The purely casual coincidence, from which there is no escape except the actual doctrine of special providences, carried down to a very low point of special intention, requires a junction of the things the like of each of which is always happening. I will give three instances which have occurred to myself within the last few years: I solemnly vouch for the literal truth of every part of all three:
In August 1861, M. Senarmont,[[93]] of the French Institute, wrote to me to the effect that Fresnel[[94]] had sent to England, in or shortly after 1824, a paper for translation and insertion in the European Review, which shortly afterwards expired. The question was what had become of that paper. I examined the Review at the Museum, found no trace of the paper, and wrote back to that effect at the Museum, adding that everything now depended on ascertaining the name of the editor, and tracing his papers: of this I thought there was no chance. I posted this letter on my way home, at a Post Office in the Hampstead Road at the junction with Edward Street, on the opposite side of which is a bookstall. Lounging for a moment over the exposed books, sicut meus est mos,[[95]] I saw, within a few minutes of the posting of the letter, a little catch-penny book of anecdotes of Macaulay, which I bought, and ran over for a minute. My eye was soon caught by this sentence: "One of the young fellows immediately wrote to the editor (Mr. Walker)
of the European Review." I thus got the clue by which I ascertained that there was no chance of recovering Fresnel's paper. Of the mention of current reviews, not one in a thousand names the editor.
In the summer of 1865 I made my first acquaintance with the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the first I read was about the siege of Boston in the War of Independence. I could not make it out: everybody seemed to have got into somebody else's place. I was beginning the second tale, when a parcel arrived: it was a lot of old pamphlets and other rubbish, as he called it, sent by a friend who had lately sold his books, had not thought it worth while to send these things for sale, but thought I might like to look at them and possibly keep some. The first thing I looked at was a sheet which, being opened, displayed "A plan of Boston and its environs, shewing the true situation of his Majesty's army and also that of the rebels, drawn by an engineer, at Boston Oct. 1775." Such detailed plans of current sieges being then uncommon, it is explained that "The principal part of this plan was surveyed by Richard Williams, Lieutenant at Boston; and sent over by the son of a nobleman to his father in town, by whose permission it was published." I immediately saw that my confusion arose from my supposing that the king's troops were besieging the rebels, when it was just the other way.
April 1, 1853, while engaged in making some notes on a logical point, an idea occurred which was perfectly new to me, on the mode of conciliating the notions omnipresence and indivisibility into parts. What it was is no matter here: suffice it that, since it was published elsewhere (in a paper on Infinity, Camb. Phil. Trans. vol. xi. p. 1) I have not had it produced to me. I had just finished a paragraph on the subject, when a parcel came in from a bookseller containing Heywood's[[96]] Analysis of Kant's Critick, 1844.
On turning over the leaves I found (p. 109) the identical thought which up to this day, I only know as in my own paper, or in Kant. I feel sure I had not seen it before, for it is in Kant's first edition, which was never translated to my knowledge; and it does not appear in the later editions. Mr. Heywood gives some account of the first edition.
In the broadsheet which gave account of the dying scene of Charles II, it is said that the Roman Catholic priest was introduced by P. M. A. C. F. The chain was this: the Duchess of Portsmouth[[97]] applied to the Duke of York, who may have consulted his Cordelier confessor, Mansuete, about procuring a priest, and the priest was smuggled into the king's room by the Duchess and Chiffinch.[[98]] Now the letters are a verbal acrostic of Père Mansuete a Cordelier Friar, and a syllabic acrostic of PortsMouth and ChifFinch. This is a singular coincidence. Macaulay adopted the first interpretation, preferring it to the second, which I brought before him as the conjecture of a near relative of my own. But Mansuete is not mentioned in his narrative: it may well be doubted whether the writer of a broadside for English readers would use Père instead of Father. And the person who really "reminded" the Duke of "the duty he owed to his brother," was the Duchess and not Mansuete. But my affair is only with the coincidence.
But there are coincidences which are really connected without the connection being known to those who find in them matter of astonishment. Presentiments furnish marked cases: sometimes there is no mystery to those who have the clue. In the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. 80, part 2, p. 33) we read, the subject being presentiment of death, as follows: "In 1778, to come nearer the recollection of
survivors, at the taking of Pondicherry, Captain John Fletcher, Captain De Morgan, and Lieutenant Bosanquet, each distinctly foretold his own death on the morning of his fate." I have no doubt of all three; and I knew it of my grandfather long before I read the above passage. He saw that the battery he commanded was unduly exposed: I think by the sap running through the fort when produced. He represented this to the engineer officers, and to the commander-in-chief; the engineers denied the truth of the statement, the commander believed them, my grandfather quietly observed that he must make his will, and the French fulfilled his prediction. His will bore date the day of his death; and I always thought it more remarkable than the fulfilment of the prophecy that a soldier should not consider any danger short of one like the above, sufficient reason to make his will. I suppose the other officers were similarly posted. I am told that military men very often defer making their wills until just before an action: but to face the ordinary risks intestate, and to wait until speedy death must be the all but certain consequence of a stupid mistake, is carrying the principle very far. In the matter of coincidences there are, as in other cases, two wonderful extremes with every intermediate degree. At one end we have the confident people who can attribute anything to casual coincidence; who allow Zadok Imposture and Nathan Coincidence to anoint Solomon Selfconceit king. At the other end we have those who see something very curious in any coincidence you please, and whose minds yearn for a deep reason. A speculator of this class happened to find that Matthew viii. 28-33 and Luke viii. 26-33 contain the same account, that of the demons entering into the swine. Very odd! chapters tallying, and verses so nearly: is the versification rightly managed? Examination is sure to show that there are monstrous inconsistencies in the mode of division, which being corrected, the verses tally as well as the chapters. And then how comes it? I cannot go on,