Includes articles about hexameters and Philarète Chasles' remarks (with Whewell's reply) in complete issues of The Athenaeum (no. 1121, 21 Apr. 1849, no. 1124, 12 May 1849, part of no. 1125, 19 May 1849), with 5 cuttings from literary papers of poetry, three of them translations of Goethe, with comments and revisions by Whewell in ink, and a proof of an article for The Press 12 Apr. 1862 by J. S. Blackie disagreeing with Whewell and John Gibson Lockhart about the utility of a translation of Homer in English hexameter; a privately printed set of "Dargle Verses" by William Rowan Hamilton in 1854, an offprint of H. A. J. Munro's On a metrical Latin inscription" in 1861, both bearing the author's inscriptions, and an issue of Punch*, no. 559, vol. 22, 27 Mar. 1852 featuring "The Death of the Sea-Serpent" by Publius Jonathan Virgilius Jefferson Smith".
Naples, Italy - JWL has been taking singing lessons in counterpoint from a top Italian teacher. Gives news of his travels to various places including the summit of Vesuvius. JWL sends his best to Mr Hamilton and Mr Sedgwick if they are in Cambridge, and hopes 'Mr Hamilton's book will do something towards introducing algebraical analysis at Cambridge'.
In Whewell's hand.
WW finds RJ's word admirable [another word[?] for Richard Whately's term 'catallactics', see WW to RJ, 20 Jan. 1833]: 'Except you could make more of the ridicule of Whately turn upon the ugliness of the word Calallactics' ['Review of Whately'?]. RJ should reduce his 3 glasses of wine to 2. WW has enclosed an unpublished sonnet by 'Hamilton [William Rowan Hamilton] the Dublin astronomer about which I want your advice. It takes my fancy extremely...I should like to print it at the beginning of my Bridgewater book ['Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology', 1833]...In doing so I should say in the preface that the statements in one of my chapters concerning the tendency of mathematics to lead men's minds from religious views must be held to apply to some cause only, as was clear by such an example as the author of these lines, one of the first analysts of the age. This would be no more than justice, for he is a superb analyst and a noble fellow'. What does RJ think?
Trinity College - WW would like news on RJ and Mrs Jones's health. What has come of RJ's Professorship? (see WW to RJ, 18 March 1832). The Somervilles [Mary and Dr Somerville] are in Cambridge with a ' Dublin man of whom you may have heard as a stout mathematician (Hamilton [William Rowan Hamilton]) and who is moreover a strenuous metaphysician and an interminable talker about such high matters'.
7 Camdn. St. & T. - He has received 'the Newton' [Edleston ed. Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes]: 'It is that kind of book of which one's opinion is not made up in a month or two'. He 'expected a strong Anti-Leibnitio-Flamsteedian bias'. He is to send Whewell a copy of the Logic and his new mathematical paper. Has Whewell seen the recent article in the Athenaeum [Dec. 21 1850] claiming William Hamilton's quantification of the predicate was first published by George Bentham in A New System of Logic (1827). De Morgan confirms that three of Hamilton's 'great points' are to be found in this work. Hamilton had in fact reviewed the book which 'stands at the head of his celebrated article on logic' in the Edinburgh Review.
4 MS and one printed poem
GA does not think WW's letter to David Brewster 'at all savage': 'If I had any discussion with Brewster on these points I would certainly hit him about his bad information and his influence in acting on it. The revenues of professorships &c is one point already reproached - another is the character of the professors "Whewell, Airy & Hamilton" the only true experimenters - Does not [James?] Cumming do more than all? And did [Sir W. R. ?] Hamilton since he drew vital air ever make or meditate an experiment or trouble himself about other peoples?...I wish Babbage's non-lecturing could somehow be lugged into this controversy'.