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.
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
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
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 Athenæum 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.