Baron Maseres[458] was, as a writer, dry; those who knew his writings will
feel that he seldom could have taken in a joke or issued a pun. Maseres was
the fourth wrangler of 1752, and first Chancellor's medallist (or highest
in classics); his second was Porteus[459] (afterward Bishop of London).
Waring[460] came five years after him: he could not get Maseres through the
second page of his first book on algebra; a negative quantity stood like a
lion in the way. In 1758 he published his _Dissertation on the Use of the
Negative Sign_,[461] 4to. There are some who care little about + and -, who
would give it house-room for the sake of the four words "Printed by Samuel
Richardson."
Maseres speaks as follows: "A single quantity can never be marked with
either of those signs, or considered as either affirmative or negative; for
if any single quantity, as b, is marked either with the sign + or with the
sign - without assigning some other quantity, as a, to which it is to be
added, or from which it is to be subtracted, the mark will have no meaning
or signification: thus if it be said that the square of -5, or the product
of -5 into -5, is equal to +25, such an assertion must either signify no
more than that 5 times 5 is equal to 25 without any regard to the signs, or
it must be mere nonsense and unintelligible jargon. I speak according to
the foregoing definition, by which the affirmativeness or negativeness of
any quantity implies a relation to another quantity of the same kind to
which it {204} is added, or from which it is subtracted; for it may perhaps
be very clear and intelligible to those who have formed to themselves some
other idea of affirmative and negative quantities different from that above
defined."
Nothing can be more correct, or more identically logical: +5 and -5,
standing alone, are jargon if +5 and -5 are to be understood as without
reference to another quantity. But those who have "formed to themselves
some other idea" see meaning enough. The great difficulty of the opponents
of algebra lay in want of power or will to see extension of terms. Maseres
is right when he implies that extension, accompanied by its refusal, makes
jargon. One of my paradoxers was present at a meeting of the Royal Society
(in 1864, I think) and asked permission to make some remarks upon a paper.
He rambled into other things, and, naming me, said that I had written a
book in which two sides of a triangle are pronounced _equal_ to the
third.[462] So they are, in the sense in which the word is used in complete
algebra; in which A + B = C makes A, B, C, three sides of a triangle, and
declares that going over A and B, one after the other, is equivalent, in
change of place, to going over C at once. My critic, who might, if he
pleased, have objected to extension, insisted upon reading me in unextended
meaning.
On the other hand, it must be said that those who wrote on the other idea
wrote very obscurely about it and justified Des Cartes (_De Methodo_)[463]
when he said: "Algebram vero, ut solet doceri, animadverti certis regulis
et numerandi formulis ita esse contentam, ut videatur potius ars quaedam
confusa, cujus usu ingenium quodam modo turbatur et obscuratur, quam
scientia qua excolatur et perspicacius {205} reddatur."[464] Maseres wrote
this sentence on the title of his own work, now before me; he would have
made it his motto if he had found it earlier.
There is, I believe, in Cobbett's _Annual Register_,[465] an account of an
interview between Maseres and Cobbett when in prison.
The conversation of Maseres was lively, and full of serious anecdote: but
only one attempt at humorous satire is recorded of him; it is an
instructive one. He was born in 1731 (Dec. 15), and his father was a
refugee. French was the language of the house, with the pronunciation of
the time of Louis XIV. He lived until 1824 (May 19), and saw the race of
refugees who were driven out by the first Revolution. Their pronunciation
differed greatly from his own; and he used to amuse himself by mimicking
them. Those who heard him and them had the two schools of pronunciation
before them at once; a thing which seldom happens. It might even yet be
worth while to examine the Canadian pronunciation.
Maseres went as Attorney-General to Quebec; and was appointed Cursitor
Baron of our Exchequer in 1773. There is a curious story about his mission
to Canada, which I have heard as good tradition, but have never seen in
print. The reader shall have it as cheap as I; and I confess I rather
believe it. Maseres was inveterately honest; he could not, at the bar, bear
to see his own client victorious, when he knew his cause was a bad one. On
a certain occasion he was in a cause which he knew would go against him if
a certain case were quoted. Neither the judge nor the opposite counsel
seemed to remember this case, and Maseres could not help dropping an
allusion which brought it out. {206} His business as a barrister fell off,
of course. Some time after, Mr. Pitt (Chatham) wanted a lawyer to send to
Canada on a private mission, and wanted a _very honest man_. Some one
mentioned Maseres, and told the above story: Pitt saw that he had got the
man he wanted. The mission was satisfactorily performed, and Maseres
remained as Attorney-General.
The _Doctrine of Life Annuities_[466] (4to, 726 pages, 1783) is a strange
paradox. Its size, the heavy dissertations on the national debt, and the
depth of algebra supposed known, put it out of the question as an
elementary work, and it is unfitted for the higher student by its elaborate
attempt at elementary character, shown in its rejection of forms derived
from chances in favor of _the average_, and its exhibition of the separate
values of the years of an annuity, as arithmetical illustrations. It is a
climax of unsaleability, unreadability, and inutility. For intrinsic
nullity of interest, and dilution of little matter with much ink, I can
compare this book to nothing but that of Claude de St. Martin, elsewhere
mentioned, or the lectures _On the Nature and Properties of Logarithms_, by
James Little,[467] Dublin, 1830, 8vo. (254 heavy pages of many words and
few symbols), a wonderful weight of weariness.
The stock of this work on annuities, very little diminished, was given by
the author to William Frend, who paid warehouse room for it until about
1835, when he consulted me as to its disposal. As no publisher could be
found who would take it as a gift, for any purpose of sale, it was
consigned, all but a few copies, to a buyer of waste paper.
Baron Maseres's republications are well known: the _Scriptores
Logarithmici_[468] is a set of valuable reprints, mixed {207} with much
which might better have entered into another collection. It is not so well
known that there is a volume of optical reprints, _Scriptores Optici_,
London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469]
at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes,
Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, the _Principia_ of
the undulatory theory. It also contains, by the sort of whim in which such
men as Maseres, myself, and some others are apt to indulge, a reprint of
"The great new Art of weighing Vanity,"[470] by M. Patrick Mathers,
Arch-Bedel to the University of St. Andrews, Glasgow, 1672. Professor
Sinclair,[471] of Glasgow, a good man at clearing mines of the water which
they did not want, and furnishing cities with water which they did want,
seems to have written absurdly about hydrostatics, and to have attacked a
certain Sanders,[472] M.A. So Sanders, assisted by James Gregory, published
a heavy bit of jocosity about him. This story of the authorship rested on a
note made in his {208} copy by Robert Gray, M.D.; but it has since been
fully confirmed by a letter of James Gregory to Collins, in the
Macclesfield Correspondence. "There is one Master Sinclair, who did write
the _Ars Magna et Nova_,[473] a pitiful ignorant fellow, who hath lately
written horrid nonsense in the hydrostatics, and hath abused a master in
the University, one Mr. Sanders, in print. This Mr. Sanders ... is resolved
to cause the Bedel of the University to write against him.... We resolve to
make excellent sport with him."
On this I make two remarks: First, I have learned from experience that old
notes, made in books by their possessors, are statements of high authority:
they are almost always confirmed. I do not receive them without hesitation;
but I believe that of all the statements about books which rest on one
authority, there is a larger percentage of truth in the written word than
in the printed word. Secondly, I mourn to think that when the New Zealander
picks up his old copy of this book, and reads it by the associations of his
own day, he may, in spite of the many assurances I have received that my
_Athenaeum Budget_ was amusing, feel me to be as heavy as I feel James
Gregory and Sanders. But he will see that I knew what was coming, which
Gregory did not.