[520] Gaetano Rossi of Catanzaro. This was the libretto writer (1772-1855), and hence the imperfections of the work can better be condoned. De Morgan should have given a little more of the title: Solusione esatta e regolare ... del ... problema della quadratura del circolo. There was a second edition, London, 1805.
[521] This identifies Rossi, for Joséphine Grassini (1773-1850) was a well-known contralto, prima donna at Napoleon's court opera.
[522] William Spence (1783-1860) was an entomologist and economist of some standing, a fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the founders of the Entomological Society of London. The work here mentioned was a popular one, the first edition appearing in 1807, and four editions being justified in a single year. He also wrote Agriculture the Source of Britain's Wealth (1808) and Objections against the Corn Bill refuted (1815), besides a work in four volumes on entomology (1815-1826) in collaboration with William Kirby.
[523] "That used to be so, but we have changed all that."
[524] "Meet the coming disease."
[525] George Douglas (or Douglass) was a Scotch writer. He got out an edition of the Elements of Euclid in 1776, with an appendix on trigonometry and a set of tables. His work on Mathematical Tables appeared in 1809, and his Art of Drawing in Perspective, from mathematical principles, in 1810.
[526] See note [443], on page [197].
[527] John Playfair (1748-1848) was professor of mathematics (1785) and natural philosophy (1805) at the University of Edinburgh. His Elements of Geometry went through many editions.
[528] "Tell Apella" was an expression current in classical Rome to indicate incredulity and to show the contempt in which the Jew was held. Horace says: Credat Judæus Apella, "Let Apella the Jew believe it." Our "Tell it to the marines," is a similar phrase.
[529] As De Morgan says two lines later, "No mistake is more common than the natural one of imagining that the"—University of Virginia is at Richmond. The fact is that it is not there, and that it did not exist in 1810. It was not chartered until 1819, and was not opened until 1825, and then at Charlottesville. The act establishing the Central College, from which the University of Virginia developed, was passed in 1816. The Jean Wood to whom De Morgan refers was one John Wood who was born about 1775 in Scotland and who emigrated to the United States in 1800. He published a History of the Administration of J. Adams (New York, 1802) that was suppressed by Aaron Burr. This act called forth two works, a Narrative of the Suppression, by Col. Burr, of the 'History of the Administration of John Adams' (1802), in which Wood was sustained; and the Antidote to John Wood's Poison (1802), in which he was attacked. The work referred to in the "printed circular" may have been the New theory of the diurnal rotation of the earth (Richmond, Va., 1809). Wood spent the last years of his life in Richmond, Va., making county maps. He died there in 1822. A careful search through works relating to the University of Virginia fails to show that Wood had any connection with it.