First, as to Mr. Halliwell. The late Thomas Stephens Davies,[268] excellent
in geometry, and most learned in its history, was also a good hand at
enmity, though not implacable. He and Mr. Halliwell, who had long before
been very much one, were, at this date, very much two. I do not think T. S.
Davies wrote this article; and I think that by giving my reasons I shall do
service to his memory. It must have been written at the beginning of
February; and within three days of that time T. S. Davies was making over
to me, by his own free act, to be kept until claimed by the relatives, what
all who knew even his writings knew that he considered as the most precious
deposit he had ever had in his keeping--Horner's[269] papers. His letter
announcing the transmission is dated February 2, 1850. This is a strong
point; but there is another quite as strong. Euclid and {152} his writings
were matters on which T. S. Davies knew neither fear nor favor: he could
not have written lightly about a man who stood high with him as a judge of
Euclid. Now in this very letter of Feb. 2, there is a sentence which I
highly value, because, as aforesaid, it is on a point on which he would
never have yielded anything, to which he had paid life-long attention, and
on which he had the bias of having long stood alone. In fact, knowing--and
what I shall quote confirms me,--that in the matter of Euclid his hand was
against every man, I expected, when I sent him a copy of my 22-column
article, "Eucleides" in Smith's _Dictionary_,[270] to have received back a
criticism, that would have blown me out of the water: and I thought it not
unlikely that a man so well up in the subject might have made me feel
demolished on some points. Instead of this, I got the following: "Although
on one or two minor points I do not quite accord with your views, yet as a
whole and without regard to any minor points, I think you are the first who
has succeeded in a delineation of Euclid as a geometer." All this duly
considered, it is utterly incredible that T. S. Davies should have written
the review in question. And yet Mr. Halliwell is treated just as T. S.
Davies would have treated him, as to tone and spirit. The inference in my
mind is that we have here a marked instance of the joining of hatreds which
takes place in journals supported by voluntary contributions of matter.
Should anything ever have revived this article--and no one ever knows what
might have been fished up from the forgotten mass of journals--the
treatment of Mr. Halliwell would certainly have thrown a suspicion on T. S.
Davies, a large and regular contributor to the Magazine. It is good service
to his memory to point out what makes it incredible that he should have
written so unworthy an article.
The fault is this. There are four extracts: the first {153} three are
perfectly well printed. The printing of the _Mechanics' Magazine_ was very
good. I was always exceedingly satisfied with the manner in which my
articles appeared, without my seeing proof. Most likely these extracts were
printed from my printed paper; if not the extractor was a good copier. I
know this by a test which has often served me. I use the subjunctive--"if
no man _have_ done nothing," an ordinary transcriber, narrating a quotation
almost always lets his own habit write _has_. The fourth extract has three
alterations, all tending to make me ridiculous. _None_ is altered, in two
places, into _nine_, _denial_ into _decimal_, and _comes_ into _aims_; so
that "none, the denial of one, comes to be associated with the denial of
plurality," reads as "nine, the decimal of one, aims to be associated with
the decimal of plurality." This is intentional; had it been a compositor's
reading of bad handwriting, these would not have been the only mistakes; to
say nothing of the corrector of the press. And both the compositor and
reader would have guessed, from the first line being translated into "one
is not one," that it must have been "one's none," not "one's nine." But it
was not intended that the gem should be recovered from the unfathomed cave,
and set in a Budget of Paradoxes.
We have had plenty of slander-paradox. I now give a halfpennyworth of bread
to all this sack, an instance of the paradox of benevolence, in which an
individual runs counter to all the ideas of his time, and sees his way into
the next century. At Amiens, at the end of the last century, an institution
was endowed by a M. de Morgan, to whom I hope I am of kin, but I cannot
trace it; the name is common at Amiens. It was the first of the kind I ever
heard of. It is a Salle d'Asyle for children, who are taught and washed and
taken care of during the hours in which their parents must be at work. The
founder was a large wholesale grocer and colonial importer, who was made a
Baron by Napoleon I for his commercial success and his charities. {154}