148 MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN LAWSON, B.D., 



in 1756. His name appears as college tutor till the beginning 

 of 1760, and he also held various college offices from 1748 to 

 1757. He was for a considerable period Senior Fellow of his 

 college, and as such, in 1759, was instituted to the rectory of 

 Swanscombe, in Kent, which he continued to hold until his 

 death. 



During his residence at Cambridge, he had become known 

 as an ardent admirer of the works of Apollonius. The 

 valuable fragments of geometrical research contained in the 

 Mathematical Collections of Pappus had led him to examine, 

 with critical attention, all the efforts of the moderns to restore 

 these " second elements ; " and shortly after his removal to 

 Swanscombe, he resolved to devote a portion of his means 

 and leisure to the translation and publication of the most 

 successful of these restorations. In the Preface to the 

 Seventh Book of the Mathematical Collections, Pappus Alex- 

 andrinus has enumerated those works which were then usually 

 studied after the Elements of Euclid. They consisted of the 

 Book of Data and a Treatise on Porisms, by the editor of the 

 Elements ; — the Section of Ratio and the Section of Space ; — 

 the Treatises on Determinate Section, Tangencies, Inclina- 

 tions, Plane Loci and the Conic Sections; — all of which we 

 owe to the fertile genius of Apollonius, the great geometer 

 of Perga. The interest attaching to these lost treatises, of 

 which scarcely anything has come down to our times except 

 a few preparatory Lemmas, had induced several of the most 

 able geometers, both of our own and other countries, to 

 attempt the reconstruction of the originals from the obscure 

 hints given of their contents by Pappus, and among the most 

 successful of the adventurers into these obscure regions of 

 geometrical science, are our own countrymen. Dr. Halley and 

 Dr. Simson, of Glasgow. The former has restored the Sec- 

 tions of Ratio and of Space, both of which are conceived in 

 the true spirit of the ancients; and the latter has been equally 

 successful in reproducing the Loci, the Determinate Section, 



