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Augustus De Morgan

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Title: A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II)

Author: Augustus De Morgan

Editor: David Eugene Smith

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23100]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they
are listed at the end of the text.

       *       *       *       *       *


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 _Athenaeum_
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 _Athenaeum_ 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 ueber die
Geschichte des Problemes von der Quadratur des Zirkels_, Leipsic, 1892;
Thomas Muir, "Circle," in the eleventh edition of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_; the various histories of mathematics; and to his own article
on "The Incommensurability of [pi]" 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

{1}

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 {2} 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 {3} 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 Scripturae
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 Philosophiae ope, antequam quod esset statuerent, secundum verae logices
praecepta 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. {4} Profecto magnus ille vir ...
dogma illud, quamvis apud theologos eo nomine non multum gratiae iniverit,
ita ex immotis Philosophiae 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. {5}

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 Brahe, Galileo, Napier, Descartes,
Leibnitz, Newton, Locke. I take none but names known out of their {6}
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, {7} 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 _Athenaeum_ 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 {8} 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. {9} 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 {10} 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 {11} 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
_Chrysaespis_, 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 {12} 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" {13} 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
Pro^r (_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 {14} 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. {15}

       *       *       *       *       *

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 {16} 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 {17} 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 {18}
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 {19} 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, {20} 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 {21} 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-pharmacopoeian 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 {22} 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, {23} 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 facheux que cet ingenieux Naturaliste, qui nous a deja donne et qui
nous prepare encore des ouvrages plus utiles, emploie a cette odieuse tache
une plume qu'il trempe dans le fiel et dans l'absinthe. Il est vrai que
plusieurs de ses remarques sont fondees, et qu'a l'erreur qu'il indique, il
joint en meme tems la correction. Mais il n'est pas toujours equitable, et
ne manque jamais d'insulter. Que peut {24} apres tout prouver son livre, si
ce n'est que la quarante-cinquieme partie d'un tres-ample et tres-utile
Recueil n'est pas exempte d'erreurs? Devoit-il confondre avec des Ecrivains
superficiels, dont la Liberte du Corps ne permet pas de restreindre la
fertilite, cette foule de savans du Premier ordre, dont les Ecrits ont orne
et ornent encore les Transactions? A-t-il oublie qu'on y a vu frequemment
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 prefere a tous
les autres, je veux dire de Mr. Hill lui-meme?"[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. {25} 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 {26} 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 {27} 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 {28} 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 {29} 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, {30} 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 _elite_ 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 Scientiae_, but I
would not be taken for _Falsae 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 {31} 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
Amphisbaena 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 _Amphisbaena_." {32}

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 {33} 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 {34} 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 praeclara (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
pestilentiae sedi praefuisset."[12]

There was another quarrel between Virgil and Boniface which is an
illustration. An ignorant priest had baptized "in nomine Patri_a_, et
Fili_a_ et Spiritu_a_ 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 {35} 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 {36} 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.

       *       *       *       *       *


{37}

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 {38} 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 {39} 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 _Athenaeum_ 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 {40}
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 {41} 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 Pergaeus, 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 Nicaea 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 ([Greek:
eis akribesterous arithmous agagein]) 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 {42} and quoted [Greek: apo Gadaron]. 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 Cyclopaedia_,
art. "Quadrature of the Circle."

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

{43}

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 Boet_h_ius. 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 {44}
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] {45} 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 [pi] = [root]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 [pi] = 3-1/8, which it thus appears Bovillus could not
distinguish from [root]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.

{46}



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 etait impossible de le lui dire au juste, attendu
que personne n'avait encore pu trouver d'une maniere exacte le rapport de
la circonference 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 {47} 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 _seance_ 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 "Haec accurata recognitio trium voluminum operum clariss.
P. Nicolai Cusae ... 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.

{48} 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.

{49}



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 Scharta_ch_an_ [_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 Librae_, 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 {50} 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 Thyraeus.

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 {51} 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 Finee; 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 Viete,
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 Sussannaeus 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.



{52}

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 a 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 {53} 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 foedor 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 Turiae ostia
  Lacumque limpidissimum
  Sita est beata civitas
  {54}
  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 praedicat.
  Hic ergo bellus artifex
  Tuam quadravit aream.[61]

Falco's verses are pretty, if the U-mysteries be correct; but of these
things I have forgotten--what I knew. [One mistake has been pointed out to
me: it is Arch[=y]tas].

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.

{55}



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:

   M   A   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:

  [Hebrew:   R    T    L    W   L]
            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 {56} 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 {57} 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 {58} 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 _Athenaeum_, 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.] {59}



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 {60} 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 {61} 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 {62} 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 {63} 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 {64} _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]
{65} (vol. iii. pp. 756-778) is an account of the quadrature of
Gephyra_u_der, 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 {66} 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
Grynaeus,[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]

{67}

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.

{68}



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.

{69}



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 {70} 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 Cyclometriae Novae 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 {71} 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 crue,
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 venue 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 dure
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 ayme de Dieu, colomne de la foy, sorty de la race de Inda, etc.
Les limites de cet Empire touchent a la mer Rouge, et aux montagnes d'Azuma
vers {72} l'Orient, et du coste de l'Occident, il est borne du fleuue du
Nil, qui le separe de la Nubie, vers le Septentrion il a l'AEgypte, et au
Midy les Royaumes de Congo, et de Mozambique, sa longueur contenant
quarante degre, qui font mille vingt cinq lieues, et ce depuis Congo ou
Mozambique qui sont au Midy, iusqu'en AEgypte qui est au Septentrion, et sa
largeur contenant depuis le Nil qui est a l'Occident, iusqu'aux montagnes
d'Azuma, qui sont a l'Orient, sept cens vingt cinq lieues, qui font vingt
neuf degrez. Cet empire a sous soy trente grandes Prouinces, scavoir,
Medra, Gaga, Alchy, Cedalon, Mantro, Finazam, Barnaquez, Ambiam, Fungy,
Angote, 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 situees iustement sous la ligne equinoxiale, entres les Tropiques de
Capricorne, et de Cancer. Mais elles s'approchent de nostre Tropique, de
deux cens cinquante lieues 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 este 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
confere souuent par le moyen de nostre trucheman: il estoit d'vn port graue
et serieux, succiur (_sic_) en son parler, mais subtil a merueilles en tout
ce qu'il disoit. Il prenoit grand plaisir au recit que je luy faisais de
nos belles ceremonies, et de la grauite 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 salete du Tartare, ny a
l'affreux regard du miserable Arabe, mais ils sont fins et cauteleux, et ne
se fient en personne, soupconneux a 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 {73} 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.

{74}



CONCERNING A TRACT BY FIENUS.

    De Cometa anni 1618 dissertationes Thomae Fieni[106] et Liberti
    Fromondi[107] ... Equidem Thomae Fieni epistolica quaestio, An verum sit
    Coelum 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.

{75}



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 {76} 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 Brahe,[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 {77} 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 {78} 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 {79} 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 {80} 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 {81} 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
{82} 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 {83} 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 [Greek: heureka] 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 {84} 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. {85} 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 {86} 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]
{87} 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, {88} 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 {89} 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 {90} 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, divinae que Scripturae omnino
adversantem, de mobilitate Terrae et immobilitate Solis."[138]

But a work of the Carmelite Foscarini[139] is:

{91}

"Omnino prohibendum atque damnandum," because "ostendere conatur praefatam
doctrinam ... consonam esse veritati et non adversari Sacrae
Scripturae."[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:

"Sacrae Scripturae, ejusque verae et Catholicae 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 Terrae
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 [Greek:
mataiologoi], qui cum omnium Mathematum ignari sint, tamen de illis
judicium sibi summunt, propter aliquem locum scripturae, male ad suum
propositum detortum, ausi fuerint meum {92} 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 terrae
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. ecclesiasticae conducere aliquid....
_Emend._ Ibi _si fortasse_ dele omnia, usque ad verbum _hi nostri labores_
et sic accommoda--_Coeterum 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 haec quaestio 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 coelestium motuum
apparentias existimemus."[144]

{93}

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 Terrae, 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 formae suae
a natura congruentem concedere, magisquam quod totus labatur mundus, cujus
finis ignoratur, scirique nequit, neque fateamur ipsius cotidianae
revolutionis in coelo apparentiam esse, et in terra veritatem? Et haec
perinde se habere, ac si diceret Virgilianus AEneas: Provehimur portu ...
_Emend._ Cur ergo non possum mobilitatem illi formae suae concedere, magisque
quod totus labatur mundus, cujus finis ignoratur scirique nequit, et quae
apparent in coelo, perinde se habere ac si ..."[146]

{94}

"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 Terrae, quam ejus quies, praesertim in cotidiana revolutione,
tanquam terrae 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 Terrae, 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]

{95}

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 terrae verificari. _Emend._ Non pudet nos assumere ... hoc
consequenter in mobilitate verificari."[150]

(Cap. 10. lib. i. p. 10.) "_Copernicus._ Tanta nimirum est divina haec. 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 Terrae, ejusque
demonstratione."[153]

(Cap. 10. lib. iv. p. 122.[154]) "_Copernicus._ De magnitudine horum trium
siderum, Solis, Lunae, et Terrae. _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 {96} 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 {97} 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, {98} 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 terrae 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 {99} 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 a 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 {100} 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, {101} "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 {102} 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 {103} 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 {104} 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 novercae creditum est;
  Cassandrae quia non creditum ruit Ilium:
  Ergo exploranda est veritas multum prius
  Quam stulta prove judicet sententia."[182]



    Nova Demonstratio immobilitatis terrae petita ex virtute magnetica. By
    Jacobus Grandamicus. Flexiae (La Fleche), 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 a 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 {105} on biography. Argoli's
discovery that logarithms facilitate easy processes, but increase the labor
of difficult ones, is worth recording.



    Controversiae 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
{106} mincemeat: but he is said to have insisted on the discovery of his
epitaph.[189]

{107}



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]

{108}



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 {109} 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 Mathematicae Hodiernae. 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 {110} 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 sphaerae,
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 {111} 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 aeque
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, haec 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 [Greek:
katorthountas]."[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 {112}
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 {113}
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
Finaeus, "Il se vanta sans raison avoir trouve la quadrature du cercle; la
gloire de cette admirable decouverte etait reservee a Joseph Scalinger,
comme l'a ecrit Scevole 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 {114} 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 Coryphaeus 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 {115} 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, [Greek: Philomathematikos]. 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 {116}
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, {117} _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.

{118}



RENE DE SLUSE.

    Renati Francisci Slusii Mesolabum. Leodii Eburonum [Liege], 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 Hyperbolae
Quadratura_,[231] held himself to have proved that {119} 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
Geometrique_, at Paris, in 1825. His method would make the circumference
less than three times the diameter.



BEAULIEU'S QUADRATURE.

    La Geometrie Francoise, ou la Pratique aisee.... La quadracture du
    cercle. Par le Sieur de Beaulieu, Ingenieur, Geographe 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 {120} lecturing. See some letters on the History of Perspective, which
I wrote in the _Athenaeum_, 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, mathematicien, fort mal traite par
Descartes, et a ce qu'il paroit avec justice."[234]

Beaulieu's quadrature amounts to a geometrical construction[235] which
gives [pi] = [root]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
ecrits; et nous pourrions dire de luy, qu'il seroit le seul et unique en la
force de ses Problemes, si sa trop grande presomption ne l'avoit porte a
avancer en cette Science une proposition aussi absurde, qu'elle est contre
la Foy et raison, en faisant la circonference d'un Cercle fixe, immobile,
et le centre mobile, sur lequel principe Geometrique, il a avance en son
Traitte 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 Brahe[237] to
Beaulieu, there is but one expression of admiration for the genius of
Copernicus. There is an exception, which, I {121} believe, has been quite
misunderstood. Maurolycus,[238] in his _De Sphaera_, 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 Scavans et specialement d'un General
d'Armee ou Capitaine, pour promptement ranger une Armee 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 a l'Armee
_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'Armee
_rang_. Q signifie _quare_ en l'un et l'autre usage. C signifie _cube_ en
la mesure, et _Cavallerie_ en la composition des bataillons et escadrons.
Quant a l'operation de cette science, c'est {122} 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 trouve. Je
dis seulement cecy en passant pour ceux qui n'en scavent rien du
tout."[240]

This is the algebra of the Royal Household, seventy-three years after the
death of Vieta. Quaere, 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.

{123}



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 Nugae" 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
    Nugae_. 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 {124} 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."

{125}



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. {126}
    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.

{127}

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 quaevis 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 [Greek: chemeia] or with [Greek: chumeia].



    Lettre d'un gentil-homme de province a une dame de qualite, sur le
    sujet de la Comete. 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."

{128}

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.

{129}

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.

    Theologiae Christianae 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. {130} 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 formulae, 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 {131} 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, {132} 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] {133}



    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, {134} 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 Caesar'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 {135} 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 {136} 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 _eloge_ 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 {137} 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.

{138}



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! [Integral]a u^{n} 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!
  {139}
  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 [pi] 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 {140} 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. {141}



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 {142} 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. (_Athenaeum_, 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 {143} 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 {144} 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 {145} 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.

{146}



    Demonstration de l'immobilitez de la Terre.... Par M. de la
    Jonchere,[308] Ingenieur Francais. 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 [pi] = 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 {147} (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]

{148}

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 systeme de physique generale de M. Isaac Newton expose et
    analyse en parallele 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 AEther of Sir Isaac Newton. By Bryan
    Robinson,[319] M.D. Dublin, 1743, 8vo.[320]

{149}

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, decouverte, et demonstrations de la quadrature
    mathematique du cercle. Par M. de Faure, geometre. [_s. l._, probably
    Geneva] 1747, 8vo.

    Analyse de la Quadrature du Cercle. Par M. de Faure, 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 {150}
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 Faure 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 posees dans ce Memoire, il est si evident que
    t doit etre = 34, y = 1, et z = 1, que cela n'a besoin ni de preuve ni
    d'autorite pour etre reconnu par tout le monde.[326]

    "a Basle le 7e Mai 1749. JEAN BERNOULLI."

    "Je souscris au jugement de Mr. Bernoulli, en consequence de ces
    suppositions.[327]

    "a la Haye le 21 Juin 1749. S. KOENIG."

On which de Faure remarks with triumph--as I have no doubt it was intended
he should do--"il conste clairement par ma presente Analyse et
Demonstration, qu'ils y ont deja {151} reconnu et approuve parfaitement que
la quadrature du cercle est mathematiquement demontree."[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, {152} 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:

{153}

"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 {154} 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 {155} 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 [Greek: Su legeis] 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:

{156}

"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, {157} 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 L100, now bought, is meant that the buyer is to have
for his money L100 in a year, if he be then alive, L100 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 L100 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.

{158}

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 {159} 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 problemes 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 {160} _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 Abbe 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 la, que Barrow etoit un pauvre philosophe; car il
croyait en l'immortalite de l'ame, et en une Divinite autre que la nature
{161} 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 {162}
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 Caelestino Cominale,[357] M.D. Naples, 1754
    and 1756, 2 vols. 4to.

The first volume upsets the theory of light; the second vacuum, vis
inertiae, 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 L500, and two sureties in L250
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.

{163}



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
    quadraturae 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 {164} 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 L30,000 previously promised for the same. I need hardly say
that the Royal Society had not L30,000 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 L30,000 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 Philosophiae 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, {165} with notes, which he
dedicated to the Royal Society: _De Solis et Lunae defectibus_,[360] London,
Millar and Dodsley, 1760, 4to.



    Traite de paix entre Des Cartes et Newton, _precede_ des vies
    litteraires de ces deux chefs de la physique moderne.... By Aime 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 {166}
    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, adressees
    a 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 {167}
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 Verite, ou les hommes rappeles au principe
    universel de la science; ouvrage dans lequel, en faisant remarquer aux
    observateurs l'incertitude de leurs recherches, et leurs meprises
    continuelles, on leur indique la route qu'ils auroient du suivre, pour
    acquerir l'evidence physique sur l'origine du bien et du mal, sur
    l'homme, sur la nature materielle, et la nature sacree; sur la base des
    gouvernements {168} politiques, sur l'autorite 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 {169} 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 _Incredule_;
[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 [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 {170} 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 Zypoeus, 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 Verite_, 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 preserver de toutes {171} les illusions, et surtout
des amorces de l'orgueil par lesquelles l'homme est si souvent seduit, 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 deja une
explication des nombres _quatre_ et _neuf_, qui ont peu embarrasse dans
l'ouvrage deja cite. L'homme s'est egare en allant de _quatre_ a
_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 {172} 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 _virgulae_; 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.

{173}

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 Laetitia 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 {174} lived. It is what the French call
a _piece 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 W_oo_lstonecraft. Watt gives double insinuation,
for his cross-reference sends us to G_oo_dwin.[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 {175} 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 {176} 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 {177} 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 {178}
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?
  {179}
  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."

{180} 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 {181} 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 {182} 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 L105. 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:
{183} 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,
L1 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, L1 16s.--A
conscientious attorney, L1 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 {184} 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 {185} 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 {186} 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 {187} 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. {188}



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 Cyclopaedia_, 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: "[Greek: Pas agathos hei agathos
ethnikos; kai pas christianos hei christianos kakos.] 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, {189}
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 {190} 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 {191} 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 {192} 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"
{193} 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? {194} 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 {195} 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.

{196}

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 {197} 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
_Athenaeum_ 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 {198} 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
{199} 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 {200} 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!" {201}

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
{202} 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.

{203}



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 {204} 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 quaedam
confusa, cujus usu ingenium quodam modo turbatur et obscuratur, quam
scientia qua excolatur et perspicacius {205} 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. {206} 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 {207} 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 {208} 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
_Athenaeum 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 {209} 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 {210} 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:
{211} 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
{212} 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 {213} 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 {214} 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.'" {215}

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
AEsop'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 {216}
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 {217} 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 {218} 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 {219} 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 e vero_, said he, _e 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 {220} 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 Molieres,[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 Molieres, who examined the work officially for the _Garde des
Sceaux_, is transported beyond the bounds of official gravity, and says
that it "ne merite pas seulement d'etre imprime, mais d'etre admire comme
un prodige d'imagination, de conception, et de capacite."[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 {221} 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 nommee 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 {222} 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 {223} 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 {224} 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]

{225}



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 {226} 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 {227} 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 {228} 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 (Thomae) 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.

{229}

    "Bradwardine (Archbp. T.). Brauardini (Thomae) 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 etoiles_,[511] see Chasles (_Apercu_,
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 theorie nouvelle qui doit faire honneur au XIVe Siecle.'"[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 theorie des paralleles. Par Adolphe Kircher[514] [so signed at
    the end of the appendix]. Paris, 1803, 8vo.

An alleged emendation of Legendre.[515] The author refers {230} 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 novae parallelarum
theoriae notione situs fundatae; auctore G. C. Schwal,[519] Stuttgardae, 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.

{231}



    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 {232} 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 Moliere (who will certainly then exist): "_Cela etait
autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons change 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 {233} 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 {234} 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
{235} 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 {236} 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. {237} 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 {238} 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 {239} 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 "[Greek: haireseon anastasis], 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 {240} 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 {241} 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:

{242}

 "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 {243}
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_ {244} 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 {245} 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 {246} 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, {247} 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 {248} a rejoinder by Blanco
White.[569] These circumstances increase the probability that Whately was
written against and for.



    VOLTAIRE A CHRISTIAN.

    Voltaire Chretien; preuves tirees 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 {249} 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, {250} 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

  F_x_ = A_{0}[Omega]_{0} + A_{1}[Omega]_{1} + A_{2}[Omega]_{2} +
      A_{3}[Omega]_{3} + &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]

{251}



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. {252} 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.

[Illustration]

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 {253}
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]
    Koenigsberg, 1822, 4to.

{254}

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, [beta]
the whole perceptive intensity of the individual, [phi] the whole of his
mental force, and _z_ the force given to a notion by attention during the
time _t_. Then,

z = [phi] (1 - [epsilon]^{-[beta]t})

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_ = [pi][phi][beta]/(1 - [beta])[epsilon]^{-[beta]t} + C[epsilon]^{-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] {255} 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.

{256}



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 {257} 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 {258}
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
d_evi_l and l_evi_athan--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 {259}
St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver
buckles. (Boswell, _aet._ 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
{260} 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, {261} 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:

{262}

"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 {263} 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." {264}

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]

{265}



GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.

The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of my _Athenaeum_ 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 ete ordonne, Monsieur, il a
ete ordonne,"[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 {266} 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, homoeopathy, 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
antipharmacopoeal 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 {267} 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 {268} 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 {269} 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 {270} 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, {271} 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 a 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 {272} 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, [Greek: chabball], 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 [Greek: chimeia]. 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.

{273}

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,

{274}

  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."

{275}

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 {276} 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, _Horae Sabaticae; 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
{277} 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 {278}
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.

    Epitome de mathematiques. Par F. Jacotot,[606] Avocat. 3ieme edition,
    Paris, 1830, 8vo. (pp. 18).

    Methode Jacotot. Choix de propositions mathematiques. Par P. Y.
    Sepres.[607] 2nde edition. 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 a 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 {279} 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 a MM. les Membres de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, contenant
    un developpement de la refutation du systeme de la gravitation
    universelle, qui leur a ete presentee le 30 aout, 1830. Par Felix
    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.

{280}

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
    necessaires 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 {281} 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
determine_, 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_ {282} occur before _head_
turns up be T^{7}H. In an immense number of trials of sets, about half will
be H; about a quarter TH; about an eighth, T^{2}H. 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^{2}H      256      232      248      235      267
  T^{3}H      128      137       99      118      126
  T^{4}H       64       56       71       72       67
  T^{5}H       32       29       38       32       33
  T^{6}H       16       25       17       10       19
  T^{7}H        8        8        9        9       10
  T^{8}H        4        6        5        3        3
  T^{9}H        2                 3        2        4
  T^{10}H       1                 1        1
  T^{11}H                         0        1
  T^{12}H                         0        0
  T^{13}H       1                 1        0
  T^{14}H                         0        0
  T^{15}H                         1        1
  &c.                             0        0
            -----    -----    -----    -----    -----
            2,048    2,048    2,048    2,048    2,048

{283}

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 1,2181/2 to
3,204 for the ratio of 6 to 5[pi], presuming that the greatness of the
number of trials gives something near to the final average, or result in
the long run: this gives [pi] = 3.1553. If all the 11 contacts had been
treated as intersections, the result would have been {284} [pi] = 3.1412,
exceedingly near. A pupil of mine made 600 trials with a rod of the length
between the seams, and got [pi] = 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 [pi].

1830. The celebrated interminable fraction 3.14159..., which the
mathematician calls [pi], 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, [pi] 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 [pi] 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 {285} had
but one kind of occurrence. As it is, our trigonometry being founded on the
circle, [pi] first appears as the ratio stated. If, for instance, a deep
study of probable fluctuation from average had preceded, [pi] 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 [pi], 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, {286} 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: _a 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 [pi]; 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.

{287}



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 serenissimae filiolae.
    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 Cyclopaedias_, at "Parallels." He has
given thirty instances, selected from what he had found.[620]

{288}

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."

{289}

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 {290} 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 {291}
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 {292} 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'egard de M. Poisson,[632] j'envie loyalement
la millieme partie de ses connaissances mathematiques, pour prouver mon
systeme d'astronomie aux plus incredules."[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
{293} 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'unite
mathematique._--_Principes de la physique de la creation implicitement
admis dans la notice sur le tonnerre par M. Arago._--_Question de longitude
sur mer._[636]--_Vrai systeme 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.--_Resume de la physique de la creation;
troisieme partie du vrai systeme 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 {294}
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 _Athenaeum_, 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. {295}



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."

{296}

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 {297} 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 {298} 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 {299} 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 {300} 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 {301} by fast-sailing
comets, and there was a remarkably full attendance. Among the visitors we
_observed_ several nebulae, 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 [alpha] and [delta] Ursae 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 {302} 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,
{303} 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 {304} 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 {305} 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 {306} 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 nebulae, 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.)

{307}



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.

    Description of the Universal Time-piece. (4pp. 12mo.)

I think this divine system was published several years before, and was
republished with an introduction in 1834.[663] Capt. Woodley was very sure
that the earth does not move: he pointed out to me, in a conversation I had
with him, something--I forget what--in the motion of the Great Bear,
visible to any eye, which could not possibly be if the earth moved. He was
exceedingly ignorant, as the following quotation from his account of the
usual opinion will show:

"The north pole of the Earth's axis deserts, they say, the north star or
pole of the Heavens, at the rate of 1 deg. in 713/4 years.... The fact is,
nothing can be more certain than that the Stars have not changed their
latitudes or declinations _one degree_ in the last 713/4 years."

This is a strong specimen of a class of men by whom all accessible persons
who have made any name in science are hunted. It is a pity that they cannot
be admitted into scientific societies, and allowed fairly to state their
cases, and stand quiet cross-examination, being kept in their answers very
close to the questions, and the answers written down. I am perfectly
satisfied that if one meeting in the year were devoted to the hearing of
those who chose to come forward on such conditions, much good would be
done. But I strongly suspect few would come forward {308} at first, and
none in a little while: and I have had some experience of the method I
recommend, privately tried. Capt. Woodley was proposed, a little after
1834, as a Fellow of the Astronomical Society; and, not caring whether he
moved the sun or the earth, or both--I could not have stood _neither_--I
signed the proposal. I always had a sneaking kindness for paradoxers, such
a one, perhaps, as Petit Andre had for his _lambs_, as he called them.
There was so little feeling against his opinions, that he only failed by a
fraction of a ball. Had I myself voted, he would have been elected; but
being engaged in conversation, and not having heard the slightest objection
to him, I did not think it worth while to cross the room for the purpose. I
regretted this at the time, but had I known how ignorant he was I should
not have supported him. Probably those who voted against him knew more of
his book than I did.

I remember no other instance of exclusion from a scientific society on the
ground of opinion, even if this be one; of which it may be that ignorance
had more to do with it than paradoxy. Mr. Frend,[664] a strong
anti-Newtonian, was a Fellow of the Astronomical Society, and for some
years in the Council. Lieut. Kerigan[665] was elected to the Royal Society
at a time when his proposers must have known that his immediate object was
to put F.R.S. on the title-page of a work against the tides. To give all I
know, I may add that the editor of some very ignorant bombast about the
"forehead of the solar sky," who did not know the difference between
_Bailly_[666] and _Baily_,[667] received hints which induced him to
withdraw his proposal for election into the Astronomical Society. But this
was an act of kindness; {309} for if he had seen Mr. Baily in the chair,
with his head on, he might have been political historian enough to faint
away.



    De la formation des Corps. Par Paul Laurent.[668] Nancy, 1834, 8vo.

Atoms, and ether, and ovules or eggs, which are planets, and their eggs,
which are satellites. These speculators can create worlds, in which they
cannot be refuted; but none of them dare attack the problem of a grain of
wheat, and its passage from a seed to a plant, bearing scores of seeds like
what it was itself.



ON JOHN FLAMSTEED.

    An account of the Rev. John Flamsteed,[669] the First
    Astronomer-Royal.... By Francis Baily,[670] Esq. London, 1835, 4to.
    Supplement, London, 1837, 4to.

My friend Francis Baily was a paradoxer: he brought forward things counter
to universal opinion. That Newton was impeccable in every point was the
national creed; and failings of temper and conduct would have been utterly
disbelieved, if the paradox had not come supported by very unusual
evidence. Anybody who impeached Newton on existing evidence might as well
have been squaring the circle, for any attention he would have got. About
this book I will tell a story. It was published by the Admiralty for
distribution; and the distribution was entrusted to Mr. Baily. On the eve
of its appearance, rumors of its extraordinary revelations got about, and
persons of influence applied to the Admiralty for copies. The Lords were in
a difficulty: but on looking at the list they saw names, as they {310}
thought, which were so obscure that they had a right to assume Mr. Baily
had included persons who had no claim to such a compliment as presentation
from the Admiralty. The Secretary requested Mr. Baily to call upon him.
"Mr. Baily, my Lords are inclined to think that some of the persons in this
list are perhaps not of that note which would justify their Lordships in
presenting this work."--"To whom does your observation apply, Mr.
Secretary?"--"Well, now, let us examine the list; let me see;
now,--now,--now,--come!--here's Gauss[671]--_who's Gauss_?"--"Gauss, Mr.
Secretary, is the oldest mathematician now living, and is generally thought
to be the greatest."--"O-o-oh! Well, Mr. Baily, we will see about it, and I
will write you a letter." The letter expressed their Lordships' perfect
satisfaction with the list.

There was a controversy about the revelations made in this work; but as the
eccentric anomalies took no part in it, there is nothing for my purpose.
The following valentine from Mrs. Flamsteed,[672] which I found among
Baily's papers, illustrates some of the points:

"3 Astronomers' Row, Paradise: February 14, 1836.

"Dear Sir,--I suppose you hardly expected to receive a letter from me,
dated from this place; but the truth is, a gentleman from our street was
appointed guardian angel to the American Treaty, in which there is some
astronomical question about boundaries. He has got leave to go back to
fetch some instruments which he left behind, and I take this opportunity of
making your acquaintance. That America has become a wonderful place since I
was down among you; you have no idea how grand the fire at New York {311}
looked up here. Poor dear Mr. Flamsteed does not know I am writing a letter
to a gentleman on Valentine's day; he is walked out with Sir Isaac Newton
(they are pretty good friends now, though they do squabble a little
sometimes) and Sir William Herschel, to see a new nebula. Sir Isaac says he
can't make out at all how it is managed; and I am sure I cannot help him. I
never bothered my head about those things down below, and I don't intend to
begin here.

"I have just received the news of your having written a book about my poor
dear man. It's a chance that I heard it at all; for the truth is, the
scientific gentlemen are somehow or other become so wicked, and go so
little to church, that very few of them are considered fit company for this
place. If it had not been for Dr. Brinkley,[673] who came here of course, I
should not have heard about it. He seems a nice man, but is not yet used to
our ways. As to Mr. Halley,[674] he is of course not here; which is lucky
for him, for Mr. Flamsteed swore the moment he caught him in a place where
there are no magistrates, he would make a sacrifice of him to heavenly
truth. It was very generous in Mr. F. not appearing against Sir Isaac when
he came up, for I am told that if he had, Sir Isaac would not have been
allowed to come in at all. I should have been sorry for that, for he is a
companionable man enough, only holds his head rather higher than he should
do. I met him the other day walking with Mr. Whiston,[675] and disputing
about the deluge. 'Well, Mrs. Flamsteed,' says he, 'does old Poke-the-Stars
understand gravitation yet?' Now you must know that is rather a sore point
with poor dear Mr. Flamsteed. He says that Sir Isaac is as crochetty about
the moon as ever; and as to {312} what some people say about what has been
done since his time, he says he should like to see somebody who knows
something about it of himself. For it is very singular that none of the
people who have carried on Sir Isaac's notions have been allowed to come
here.

"I hope you have not forgotten to tell how badly Sir Isaac used Mr.
Flamsteed about that book. I have never quite forgiven him; as for Mr.
Flamsteed, he says that as long as he does not come for observations, he
does not care about it, and that he will never trust him with any papers
again as long as he lives. I shall never forget what a rage he came home in
when Sir Isaac had called him a puppy. He struck the stairs all the way up
with his crutch, and said puppy at every step, and all the evening, as soon
as ever a star appeared in the telescope, he called it puppy. I could not
think what was the matter, and when I asked, he only called me puppy.

"I shall be very glad to see you if you come our way. Pray keep up some
appearances, and go to church a little. St. Peter is always uncommonly
civil to astronomers, and indeed to all scientific persons, and never
bothers them with many questions. If they can make anything out of the
case, he is sure to let them in. Indeed, he says, it is perfectly out of
the question expecting a mathematician to be as religious as an apostle,
but that it is as much as his place is worth to let in the greater number
of those who come. So try if you cannot manage it, for I am very curious to
know whether you found all the letters. I remain, dear sir, your faithful
servant,

"MARGARET FLAMSTEED.

  Francis Baily, Esq.

"P.S. Mr. Flamsteed has come in, and says he left Sir Isaac riding
cockhorse upon the nebula, and poring over it as if it were a book. He has
brought in his old acquaintance Ozanam,[676] who says that it was always
his maxim on {313} earth, that 'il appartient aux docteurs de Sorbonne de
disputer, au Pape de prononcer, et au mathematicien d'aller en Paradis en
ligne perpendiculaire.'"[677]



ON STEVIN.

The Secretary of the Admiralty was completely extinguished. I can recall
but two instances of demolition as complete, though no doubt there are many
others. The first is in

  Simon Stevin[678] and M. Dumortier. Nieuport, 1845, 12mo.

M. Dumortier was a member of the Academy of Brussels: there was a
discussion, I believe, about a national Pantheon for Belgium. The name of
Stevinus suggested itself as naturally as that of Newton to an Englishman;
probably no Belgian is better known to foreigners as illustrious in
science. Stevinus is great in the _Mecanique Analytique_ of Lagrange;[679]
Stevinus is great in the _Tristram Shandy_ of Sterne. M. Dumortier, who
believed that not one Belgian in a thousand knew Stevinus, and who
confesses with ironical shame that he was not the odd man, protested
against placing the statue of an obscure man in the Pantheon, to give
foreigners the notion that Belgium could show nothing greater. The work
above named is a slashing retort: any one who knows the history of science
ever so little may imagine what a dressing was given, by mere extract from
foreign writers. The tract is a letter signed J. du Fan, but this is a
pseudonym of Mr. Van de Weyer.[680] The Academician says Stevinus was a man
who was not {314} without merit for the time at which he lived: Sir! is the
answer, he was as much before his own time as you are behind yours. How
came a man who had never heard of Stevinus to be a member of the Brussels
Academy?

The second story was told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long
connected with the _Times_, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682]
When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a
stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in
that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a
gentleman?"--"Eh?"--"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding,
and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The bumpkin raised his
muscular figure on its feet, patted his menacer on the head, and said, very
quietly,--"Young man! I'm Cribb."[683] W*** seized the great pugilist's
hand, and shook it warmly, got him to his own rooms in college, collected
some friends, and had a symposium which lasted until the large end of the
small hours.



FINLEYSON AS A PARADOXER.

    God's Creation of the Universe as it is, in support of the Scriptures.
    By Mr. Finleyson.[684] Sixth Edition, 1835, 8vo.

{315}

This writer, by his own account, succeeded in delivering the famous Lieut.
Richard Brothers[685] from the lunatic asylum, and tending him, not as a
keeper but as a disciple, till he died. Brothers was, by his own account,
the nephew of the Almighty, and Finleyson ought to have been the nephew of
Brothers. For Napoleon came to him in a vision, with a broken sword and an
arrow in his side, beseeching help: Finleyson pulled out the arrow, but
refused to give a new sword; whereby poor Napoleon, though he got off with
life, lost the battle of Waterloo. This story was written to the Duke of
Wellington, ending with "I pulled out the arrow, but left the broken sword.
Your Grace can supply the rest, and what followed is amply recorded in
history." The book contains a long account of applications to Government to
do three things: to pay 2,000l. for care taken of Brothers, to pay 10,000l.
for discovery of the longitude, and to prohibit the teaching of the
Newtonian system, which makes God a liar. The successive administrations
were threatened that they would have to turn out if they refused, which, it
is remarked, came to pass in every case. I have heard of a joke of Lord
Macaulay, that the House of Commons must be the Beast of the Revelations,
since 658 members, with the officers necessary for the action of the House,
make 666. Macaulay read most things, and the greater part of the rest: so
that he might be suspected of having appropriated as a joke one of
Finleyson's serious points--"I wrote Earl Grey[686] upon the 13th of July,
1831, informing him that his Reform {316} Bill could not be carried, as it
reduced the members below the present amount of 658, which, with the eight
principal clerks or officers of the House, make the number 666." But a
witness has informed me that Macaulay's joke was made in his hearing a
great many years before the Reform Bill was proposed; in fact, when both
were students at Cambridge. Earl Grey was, according to Finleyson, a
descendant of Uriah the Hittite. For a specimen of Lieut. Brothers, this
book would be worth picking up. Perhaps a specimen of the Lieutenant's
poetry may be acceptable: Brothers _loquitur_, remember:

 "Jerusalem ! Jerusalem! shall be built again!
    More rich, more grand then ever;
  And through it shall Jordan flow!(!)
    My people's favourite river.
  There I'll erect a splendid throne,
    And build on the wasted place;
  To fulfil my ancient covenant
    To King David and his race.
      *    *    *    *    *    *
 "Euphrates' stream shall flow with ships,
    And also my wedded Nile;
  And on my coast shall cities rise,
    Each one distant but a mile.
      *    *    *    *    *    *
 "My friends the Russians on the north
    With Persees and Arabs round,
  Do show the limits of my land,
    Here! Here! then I mark the ground."



ON THEOLOGICAL PARADOXERS.

Among the paradoxers are some of the theologians who in their own organs of
the press venture to criticise science. These may hold their ground when
they confine themselves to the geology of long past periods and to general
cosmogony: for it is the tug of Greek against Greek; and both sides deal
much in what is grand when called _hypothesis_, petty when called
_supposition_. And very often they are not conspicuous when they venture
upon things within knowledge; {317} wrong, but not quite wrong enough for a
Budget of Paradoxes. One case, however, is destined to live, as an instance
of a school which finds writers, editors, and readers. The double stars
have been seen from the seventeenth century, and diligently observed by
many from the time of Wm. Herschel, who first devoted continuous attention
to them. The year 1836 was that of a remarkable triumph of astronomical
prediction. The theory of gravitation had been applied to the motion of
binary stars about each other, in elliptic orbits, and in that year the two
stars of [gamma] Virginis, as had been predicted should happen within a few
years of that time--for years are small quantities in such long
revolutions--the two stars came to their nearest: in fact, they appeared to
be one as much with the telescope as without it. This remarkable
turning-point of the history of a long and widely-known branch of astronomy
was followed by an article in the _Church of England Quarterly Review_ for
April 1837, written against the Useful Knowledge Society. The notion that
there are any such things as double stars is (p. 460) implied to be
imposture or delusion, as in the following extract. I suspect that I myself
am the _Sidrophel_, and that my companion to the maps of the stars, written
for the Society and published in 1836, is the work to which the writer
refers:

"We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that
the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles
at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence
of that competition in trade which the political economists tell us is so
advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior
telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such
wondrous mandarins of science, how continually must _homunculi_ like
ourselves keep in the background, lest we come between the wind and their
nobility."

If the _homunculus_ who wrote this be still above ground, {318} how
devoutly must he hope he may be able to keep in the background! But the
chief blame falls on the editor. The title of the article is:

"The new school of superficial pantology; a speech intended to be delivered
before a defunct Mechanics' Institute. By Swallow Swift, late M.P. for the
Borough of Cockney-Cloud, Witsbury: reprinted Balloon Island, Bubble year,
month _Ventose_. Long live Charlatan!"

As a rule, orthodox theologians should avoid humor, a weapon which all
history shows to be very difficult to employ in favor of establishment, and
which, nine times out of ten, leaves its wielder fighting on the side of
heterodoxy. Theological argument, when not enlivened by bigotry, is seldom
worse than narcotic: but theological fun, when not covert heresy, is almost
always sialagogue. The article in question is a craze, which no editor
should have admitted, except after severe inspection by qualified persons.
The author of this wit committed a mistake which occurs now and then in old
satire, the confusion between himself and the party aimed at. He ought to
be reviewing this fictitious book, but every now and then the article
becomes the book itself; not by quotation, but by the writer forgetting
that _he_ is not Mr. Swallow Swift, but his reviewer. In fact he and Mr. S.
Swift had each had a dose of the _Devil's Elixir_. A novel so called,
published about forty years ago, proceeds upon a legend of this kind. If
two parties both drink of the elixir, their identities get curiously
intermingled; each turns up in the character of the other throughout the
three volumes, without having his ideas clear as to whether he be himself
or the other. There is a similar confusion in the answer made to the famous
_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_:[687] it is headed _Lamentationes Obscurorum
Virorum_.[688] {319} This is not a retort of the writer, throwing back the
imputation: the obscure men who had been satirized are themselves made, by
name, to wince under the disapprobation which the Pope had expressed at the
satire upon themselves.

Of course the book here reviewed is a transparent forgery. But I do not
know how often it may have happened that the book, in the journals which
always put a title at the head, may have been written after the review.
About the year 1830 a friend showed me the proof of an article of his on
the malt tax, for the next number of the _Edinburgh Review_. Nothing was
wanting except the title of the book reviewed; I asked what it was. He sat
down, and wrote as follows at the head, "The Maltster's Guide (pp. 124),"
and said that would do as well as anything.

But I myself, it will be remarked, have employed such humor as I can
command "in favor of establishment." What it is worth I am not to judge; as
usual in such cases, those who are of my cabal pronounce it good, but
cyclometers and other paradoxers either call it very poor, or commend it as
sheer buffoonery. Be it one or the other, I observe that all the effective
ridicule is, in this subject, on the side of establishment. This is partly
due to the difficulty of quizzing plain and sober demonstration; but so
much, if not more, to the ignorance of the paradoxers. For that which
cannot be _ridiculed_, can be _turned into ridicule_ by those who know how.
But by the time a person is deep enough in _negative_ quantities, and
_impossible_ quantities, to be able to satirize them, he is caught, and
being inclined to become a _user_, shrinks from being an _abuser_. Imagine
a person with a gift of ridicule, and knowledge enough, trying his hand on
the junction of the assertions which he will find in various books of
algebra. First, that a negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly, that a
{320} negative quantity has no square root; thirdly, that the first
non-existent is to the second as the circumference of a circle to its
diameter. One great reason of the allowance of such unsound modes of
expression is the confidence felt by the writers that [root]-1 and log(-1)
will make their way, however inaccurately described. I heartily wish that
the cyclometers had knowledge enough to attack the weak points of
algebraical diction: they would soon work a beneficial change.[689]



AN EARLY METEOROLOGIST.

    Recueil de ma vie, mes ouvrages et mes pensees. Par Thomas Ignace Marie
    Forster.[690] Brussels, 1836, 12mo.

Mr. Forster, an Englishman settled at Bruges, was an observer in many
subjects, but especially in meteorology. He communicated to the
Astronomical Society, in 1848, the information that, in the registers kept
by his grandfather, his father, and himself, beginning in 1767, new moon on
Saturday was followed, nineteen times out of twenty, by twenty days of rain
and wind. This statement being published in the _Athenaeum_, a cluster of
correspondents averred that the belief is common among seamen, in all parts
of the world, and among landsmen too. Some one quoted a distich:

 "Saturday's moon and Sunday's full
  Never were fine and never _wull_."

{321} Another brought forward:

 "If a Saturday's moon
  Comes once in seven years it comes too soon."

Mr. Forster did not say he was aware of the proverbial character of the
phenomenon. He was a very eccentric man. He treated his dogs as friends,
and buried them with ceremony. He quarrelled with the _cure_ of his parish,
who remarked that he could not take his dogs to heaven with him. I will go
nowhere, said he, where I cannot take my dog. He was a sincere Catholic:
but there is a point beyond which even churches have no influence.

The following is some account of the announcement of 1849. The _Athenaeum_
(Feb. 17), giving an account of the meeting of the Astronomical Society in
December, 1858, says:

"Dr. Forster of Bruges, who is well known as a meteorologist, made a
communication at which our readers will stare: he declares that by journals
of the weather kept by his grandfather, father, and himself, ever since
1767, to the present time, _whenever the new moon has fallen on a Saturday,
the following twenty days have been wet and windy_, in nineteen cases out
of twenty. In spite of our friend Zadkiel[691] and the others who declare
that we would smother every truth that does not happen to agree with us, we
are glad to see that the Society had the sense to publish this
communication, coming, as it does, from a veteran observer, and one whose
love of truth is undoubted. It must be that the fact is so set down in the
journals, because Dr. Forster says it: and whether it be only a fact of the
journals, or one of the heavens, can soon be tried. The new moon of March
next, falls on _Saturday_ the 24th, at 2 in the afternoon. We shall
certainly look out."

{322}

The following appeared in the number of March 31:

"The first _Saturday Moon_ since Dr. Forster's announcement came off a week
ago. We had previously received a number of letters from different
correspondents--all to the effect that the notion of new moon on Saturday
bringing wet weather is one of widely extended currency. One correspondent
(who gives his name) states that he has constantly heard it at sea, and
among the farmers and peasantry in Scotland, Ireland, and the North of
England. He proceeds thus: 'Since 1826, nineteen years of the time I have
spent in a seafaring life. I have constantly observed, though unable to
account for, the phenomenon. I have also heard the stormy qualities of a
Saturday's moon remarked by American, French, and Spanish seamen; and,
still more distant, a Chinese pilot, who was once doing duty on board my
vessel seemed to be perfectly cognizant of the fact.' So that it seems we
have, in giving currency to what we only knew as a very curious
communication from an earnest meteorologist, been repeating what is common
enough among sailors and farmers. Another correspondent affirms that the
thing is most devoutly believed in by seamen; who would as soon sail on a
Friday as be in the Channel after a Saturday moon.--After a tolerable
course of dry weather, there was some snow, accompanied by wind on Saturday
last, here in London; there were also heavy louring clouds. Sunday was
cloudy and cold, with a little rain; Monday was louring, Tuesday unsettled;
Wednesday quite overclouded, with rain in the morning. The present occasion
shows only a general change of weather with a tendency towards rain. If Dr.
Forster's theory be true, it is decidedly one of the minor instances, as
far as London weather is concerned.--It will take a good deal of evidence
to make us believe in the omen of a Saturday Moon. But, as we have said of
the Poughkeepsie Seer, the thing is very curious whether true or false.
Whence comes this universal proverb--and a hundred others--while the
meteorological observer {323} cannot, when he puts down a long series of
results, detect any weather cycles at all? One of our correspondents wrote
us something of a lecture for encouraging, he said, the notion that _names_
could influence the weather. He mistakes the question. If there be any
weather cycles depending on the moon, it is possible that one of them may
be so related to the week cycle of seven days, as to show recurrences which
are of the kind stated, or any other. For example, we know that if the new
moon of March fall on a Saturday in this year, it will most probably fall
on a Saturday nineteen years hence. This is not connected with the spelling
of Saturday--but with the connection between the motions of the sun and
moon. Nothing but the Moon can settle the question--and we are willing to
wait on her for further information. If the adage be true, then the
philosopher has missed what lies before his eyes; if false, then the world
can be led by the nose in spite of the eyes. Both these things happen
sometimes; and we are willing to take whichever of the two solutions is
borne out by future facts. In the mean time, we announce the next Saturday
Moon for the 18th of August."

How many coincidences are required to establish a law of connection? It
depends on the way in which the mind views the matter in question. Many of
the paradoxers are quite set up by a very few instances. I will now tell a
story about myself, and then ask them a question.

So far as instances can prove a law, the following is proved: no failure
has occurred. Let a clergyman be known to me, whether by personal
acquaintance or correspondence, or by being frequently brought before me by
those with whom I am connected in private life: that clergyman does not,
except in few cases, become a bishop; but _if_ he become a bishop, he is
sure, first or last, to become an arch-bishop. This has happened in every
case. As follows:

1. My last schoolmaster, a former Fellow of Oriel, was {324} a very
intimate college friend of Richard Whately[692], a younger man. Struck by
his friend's talents, he used to talk of him perpetually, and predict his
future eminence. Before I was sixteen, and before Whately had even given
his Bampton Lectures, I was very familiar with his name, and some of his
sayings. I need not say that he became Archbishop of Dublin.

2. When I was a child, a first cousin of John Bird Sumner[693] married a
sister of my mother. I cannot remember the time when I first heard his
name, but it was made very familiar to me. In time he became Bishop of
Chester, and then, Archbishop of Canterbury. My reader may say that Dr.
C. R. Sumner,[694] Bishop of Winchester, has just as good a claim: but it
is not so: those connected with me had more knowledge of Dr. J. B.
Sumner;[695] and said nothing, or next to nothing, of the other. Rumor says
that the Bishop of Winchester has _declined_ an Archbishopric: if so, my
rule is a rule of gradations.

3. Thomas Musgrave,[696] Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was _Dean_
of the college when I was an undergraduate: this brought me into connection
with him, he giving impositions for not going to chapel, I writing them out
according. We had also friendly intercourse in after life; I forgiving, he
probably forgetting. Honest Tom {325} Musgrave, as he used to be called,
became Bishop of Hereford, and Archbishop of York.

4. About the time when I went to Cambridge, I heard a great deal about Mr.
C. T. Longley,[697] of Christchurch, from a cousin of my own of the same
college, long since deceased, who spoke of him much, and most
affectionately. Dr. Longley passed from Durham to York, and thence to
Canterbury. I cannot quite make out the two Archbishoprics; I do not
remember any other private channel through which the name came to me:
perhaps Dr. Longley, having two strings to his bow, would have been one
archbishop if I had never heard of him.

5. When Dr. Wm. Thomson[698] was appointed to the see of Gloucester in
1861, he and I had been correspondents on the subject of logic--on which we
had both written--for about fourteen years. On his elevation I wrote to
him, giving the preceding instances, and informing him that he would
certainly be an Archbishop. The case was a strong one, and the law acted
rapidly; for Dr. Thomson's elevation to the see of York took place in 1862.

Here are five cases; and there is no opposing instance. I have searched the
almanacs since 1828, and can find no instance of a Bishop not finally
Archbishop of whom I had known through private sources, direct or indirect.
Now what do my paradoxers say? Is this a pre-established harmony, or a
chain of coincidences? And how many instances will it require to establish
a law?[699]

{326}



THE HERSCHEL HOAX.

    Some account of the great astronomical discoveries lately made by Sir
    John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope. Second Edition. London, 12mo.
    1836.

This is a curious hoax, evidently written by a person versed in astronomy
and clever at introducing probable circumstances and undesigned
coincidences.[700] It first appeared in a newspaper. It makes Sir J.
Herschel discover men, animals, etc. in the moon, of which much detail is
give