The quadrature of the circle discovered, by Arthur Parsey,[639] author
of the 'art of miniature painting.' Submitted to the consideration of
the Royal Society, on whose protection the author humbly throws
himself. London, 1832, 8vo.
Mr. Parsey was an artist, who also made himself conspicuous by a new view
of perspective. Seeing that the sides of a tower, for instance, would
appear to meet in a point if the tower were high enough, he thought that
these sides ought to slope to one another in the picture. On this {294}
theory he published a small work, of which I have not the title, with a
Grecian temple in the frontispiece, stated, if I remember rightly, to be
the first picture which had ever been drawn in true perspective. Of course
the building looked very Egyptian, with its sloping sides. The answer to
his notion is easy enough. What is called the picture is not the picture
from which the mind takes its perception; that picture is on the retina.
The _intermediate_ picture, as it may be called--the human artist's
work--is itself seen perspectively. If the tower were so high that the
sides, though parallel, appeared to meet in a point, the picture must also
be so high that the _picture-sides_, though parallel, would appear to meet
in a point. I never saw this answer given, though I have seen and heard the
remarks of artists on Mr. Parsey's work. I am inclined to think it is
commonly supposed that the artist's picture is the representation which
comes before the mind: this is not true; we might as well say the same of
the object itself. In July 1831, reading an article on squaring the circle,
and finding that there was a difficulty, he set to work, got a light denied
to all mathematicians in--some would say through--a crack, and advertised
in the _Times_ that he had done the trick. He then prepared this work, in
which, those who read it will see how, he showed that 3.14159... should be
3.0625. He might have found out his error by _stepping_ a draughtsman's
circle with the compasses.
Perspective has not had many paradoxes. The only other one I remember is
that of a writer on perspective, whose name I forget, and whose four pages
I do not possess. He circulated remarks on my notes on the subject,
published in the _Athenaeum_, in which he denies that the stereographic
projection is a case of perspective, the reason being that the whole
hemisphere makes too large a picture for the eye conveniently to grasp at
once. That is to say, it is no perspective because there is too much
perspective. {295}