E. H. A.
You have lately published some inquiries relative to Wolfe's early career. Is the following fact worth stating? Tradition points to an old house, once an inn, at the back of the Town-hall at Devizes, where the young officer resided while enlisting soldiers into his regiment.
WILTONIENSIS.
JAMES WILSON, M.D.
(Vol. v., pp. 276. 329.)
This writer will be one instance of the use of such an organ of inquiry as "N. & Q." MR. CORNEY'S reply to my Query reminds me of Wilson's History of Navigation, with which I have long been acquainted: but I had quite forgotten, or perhaps never remarked, that this Wilson was James, and M.D. Baron Maseres reprinted the History of Navigation in the fourth volume of the Scriptores Logarithmici: it is an elaborate summary, of wide research, and puts the author's learning and judgment beyond a doubt. Maseres, in his Preface, gives a mention of Wilson, and, in addition to the facts now brought out, states, in his own curiously explicit style, that Dr. Pemberton's Epistola ad Amicum J. W. de Cotesii inventis, "was addressed to this Dr. James Wilson, who was the person meant by the word Amicum, with the two letters J. W., which were the initial letters of his name." I happen to possess Brook Taylor's copy of this Epistola (4to. 1722), and its Supplement (4to. 1723), in which Taylor has written, "E libris Br. Taylor, ex dono eximii paris amicorum, autoris D. H. Pemberton atque editoris D. J. Wilson." Thus it is established that the author of the dissertation on the fluxional controversy appended to Robins's tracts, lived in friendship with some of the most distinguished parties to that quarrel. It is also established that he was fully conversant with the mathematics of the day; for Pemberton's letter, called out by Wilson's own queries, could have been read by none but a previous reader of Cotes and the highest fluxionists. As to Wilson's age, he says (Robins's Math. Tr., vol. ii. p. 299.) he was a fellow-student of Pemberton at Paris: the latter was born in 1694, and the former was probably of nearly the same age. They were close friends to the end of their lives, and Wilson published Pemberton's Course of Chemistry, delivered at Gresham College, 8vo. 1771, according to Hutton and Watt. These last-named authorities both attribute to Pemberton himself the dissertation on the fluxional controversy in Robins's Tracts: but it certainly has Wilson's name to it; or rather, it is said to be by the publisher (which we now call editor) of the volumes. It is very likely that Pemberton gave help: assuredly he must have been consulted by his intimate friend on facts the truth of which was within his own knowledge. Accordingly, the following assertions, made by Wilson, are not to be lightly passed over: first (which also Robins assumes again and again), that Newton wrote the anonymous account of the Commercium Epistolicum (Phil. Trans., No. 342.) usually attributed to Keill, which, in Latin, forms the Preface to the second edition of that work. Secondly, that Newton wrote the criticism on John Bernoulli's letter at the end of the second edition. Thirdly, that Newton himself, and not Pemberton, omitted the celebrated Scholium from the third edition of the Principia. Montucla, in the second edition (1802, vol. iii. p. 108) of his History of Mathematics, gives statements on these points from a private source, to the effect that the notes of the original edition of the Comm. Epist. were Newton's, and that the informant had seen the matter which was substituted for the Scholium, in Newton's handwriting, among the proof-sheets preserved by Pemberton. If Wilson were the informant, which may have been, for Montucla's first edition was published in 1758, Montucla must have confounded the two editions of the Comm. Epist. If not, it must have been some one who did not draw his account from the dissertation, in which there is nothing about the proof-sheets. Montucla, however, has lowered the credit of his informant by making him assert that the second edition of the Principia was managed by Cotes and Bentley, without communication with Newton. This, which all the world knows to be untrue of the book, is true of the prefatory parts; and Wilson gives an account of Newton's dissatisfaction with those parts. If Wilson were the informant, Montucla has again misunderstood him.
A. DE MORGAN.
OLIVER CROMWELL.—THE "WHALE" AND THE "STORM" IN 1658.
(Vol. iii., p. 207.)
B. B. may see, in the British Museum library, a tract of four leaves only, the title of which I will transcribe:
"London's Wonder. Being a most true and positive relation of the taking and killing of a great Whale neer to Greenwich; the said Whale being fifty-eight foot in length, twelve foot high, fourteen foot broad, and two foot between the eyes. At whose death was used Harping-irons, Spits, Swords, Guns, Bills, Axes, and Hatchets, and all kind of sharp Instruments to kill her: and at last two Anchors being struck fast into her body, she could not remoove them, but the blood gush'd out of her body, as the water does out of a pump. The report of which Whale hath caused many hundred of people both by land and water to go and see her: the said Whale being slaine hard by Greenwich upon the third day of June this present yere 1658, which is largely exprest in this following discourse. London, printed for Francis Grove, neere the Sarazen's head on Snowhill, 1658."
Surely after reading the above, your sceptical correspondent can no longer hesitate to accept as a matter of veritable fact this story so very like a whale.