Maupertuis,[529] Bouguer,[530] La Condamine,[531] Folkes,[532]

Macclesfield,[533] {302} Baker,[534] Barrow,[535] Flamsteed,[536] Lord Brounker,[537] J. Gregory,[538] Newton[539] and Keill.[540] To these the Museum collection adds the names of Thomas Digges,[541] Dee,[542] Tycho Brahe,[543] Harriot,[544] Lydyat,[545] Briggs,[546] Warner,[547] Tarporley, Pell,[548] Lilly,[549] Oldenburg,[550] Collins,[551] Morland.[552]

{303}

The first who appears on the scene is the celebrated Oughtred, who is related to have died of joy at the Restoration: but it should be added, by way of excuse, that he was eighty-six years old. He is an animal of extinct race, an Eton mathematician. Few Eton men, even of the minority which knows what a sliding rule is, are aware that the inventor was of their own school and college: but they may be excused, for Dr. Hutton,[553] so far as his Dictionary bears witness, seems not to have known it any more than they. A glance at one of his letters reminds us of a letter from the Astronomer Royal on the discovery of Neptune, which we printed March 20, 1847. Mr.

Airy[554] there contends, and proves it both by Leverrier[555] and by Adams,[556] that the limited publication of a private letter is more efficient than the more general publication of a printed memoir. The same may be true of a dead letter, as opposed to a dead book. Our eye was caught by a letter of Oughtred (1629), containing systematic use of contractions for the words _sine_, _cosine_, etc., prefixed to the symbol of the angle.

This is so very important a step, simple as it is, that Euler[557] is justly held to have greatly advanced trigonometry by its introduction.

n.o.body that we know of has noticed that Oughtred was master of the improvement, and willing to have taught it, if people would have learnt.

After looking at his dead letter, we naturally turned to his dead book on trigonometry, and there we found the abbreviations _s_, _sco_, _t_, _tco_, _se_, _seco_, regularly established as part of the system of the work. But not one of those who have investigated the contending claims of Euler and Thomas {304} Simpson[558] has chanced to know of Oughtred's "Trigonometrie": and the present revival is due to his letter, not to his book.

A casual reader, turning over the pages, would imagine that almost all the letters had been printed, either in the General Dictionary, or in Birch,[559] etc.: so often does the supplementary remark begin with "this letter has been printed in ----." For ourselves we thought, until we counted, that a large majority of the letters had been given, either in whole or in part. But the positive strikes the mind more forcibly than the negative: we find that all of which any portion has been in type makes up very little more than a quarter; the cases in which the whole letter is given being a minority of this quarter. The person who has been best ransacked is Flamsteed: of 36 letters from him, 34 had been previously given in whole or in part. Of 59 letters to and from Newton, only 17 have been culled.

The letters have been modernized in spelling, and, to some extent, in algebraical notation; it also seems that conjectural methods of introducing interpolations into the text have been necessary. For all this we are sorry: the scientific value of the collection is little altered, but its literary value is somewhat lowered. But it could not be helped: the printers could not work from the originals, and Professor Rigaud had to copy everything himself. A fac-simile must have been the work of more time than he had to give: had he attempted it, his death would have cut short the whole undertaking, instead of allowing him to prepare everything but a preface, and to superintend the printing of one of the volumes. We may also add, that we believe we have notices of _all_ the letters in the Macclesfield collection. We judge this because several which are too trivial to print are numbered and described; and those would certainly not have been noticed if _any_ omissions had {305} been made. And we know that every letter was removed from Shirburn Castle to Oxford.

Two persons emerge from oblivion in this series of letters. The first is Michael Dary,[560] an obscure mathematician, who was in correspondence with Newton and other stars. He was a gauger at Bristol, by the interest of Collins; afterwards a candidate for the mathematical school at Christ's Hospital, with a certificate from Newton: he was then a gunner in the Tower, and is lastly described by Wallis as "Mr. Dary, the tobacco-cutter, a knowing man in algebra." In 1674, Dary writes to Newton at Cambridge, as follows:--"Although I sent you three papers yesterday, I cannot refrain from sending you this. I have had fresh thoughts this morning." Two months afterwards poor Newton writes to Collins, "Mr. Dary is very solicitous about mathematics": but in spite of the persecution, he subscribes himself to Dary "your loving friend." Dary's _problem_ is that of finding the rate of interest of an annuity of which the value and term are given. Dary's _theorem_, which he seems to have invented specially for the solution of his problem, though it is of wide range, can be exhibited to mathematical readers even in our columns. In modern language, it is that the limit of [phi]^{_n_}_x_, when _n_ increases without limit, is a solution of [phi]_x_ = _x_. We have mentioned the I. Newton to whom Dary looked up; we add a word about the one on whom he looked down. Dr. John Newton,[561] a sedulous publisher of logarithms, tables of interest, etc., who began his career before Isaac Newton, sometimes puzzles those who do not know him, when described as I. Newton. The scientific world was of opinion that all that was valuable in one of his works was taken from Dary's private communications.

{306}

The second character above alluded to is one who carried mathematical researches a far greater length than Newton himself: the a.s.sistance which he rendered in this respect, even to Newton, has never been acknowledged in modern times: though the work before us shows that his contemporaries were fully aware of it, and never thought of concealing it. In his theory of gravitation, in which, so far as he went, we have every reason to believe he was prior to Newton, he did not extend his calculations to the distance of the moon; his views in this matter were purely terrestrial, and led him to charge according to weight. He was John Stiles, the London and Cambridge carrier: his name is a household word in the Macclesfield Letters, and is even enshrined in the depths of Birch's quartos. Dary informs Newton--let us do his memory this justice--that he had paid John Stiles for the carriage. At the time when the railroad to Cambridge was opened, a correspondent recommended the directors, in our columns, to call an engine by the name of John Stiles, and never to let that name go off the road. We do not know whether the advice was followed: if not, we repeat it.

Little points of life and manners come out occasionally. Baker, the author of a work on algebra much esteemed at the time, wrote to Collins that their circ.u.mstances are alike, "having a just and equal number of chargeable olive-branches, and being in the same predicament and blessed condemnation with you, not more preaching than unpaid, and preaching the art of contentment to others, am forced to practise it." But the last sentence of his letter runs as follows: "I have sent by the bearer ... twenty shillings, as a token to you; desiring you to accept of it, as a small taste from Yours, Thos. Baker." In our day, men of a station to pay parish taxes do not offer their friends hard money to buy liquor. But Flamsteed[562] writes to Collins as follows: "Last week he sent us down the counterpart, which {307} my father has scaled, and I return up to you by the carrier, with 5l. to be paid to Mr. Leneve for the writing, I have added 2s. 6d. over, which will pay the expenses and serve to drink, with him." This would seem as odd to us as it would have seemed thirty years ago that half-a-crown should pay carriage for a deed from Derby to London, and leave margin for a bottle of wine: in our day, the Post-office and the French treaty would just manage it between them. But Flamsteed does not limit his friend to one bottle; he adds, "If you expend more than the half-crown, I will make it good after Whitsuntide." Collins does not remember exactly where he had met James Gregory, and mentions two equally likely places thus: "Sir, it was once my good hap to meet with you in an alehouse or in Sion College." There is a little proof how universally the dinner-hour was twelve o'clock. Astronomers well know the method of finding time by equal alt.i.tudes of the sun before and after noon: Huyghens calls it "le moyen de deux egales hauteurs du soleil devant et apres _diner_."[563]

There is one mention of "Mr. c.o.c.ker,[564] our famous English graver and writer, now a schoolmaster at Northampton." This is the true c.o.c.ker: his genuine works are specimens of writing, such as engraved copy-books, including some on arithmetic, with copper-plate questions and s.p.a.ce for the working; also a book of forms for law-stationers, with specimens of legal handwriting. It is recorded somewhere that c.o.c.ker and another, whose name we forget, competed with the Italians in the beauty of their flourishes.

This was his real fame: and in these matters he was great. The eighth edition of his book of law forms (1675), published shortly after c.o.c.ker's death, has a preface signed "J. H." This was John Hawkins, who became possessed of c.o.c.ker's papers--at least he said so--and {308} subsequently forged the famous Arithmetic,[565] a second work on Decimal Arithmetic, and an English dictionary, all attributed to c.o.c.ker. The proofs of this are set out in De Morgan's _Arithmetical Books_. Among many other corroborative circ.u.mstances, the clumsy forger, after declaring that c.o.c.ker to his dying day resisted strong solicitation to publish his Arithmetic, makes him write in the preface _Ille ego qui quondam_[566] of this kind: "I have been instrumental to the benefit of many, by virtue of those useful arts, writing and engraving; and do _now_, with the same _wonted alacrity_, cast this my arithmetical mite into the public treasury." The book itself is not comparable in merit to at least half-a-dozen others. How then comes c.o.c.ker to be the impersonation of Arithmetic? Unless some one can show proof, which we have never found, that he was so before 1756, the matter is to be accounted for thus.

Arthur Murphy,[567] the dramatist, was by taste a man of letters, and ended by being the translator of Tacitus; though many do not know that the two are one. His friends had tried to make him a man of business; and no doubt he had been well plied with commercial arithmetic. His first dramatic performance, the farce of "The Apprentice," produced in 1756, is about an idle young man who must needs turn actor. Two of the best known books of the day in arithmetic were those of c.o.c.ker and Wingate.[568] Murphy chooses _Wingate_ to be the name of an old merchant who {309} delights in vulgar fractions, and _c.o.c.ker_ to be his arithmetical catchword--"You read Shakespeare! get c.o.c.ker's Arithmetic! you may buy it for a shilling on any stall; best book that ever was wrote!" and so on. The farce became very popular, and, as we believe, was the means of elevating c.o.c.ker to his present pedestal, where Wingate would have been, if his name had had the droller sound of the two to English ears.

A notoriety of an older day turns up, Major-General Lambert.[569] The common story is that he was banished to Guernsey, where he pa.s.sed thirty years in confinement, rearing and painting flowers. But Baker, in 1678, represents him as a prisoner at Plymouth, sending equations for solution as a challenge: probably his place of confinement was varied, and his occupation also.

[General Lambert was removed to Plymouth, probably about 1668. His daughter captured the son of the Governor of Guernsey, who therefore probably was reckoned an unsafe custodier thenceforward; though he a.s.sured the king that he had turned the young couple out of doors, and had never given them a penny. Great importance was attached to Lambert's safe detention: probably the remaining republicans looked upon him as to be their next Cromwell, if such a thing were to be. There were standing orders to shoot him at once on the first appearance of any enemy before the island. See _Notes and Queries_, 3d S. iv. 89.]

Collins informs James Gregory that "some of the Royal Academy wrote over to Mr. Oldenburg, who was desired to impart the same to the Council of the Royal Society, that the French King was willing to allow pensions to one or two learned Englishmen, but they never made any answer {310} to such a proposal." This was written in 1671, and the thing probably happened several years before. Mr. De Morgan communicated the account of the proposal to Lord Macaulay, who replied that he did not think that any Englishman _received_ a literary pension from Louis; but that there is a curious letter, about 1664, from the French Amba.s.sador, in which he says that he has, by his master's orders, been making inquiries as to the state of learning in England, and that he is sorry to find that the best writer is _the infamous Miltonus_. On two such independent testimonies it may be held proved that the French King had attempted to buy a little adherence from English literature and science; and the silent contempt of the Royal Society is an honorable fact in their history.

Another little bit of politics is as follows. Oughtred is informed that "Mr. Foster,[570] our Lecturer on Astronomy at Gresham College, is put out because he will not kneel down at the communion-table. A Scotsman [Mungo Murray], one that is _verbi bis minister_,[571] is now lecturer in Mr.

Foster's place." Ward in his work on the Gresham Professors,[572]

suppresses the reason, and the suppression lowers the character of his book. Foster was expelled in 1636, and re-elected on a vacancy in 1641, when Puritanism had gained strength.

The correspondence of Newton would require deeper sifting than could be given in such an article as the present. The first of the letters (1669) is curious, as presenting the {311} appearance of forms belonging to the great calculus which, in this paragraph, we ought to call that of fluxions. We find, of the date February 18, 1669-70, what we believe is the earliest manifestation of that morbid part of Newton's temperament which has been so variously represented. He had solved a problem--being that which we have called Dary's--on which he writes as follows: "The solution of the annuity problem, if it will be of any use, you have my leave to insert into the _Philosophical Transactions_, so it be without my name to it. For I see not what there is desirable in public esteem, were I able to acquire and maintain it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline."

Three letters touch upon "the experiment of gla.s.s rubbed to cause various motions in bits of paper underneath": they are supplements to the account given by Newton to the Royal Society, and printed by Birch. It was Newton, so far as appears, who added _gla.s.s_ to the substances known to be electric. Soon afterwards we come to a little bit of the history of the appointment to the Mint. It has appeared from the researches of late years that Newton was long an aspirant for public employment: the only coolness which is known to have taken place between him and Charles Montague[573]

[Halifax] arose out of his imagining that his friend was not in earnest about getting him into the public service. March 14, 1696, Newton writes thus to Halley: "And if the rumour of preferment for me in the Mint should hereafter, upon the death of Mr. h.o.a.r [the comptroller], or any other occasion, be revived, I pray that you would {312} endeavour to obviate it by acquainting your friends that I neither _put in_ for _any_ place in the Mint, nor would meddle with _Mr. h.o.a.r's place_, were it offered to me."

This means that Mr. h.o.a.r's place had been suggested, which Newton seems to have declined. Five days afterwards, Montague writes to Newton that he is to have the _Wardenship_. It is fair to Newton to say that in all probability this was not--or only in a smaller degree--a question of personal dignity, or of salary. It must by this time have been clear to him that the minister, though long bound to make him an object of patronage, was actually seeking him for the Mint, because he wanted both Newton's name and his talents for business--which he knew to be great--in the weighty and dangerous operation of restoring the coinage. It may have been, and probably was, the case that Newton had a tolerably accurate notion of what he would have to do, and of what degree of power would be necessary to enable him to do it in his own way.

We have said that the non-epistolary ma.n.u.scripts are still unexamined.

There is a chance that one of them may answer a question of two centuries'

standing, which is worth answering, because it has been so often asked.

About 1640, Warner,[574] afterwards a.s.sisted by Pell,[575] commenced a table of _antilogarithms_, of the kind which Dodson[576] afterwards constructed anew and published. In the Museum collection there is inquiry after inquiry from Charles Cavendish,[577] first, as to when the _a.n.a.logics_, as he called them, would be finished; next, when they would be printed. Pell answers, in 1644, that Warner left his papers to a kinsman, who had become bankrupt, and proceeds thus:

"I am not a little afraid that all Mr. Warner's papers, {313} and no small share of my labours therein, are seazed upon, and most unmathematically divided between the sequestrators and creditors, who (not being able to ballance the account where there appeare so many numbers, and much troubled at the sight of so many crosses and circles in the superst.i.tious Algebra and that black art of Geometry) will, no doubt, determine once in their lives to become figure-casters, and so vote them all to be throwen into the fire, if some good body doe not reprieve them for pye-bottoms, for which purposes you know a.n.a.logicall numbers are incomparably apt, if they be accurately calculated."

Pell afterwards told Wallis[578] that the papers had fallen into the hands of Dr. Busby,[579] and Collins[580] writes that they were left in the hands of Dr. Thorndike,[581] a prebendary of Westminster; whence Rigaud[582]

seems to say that Thorndike had left them to Dr. Busby. Birch[583] says that he procured for the Royal Society four boxes from Busby's trustees, containing papers of Warner and Pell: but there is no other tradition of such things in the Society. But in the Birch ma.n.u.scripts at the British Museum, there turns up, as printed in what we call the Museum collection, a list of Warner's papers, with _Collins's_ receipt to Dr. Thorndike at the bottom, and engagement to restore them on demand. The date is December 14, 1667; Wallis's statement being in 1693. It is possible that Busby may be a mistake altogether: he was very unlikely to have had charge of any mathematical papers: there may have been a confusion between the Prebendary of Westminster and the Head Master of Westminster School. If so, in all probability Thorndike handed {314} the c.u.mbrous lot over to the notorious collector of mathematical papers, blessing himself that he got rid of them in a manner which would insure their return if he were called upon by the owners to restore them. It is much against this hypothesis that Dodson, who certainly recalculated, can say nothing more about Warner than a repet.i.tion of Wallis's story: though, had Collins kept the papers, they would probably have been in Jones's possession at the very time when Dodson, who was a friend of Jones and a user of his library, was engaged on his own computations. But even books, and still more ma.n.u.scripts, are often singularly overlooked; and it remains not very improbable that Warner's table is now at Shirburn Castle, among the unexamined ma.n.u.scripts.

CYCLOMETRY AND STEEL PENS.

_Redit labor actus in orbem._[584] Among the matters which have come to me since the Budget opened, there is a pamphlet of quadrature of two pages and a half from Professor Recalcati,[585] already mentioned. It ends with "Quelque objection qu'on fa.s.se touchant les raisonnements ci-dessus on tombera toujours dans l'absurde."[586] A civil engineer--so he says--has made the quadrature "no longer a problem, but an axiom." As follows: "Take the quadrant of a circle whose circ.u.mference is given, square the quadrant which gives the true square of the circle. Because 30 4 = 7.5 7.5 = 56.25 = the positive square of a circle whose circ.u.mference is 30."

Brevity, the soul of wit, is the "wings of mighty-winds" to quadrature, and sends it "flying all abroad." A _surbodhicary_--something like M.A. or LL.D., I understand--at Calcutta, published in 1863 the division of an {315} angle into any odd number of parts, demonstration and all in--when the diagram is omitted--one page, good-sized, well-leaded type, small duodecimo. But in the Preface he acknowledges "sheer inability" to execute his task. Mr. William Dean, of Todmorden, in 1863, announced 3-9/64 as proved both practically and geometrically: he has been already mentioned anonymously. Next I have the tract of Don Juan Larriva, published at Leiria in 1856, and dedicated to Queen Victoria. Mr. W. Peters,[587] already mentioned, who has for some months been circulating diagrams on a card, publishes (August, 1865) _The Circle Squared_. He agrees with the Archpriest of St. Vitus. He hints that a larger publication will depend partly on the support he receives, and partly on the castigation, for which last, of course, he looks to me. Cyclometers have their several styles of wit; so have anticyclometers too, for that matter. Mr. Peters will not allow me any extra-journal being: I am essentially a quotation from the _Athenaeum_; "A. De Morgan" _et praeterea nihil_.[588] If he had to pay for keeping me set up, he would find out his mistake, and would be glad to compound handsomely for a stereotype. Next comes a magnificent sheet of pasteboard, printed on both sides. Having glanced at it and detected quadrature, I began methodically at the beginning--"By Royal Command," with the lion and unicorn, and all that comes between. Mercy on us! thought I to myself: has Her Majesty referred the question to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, where all the great difficulties go now-a-days, and is this proclamation the result? On reading further I was relieved by finding that the first side is entirely an advertis.e.m.e.nt of Joseph Gillott's[589]

steel pens, with engraving of his {316} premises, and notice of novel application of his unrivalled machinery. The second side begins with "the circle rectified" by W. E. Walker,[590] who finds [pi] = 3.141594789624155.... This is an off-shoot from an accurate geometrical rectification, on which is to be presumed Mr. Gillott's new machinery is founded. I have no doubt that Mr. Walker's error, which is only in the sixth place of decimals, will not hurt the pens, unless it be by the slightest possible increase of the tendency to open at the points. This arises from Mr. Walker having rectified above proof by .000002136034362....

Lastly, I, even I myself, who have long felt that I was a quadrature below par, have solved the problem by means which, in the present state of the law of libel, I dare not divulge. But the result is permitted; and it goes far to explain all the discordances. The ratio of the circ.u.mference to the diameter is not always the same! Not that it varies with the radius; the geometers are right enough on that point: but it varies with the time, in a manner depending upon the difference of the true longitudes of the Sun and Moon. A friend of mine--at least until he misbehaved--insisted on the mean right ascensions: but I served him as Abraham served his guest in Franklin's parable. The true formula is, A and a being the Sun's and Moon's longitudes,

[pi] = 3-13/80 + 3/80 cos(A - a).

Mr. James Smith obtained his quadrature at full moon; the Archpriest of St.

Vitus and some others at new moon. Until I can venture to publish the demonstration, I recommend the reader to do as I do, which is to adopt 3.14159..., and to think of the matter only at the two points of the lunar month at which it is correct. The _Nautical Almanac_ will no doubt give these points in a short time: I am in correspondence with the Admiralty, with nothing {317} to get over except what I must call a perverse notion on the part of the Superintendent of the _Almanac_, who suspects one correction depending on the Moon's lat.i.tude; and the Astronomer Royal leans towards another depending on the date of the Queen's accession. I have no patience with these men: what can the Moon's node of the Queen's reign possibly have to do with the ratio in question? But this is the way with all the regular men of science; Newton is to them etc. etc. etc. etc.

The following method of finding the circ.u.mference of a circle (taken from a paper by Mr. S. Drach[591] in the _Phil. Mag._, Jan. 1863, Suppl.) is as accurate as the use of 3.14159265. From three diameters deduct 8-thousandths and 7-millionths of a diameter; to the result add five per cent. We have then not quite enough; but the shortcoming is at the rate of about an inch and a sixtieth of an inch in 14,000 miles.

JACOB BEHMEN.

Though I have met with nothing but a little tract from the school of Jacob Behmen[592] (or Bohme; I keep to the old English version of his name), yet there has been more, and of a more recent date. I am told of an "Introduction to Theosophy [_Theo_ private, I suppose, as in theological]; or, the Science of the Mystery of Christ," published in 1854, mostly from the writings of William Law[593]: and also of a volume of 688 pages, of the same year, printed for private circulation, containing notes for a biography of William Law. The editor of the first work wishes to grow "a {318} generation of perfect Christians" by founding a Theosophic College, for which he requests the public to raise a hundred thousand pounds. There is a good account of Jacob Behmen in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_. The author mentions inaccurate accounts, one of which he quotes, as follows: "He derived all his mystical and rapturous doctrine from Wood's[594] _Athenae Oxonienses_, Vol. I, p. 610, and _Hist. et Antiq. Acad. Oxon._, Vol. II, p.

308." On which the author remarks that Wood was born after Behmen's death.

There must have been a few words which slipped out: what is meant is that Behmen "derived his doctrine from _Robert Fludd_,[595] _for whom see_ Wood's etc. etc." Even this is absurd enough: for Behmen began to publish in 1610, and Fludd in 1616. Fludd was a Rosicrucian, and a mystic of a different type from Behmen. I have some of his works, and could produce out of them paradoxes enough, according to our ways of thinking, to fit out a host. But the Rosicrucian system was a recognized school of its day, and Fludd, a man of great learning, had abettors enough in all which he advanced, and predecessors in most of it.

[A Correspondent has recently sent a short summary of the claims of Jacob Behmen to rank higher than I have placed him. I shall gladly insert this summary in the book I contemplate, as a statement of what is said of Behmen far less liable to suspicion of exaggeration than anything I could write. I shall add a few extracts from Behmen himself, in support of his right to be in my list.]

"_Jacob Behmen._--That Prof. De Morgan cla.s.ses Jacob Behmen among paradoxers can only be attributed to the fact of his being avowedly unacquainted with the writings {319} of that author. Perhaps you may think a few words from one who knows them well of sufficient interest to the learned Professor, and your readers in general, to be worthy of s.p.a.ce in your columns. The metaphysical system of Behmen--the most perfect and only true one--still awaits a qualified commentator. Behmen's countryman, Dionysius Andreas Freher,[596] who spent the greater part of his life in this country, and whose exposition of Behmen exists only in MS., filling many volumes, written in English, with the exception of two, written in German, with numerous beautiful, highly ingenious, and elaborate ill.u.s.trations,--copies of some of which are in the British Museum, but all the originals of which are in the possession of the gentleman who is the editor of the two works alluded to by Professor De Morgan,--this Freher was the first to philosophically expound Behmen's system, which was afterwards, with the help of these MSS., as it were, popularized by William Law; but both Freher and Law confined themselves chiefly to its theological aspect.

In Behmen, however, is to be found, not only the true ground of all theology, but also that of all physical science. He demonstrated with a fullness, accuracy, completeness and certainty that leave nothing to be desired, the innermost ground of Deity and Nature; and, confining myself to the latter, I can from my own knowledge a.s.sert, that in Behmen's writings is to be found the true and clear demonstration of every physical fact that has been discovered since his day. Thus, the science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he wrote, is there antic.i.p.ated; and not only does Behmen describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us the origin, generation and birth of electricity itself. Again, positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his knowledge of gravitation and its {320} laws from Behmen, with whom gravitation or attraction is, and very properly so, as he shows us, the first of the seven properties of Nature. The theory defended by Mr. Grove,[597] at the Nottingham meeting of last year, that all the apparently distinct causes of moral and physical phenomena are but so many manifestations of one central force, and that Continuity is the law of nature, is clearly laid down, and its truth demonstrated, by Behmen, as well as the distinction between spirit and matter, and that the moral and material world is pervaded by a sublime unity. And though all this was not admitted in Behmen's days, because science was not then sufficiently advanced to understand the deep sense of our author, many of his pa.s.sages, then unintelligible, or apparently absurd, read by the light of the present age, are found to contain the positive enunciation of principles at whose discovery and establishment science has only just arrived by wearisome and painful investigations. Every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound and intuitive insight into the most secret workings of nature; and if scientific men, instead of sharing the prejudice arising from ignorance of Behmen's system, would place themselves on the vantage ground it affords, they would at once find themselves on an eminence whence they could behold all the arcana of nature. Behmen's system, in fact, shows us the _inside_ of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at the _outside_. Behmen traces back every outward manifestation or development to its one central root,--to that one central energy which, as yet, is only suspected; every link in the chain of his demonstration is perfect, and there is not one link wanting. He carries us from the out-births of the circ.u.mference, along the radius to the center, {321} or point, and beyond that even to the zero, demonstrating the const.i.tution of the zero, or nothing, with mathematical precision. C. W. H."

And so Behmen is no subject for the Budget! I waited until I should chance to light on one of his volumes, knowing that any volume would do, and almost any page. My first hap was on the second volume of the edition of 1664 (4to, published by M. Richardson) and opening near the beginning, a turn or two brought me to page 13, where I saw about _sulphur_ and _mercurius_ as follows:

"Thus SUL is the soul, in an herb it is the oil, and in man also, according to the spirit of _this_ world in the third principle, which is continually generated out of the anguish of the will in the mind, and the Brimstone-worm is the Spirit, which hath the fire and _burneth_: PHUR is the sour wheel in itself which causeth that.

"_Mercurius_ comprehendeth all the four forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (_viz._ the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; which a.s.simulateth it thus in the sourness in the flash of fire, where the sour wrathful life _ariseth_. The syllable CU is the pressing out, of the _Anxious_ will of the mind, from Nature: which is climbing up, and _willeth_ to be out aloft. RI is the comprehension of the flash of fire, which in MER giveth a clear sound and tune. For the flash maketh the tune, and it is the Salt-Spirit which _soundeth_, and its form (or quality) is gritty like sand, and herein arise noises, sounds and voices, and thus CU comprehendeth the flash, and so the pressure is as a _wind_ which thrusteth, and giveth a spirit to the flash, so that it liveth and burneth. Thus the {322} syllable US is called the burning fire, which with the spirit continually driveth itself forth: and the syllable CU presseth continually upon the flash."

Shades of Tauler[598] and Paracelsus,[599] how strangely you do mix! Well may Hallam call Germany the native soil of Mysticism. Had Behmen been the least of a scholar, he would not have divided _sulph-ur_ and _merc-ur-i-us_ as he has done: and the inflexion _us_, that boy of all work, would have been rejected. I think it will be held that a writer from whom hundreds of pages like the above could be brought together, is fit for the Budget. If Sampson Arnold Mackay[600] had tied his etymologies to a mystical Christology, instead of a mystical infidelity, he might have had a school of followers. The nonsense about Newton borrowing gravitation from Behmen pa.s.ses only with those who know neither what Newton did, nor what was done before him.

The above reminds me of a cla.s.s of paradoxers whom I wonder that I forgot; they are without exception the greatest bores of all, because they can put the small end of their paradox into any literary conversation whatever. I mean the people who have heard the local p.r.o.nunciation of celebrated names, and attempt not only to imitate it, but to impose on others their broken German or Arabic, or what not. They also learn the vernacular names of those who are generally spoken of in their Latin forms; at least, they learn a few cases, and hawk them as evidences of erudition. They are miserably mistaken: scholarship, as a rule, {323} always accepts the vernacular form of a name which has vernacular celebrity. Hallam writes Behmen: his index-maker, rather superfluously, gives "_Behmen_ or Boehm."

And he retains Melanchthon,[601] the name given by Reuchlin[602] to his little kinsman Schwartzerd, because the world has adopted it: but he will none of Capnio, the name which Reuchlin fitted on to himself, because the world has not adopted it. He calls the old forms pedantry: but he sees that the rejection of well-established results of pedantry would be greater pedantry still. The paradoxers a.s.sume the question that it is more _correct_ to sound a man by lame imitation of his own countrymen than as usual in the country in which the sound is to be made. Against them are, first, the world at large; next, an overpowering majority of those who know something about surnames and their history. Some thirty years ago--a fact--there appeared at the police-office a complainant who found his own law. In the course of his argument, he asked, "What does Kitty say?"--"Who's Kitty?" said the magistrate, "your wife, or your nurse?"--"Sir! I mean Kitty, the celebrated lawyer."--"Oh!" said the magistrate, "I suspect you mean Mr. Chitty,[603] the author of the great work on pleading."--"I do sir! But Chitty is an Italian name, and ought to be p.r.o.nounced _Kitty_." This man was a full-blown flower: but there is many a modest bud; and all ought either to blush when seen or to waste their p.r.o.nunciation on the desert air.

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