446 Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers. 



man, was a welcome visitor to the family. This was during the 

 feverish feeling created in England by the first French revolution. 

 Whether the Mathematical Repository or the Gentleman's 

 Mathematical Companion was first projected I do not know with 

 perfect certainty, but several trivial circumstances incline me to 

 the belief that the latter was. It is pretty clear, however, that 

 Mr. Leyboum was fii-st in the open field. I cannot give the 

 exact date of its first issue ; but from the cover of No. 3 bearing 

 the date March 1, 1797, and the woi-k being published half- 

 yearly (at first only and with tolerable regularity) we may put 

 down its origin as March 1, 1796. The first number of the 

 Mathematical Companion bears date /or 1798, and was therefore 

 printed in the preceding year, probably about the same time 

 (November) as the almanacs. This will explain the ground of 

 the otherwise unaccountable opposition of the " Diary Editor,'* 

 Dr. Hutton, to the Mathematical Companion ; the consequent 

 assumption of a dififerent foi-m of title ; and making it an indepen- 

 dent work, trusting to its own merits rather than one of homage 

 to the Stationers' Hall editors of the period. 



cleared him a sixpence, and this he held from Dr. Hutton*s death as long 

 as he himself lived. 



If, however, Mr. Leybom*n lost money, he at the same time gained a 

 high reputation from editing his Mathematical Repository. lie thus ob- 

 tained one great object of his early ambition, which he could have gained 

 in no other way ; for the most devoted of his friends and admirers (amongst 

 whom I place myself) will not contend for a moment, that either his range 

 of power or his mathematical acquirements could have gained for him that 

 reputation, in whatever other way exerted. Tlie Repository (as well as the 

 Diar}') was edited practically by his friends from its origin to its termina- 

 tion. Dr. Hutton aided him in the outset of the first series, and subse- 

 quently Dr. Gregory and IVIr. Lowry. In the earlier part of the new series 

 he was dependent on the judgement of Messrs. Dalby, howry, Wallace and 

 Ivory, with one or two others occasionally. In closing the fifth volume, 

 and throughout the sixth, this office devolved partly on Mr. Woolhouse, 

 but mainly on myself. During this latter period, too, the same may be 

 said of the Gentleman's Diary. Dr. Gregory, however, suppHedthe almanac 

 part of the Diary. 



I have felt this distinct statement to be necessary to prevent some mis- 

 conceptions that might hereafter arise, if they have not (as I am led to think 

 they have) already been fonned, as to my connexion with the Repository 

 and Diary. My labours were neither few nor small, but they were wholly 

 gratuitous ; for besides what I wrote in those works, I had immense masses 

 of papers (often very jejune and absurd) to read ; and from these to select 

 what should be printed — a kind of labour, the disagreeableness and tedious- 

 ness of which can alone be understood by those who have exercised similar 

 editorial functions in respect of mathematical papers and solutions. 



I bear my testimony, however, to Professor Ley bourn's honourable in- 

 tentions, and (as long as he was a free agent — which latterly he ceased to 

 be) bis high sense ofhouourable friendship. lie was a good if he was not 

 a great man.— T. S. D. 



