514 Royal Astronomical Society. 



seems to any one who reads his writings, that he means that New- 

 ton had done nothing out of mathematics, and that the results of 

 algebra are all delusion. That the planets, attraction or no attrac- 

 tion, move about the sun, and are disturbed, precisely as it would 

 be if there were attraction ; that the truth of an equation though 

 produced by aid of impossible quantities, may be verified by nume- 

 rical computation — may be made purely experimental realities, and 

 would, to most minds as well acquainted with the subject as that of 

 Mr. Frend, remain true, even though attraction were the atheism 

 which some formerly called it, and the doctrine of negative quan- 

 tities were a part of the black art. Nor would it have been won- 

 derful if he had rejected incomplete explanations in elementary 

 writing, the object of which is to teach clear results of clear prin- 

 ciples. But there was more than this : sometimes, though rarely, 

 he seemed to have a power of admitting the facts as facts ; but for 

 the most part, when they were presented to him in conversation, his 

 mind did not appear capable of dwelling on them long enough to 

 decide whether an answer was required or not ; they seemed to slip 

 like water through a sieve. In this there was neither affectation 

 nor evasion ; it was a peculiar state of mind with regard to what 

 could be contemplated as a scientific truth, and may be partly ex- 

 plained. 



Mr. Frend had an admiration of simplicity, and an indisposition to 

 arrive at complex results, which was perhaps a consequence of the 

 desire to have no secret in philosophy. Next to the abandonment 

 of all that was difficult to explain, followed the practical rejection of 

 every thing in which the mind could not hold the full explanation 

 at once before itself, in all its parts. The simple theory of num- 

 bers, that is, of integer numbers, was therefore naturally a favourite 

 study ; and this branch of mathematics is well known to be an ex- 

 tremely powerful stimulant of that disposition which leads to its 

 pursuit. Legendre has said that it almost always becomes a species of 

 passion with those who give themselves to it at all. With Mr. Frend it 

 went still further ; an equation with a fractional root, even if commen- 

 surable, was a pseudo- equation : and a? 2 +y 2 = 1, x and y being rational 

 fractions, was an illegitimate child of # 2 -j- y 2 = z % , x, y, and z be- 

 ing integers. In this particular Mr. Frend differed greatly from 

 another remarkable person, his own most intimate friend Baron 

 Maseres, whose leading idea it seems to have been to calculate more 

 decimal places than any one would want, and to reprint the works 

 of all who had done the same thing. 



There was also another peculiar circumstance which no doubt 

 had considerable effect. Mr. Frend had studied Hebrew thoroughly, 

 and was, in the opinion of learned Jews, better versed in that lan- 

 guage than any English Christian of his day. No one who became 

 acquainted with him could long avoid noticing the interest which he 

 took in every matter directly or indirectly concerning the history 

 and progress of Christianity. This knowledge of their language, 

 history, and customs, with a community of opinion on the nature of 

 the Deity, led him much into the acquaintance of his elder brethren, 



