Item 60 - Letter from George Airy

4 pp.

Flamsteed House, Greenwich - GA is taking a vacation in France: 'my nervous system seems I think more than usually shaken'. Regarding high academical instruction in mathematics: 'I have no doubt of the want of a Code. Yet it will not do to make this exclusive or suppressive of novelties - not because it would not be best if it could be maintained, but because it cannot be maintained for an unlimited time, and the more pestiferously it is kept up for a time, the more sudden and complete and anarchical will be its fall at some period... Therefore my general notion would be, to define subjects which ought to be kept, leaving a fair space for others which may be introduced as new tastes or the influence of individuals may prevail, and not to risk the chance of such a treatise as Babbage proposed "On the principles of d-ism, in opposition to the dot-age of the University"'. As to particular authors, GA recommends Newton, Lagrange and Monge, and reluctantly Laplace's Mechanique Celeste - though 'this is by no means so systematic a work as those above'. Regarding the works of [Leonhard] Euler GA is not very familiar: 'But to some of these which I did read, there is this objection, that Euler gives the whole course of his ideas, dilating upon his crude notions in a way which requires great labour for following him, and then quietly informing you that it is all useless and that he can give you something much better'. GA agrees with WW in emphasising 'the great standard works of all times rather than to the last steps made'.