To return to Place. He is a noted instance of the advantage of our jury system, which never asks a man's politics, etc. The late King of Hanover, when Duke of Cumberland, being unpopular, was brought under unjust suspicions by the suicide of his valet: he must have seduced the wife and murdered the husband. The charges were as absurd as those brought against the Englishman in the Frenchman's attempt at satirical verses upon him:
"The Englishman is a very bad man;
He drink the beer and he steal the can:
He kiss the wife and he beat the man;
And the Englishman is a very G—— d——."
The charges were revived in a much later day, and the defense might have given some trouble. But Place, who had been the foreman at the inquest, came forward, and settled the question in a few lines. Every one knew that the old Radical was quite free of all disposition to suppress truth from wish to curry favor with royalty.
John Speed,[[453]] the author of the English History,[[454]] (1632) which Bishop Nicolson[[455]] calls the best chronicle extant, was a man, like Place, of no education, but what he gave himself. The bishop says he would have done better if he had a better training: but what, he adds, could have been expected from a tailor! This Speed was, as well as Place. But he was
released from manual labor by Sir Fulk Grevil,[[456]] who enabled him to study.
A STORY ON SIMSON.
I have elsewhere noticed that those who oppose the mysteries of algebra do not ridicule them; this I want the cyclometers to do. Of the three who wrote against the great point, the negative quantity, and the uses of 0 which are connected with it, only one could fire a squib. That Robert Simson[[457]] should do such a thing will be judged impossible by all who admit tradition. I do not vouch for the following; I give it as a proof of the impression which prevailed about him: