OBSERVATION.
Flattery is often the guide to destruction.—It is the first rudiment which man attends to with success, and the first lesson he repeats to gain our affections; too often, my fair friends, you give ear to it, and suffer your hearts to be enslaved for encomiums which your mirror tell you are false.
THE FARRAGO.
Nº. V.
Our youth, proficients in a NOBLE art,
Divide a farthing to the hundredth part.
Well done, my boy, the joyful father cries,
Addition and Subtraction make us wise.
Francis.
It would scarcely inform my readers to assure them, that, when I was at College, my mathematical tutor shook his head, and dubbed me a stupid fellow. Whatever stress might be laid on the multiplication and pence tables by the sedate shop-keepers of State-street and Cornhill, it always appeared to me that a scholar could attain the object of his mission to the university, without any assistance from the four first rules. Hence, I was more ashamed to be surprised solving a sum in Pike, than a reputed virgin would be to have the unchaste poems of Rochester plucked from her pillow. I contented myself with studying the ways of men and the works of Roman and English wits, without gaping with a foolish face of wonder, when told of the “Square of the Hypothenuse,” and the miracles that compound interest would perform in a term of years. Geometrical progression was not half so delightful to me as vehicular progression in a crazy Charlestown-car. That portion of arithmetic among merchants called fellowship, or company, I left to them to ascertain their shares of a cargo of sugar and molasses by; while the rules of good fellowship I made familiar both to my conception and practice. In fine, those of my prudent friends who observed the lankness of my purse, long before the expiration of a College term, merrily remarked, that REDUCTION was the only part of arithmetic in which I made a figure.
This avowed neglect of a darling study, so offended the lovers of straight lines, that every moment they could steal from their diagrams they employed in prognosticating my future fortune. They would sketch on the paper covers of Euclid perspective views of my dilapidated estate; and by rhombus, rhomboid, and trapezium, barbarous terms, such as are “a misery to hear,” they would conjure away my goods and chattles. Those, who descending from the heights of abstraction, condescended to become mere mortals again, and to converse upon sublunary topics, were continually quoting and applying to me that elegant adage “of bringing one’s noble to a nine-pence,” &c. In vain I endeavoured to defend my practice, and to apologize for my disbelief in Euclid’s infallibility. In vain I suggested, that many of the brightest geniuses successfully clambered up the rugged steeps of Fame, without employing the nine digits, as pioneers, to smooth the way: that Shakespeare, with whom, as Cicero observes of Plato, I would rather err, than think right with all the philosophers, was not only a novice in the doctrine of “nought and carry one,” but frankly indulges a laugh of contempt at computation:—that in Othello, when Iago informs his Venitian dupe of Cassio’s unjust preferment to a lieutenancy, and is asked “what is he?” the contemptuous response is “forsooth a great arithmetician!” That in Love’s Labour Lost, a pert page demands of Armado “how many is one thrice told?” the solemn knight replies “I am ill at reckoning, it fits the spirit of a tapster:” that Lord Lyttleton the elder, a man of business, emphasizing the phrase, honoured by his prince with a place in the exchequer and in the department of finance, could not, as we are assured by his son, count twenty pounds in different British coins; that the Dean of St. Patrick’s, whose sterling sense and humour has pleased and informed men more than all the works of all the mathematicians, employed eight hours in a day in reading historians and poets, and composing the Tale of a Tub, and was refused by the university of Dublin, a degree, because he lampooned Locke and derided the ærial speculations of a mathematician. All these shining examples, like Haman’s prosperity, “availed me nothing,” and the sticklers for science told me that I could not give directions to a carpenter without understanding—how shall I write so unpoetical a word—without understanding parallelograms.
Having thus far, in jocular phrase, discussed this grave subject, I now seriously declare, it is not my wish to abrogate any branches of this recondite science. I am not possessed with such a Quixotish spirit of innovation, as to desire all concerned forthwith to make proclamation for mathematics and cousin german arithmetic to depart; but good-naturedly to deride that mode of education, which neglecting, or partially studying, eloquence, poetry, history, the classics, and the world, devotes long and exclusive attention to things abstracted and foreign from men’s business and bosoms. That great and universal scholar, Dr. Johnson, whose authority is of no trivial weight, decisively pronounces that this science and the knowledge which it requires and includes, is not the great and frequent business of life. It is of rare emergence. We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. One may live long with a man and not discern his skill in hydrostatics, or astronomy, but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. The rigid Knox, who is a strenuous advocate for the severest school discipline, confesses, that a man may be very liberally educated, without much skill in this branch of learning. I remember reading, not many years since, a preface of Dr. Cheyne’s to one of his medical tracts, wherein, after describing his devotion to triangles, &c. he pathetically deplores his waste of time, and adds, “that in these exquisitely bewitching speculations, gentlemen of liberal leisure may riot; but for men of general learning, business, and the world, they are too empty and ærial.” My readers will perhaps yawn at these multiplied citations; but this is a science, supported so much by authority and opinion, that I must oppose it with equal arms.
We are magisterially told that this study, of all others, most closely fixes the attention. An argument shallow, untrue, and easily vanquished. Any object that engrosses the mind, will induce a habit of attention. Now I can warrantably assert, that a description from Virgil, a scene from Shakespeare, Robertson’s narrative of the decollation of Mary, or any striking passage from authors of polite literature, will accomplish this purpose. Why should the demonstrations of Euclid arrogate this honour to themselves? Have they an exclusive privilege of enchanting the mind, or are they invested with a talismanic charm by which attention is at once conjured into mathematical circles? Addison wondered how rational beings could for hours play with painted bits of paper; but he was manifestly a novice in whist, a game which, regularly played, is an unremitting exercise of two of the noblest intellectual powers, memory and judgment. The acute Hume, when jaded with metaphysical research, invigorated his powers with a cheerful RUBBER. From a fashionable amusement he derived that benefit which the worshippers of Euclid would confine to their God. In fine, a mere mathematician, without being a more cogent reasoner, is less learned, less eloquent, and less courtly than the Beauclercs, whose superficial talents he contemns. He is a solemn, absent, unaccommodating mortal. Better therefore to imitate Cardinal de Retz and Chesterfield; better to study the useful and the pleasant, than to dream away life over the symbols and negative quantities of algebra.
I proposed to animadvert next on the influence that arithmetical minutiæ gradually obtained over the heart. I was about adventuring to censure even the great Dr. Franklin, for insisting too much upon the mint, annise, and cummin of computation. I wished to brand avarice, and to deny the doctrine of “uttermost farthings.” But I recollected that every penurious parent, who prescribes as a horn-book lesson to his son, that “scoundrel maxim” a penny saved is a penny got, would cry—shame! The world, quoth prudence, will not bear it; ’tis a penny getting, pound hoarding world—I yielded; and shelter myself in my garret against that mob of misers and worldlings I see gathering to hoot me.