.508 Mr. T. S. Da vies on Geometric and Geometers. 



in margin) antecedent to that given in the 6"' and H*^ (he means the 

 S*'* and 7'^ in the Greek Text) Definitions of the 5'^ book, D^ Bar- 

 row has so fully answered it that nothing further need be added. 



" 14. Tho Mr. Thomas Simpson is a very able Mathematician, 

 yet he is very much displeased at the high encomiums and extrava- 

 gant commendations that have been lavished on this 5^^ book of 

 Euclids ; and adds that ' this superb fabrick of proportions, reared 

 ' with so much art, stands upon a tottering foundation' but D"". Bar- 

 row who gives it the highest Encomiums, and who is the person, I 

 believe, he chiefly intends here, was, as is well known, an exceeding 

 modest man, and never launched out too far in behalf of opinions he 

 had adopted; he was on every account, one of the best judges of 

 this affair, and with respect to such objections as have been here 

 taken notice of against Euclid's Definition sayes in Page 297 of his 

 Led : Mathem : that this definition ' nisi machinis impulsa validori 

 ' bus in eeternum persistet inconcussa.'" 



I have not observed in Simson's correspondence with 

 Nourse, any allusion to this paper. It does not, indeed, fol- 

 low that because no chasm appears in the letters of this period 

 between them, by reference to missing ones in subsequent 

 letters, that all the letters which Simson wrote to Nourse (the 

 one, specified formerly, excepted) are preserved. It is not 

 unlikely that this paper was written soon after Simson's re- 

 ceipt of Simpson's book; as much to satisfy Nourse with his 

 purchase of Simson's copyright as anything else*. One or 

 two passages of the ad captandum kind would seem to bespeak 

 such a purpose. Why else the sneer about the able " mathe- 

 matician " at the opening of art. I'l, as a preliminary to his 

 being so strongly contrasted with Dr. Barrow for modesty 

 and learning? The character of the paper is, on the whole, 

 marked by a hauteur towards Simpson, that is only excusable 

 in the writer, from a consideration of his age and the profound 

 respect with which he had so long been treated by his own 



* It is a remarkable circumstance, that whilst Simson's Euclid is the 

 universally-adopted text-book iu geometry in England, it is almost as uni- 

 versally discarded in the Scottish schools and colleges — even in Glasgow 

 itself. In Ireland, Elrington's edition is used; and on the Continent, the 

 Elements is only viewed as a work of learned curiosity, and quoted, where 

 quoted at all, for the purpose of animadversion. The honour of a prophet 

 in his own country is here verified indeed ! I have often thought, whilst 

 reflecting upon this, that the maintenance of the preference for Simson's 

 edition in this country was due to the earnest manner in which its supe- 

 riority was urged at Cambridge by Dr. Robert Smith, and the respect paid 

 to Nourse's known good judgement at Oxford. Probably, but for this, 

 Thomas Simpson's Elements (the best, perhaps, we yet possess, which does 

 not follow close in the wake of Euclid) might have now held the same 

 position in this country that Legendre's does in France; at least if our na- 

 tional propensities to admire everything antique should not have given rise 

 to some new translation with its distinguishing variations. 



