132 



ME. T. T. WILKINSON ON 



the impulse which biased his mind in favour of Geometry, 

 cannot peihaps now be ascertained; but, from his position in 

 life and his subsequent connexions, it is not improbable that 

 the Grammar School of Manchester had the honour of his 

 education. He died in 1784, at the early age of forty-one, 

 and hence at the time of his first appearance as a corres- 

 pondent to the Mathematical Magazine he could not be more 

 than eighteen years of age. In 1768 he answered most of the 

 mathematical questions in the Lady's Diary, but probably 

 from the circumstance of none of his solutions being printed at 

 length he discontinued his communications to that periodical. 

 At a later period we find him in correspondence with the Editors 

 of the Manchester Journal for 1771, the Gentleman s Diary for 

 1782, the London Magazine, and Burrows Diary from 1777 to 

 1782. His communications to the Manchester Journal prove 

 him to have been well acquainted with astronomy, and involved 

 him in a controversy with his neighbour Dr. Clarke, who how- 

 ever does not appear to have entered so deeply into the subject 

 under dispute as his opponent. As a geometer, his merits were 

 well known and appreciated by his contemporaries, so much so 

 that the Rev. John Lawson, who contemplated the publication 

 of a series of Solutions to the Theorems and Problems which 

 usually pass under his name,* submitted his manuscript to 

 Mr. Ainsworth for his judgment and corrections. What has 

 become of this MS. collection I am unable to state, but the 

 following account of its existence will not be without its 

 interest, and may possibly lead to its discovery : — 



"Manchester, Aug. 22nd, 1777. 

 " Rev. Sir, — I received yonr manuscript, &c., which I have examined 

 carefully, and indeed not quite without effect ; for I have found three 



* It is not generally known that what are usually termed " Lawiori's Tlteorems " 

 were mostly taken, without achnomledgment, from Dr. Stewart's Proposiliones Oeo- 

 metricoe. The first thirty-five Theorems are taken consecutively from Book I. of 

 this work, and several oS the others may be found in the same author's Qmvral 

 Theorems. 



