Accordingly, * * * was withdrawn, and a discussion took place, for which see the Athenæum, No. 1126, May 26, 1849, p. 544. The Mechanics' Magazine was very sore, but up to this day has never ventured beyond an attack on Airy, private whisperings against Adams—(see ante, p. 147),—and the above against myself. In due time, I doubt not my name will appear as one of the âmes damnées[[266]] of the Mechanics' Magazine.[[267]]
T. S. DAVIES ON EUCLID.
First, as to Mr. Halliwell. The late Thomas Stephens Davies,[[268]] excellent in geometry, and most learned in its history, was also a good hand at enmity, though not implacable. He and Mr. Halliwell, who had long before been very much one, were, at this date, very much two. I do not think T. S. Davies wrote this article; and I think that by giving my reasons I shall do service to his memory. It must have been written at the beginning of February; and within three days of that time T. S. Davies was making over to me, by his own free act, to be kept until claimed by the relatives, what all who knew even his writings knew that he considered as the most precious deposit he had ever had in his keeping—Horner's[[269]] papers. His letter announcing the transmission is dated February 2, 1850. This is a strong point; but there is another quite as strong. Euclid and
his writings were matters on which T. S. Davies knew neither fear nor favor: he could not have written lightly about a man who stood high with him as a judge of Euclid. Now in this very letter of Feb. 2, there is a sentence which I highly value, because, as aforesaid, it is on a point on which he would never have yielded anything, to which he had paid life-long attention, and on which he had the bias of having long stood alone. In fact, knowing—and what I shall quote confirms me,—that in the matter of Euclid his hand was against every man, I expected, when I sent him a copy of my 22-column article, "Eucleides" in Smith's Dictionary,[[270]] to have received back a criticism, that would have blown me out of the water: and I thought it not unlikely that a man so well up in the subject might have made me feel demolished on some points. Instead of this, I got the following: "Although on one or two minor points I do not quite accord with your views, yet as a whole and without regard to any minor points, I think you are the first who has succeeded in a delineation of Euclid as a geometer." All this duly considered, it is utterly incredible that T. S. Davies should have written the review in question. And yet Mr. Halliwell is treated just as T. S. Davies would have treated him, as to tone and spirit. The inference in my mind is that we have here a marked instance of the joining of hatreds which takes place in journals supported by voluntary contributions of matter. Should anything ever have revived this article—and no one ever knows what might have been fished up from the forgotten mass of journals—the treatment of Mr. Halliwell would certainly have thrown a suspicion on T. S. Davies, a large and regular contributor to the Magazine. It is good service to his memory to point out what makes it incredible that he should have written so unworthy an article.
The fault is this. There are four extracts: the first
three are perfectly well printed. The printing of the Mechanics' Magazine was very good. I was always exceedingly satisfied with the manner in which my articles appeared, without my seeing proof. Most likely these extracts were printed from my printed paper; if not the extractor was a good copier. I know this by a test which has often served me. I use the subjunctive—"if no man have done nothing," an ordinary transcriber, narrating a quotation almost always lets his own habit write has. The fourth extract has three alterations, all tending to make me ridiculous. None is altered, in two places, into nine, denial into decimal, and comes into aims; so that "none, the denial of one, comes to be associated with the denial of plurality," reads as "nine, the decimal of one, aims to be associated with the decimal of plurality." This is intentional; had it been a compositor's reading of bad handwriting, these would not have been the only mistakes; to say nothing of the corrector of the press. And both the compositor and reader would have guessed, from the first line being translated into "one is not one," that it must have been "one's none," not "one's nine." But it was not intended that the gem should be recovered from the unfathomed cave, and set in a Budget of Paradoxes.
We have had plenty of slander-paradox. I now give a halfpennyworth of bread to all this sack, an instance of the paradox of benevolence, in which an individual runs counter to all the ideas of his time, and sees his way into the next century. At Amiens, at the end of the last century, an institution was endowed by a M. de Morgan, to whom I hope I am of kin, but I cannot trace it; the name is common at Amiens. It was the first of the kind I ever heard of. It is a Salle d'Asyle for children, who are taught and washed and taken care of during the hours in which their parents must be at work. The founder was a large wholesale grocer and colonial importer, who was made a Baron by Napoleon I for his commercial success and his charities.
JAS. SMITH AGAIN.
1862. Mr. Smith replies to me, still signing himself Nauticus: I give an extract: