A new and easy method to find the longitude at land or sea. London,
1710, 4to.
This tract is a little earlier than the great epoch of such publications
(1714), and professes to find the longitude by the observed altitudes of
the moon and two stars.[274] {133}
A new method for discovering the longitude both at sea and land, humbly
proposed to the consideration of the public.[275] By Wm. Whiston[276]
and Humphry Ditton.[277] London, 1714, 8vo.
This is the celebrated tract, written by the two Arian heretics. Swift,
whose orthodoxy was as undoubted as his meekness, wrote upon it the
epigram--if, indeed, that be epigram of which the point is pious
wish--which has been so often recited for the purity of its style, a purity
which transcends modern printing. Perhaps some readers may think that Swift
cared little for Whiston and Ditton, except as a chance hearing of their
plan pointed them out as good marks. But it was not so: the clique had
their eye on the guilty pair before the publication of the tract. The
preface is dated July 7; and ten days afterwards Arbuthnot[278] writes as
follows to Swift:
"Whiston has at last published his project of the longitude; the most
ridiculous thing that ever was thought on. But a pox on him! he has spoiled
one of my papers of Scriblerus, which was a proposition for the longitude
not very unlike his, to this purpose; that since there was no pole for east
and west, that all the princes of Europe should join and build two
prodigious poles, upon high mountains, {134} with a vast lighthouse to
serve for a polestar. I was thinking of a calculation of the time, charges,
and dimensions. Now you must understand his project is by lighthouses, and
explosion of bombs at a certain hour."
The plan was certainly impracticable; but Whiston and Ditton might have
retorted that they were nearer to the longitude than their satirist to the
kingdom of heaven, or even to a bishopric. Arbuthnot, I think, here and
elsewhere, reveals himself as the calculator who kept Swift right in his
proportions in the matter of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, etc. Swift
was very ignorant about things connected with number. He writes to Stella
that he has discovered that leap-year comes every four years, and that all
his life he had thought it came every three years. Did he begin with the
mistake of Caesar's priests? Whether or no, when I find the person who did
not understand leap-year inventing satellites of Mars in correct accordance
with Kepler's third law, I feel sure he must have had help.