A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 26

"Mr. Baily, my Lords are inclined to think that some of the persons in this list are perhaps not of that note which would justify their Lords.h.i.+ps in presenting this work."--"To whom does your observation apply, Mr.

Secretary?"--"Well, now, let us examine the list; let me see; now,--now,--now,--come!--here's Gauss[671]--_who's Gauss_?"--"Gauss, Mr.

Secretary, is the oldest mathematician now living, and is generally thought to be the greatest."--"O-o-oh! Well, Mr. Baily, we will see about it, and I will write you a letter." The letter expressed their Lords.h.i.+ps' perfect satisfaction with the list.

There was a controversy about the revelations made in this work; but as the eccentric anomalies took no part in it, there is nothing for my purpose.

The following valentine from Mrs. Flamsteed,[672] which I found among Baily's papers, ill.u.s.trates some of the points:

"3 Astronomers' Row, Paradise: February 14, 1836.

"Dear Sir,--I suppose you hardly expected to receive a letter from me, dated from this place; but the truth is, a gentleman from our street was appointed guardian angel to the American Treaty, in which there is some astronomical question about boundaries. He has got leave to go back to fetch some instruments which he left behind, and I take this opportunity of making your acquaintance. That America has become a wonderful place since I was down among you; you have no idea how grand the fire at New York {311} looked up here. Poor dear Mr. Flamsteed does not know I am writing a letter to a gentleman on Valentine's day; he is walked out with Sir Isaac Newton (they are pretty good friends now, though they do squabble a little sometimes) and Sir William Herschel, to see a new nebula. Sir Isaac says he can't make out at all how it is managed; and I am sure I cannot help him. I never bothered my head about those things down below, and I don't intend to begin here.

"I have just received the news of your having written a book about my poor dear man. It's a chance that I heard it at all; for the truth is, the scientific gentlemen are somehow or other become so wicked, and go so little to church, that very few of them are considered fit company for this place. If it had not been for Dr. Brinkley,[673] who came here of course, I should not have heard about it. He seems a nice man, but is not yet used to our ways. As to Mr. Halley,[674] he is of course not here; which is lucky for him, for Mr. Flamsteed swore the moment he caught him in a place where there are no magistrates, he would make a sacrifice of him to heavenly truth. It was very generous in Mr. F. not appearing against Sir Isaac when he came up, for I am told that if he had, Sir Isaac would not have been allowed to come in at all. I should have been sorry for that, for he is a companionable man enough, only holds his head rather higher than he should do. I met him the other day walking with Mr. Whiston,[675] and disputing about the deluge. 'Well, Mrs. Flamsteed,' says he, 'does old Poke-the-Stars understand gravitation yet?' Now you must know that is rather a sore point with poor dear Mr. Flamsteed. He says that Sir Isaac is as crochetty about the moon as ever; and as to {312} what some people say about what has been done since his time, he says he should like to see somebody who knows something about it of himself. For it is very singular that none of the people who have carried on Sir Isaac's notions have been allowed to come here.

"I hope you have not forgotten to tell how badly Sir Isaac used Mr.

Flamsteed about that book. I have never quite forgiven him; as for Mr.

Flamsteed, he says that as long as he does not come for observations, he does not care about it, and that he will never trust him with any papers again as long as he lives. I shall never forget what a rage he came home in when Sir Isaac had called him a puppy. He struck the stairs all the way up with his crutch, and said puppy at every step, and all the evening, as soon as ever a star appeared in the telescope, he called it puppy. I could not think what was the matter, and when I asked, he only called me puppy.

"I shall be very glad to see you if you come our way. Pray keep up some appearances, and go to church a little. St. Peter is always uncommonly civil to astronomers, and indeed to all scientific persons, and never bothers them with many questions. If they can make anything out of the case, he is sure to let them in. Indeed, he says, it is perfectly out of the question expecting a mathematician to be as religious as an apostle, but that it is as much as his place is worth to let in the greater number of those who come. So try if you cannot manage it, for I am very curious to know whether you found all the letters. I remain, dear sir, your faithful servant,

"MARGARET FLAMSTEED.

Francis Baily, Esq.

"P.S. Mr. Flamsteed has come in, and says he left Sir Isaac riding c.o.c.khorse upon the nebula, and poring over it as if it were a book. He has brought in his old acquaintance Ozanam,[676] who says that it was always his maxim on {313} earth, that 'il appartient aux docteurs de Sorbonne de disputer, au Pape de p.r.o.noncer, et au mathematicien d'aller en Paradis en ligne perpendiculaire.'"[677]

ON STEVIN.

The Secretary of the Admiralty was completely extinguished. I can recall but two instances of demolition as complete, though no doubt there are many others. The first is in

Simon Stevin[678] and M. Dumortier. Nieuport, 1845, 12mo.

M. Dumortier was a member of the Academy of Brussels: there was a discussion, I believe, about a national Pantheon for Belgium. The name of Stevinus suggested itself as naturally as that of Newton to an Englishman; probably no Belgian is better known to foreigners as ill.u.s.trious in science. Stevinus is great in the _Mecanique a.n.a.lytique_ of Lagrange;[679]

Stevinus is great in the _Tristram Shandy_ of Sterne. M. Dumortier, who believed that not one Belgian in a thousand knew Stevinus, and who confesses with ironical shame that he was not the odd man, protested against placing the statue of an obscure man in the Pantheon, to give foreigners the notion that Belgium could show nothing greater. The work above named is a slas.h.i.+ng retort: any one who knows the history of science ever so little may imagine what a dressing was given, by mere extract from foreign writers. The tract is a letter signed J. du Fan, but this is a pseudonym of Mr. Van de Weyer.[680] The Academician says Stevinus was a man who was not {314} without merit for the time at which he lived: Sir! is the answer, he was as much before his own time as you are behind yours. How came a man who had never heard of Stevinus to be a member of the Brussels Academy?

The second story was told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long connected with the _Times_, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682]

When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a stile, on which sat a b.u.mpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a gentleman?"--"Eh?"--"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding, and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The b.u.mpkin raised his muscular figure on its feet, patted his menacer on the head, and said, very quietly,--"Young man! I'm Cribb."[683] W*** seized the great pugilist's hand, and shook it warmly, got him to his own rooms in college, collected some friends, and had a symposium which lasted until the large end of the small hours.

FINLEYSON AS A PARADOXER.

G.o.d's Creation of the Universe as it is, in support of the Scriptures.

By Mr. Finleyson.[684] Sixth Edition, 1835, 8vo.

{315}

This writer, by his own account, succeeded in delivering the famous Lieut.

Richard Brothers[685] from the lunatic asylum, and tending him, not as a keeper but as a disciple, till he died. Brothers was, by his own account, the nephew of the Almighty, and Finleyson ought to have been the nephew of Brothers. For Napoleon came to him in a vision, with a broken sword and an arrow in his side, beseeching help: Finleyson pulled out the arrow, but refused to give a new sword; whereby poor Napoleon, though he got off with life, lost the battle of Waterloo. This story was written to the Duke of Wellington, ending with "I pulled out the arrow, but left the broken sword.

Your Grace can supply the rest, and what followed is amply recorded in history." The book contains a long account of applications to Government to do three things: to pay 2,000l. for care taken of Brothers, to pay 10,000l.

for discovery of the longitude, and to prohibit the teaching of the Newtonian system, which makes G.o.d a liar. The successive administrations were threatened that they would have to turn out if they refused, which, it is remarked, came to pa.s.s in every case. I have heard of a joke of Lord Macaulay, that the House of Commons must be the Beast of the Revelations, since 658 members, with the officers necessary for the action of the House, make 666. Macaulay read most things, and the greater part of the rest: so that he might be suspected of having appropriated as a joke one of Finleyson's serious points--"I wrote Earl Grey[686] upon the 13th of July, 1831, informing him that his Reform {316} Bill could not be carried, as it reduced the members below the present amount of 658, which, with the eight princ.i.p.al clerks or officers of the House, make the number 666." But a witness has informed me that Macaulay's joke was made in his hearing a great many years before the Reform Bill was proposed; in fact, when both were students at Cambridge. Earl Grey was, according to Finleyson, a descendant of Uriah the Hitt.i.te. For a specimen of Lieut. Brothers, this book would be worth picking up. Perhaps a specimen of the Lieutenant's poetry may be acceptable: Brothers _loquitur_, remember:

"Jerusalem ! Jerusalem! shall be built again!

More rich, more grand then ever; And through it shall Jordan flow!(!) My people's favourite river.

There I'll erect a splendid throne, And build on the wasted place; To fulfil my ancient covenant To King David and his race.

"Euphrates' stream shall flow with s.h.i.+ps, And also my wedded Nile; And on my coast shall cities rise, Each one distant but a mile.

"My friends the Russians on the north With Persees and Arabs round, Do show the limits of my land, Here! Here! then I mark the ground."

ON THEOLOGICAL PARADOXERS.

Among the paradoxers are some of the theologians who in their own organs of the press venture to criticise science. These may hold their ground when they confine themselves to the geology of long past periods and to general cosmogony: for it is the tug of Greek against Greek; and both sides deal much in what is grand when called _hypothesis_, petty when called _supposition_. And very often they are not conspicuous when they venture upon things within knowledge; {317} wrong, but not quite wrong enough for a Budget of Paradoxes. One case, however, is destined to live, as an instance of a school which finds writers, editors, and readers. The double stars have been seen from the seventeenth century, and diligently observed by many from the time of Wm. Herschel, who first devoted continuous attention to them. The year 1836 was that of a remarkable triumph of astronomical prediction. The theory of gravitation had been applied to the motion of binary stars about each other, in elliptic orbits, and in that year the two stars of [gamma] Virginis, as had been predicted should happen within a few years of that time--for years are small quant.i.ties in such long revolutions--the two stars came to their nearest: in fact, they appeared to be one as much with the telescope as without it. This remarkable turning-point of the history of a long and widely-known branch of astronomy was followed by an article in the _Church of England Quarterly Review_ for April 1837, written against the Useful Knowledge Society. The notion that there are any such things as double stars is (p. 460) implied to be imposture or delusion, as in the following extract. I suspect that I myself am the _Sidrophel_, and that my companion to the maps of the stars, written for the Society and published in 1836, is the work to which the writer refers:

"We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence of that compet.i.tion in trade which the political economists tell us is so advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such wondrous mandarins of science, how continually must _homunculi_ like ourselves keep in the background, lest we come between the wind and their n.o.bility."

If the _homunculus_ who wrote this be still above ground, {318} how devoutly must he hope he may be able to keep in the background! But the chief blame falls on the editor. The t.i.tle of the article is:

"The new school of superficial pantology; a speech intended to be delivered before a defunct Mechanics' Inst.i.tute. By Swallow Swift, late M.P. for the Borough of c.o.c.kney-Cloud, Witsbury: reprinted Balloon Island, Bubble year, month _Ventose_. Long live Charlatan!"

As a rule, orthodox theologians should avoid humor, a weapon which all history shows to be very difficult to employ in favor of establishment, and which, nine times out of ten, leaves its wielder fighting on the side of heterodoxy. Theological argument, when not enlivened by bigotry, is seldom worse than narcotic: but theological fun, when not covert heresy, is almost always sialagogue. The article in question is a craze, which no editor should have admitted, except after severe inspection by qualified persons.

The author of this wit committed a mistake which occurs now and then in old satire, the confusion between himself and the party aimed at. He ought to be reviewing this fict.i.tious book, but every now and then the article becomes the book itself; not by quotation, but by the writer forgetting that _he_ is not Mr. Swallow Swift, but his reviewer. In fact he and Mr. S.

Swift had each had a dose of the _Devil's Elixir_. A novel so called, published about forty years ago, proceeds upon a legend of this kind. If two parties both drink of the elixir, their ident.i.ties get curiously intermingled; each turns up in the character of the other throughout the three volumes, without having his ideas clear as to whether he be himself or the other. There is a similar confusion in the answer made to the famous _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_:[687] it is headed _Lamentationes Obscurorum Virorum_.[688] {319} This is not a retort of the writer, throwing back the imputation: the obscure men who had been satirized are themselves made, by name, to wince under the disapprobation which the Pope had expressed at the satire upon themselves.

Of course the book here reviewed is a transparent forgery. But I do not know how often it may have happened that the book, in the journals which always put a t.i.tle at the head, may have been written after the review.

About the year 1830 a friend showed me the proof of an article of his on the malt tax, for the next number of the _Edinburgh Review_. Nothing was wanting except the t.i.tle of the book reviewed; I asked what it was. He sat down, and wrote as follows at the head, "The Maltster's Guide (pp. 124),"

and said that would do as well as anything.

But I myself, it will be remarked, have employed such humor as I can command "in favor of establishment." What it is worth I am not to judge; as usual in such cases, those who are of my cabal p.r.o.nounce it good, but cyclometers and other paradoxers either call it very poor, or commend it as sheer buffoonery. Be it one or the other, I observe that all the effective ridicule is, in this subject, on the side of establishment. This is partly due to the difficulty of quizzing plain and sober demonstration; but so much, if not more, to the ignorance of the paradoxers. For that which cannot be _ridiculed_, can be _turned into ridicule_ by those who know how.

But by the time a person is deep enough in _negative_ quant.i.ties, and _impossible_ quant.i.ties, to be able to satirize them, he is caught, and being inclined to become a _user_, shrinks from being an _abuser_. Imagine a person with a gift of ridicule, and knowledge enough, trying his hand on the junction of the a.s.sertions which he will find in various books of algebra. First, that a negative quant.i.ty has no logarithm; secondly, that a {320} negative quant.i.ty has no square root; thirdly, that the first non-existent is to the second as the circ.u.mference of a circle to its diameter. One great reason of the allowance of such unsound modes of expression is the confidence felt by the writers that [root]-1 and log(-1) will make their way, however inaccurately described. I heartily wish that the cyclometers had knowledge enough to attack the weak points of algebraical diction: they would soon work a beneficial change.[689]

AN EARLY METEOROLOGIST.

Recueil de ma vie, mes ouvrages et mes pensees. Par Thomas Ignace Marie Forster.[690] Brussels, 1836, 12mo.

Mr. Forster, an Englishman settled at Bruges, was an observer in many subjects, but especially in meteorology. He communicated to the Astronomical Society, in 1848, the information that, in the registers kept by his grandfather, his father, and himself, beginning in 1767, new moon on Sat.u.r.day was followed, nineteen times out of twenty, by twenty days of rain and wind. This statement being published in the _Athenaeum_, a cl.u.s.ter of correspondents averred that the belief is common among seamen, in all parts of the world, and among landsmen too. Some one quoted a distich:

"Sat.u.r.day's moon and Sunday's full Never were fine and never _wull_."

{321} Another brought forward:

"If a Sat.u.r.day's moon Comes once in seven years it comes too soon."

Mr. Forster did not say he was aware of the proverbial character of the phenomenon. He was a very eccentric man. He treated his dogs as friends, and buried them with ceremony. He quarrelled with the _cure_ of his parish, who remarked that he could not take his dogs to heaven with him. I will go nowhere, said he, where I cannot take my dog. He was a sincere Catholic: but there is a point beyond which even churches have no influence.