Prof. Boole's Account of the late John Walsh of Cork. 35 7 



apparently to Mr. Walsh's pertinacious obtrusion of his views 

 upon the public^ says, " Let us hope that the person who in our 

 day occupies himself with printing his mathematical reveries 

 against the method of fluxions and the first section of the Prin- 

 cipia, and who insults the public taste by publishing the foulest, 

 most vulgar abuse of the ' Saxon Philosopher/ may not succeed 

 in making his reflecting countrymen believe that the name which 

 all mankind have consecrated to receive only veneration repre- 

 sents only a driveller and a knave.'^ 



I find this passage and another from the same journal copied 

 in Mr. Walsh's hand-writing among his papers. He there denies 

 that he made use of the language imputed to him, and addresses 

 a letter to the editor of the Edinburgh Review upon the subject. 

 Of this letter, or of a similar one, there is also a printed copy. 

 It is to be feared that, whether Walsh used the particular terms 

 in question or not, he had laid himself fully open to the charge 

 of employing violent and abusive language. 



Mr. Walsh is an extreme instance of a class of persons, who, 

 without having mastered the very elements of received science, 

 spend their lives in attempting its subversion, and in the vain 

 endeavour to substitute in its place some visionary creation of 

 their own fancy. Whether such persons would not in the earlier 

 stages at least of their career be accessible to the conviction of 

 their error is worthy of consideration. A^little judicious kind- 

 ness at that period might in some cases prevent the misspending 

 of a life. But when that which was originally but a fond and 

 foolish notion has been fostered into a disease of the mind, the 

 cure is generally hopeless. Trisectors of an angle, squarers of 

 the circle, discoverers of perpetual motion, constitute a class of 

 mankind whose peculiarities deserve the attention of the student 

 of human nature, and whose personal history is often calculated 

 to awaken the deepest commiseration. Providence seems to have 

 in some measure vindicated the equality of its dispensations by 

 assigning to them a double measure of hope, which serves them 

 in the stead both of abihty and of success. 



But there is a class superior to these whose history is far more 

 affecting ; men who with both genius and competent knowledge 

 devote themselves, perhaps in the over hours of labour, to the 

 improvement of some mechanical invention, and either through 

 want of means, or through legal impediments, or because they 

 have miscalculated the requirements of the age, find themselves 

 doomed to ceaseless disappointment. If they are unburdened 

 with family ties, the case is not so distressing. Amid the greater 

 sorrows of the times we may permit ourselves to forget theirs. 

 But if they have wife and children looking up to them for 

 support, yet destined to see their comforts depart and their hopes 



