Montucla was nothing of a bibliographer, and his descriptions of books in the first edition were insufficient. The Abbé Rive[[349]] fell foul of him, and as the phrase is, gave it him. Montucla took it with great good humor, tried to mend, and, in his second edition, wished his critic had lived to see the vernis de bibliographe which he had given himself.
I have seen Montucla set down as an esprit fort, more than once: wrongly, I think. When he mentions Barrow's[[350]] address to the Almighty, he adds, "On voit, au reste, par là, que Barrow étoit un pauvre philosophe; car il croyait en l'immortalité de l'âme, et en une Divinité autre que la nature
universelle."[[351]] This is irony, not an expression of opinion. In the book of mathematical recreations which Montucla constructed upon that of Ozanam,[[352]] and Ozanam upon that of Van Etten,[[353]] now best known in England by Hutton's similar treatment of Montucla, there is an amusing chapter on the quadrators. Montucla refers to his own anonymous book of 1754 as a curious book published by Jombert.[[354]] He seems to have been a little ashamed of writing about circle-squarers: what a slap on the face for an unborn Budgeteer!
Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three notions prevalent among the cyclometers: (1) that there is a large reward offered for success; (2) that the longitude problem depends on that success; (3) that the solution is the great end and object of geometry. The same three
notions are equally prevalent among the same class in England. No reward has ever been offered by the government of either country. The longitude problem in no way depends upon perfect solution; existing approximations are sufficient to a point of accuracy far beyond what can be wanted.[[355]] And geometry, content with what exists, has long passed on to other matters. Sometimes a cyclometer persuades a skipper who has made land in the wrong place that the astronomers are in fault, for using a wrong measure of the circle; and the skipper thinks it a very comfortable solution! And this is the utmost that the problem ever has to do with longitude.
ANTINEWTONIANISMUS.
Antinewtonianismus.[[356]] By Cælestino Cominale,[[357]] M.D. Naples, 1754 and 1756, 2 vols. 4to.
The first volume upsets the theory of light; the second vacuum, vis inertiæ, gravitation, and attraction. I confess I never attempted these big Latin volumes, numbering 450 closely-printed quarto pages. The man who slays Newton in a pamphlet is the man for me. But I will lend them to anybody who will give security, himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each, that he will read them through, and give a full abstract; and I will not exact security for their return. I have never seen any mention of this book: it has a printer, but not a publisher, as happens with so many unrecorded books.
OFFICIAL BLOW TO CIRCLE SQUARERS.