69 Gower Street - Thanks him for the Smith's prize paper, is confused by Whewell's added notes until he remembered seeing a review in the Edinburgh (in a bookseller's, he does not read it), remarking, 'I thought at first that you were hinting that I wrote the article in question which would have been two queer things in one 1. Supposing that I should write on optics 2. that I should write in the Edinburgh'. Points out that he has spelled Caesar's name wrong in one of the marginal notes ('Hast though appealed unto Caesar, &c'): 'when an experimental geometer appeals to his geometry it is to "See, sir!" not to Caesar'. Also points out a di/de typographic error: '(never say di) if I ever met a Di Morgan I dare say I shall learn something about it.'
69 Gower Street - Has sketched out a proof 'of the composition of forces which seems to separate the mathematical from the mechanical part better than Poisson's, and to shew the mathematical bearing of one or two steps much better'. If [D. F.] Gregory approves of it, ADM would like WW to communicate it to the Cambridge Philosophical Society Journal. Has been looking at [Jacob] Hermann's Phoronomia and would like to learn more about Hermann.
5 Upper Gower St. - Sends WW the corrected proof of his paper. Once printed WW is to retain some extra copies and give them to anyone interested in the subject.
5 Upper Gower Street - There are very few on the [Royal Astronomical] Society's Council competent to judge George Airy's paper on the new inequality of the sun and Venus. Normally Airy would adjudicate but he sits on the Council. Would WW examine the paper and if he thinks it deserves the medal would he allow his opinion to be known to the Council. Thanks WW for his treatise on the first principles of Mechanics. 'I think it highly calculated to do good: especially among the lower species of Wranglers. However might it not be useful to enter a little into what becomes of the motion lost by friction and other resistances, so as to shew that we have no reason to believe in the absolute loss of momentum?'.
90 G.S. - Asks for his opinion on different modes of expression in treating the Differential Calculus. Amongst other examples, he points out 'we cannot talk of total partial diff: coeff: Would complete partial diff: coeff: do?' Thanks him for his book on comets, and notes that the tides are yet undone.
Concerning the donation of a book in her possession created by Augustus De Morgan, recording the quarrel between Richard Sheepshanks, Sir James South and Charles Babbage, now on the shelves of Trinity College Library, shelfmark Adv.c.16.32.
7 Camden St., Camden - Shares an anecdote from 'Isocratis Parænesis': when Professor of Greek [Bartholomew] Doddington [Dodington] offers to repeat a Greek speech in Latin for the benefit of Queen Elizabeth, she responds in both languages.
Refers to a geometrical interpretation of the symbol �-1 by De Morgan, and to Maxwell's elementary manual on matter and motion.
Sidgwick, Henry (1838-1900), philosopher7 Camdn. St. & Town - Thanks him for the volume of notes, hopes Pepsia 'if there be such a goddess, has you in her keeping'.
7 C. St. & T. - Can not find that letters from Newton to Keil in 1714 have ever been published, hopes he will [gain?] them.
7 Camdn St. & Town - Corrects Whewell on [Jeremiah] Horrocks and [William] Crabtree - Christopher Towneley was friends with Edward Sherburne, who wrote about Towneley's friendships with William Milbourn[e], Crabtree, [William] Gascoygne [Gascoigne], and Horrocks, whose papers came into Towneley's possession, and who owned the Lansberg which De Morgan gave to Trinity College Library.
7 Camdn. Street & Town - Asks if a treatise on electricity, which he describes as an appendix to Mr Lunn's work, was written by Whewell, as he wishes to bind it with others by the same author; shares information on the date of Stevinus' death, and also points out that the translator Snell was likely Rudolph Snell the father, not the son.
Concerns Aristotle's account of induction. Makes a cipher for [Henry Parr Hamilton], whom he has heard from, and adds, "He goes to Salisbury in a month, for induction I suppose".
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road NW - Has two points to make: 1: the drinking song is Ptolemaic ['this bottle's the sun of our table, how the bottle revolves round the table"] and recalls the Duke of Sussex singing it at a dinner party in 1826. 2: Barrow's method is pretty but does not show the full merit of Peter Metius' [Adriaan Anthonisz'] result. Explains why he thinks the phrasing of 1620 indicates that he did not publish and will give him the reference from his son Adrian Metius' book; will look further at Barrow: "I am not sure that Barrow is not reasoning in, as well as on, a circle".
91 Adelaide Road - WW's information confirms ADM's recollection: Maitland was at Taunton when WW took his degree in 1816; tells the story of an undergraduate who was not found in the chapel lists or by tutors, but was instead remembered by the butler: 'An undergraduate may neither pray nor learn but he is sure to eat.' After the University College opened and courses were underway, a dinner was proposed and opposed by [Robert Edmond] Grant, who said he had never heard of such a thing as eating at a university.
91 Adelaide Road NW - A newspaper account claims Dr Maitland graduated from Trinity College in 1816, but this cannot be true since he lived next door to him in Taunton that year: ADM is certain that Maitland did not graduate since he was a non-conformist between 1817-20.
91 Adelaide Road NW - ADM is doing some historical research: and asks about the relationship of Trinity Fellows serving as guardians and not teachers and the modern system of tutorship as related to teaching. Is researching [Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifx?].
91 Adelaide Road NW - He does not expect Whewell to confer college patronage on Mr [Thomas Penyngton] Kirkman, but to say a good word if something arises. As to Whewell's statement that men who are hanged have the next world in this, he reminds him of the mechanics of hanging. Refers to Mr Wright, a remarkable Cambridge (town) man, and has met [Henry] Crabb Robinson who recalls that Wordsworth said Dyer's life of Robert Robinson one of the best biographies in the English language.
91 Adelaide Road NW - Would Whewell consider helping a poorly provided for man of science called Mr [Thomas Penyngton] Kirkman: His mathematical work on 'polyhedrons, and other things' are at the vanguard of their department.
91 Adelaide Road NW - He is making a list of paradoxers in the old sense of the word 'paradox', a thing strange to general opinion', and wants the date to WW's supplement - Dialogue to the Plurality of Worlds: 'how is ours to be the best of all possible worlds, as Leibniz said, if books go without dates?'. His family is in Wales in the mountains: they 'rave about 'em - poor demented creatures'.
91 Adelaide Road NW - Thanks WW for his letter and useful suggestion. He has come to the conclusion that we must treat infinity as a concept without usage, and distinguishes between the concepts which we can image from those we cannot. For quantity of space and time we have images - 'but not when too small or too great'. He has failed to repudiate infinity of quantity.
91 Adelaide Road NW - Whenever he looks at a sentence in Aristotle he often finds either gross corruption or obvious interpolation. Analyses Aristotle's chapter on the infinite closely: 'This chapter I suppose to have had much sway in determining the logicians obstinate confusion between the infinite, unlimited in quantities, powers &c, and the simple infinite of magnitude'.
91 Adelaide Road NW - Multipresence is placed on a basis of unintelligibility 'if we only envisage a quality acting through space as memory acts through time'. The analogies of space and time are 'the two indismissible extensions'. An annihilated star can be said to act when it is not, like matter 'can be said to act where it is not'. However 'presence is a very ill used notion. If a particle really do attract all others, it is present through out the universe...the presence of matter is the presence of all its qualities'. Henry Mansel is like the old logicians in the sense that he cannot separate the mathematical notion from infinite in quality and in everything. He would be glad to see anything of [Robert] Ellis's: during his illness he gained an 'enormous boon' from thinking about maths. without pen and paper; his preface to Bacon should be published.
91 Adelaide Road NW - He has come across a notion in Heywood's Analysis of Kant (1844) which occurred to him some ten years ago: 'I was considering a syllogism in which a term is a class of which the individuals are the subject at different moments of its existence'. ADM reflects upon the multipresence of consciousness and the idea of the ego knowing himself for himself in all the different parts of a space, without being able to say I am one person here (or now) and another there (or then). This supposes a faculty beyond our comprehension 'of what is what - which ties spaces together just as memory ties time together. All this I found in Kant' [Heywood p.109]. In his examination of ontological and religious works about the Almighty: 'I think I see a very great tendency to confuse omnipresent personality with infinite extent'. ADM is now writing on the subject of infinity.
91 Adelaide Road NW - Reflects that Whewell and Herschel and a Mr Murray are all translating Homer, and sends his own hexameter, a parody of the opening of book one of the 'Iliad'; comments on hexameters and the English language, praising the hymn to the Saint by Masaniello [in 'La Muette de Portici'] and its alternating dactyls and spondees. J. T. Graves has rendered his name into 81 anagrams, which he encloses [no longer attached].
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road NW - By 'mortal coil - which we shuffle off -', Shakespeare meant 'the body - not by any means a mere wrapper: Shakespeare was 'alluding to the body as the trouble which there would be an end of'. William Hamilton is clear and acute with his psychology but confounds 'the infinite and the absolute - makes his usual mistake about quantity - all somewhat resembling his confusion of identification and equation'. Gives his remarks on the 36 syllogisms he detects in Hamilton's work.
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road NW - Sends an old song - 'The Astronomer's view of the Tee-total Question. From the Transactions of the Astronomical Club, bottle dclxvi, glass 23'. This was extracted from the album of a gentleman in the west of England [J. Deck?] who believed it was sung at a mathematical society in London (probably Spitalfields Mathematical Society) to a solicitor named Fletcher who defended them gratis.
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road NW - Thanks him for his History of Discovery [Philosophy of Discovery 1860?]. Notes that WW has 'at last admitted that Induction = Induction means Induction < > Induction. Whether you have gone as far with logic I have not yet found out'. Roger Bacon is a great favourite of his 'and he ought to be allowed his share of the name of Bacon'. Wonders if less dignified names hinder reputations; says a latinised version of Sheepshanks' name would have 'looked grand' in the Middle Ages. In a postscript, he shares a few notes on the book.
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road, N.W. - He has received the memoir [of Robert Ellis] and will submit it to the editor of the Athenaeum; suggests that [James] Forbes allow his name to appear as author. Is going to write about the Sheepshanks Scholarship and asks William Whewell to send some information.
41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road, N.W. - The picture of Robert Ellis arrived: 'I am much pleased with it'.