the Rev. John Flamsteed. 141 



cordingly furnished him with a copy of it in Enghsh, which Dr 

 Wallis translated into Latin.* It appears that there was (in the 

 original) the following paragraph alluding to his having furnish- 

 ed Newton with several ohservations of the moon, as above men- 

 tioned, viz. " Contraxeram etiani cum D° Newtono, doctissimo 

 tunc temporis in Academise Cantabrigiensi Professore, necessitu- 

 dinem, cui luna? loca ab observationibus meis ante habitis de- 

 ducta 150 dederam, cum locis simul e tabulis meis ad earum 

 tempora supputatis, tum similium in posteriore prout assequerer 

 promissorum, cum elementis calculi mei, in ordine ad emenda- 

 tionem theoriae lunaris Horroccianaj." At which Newton (on 

 hearing of the circumstances through the officiousness of Dr 

 Gregory), was very indignant, and wrote that most extraordi- 

 nary letter to Flamsteed, dated January 6,'J698-9, which is in- 

 serted in the appendix, No. 43 : " I do not love (says Newton) 

 to be printed upon every occasion, much less to be dunned 

 and teazed by foreigners about mathematical things ; or to be 

 thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about 



them, when I should be about the king's business 



You may let the world know, if you please, how well you are 

 stored with observations of all sorts, and what calculations you 

 have made towards rectifying the theories of the heavenly mo- 

 tions ; but there may be cases wherein your friends should not 

 be published without their leave, and therefore I hope you will 

 so order the matter that I may not, on this occasion, be brought 

 upon the stage.^-h There is surely nothing in Flamstced's let- 

 immediately after the application of the telescope to astronomical instruments; 

 and in fact it was a necessary consequence of that invention. Flamsteed, 

 however, as well as his predecessors, mistook the cause, which they attributed 

 to the Parallax of the Earth's Orbit ; and it was reserved for Bradley to de- 

 velop and explain the true theory of the phenomenon, and its application to 

 the purposes of astronomy. 



• At least, so it is distinctly stated by Wallis and Flamsteed ; but if we 

 judge from the specimen contained in the letter wliich Wallis wrote to New- 

 ton, mentioned in the text, and which is given at full length in the addenda, 

 we can scarcely imagine the I^atin to have been composed by Wallis himself 



t Sir David Brewster (in his recent Life of Newton, page 243) has, through 

 some singular error or confusion, attributed this letter to Flamsteed Instead 

 of Newton ; stating at the same time (I know not upon what authority), that 

 it is " characteristic of Flamsteed's manner ;" and thence draws the conclusion 

 that Flamsteed, not sufficiently aware of the importance of the inquiry, re- 



