282 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. X. Oct. 13. '60. 



in the Philosophical Transactions, Sfc, which 

 Knight published : I confine myself to things not 

 easily got at. 



The Rev. Henry Temple Croker, Reader at the 

 Temple, who lectured on magnetism in London in 



1760, published 



" Experimental Magnetism, or the Truth of Mr. Ma- 

 son's Discoveries that there can be no such thing 



in Nature as an intewial Central Loadstone . . . London, 



1761, 8vo." 



It appears that Knight advertised a work by 

 subscription, but withdrew it. Mr. Croker says, 



"Pardon, Gentle Header, the incompleat account I 

 may here have given of Magnetic Discoveries, and join 

 with me to lament the unhappy Cause of it. Scarce had 

 I declared myself an advocate for Mr. Mason! scarce had 

 my first Course of Lectures been a Fortnight over ; scarce 

 was my Apparatus resettled in its peaceful Boxes, when, 

 reviewing the few Guineas I was in Pocket, I' set out to 

 my Bookseller's, with a Determination to subscribe for 

 Two Quarto Volumes of A System of Experimental Mag- 

 netism (in which to be sure the Central Loadstone would 

 have been particularly delineated), and when, to my un- 

 speakable Mortification, I heard Gowin Knight, M.D., had 

 that very Morning* [* Dec. 20, 1760 . . . .] called in all 

 his Subscriptions. O ! if instead of being recalled, they 

 had but been published that Morning . . . ." 



It appears then that Gowin Knight was em- 

 ployed to superintend, for the Admiralty, not only 

 the construction of compass-needles of his own 

 strength, but also of an improved azimuth com- 

 pass ; and that he was thus employed after his 

 appointment to the Museum, and long after the 

 publication of Canton's and Michell's methods. 

 Enough on this point for a suggestive note : I 

 have no doubt more detail is to be picked up. 



Gowin Knight was also an able speculator. He 

 published, in 1748, without any printer's or pub- 

 lisher's name : 



" An Attempt to demonstrate that all the Phenomena 

 in Nature may be explained by two simple active Prin- 

 ciples, Attraction and Repulsion : wherein the Attractions 

 of Cohesion, Gravity, and Magnetism, are shown to be 

 one and the same, and the Phenomena of the latter are 

 iflore particularly explained. London. 4to." 



Watt mentions an octavo edition of 1754, which 

 I have never seen, and perhaps might doubt, if 

 Watt had not added the price, three and sixpence. 

 This work on attracting and repelling particles 

 received some attention a few years ago, from 

 certain similarities between its theory and that of 

 some recent speculations. Perhaps its best claim 

 to notice is as one of the marks of an epoch at 

 which there was a tendency to push the New- 

 tonian doctrine into molecular speculations. The 

 more celebrated Theoria Philosophies Naturalis of 

 Boscovich was first published in 1758, and after- 

 wards in 1763. 



Could any of your readers furnish a few addi- 

 tional contemporary notices of Knight ? 



A. De Morgan. 



A RELIC OF THE CIIATTERTON CONTROVERSY. 



»R. GLYNN AND GEORGE STEEVENS. 



The Rowley controversy is one of the most cu- 

 rious and extraordinary that has ever divided the 

 literary world. On the one side we find Dean 

 Milles, Bryant, Mathias, Dr. Glynn, Dr. Symraons, 

 and Dr. Sherwin, defending the authenticity of 

 Rowley's Poems ; whilst on the other hand, Tyr- 

 whitt, Warton, Sir Horace Walpole, Herbert 

 Croft, Malone, George Steevens, George Chalmers, 

 Dr. jamieson, Pinkerton, Gough, and Southey, 

 strongly opposing their genuineness. He must 

 indeed have been " a marvellous boy," whose ge- 

 nius could set together by the ears nearly the 

 whole literai'y brotherhood. 



No one interested himself more earnestly in the 

 Chattertonian disputes than Dr. Robert Glynn 

 (who afterwards took the name of Clobery). 

 The author of The Pursuits of Literature, who 

 seems to have been intimately acquainted with his 

 merits, has distinguished him by that affectionate 

 verse, by which he wishes his character may be 

 known to all posterity : — 



" While Granta hails (what need the sage to name ?) 

 The lov'd lapis on the banks of Cam." 



Dr. Glynn, in return, contributed much inform- 

 ation and literary assistwdce to Mr. Mathias in his 

 learned Essay on the Evidence, External and In- 

 ternal, relating to the Poems attributed to Thomas 

 Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century : con- 

 taining a General View of (he ichole Controversy. 

 On the death of Mr. Barrett, author of I'he His- 

 tory of Bristol, all the original manuscripts, toge- 

 ther with the transcripts from them, and the other 

 writings in the hand of Chatterton, were pre- 

 sented to Dr. Glynn, who subsequently bequeathed 

 them to the British Museum, and are now marked 

 Addit. MS. 5766, A. B. C. 



The unremitting zeal displayed by Dr. Glynn 

 in collecting whatever related to Rowley and 

 Chatterton was well known in all literary circles. 

 On one occasion the Doctor was confined with a 

 serious illness occasioned by a violent Cold which 

 seized him in the depositary of the Rowleian ma- 

 nuscripts. Tyrwhitt, writing to Bishop Percy on 

 Feb. 1, 1783, playfully remarks, " I really begin 

 to hope that the Rowley controversy is ended; 

 especially if what the papers tell us be true, that 

 Dr. Glynn is married !" Again, George Steevens, 

 in a letter to the same prelate, says, " The author 

 of The Pursuits of Literature is still unknown. 

 He is undoubtedly an Etonian, and one of the 

 parasites of a certain Cambridge Doctor of Physic 

 [Dr. Glynn], who, if he had the power, would 

 exterminate all the parties concerned in the de- 

 tection of the' Pseudo Rowley." 



The following unpublished letter from Dr. Wil- 

 liam Lort Mansel (afterwards Bishop of" Bristol) 

 to T. J. Mathias, Esq., most vividly illustrates 



