to Mr. Arthur Aikln. 143 



been said by authors on the satellite of Venus,, in Rees's im- 

 proved edition of Chambers's Dictionary, the French and 

 English Encyclopaedias, Long's Astronomy, Wright's Cla- 

 vis Coelestis, the Philosophical Transactions, and many other 

 works : and hence all the ridicule he would wish to throw 

 upon me, will, I trust, fall on his own head. My misfortune 

 is to have gone further than the surface, and to have read 

 where your reviewer had no opportunity of obtaining infor- 

 mation. Hence my literary reputation has received a shock 

 from an unexpected quarter, and my botanical undertaking 

 nearly ruined by misrepresentations. You, sir, who can 

 feel for Rees's New Cyclopaedia, in which you are only par- 

 tially connected, and complain " that I have, in my other- 

 wise laudable zeal fio vindicate myself, been betrayed into an. 

 unjust and ungenerous allusion to that work ;" who was so 

 feelingly alive to its interests, as to take in earnest what 

 every other must at once have understood as a joke ; for, af- 

 ter the fine display of deep reading in astronomy exhibited 

 by your reviewer and yourself (for this part of your review 

 you had not then disavowed), could I for a moment seriously 

 intend to assert, that you, or your reviewer, was meant to 

 be associated with the learned writer on astronomy in the 

 New Cyclopaedia, and really refute what is incapable of 

 answer? It would have been the highest insult to Dr. Rees, 

 the sagacious director of that national work, where, in each 

 department of science, the ablest men are judiciously cho- 

 sen, and where, with the utmost propriety, you are singled 

 out for mineralogy and chemistry, in which departments of 

 science, it is but justice to say, you have but few rival con- 

 temporaries ; — it is, I should think, next to impossible, but 

 that you must also feel some 5772a// interest for a work 

 hardly less expensive, conducted at the risk of an indivi- 

 dual, and which, if crushed, must involve me in a heavy 

 loss, and disappoint many of my hitherto satisfied subscri- 

 bers : — Surely, under all these circumstances, you will for- 

 give, I assure you, an unintended hoax ; and if T have ex- 

 pressed myself too strongly with regard to your reviewer, 

 it has arisen from that natural indignation, resulting from 

 the firm persuasion, that I have been " ungenerously" and 

 " unjustly" attacked, and most ignorantly misrepresented. 

 But believe me at all other times, 



Sir, with respect and esteem, 

 Your faithful obedient servant, 

 Robert John Thornton. 



XXVI. From 



