A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 18

Then advancing his right leg, he fixed it on the professor's head, and after three turns, in which he clapped his sides with both hands thrice three times, down he leaped, and Pantagruel, Epistemon, and himself took their leaves of the wise men of Pontemaca.

"The wise men now retired, and by royal orders were accompanied by a guard, and according to the etiquette of the court, no one having a royal order could stop at any public house till it was delivered. The procession arrived at Pontemaca at nine o'clock the next morning, and the sound of bells from every church and college announced their arrival. The congregation was a.s.sembled; the royal decree was saluted in the same manner as if his highness had been there in person; and after the proper ceremonies had been performed, the satin bag was opened exactly at twelve o'clock. A finely emblazoned roll was drawn forth, and the public orator read to the gaping a.s.sembly the following words:

"'They who can make something out of nothing shall have nothing to eat at the court of--PANTAGRUEL.'" {215}

ORIGIN _of the_ ENGLISH LANGUAGE, _related by a_ SWEDE.

"Some months ago in a party in Holland, consisting of natives of various countries, the merit of their respective languages became a topic of conversation. A Swede, who had been a great traveler, and could converse in most of the modern languages of Europe, laughed very heartily at an Englishman, who had ventured to speak in praise of the tongue of his dear country. I never had any trouble, says he, in learning English. To my very great surprise, the moment I sat foot on sh.o.r.e at Gravesend, I found out, that I could understand, with very little trouble, every word that was said. It was a mere jargon, made up of German, French, and Italian, with now and then a word from the Spanish, Latin or Greek. I had only to bring my mouth to their mode of speaking, which was done with ease in less than a week, and I was everywhere taken for a true-born Englishman; a privilege by the way of no small importance in a country, where each man, G.o.d knows why, thinks his foggy island superior to any other part of the world: and though his door is never free from some dun or other coming for a tax, and if he steps out of it he is sure to be knocked down or to have his pocket picked, yet he has the insolence to think every foreigner a miserable slave, and his country the seat of everything wretched. They may talk of liberty as they please, but Spain or Turkey for my money: barring the bowstring and the inquisition, they are the most comfortable countries under heaven, and you need not be afraid of either, if you do not talk of religion and politics. I do not see much difference too in this respect in England, for when I was there, one of their most eminent men for learning was put in prison for a couple of years, and got his death for translating one of aesop's fables into English, which every child in Spain and Turkey is taught, as soon as he comes out of his leading strings. Here all the company unanimously cried out against the Swede, that it was {216} impossible: for in England, the land of liberty, the only thing its worst enemies could say against it, was, that they paid for their liberty a much greater price than it was worth.--Every man there had a fair trial according to laws, which everybody could understand; and the judges were cool, patient, discerning men, who never took the part of the crown against the prisoner, but gave him every a.s.sistance possible for his defense.

"The Swede was borne down, but not convinced; and he seemed determined to spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind.

Here the company were all in unison again for the story.

"In ancient times, said the old hag, the English occupied a spot in Tartary, where they lived sulkily by themselves, unknowing and unknown. By a great convulsion that took place in China, the inhabitants of that and the adjoining parts of Tartary were driven from their seats, and after various wanderings took up their abode in Germany. During this time n.o.body could understand the English, for they did not talk, but hissed like so many snakes. The poor people felt uneasy under this circ.u.mstance, and in one of their parliaments, or rather hissing meetings, it was determined to seek a remedy: and an emba.s.sy was sent to some of our sisterhood then living on Mount Hecla. They were put to a nonplus, and summoned the Devil to their relief. To him the English presented their pet.i.tions, and explained their sad case; and he, upon certain conditions, promised to befriend them, and to give them a language. The poor Devil was little aware of what he had promised; but he is, as all the world knows, a man of too much honor to break his word. Up and down the world then he went in quest of this new language: visited all the universities, and all {217} the schools, and all the courts of law, and all the play-houses, and all the prisons; never was poor devil so f.a.gged. It would have made your heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go round the earth in every parallel of lat.i.tude; and at last, wearied and jaded out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and post ultimatums, the poor Devil, unable to a.s.sist them was groaning in a corner and ruminating over his sad condition.

"On a sudden, a h.e.l.lish joy overspread his countenance; up he jumped, and, like Archimedes of old, ran like a madman amongst the throng, turning over tables, and papers, and witches, roaring out for a full hour together nothing else but 'tis found, 'tis found! Away were sent the sisterhood in every direction, some to traverse all the corners of the earth, and others to prepare a larger caldron than had ever yet been set upon Hecla. The affairs of Europe were at a stand: its balance was thrown aside; prime ministers and amba.s.sadors were everywhere in the utmost confusion; and, by the way, they have never been able to find the balance since that time, and all the fine speeches upon the subject, with which your newspapers are every now and then filled, are all mere hocus-pocus and rhodomontade.

However, the caldron was soon set on, and the air was darkened by witches riding on broomsticks, bringing a couple of folios under each arm, and across each shoulder. I remember the time exactly: it was just as the council of Nice had broken up, so that they got books and papers there dog cheap; but it was a bad thing for the poor English, as these were the worst materials that entered into the caldron. Besides, as the Devil wanted some amus.e.m.e.nt, and had not seen an account of the transactions of this famous council, he had all the books brought from it laid before him, and split his sides almost {218} with laughing, whilst he was reading the speeches and decrees of so many of his old friends and acquaintances. All this while the witches were depositing their loads in the great caldron. There were books from the Dalai Lama, and from China: there were books from the Hindoos, and tallies from the Caffres: there were paintings from Mexico, and rocks of hieroglyphics from Egypt: the last country supplied besides the swathings of two thousand mummies, and four-fifths of the famed library of Alexandria. Bubble! bubble! toil and trouble! never was a day of more labor and anxiety; and if our good master had but flung in the Greek books at the proper time, they would have made a complete job of it. He was a little too impatient: as the caldron frothed up, he skimmed it off with a great ladle, and filled some thousands of our wind-bags with the froth, which the English with great joy carried back to their own country. These bags were sent to every district: the chiefs first took their fill, and then the common people; hence they now speak a language which no foreigner can understand, unless he has learned half a dozen other languages; and the poor people, not one in ten, understand a third part of what is said to them. The hissing, however, they have not entirely got rid of, and every seven years, when the Devil, according to agreement, pays them a visit, they entertain him at their common halls and county meetings with their original language.

"The good-natured old hag told me several other circ.u.mstances, relative to this curious transaction, which, as there is an Englishman in company, it will be prudent to pa.s.s over in silence: but I cannot help mentioning one thing which she told me as a very great secret. You know, says she to me, that the English have more religions among them than any other nation in Europe, and that there is more teaching and sermonizing with them than in any other country. The fact is this; it matters not who gets up to teach them, the hard words of the Greek were not sufficiently {219} boiled, and whenever they get into a sentence, the poor people's brains are turned, and they know no more what the preacher is talking about, than if he harangued them in Arabic. Take my word for it if you please; but if not, when you get to England, desire the bettermost sort of people that you are acquainted with to read to you an act of parliament, which of course is written in the clearest and plainest style in which anything can be written, and you will find that not one in ten will be able to make tolerable sense of it. The language would have been an excellent language, if it had not been for the council of Nice, and the words had been well boiled.

"Here the company burst out into a fit of laughter. The Englishman got up and shook hands with the Swede: _si non e vero_, said he, _e ben trovato_.[476] But, however I may laugh at it here, I would not advise you to tell this story on the other side of the water. So here's a b.u.mper to Old England for ever, and G.o.d save the king."

ON YOUTHFUL PRODIGIES.

The accounts given of extraordinary children and adolescents frequently defy credence.[477] I will give two well-attested instances.

The celebrated mathematician Alexis Claude Clairault (now Clairaut)[478]

was certainly born in May, 1713. His treatise on curves of double curvature (printed in 1731)[479] received {220} the approbation of the Academy of Sciences, August 23, 1729. Fontenelle, in his certificate of this, calls the author sixteen years of age, and does not strive to exaggerate the wonder, as he might have done, by reminding his readers that this work, of original and sustained mathematical investigation, must have been coming from the pen at the ages of fourteen and fifteen. The truth was, as attested by De Molieres,[480] Clairaut had given public proofs of his power at twelve years old. His age being thus publicly certified, all doubt is removed: say he had been--though great wonder would still have been left--twenty-one instead of sixteen, his appearance, and the remembrances of his friends, schoolfellows, etc., would have made it utterly hopeless to knock off five years of that age while he was on view in Paris as a young lion. De Molieres, who examined the work officially for the _Garde des Sceaux_, is transported beyond the bounds of official gravity, and says that it "ne merite pas seulement d'etre imprime, mais d'etre admire comme un prodige d'imagination, de conception, et de capacite."[481]

That Blaise Pascal was born in June, 1623, is perfectly well established and uncontested.[482] That he wrote his conic sections at the age of sixteen might be difficult to establish, though tolerably well attested, if it were not for {221} one circ.u.mstance, for the book was not published. The celebrated theorem, "Pascal's hexagram,"[483] makes all the rest come very easy. Now Curabelle,[484] in a work published in 1644, sneers at Desargues,[485] whom he quotes, for having, in 1642, deferred a discussion until "cette grande proposition nommee le Pascale verra le jour."[486] That is, by the time Pascal was nineteen, the _hexagram_ was circulating under a name derived from the author. The common story about Pascal, given by his sister,[487] is an absurdity which no doubt has prejudiced many against tales of early proficiency. He is made, when quite a boy, to invent geometry _in the order of Euclid's propositions_: as if that order were natural sequence of investigation. The hexagram at ten years old would be a hundred times less unlikely.

The instances named are painfully astonishing: I give one which has fallen out of sight, because it will preserve an imperfect biography. John Wilson[488] is Wilson of that {222} Ilk, that is, of "Wilson's Theorem." It is this: if _p_ be a prime number, the product of all the numbers up to _p_-1, increased by 1, is divisible without remainder by _p_. All mathematicians know this as Wilson's theorem, but few know who Wilson was.

He was born August 6, 1741, at the Howe in Applethwaite, and he was heir to a small estate at Troutbeck in Westmoreland. He was sent to Peterhouse, at Cambridge, and while an undergraduate was considered stronger in algebra than any one in the University, except Professor Waring, one of the most powerful algebraists of the century.[489] He was the senior wrangler of 1761, and was then for some time a private tutor. When Paley,[490] then in his third year, determined to make a push for the senior wranglership, which he got, Wilson was recommended to him as a tutor. Both were ardent in their work, except that sometimes Paley, when he came for his lesson, would find "Gone a fishing" written on his tutor's outer door: which was insult added to injury, for Paley was very fond of fishing. Wilson soon left Cambridge, and went to the bar. He practised on the northern circuit with great success; and, one day, while pa.s.sing his vacation on his little property at Troutbeck, he received information, to his great surprise, that Lord Thurlow,[491] with whom he had {223} no acquaintance, had recommended him to be a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He died, Oct. 18, 1793, with a very high reputation as a lawyer and a Judge. These facts are partly from Meadley's _Life of Paley_,[492] no doubt from Paley himself, partly from the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and from an epitaph written by Bishop Watson.[493] Wilson did not publish anything: the theorem by which he has cut his name in the theory of numbers was communicated to Waring, by whom it was published. He married, in 1788, a daughter of Serjeant Adair,[494]

and left issue. _Had a family_, many will say: but a man and his wife are a family, even without children. An actuary may be allowed to be accurate in this matter, of which I was reminded by what an actuary wrote of another actuary. William Morgan,[495] in the life of his uncle Dr. Richard Price,[496] says that the Doctor and his {224} wife were "never blessed with an addition to their family." I never met with such accuracy elsewhere. Of William Morgan I add that my surname and pursuits have sometimes, to my credit be it said, made a confusion between him and me.

Dates are nothing to the mistaken; the last three years of Morgan's life were the first three years of my actuary-life (1830-33). The mistake was to my advantage as well as to my credit. I owe to it the acquaintance of one of the n.o.blest of the human race, I mean Elizabeth Fry,[497] who came to me for advice about a philanthropic design, which involved life questions, under a general impression that some Morgan had attended to such things.[498]

{225}

NEWTON AGAIN OVERTHROWN.

A treatise on the sublime science of heliography, satisfactorily demonstrating our great orb of light, the sun, to be absolutely no other than a body of ice! Overturning all the received systems of the universe hitherto extant; proving the celebrated and indefatigable Sir Isaac Newton, in his theory of the solar system, to be as far distant from the truth, as many of the heathen authors of Greece and Rome. By Charles Palmer,[499] Gent. London, 1798, 8vo.

Mr. Palmer burned some tobacco with a burning gla.s.s, saw that a lens of ice would do as well, and then says:

"If we admit that the sun could be removed, and a terrestrial body of ice placed in its stead, it would produce the same effect. The sun is a crystaline body receiving the radiance of G.o.d, and operates on this earth in a similar manner as the light of the sun does when applied to a convex mirror or gla.s.s."

Nov. 10, 1801. The Rev. Thomas Cormouls,[500] minister of Tettenhall, addressed a letter to Sir Wm. Herschel, from which I extract the following:

"Here it may be asked, then, how came the doctrines of Newton to solve all astronomic Phenomina, and all problems concerning the same, both _a parte ante_ and _a parte post_.[501] It is answered that he certainly wrought the principles he made use of into strickt a.n.a.logy with the real Phenomina of the heavens, and that the rules and results arizing from them {226} agree with them and resolve accurately all questions concerning them. Though they are not fact and true, or nature, but a.n.a.logous to it, in the manner of the artificial numbers of logarithms, sines, &c. A very important question arises here, Did Newton mean to impose upon the world? By no means: he received and used the doctrines reddy formed; he did a little extend and contract his principles when wanted, and commit a few oversights of consequences. But when he was very much advanced in life, he suspected the fundamental nullity of them: but I have from a certain anecdote strong ground to believe that he knew it before his decease and intended to have retracted his error. But, however, somebody did deceive, if not wilfully, negligently at least. That was a man to whom the world has great obligations too. It was no less a philosopher than Galileo."

That Newton wanted to retract before his death, is a notion not uncommon among paradoxers. Nevertheless, there is no retraction in the third edition of the _Principia_, published when Newton was eighty-four years old! The moral of the above is, that a gentleman who prefers instructing William Herschel to learning how to spell, may find a proper niche in a proper place, for warning to others. It seems that gravitation is not truth, but only the logarithm of it.

BISHOPS AS PARADOXERS.

The mathematical and philosophical works of the Right Rev. John Wilkins[502].... In two volumes. London, 1802, 8vo.

This work, or at least part of the edition--all for aught I know--is printed on wood; that is, on paper made from wood-pulp. It has a rough surface; and when held before a candle is of very unequal transparency.

There is in it a reprint of the works on the earth and moon. The discourse on the possibility of going to the moon, in this and the edition of 1640, is incorporated: but from the account in the {227} life prefixed, and a mention by D'Israeli, I should suppose that it had originally a separate t.i.tle-page, and some circulation as a separate tract. Wilkins treats this subject half seriously, half jocosely; he has evidently not quite made up his mind. He is clear that "arts are not yet come to their solstice," and that posterity will bring hidden things to light. As to the difficulty of carrying food, he thinks, scoffing Puritan that he is, the Papists may be trained to fast the voyage, or may find the bread of their Eucharist "serve well enough for their _viatic.u.m_."[503] He also puts the case that the story of Domingo Gonsales may be realized, namely, that wild geese find their way to the moon. It will be remembered--to use the usual subst.i.tute for, It has been forgotten--that the posthumous work of Bishop Francis G.o.dwin[504] of Llandaff was published in 1638, the very year of Wilkins's first edition, in time for him to mention it at the end. G.o.dwin makes Domingo Gonsales get to the moon in a chariot drawn by wild geese, and, as old books would say, discourses fully on that head. It is not a little amusing that Wilkins should have been seriously accused of plagiarizing G.o.dwin, Wilkins writing in earnest, or nearly so, and G.o.dwin writing fiction. It may serve to show philosophers how very near pure speculation comes to fable. From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step: which is the sublime, and which the ridiculous, every one must settle for himself.

With me, good fiction is the sublime, and bad speculation the ridiculous.

The number of bishops in my list is small. I might, had I possessed the book, have opened the list of quadrators with an Archbishop of Canterbury, or at least with a divine who was not wholly not archbishop. Thomas Bradwardine[505] (Bragvardinus, Bragadinus) was elected in {228} 1348; the Pope put in another, who died unconsecrated; and Bradwardine was again elected in 1349, and lived five weeks longer, dying, I suppose, unconfirmed and unconsecrated.[506] Leland says he held the see a year, _unus tantum annulus_,[507] which seems to be a confusion: the whole business, from the first election, took about a year. He squared the circle, and his performance was printed at Paris in 1494. I have never seen it, nor any work of the author, except a tract on proportion.

As Bradwardine's works are very scarce indeed, I give two t.i.tles from one of the Libri catalogues.

"ARITHMETIC. BRAUARDINI (Thomae) Arithmetica speculativa revisa et correcta a Petro Sanchez Ciruelo Aragonesi, black letter, _elegant woodcut t.i.tle-page_, VERY RARE, _folio. Parisiis, per Thomam Anguelast (pro Olivier Senant), s. a. circa 1510_.[508]

"This book, by Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury must be exceedingly scarce as it has escaped the notice of Professor De Morgan, who, in his _Arithmetical Books_, speaks of a treatise of the same author on proportions,[509] printed at Vienna in 1515, but does not mention the present work.

{229}

"Bradwardine (Archbp. T.). Brauardini (Thomae) Geometria speculativa, com Tractato de Quadratura Circuli bene revisa a Petro Sanchez Ciruelo, SCARCE, _folio. Parisiis, J. Pet.i.t_, 1511.[510]

"In this work we find the _polygones etoiles_,[511] see Chasles (_Apercu_, pp. 480, 487, 521, 523, &c.) on the merit of the discoveries of this English mathematician, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the XIVth Century (_tempore_ Edward III. A.D. 1349); and who applied geometry to theology. M. Chasles says that the present work of Bradwardine contains 'Une theorie nouvelle qui doit faire honneur au XIVe Siecle.'"[512]

The t.i.tles do not make it quite sure that Bradwardine is the quadrator; it may be Peter Sanchez after all.[513]

THE QUESTION OF PARALLELS.

Nouvelle theorie des paralleles. Par Adolphe Kircher[514] [so signed at the end of the appendix]. Paris, 1803, 8vo.

An alleged emendation of Legendre.[515] The author refers {230} to attempts by Hoffman,[516] 1801, by Hauff,[517] 1799, and to a work of Karsten,[518]

or at least a theory of Karsten, contained in "Tentamen novae parallelarum theoriae notione situs fundatae; auctore G. C. Schwal,[519] Stuttgardae, 1801, en 8 volumes." Surely this is a misprint; _eight_ volumes on the theory of parallels? If there be such a work, I trust I and it may never meet, though ever so far produced.

{231}

Soluzione ... della quadratura del Circolo. By Gaetano Rossi.[520]

London, 1804, 8vo.

The three remarkable points of this book are, that the household of the Prince of Wales took ten copies, Signora Gra.s.sini[521] sixteen, and that the circ.u.mference is 3-1/5 diameters. That is, the appet.i.te of Gra.s.sini for quadrature exceeded that of the whole household (_loggia_) of the Prince of Wales in the ratio in which the semi-circ.u.mference exceeds the diameter.

And these are the first two in the list of subscribers. Did the author see this theorem?