we could not learn) proposed that the
resolution should be immediately despatched, corrected for refraction, when
he was called to order by the Focal Body, who reminded him that it was

contrary to the moving orders of the system to take cognizance of what
passed inside the atmosphere of any planet.
Saturn and Pallas rose together. (Cries of "New member!" and the former
gave way.) The latter, in a long and eloquent speech, praised the liberality
with which he and his colleagues had at length been relieved from
astronomical disqualifications. He thought that it was contrary to the spirit
of the laws of gravitation to exclude any planet from office on account of
the eccentricity or inclination of his orbit. Honourable luminaries need not
talk of the want of convergency of his series. What had they to do with any
private arrangements between him and the general equations of the system?
(Murmurs from the opposition.) So long as he obeyed the laws of motion, to
which he had that day taken a solemn oath, he would ask, were old planets,
which were now so well known that nobody trusted them, to....
The Focal Body said he was sorry to break the continuity of the
proceedings, but he thought that remarks upon character, with a negative
sign, would introduce differences of too high an order. The honourable
luminary must eliminate the expression which he had brought out, in finite
terms, and use smaller inequalities in future. (Hear, hear.)
Pallas explained, that he was far from meaning to reflect upon the orbital
character of any planet present. He only meant to protest against being
judged by any laws but those of gravitation, and the differential calculus: he
thought it most unjust that astronomers should prevent the small planets
from being observed, and then reproach them with the imperfections of the
tables, which were the result of their own narrow-minded policy. (Cheers.)
Saturn thought that, as an old planet, he had not been treated with due
respect. (Hear, from his satellites.) He had long foretold the wreck of the
system from the friends of innovation. Why, he might ask, were his
satellites to be excluded, when small planets, trumpery comets, which could
not keep their mean distances (cries of oh! oh!), double stars, with graphical
approximations, and such obscure riff-raff of the heavens (great uproar)
found room enough. So help him Arithmetic, nothing could come of it, but
a stoppage of all revolution. His hon. friend in the focus might smile, for he
would be a gainer by such an event; but as for him (Saturn), he had
something to lose, and hon. luminaries well knew that, whatever they might

think under an atmosphere, above it continual revolution was the only way
of preventing perpetual anarchy. As to the hon. luminary who had risen
before him, he was not surprised at his remarks, for he had invariably
observed that he and his colleagues allowed themselves too much latitude.
The stability of the system required that they should be brought down, and
he, for one, would exert all his powers of attraction to accomplish that end.
If other bodies would cordially unite with him, particularly his noble friend
next him, than whom no luminary possessed greater weight—
Jupiter rose to order. He conceived his noble friend had no right to allude to
him in that manner, and was much surprised at his proposal, considering the
matters which remained in dispute between them. In the present state of
affairs, he would take care never to be in conjunction with his hon.
neighbour one moment longer than he could help. (Cries of "Order, order,
no long inequalities," during which he sat down.)
Saturn proceeded to say, that he did not know till then that a planet with a
ring could affront one who had only a belt, by proposing mutual co-
operation. He would now come to the subject under discussion. He should
think meanly of his hon. colleagues if they consented to bestow their
approbation upon a mere astronomical production. Had they forgotten that
they once were considered the arbiters of fate, and the prognosticators of
man's destiny? What had lost them that proud position? Was it not the
infernal march of intellect, which, after having turned the earth topsy-turvy,
was now disturbing the very universe? For himself (others might do as they
pleased), but he stuck to the venerable Partridge,[659] and the Stationers'
Company, and trusted that they would outlive infidels and anarchists,
whether of Astronomical or Diffusion of Knowledge Societies. (Cries of oh!
oh!)
Mars said he had been told, for he must confess he had not seen the work,
that the places of the planets were given for Sundays. This, he must be
allowed to say, was an indecorum he had not expected; and he was
convinced the Lords of the Admiralty had given no orders to that effect. He
hoped this point would be considered in the measure which had been
introduced in another place, and that some one would move that the
prohibition against travelling on Sundays extend to the heavenly as well as
earthly bodies.

Several of the stars here declared, that they had been much annoyed by
being observed on Sunday evenings, during the hours of divine service.
The room was then cleared for a division, but we are unable to state what
took place. Several comets-at-arms were sent for, and we heard rumors of a
personal collision having taken place between two luminaries in opposition.
We were afterwards told that the resolution was carried by a majority, and
the luminaries elongated at 2 h. 15 m. 33,41 s. sidereal time.
* * * It is reported, but we hope without foundation, that Saturn, and several
other discontented planets, have accepted an invitation from Sirius to join
his system, on the most liberal appointments. We believe the report to have
originated in nothing more than the discovery of the annual parallax of
Sirius from the orbit of Saturn; but we may safely assure our readers that no
steps have as yet been taken to open any communication.
We are also happy to state, that there is no truth in the rumor of the laws of
gravitation being about to be repealed. We have traced this report, and find
it originated with a gentleman living near Bath (Captain Forman, R.N),[660]
whose name we forbear to mention.
A great excitement has been observed among the nebulæ, visible to the
earth's southern hemisphere, particularly among those which have not yet
been discovered from thence. We are at a loss to conjecture the cause, but
we shall not fail to report to our readers the news of any movement which
may take place. (Sir J. Herschel's visit. He could just see this before he went
out.)

WOODLEY'S DIVINE SYSTEM.

A Treatise on the Divine System of the Universe, by Captain
Woodley, R.N.,[661] and as demonstrated by his Universal Time-
piece, and universal method of determining a ship's longitude by
the apparent true place of the moon; with an introduction refuting
the solar system of Copernicus, the Newtonian philosophy, and
mathematics. 1834.[662] 8vo.