Every contraband prophet gets a few followers: it is a great point to make these sequacious people into Buridan's asses, which they will become when prophets are so numerous that there is no choosing.
SIR G. C. LEWIS.
An historical survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. By the Rt. Hon. Sir G. C. Lewis.[[282]] 8vo. 1862.
There are few men of our day whom I admire more than the late Sir G. Lewis: he was honest, earnest, sagacious, learned, and industrious. He probably sacrificed his life to his conjunction of literature and politics: and he stood high as a minister of state in addition to his character as a man of letters. The work above named is of great value, and will be read for its intrinsic merit, consulted for its crowd of valuable references, quoted for its aid to one side of many a discussion, and opposed for its force against the other. Its author was also a wit and a satirist. I know of three classical satires of our day which are inimitable imitations: Mr. Malden's[[283]] Pragmatized Legends, Mr. Mansel's[[284]] Phrontisterion, and Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's Inscriptio Antiqua. In this last, HEYDIDDLEDIDDLETHECATANDTHEFIDDLE etc. is treated as an Oscan inscription, and rendered into Latin by approved methods. As few readers have seen it, I give the result:
"Hejus dedit libenter, dedit libenter. Deus propitius [est], deus [donatori] libenter favet. Deus in viarum juncturâ ovorum dape [colitur], deus mundi. Deus in litatione voluit, benigno animo, hædum, taurum intra fines [loci sacri] portandos. Deus, bis lustratus, beat fossam sacræ libationis."[[285]]
How then comes the history of astronomy among the paradoxes? Simply because the author, so admirably when writing about what he knew, did not know what he did not know, and blundered like a circle-squarer. And why should the faults of so good a writer be recorded in such a list as the present? For three reasons: First, and foremost, because if the exposure be not made by some one, the errors will gradually ooze out, and the work will get the character of inaccurate. Nothing hurts a book of which few can fathom the depths so much as a plain blunder or two on the surface. Secondly, because the reviews either passed over these errors or treated them too gently, rather implying their existence than exposing them. Thirdly, because they strongly illustrate the melancholy truth, that no one knows enough to write about what he does not know. The distinctness of the errors is a merit; it proceeds from the clear-headedness of the author. The suppression in the journals may be due partly to admiration of the talent and energy which lived two difficult lives at once, partly to respect for high position in public affairs, partly to some of the critics being themselves men of learning only, unable to detect the errors. But we know that action and reaction are equal and contrary. If our generation take no notice of defects, and allow them to go down undetected among merits, the next generation will discover them, will perhaps believe us incapable of detecting them, at least will pronounce our judgment good for nothing, and will form an
opinion in which the merits will be underrated: so it has been, is, and will be. The best thing that can be done for the memory of the author is to remove the unsound part that the remainder may thrive. The errors do not affect the work; they occur in passages which might very well have been omitted: and I consider that, in making them conspicuous, I am but cutting away a deleterious fungus from a noble tree.
(P. 154). The periodic times of the five planets were stated by Eudoxus,[[286]] as we learn from Simplicius;[[287]] the following is his statement, to which the true times are subjoined, for the sake of comparison:
| STATEMENT OF EUDOXUS | TRUE TIME | |
| Mercury | 1 year | — 87d. 23h. |
| Venus | 1 " | — 224d. 16h. |
| Mars | 2 " | 1y. 321d. 23h. |
| Jupiter | 12 " | 11y. 315d. 14h. |
| Saturn | 30 " | 29y. 174d. 1h. |