the Journals of the late Reuben Burrow, 189 



Burrow, it seems, would have had no objection to ^100 « year 

 from the Stationers' Company I Poor Clarke^s lot has been too 

 frequently realized by unpatronized students : his enigma occurs 

 in the first number of the Diary, and he continued to write 

 " from Lincoln '' during the whole of the time that it remained 

 under Mr. Burrow^s management. 



" Sunday, Aug. 13. Lent Mr. Keech, Harrises Arrangement 

 and Ghetaldus. 



" Tuesday, Aug. 22. I finished two very difficult Problems in 

 the Maxima and Minima, and did the greatest part of the Pro- 

 blem of finding the length of a Parabolic Curve generally by the 

 Method of Equidistant Ordinates; but as I had some doubt 

 about the truth of it, 1 gave it up, intending to get Major Watson 

 to write to Landen about it, or else to write myself to Mr. Cra- 

 kelt. I then called upon Mr. Robertson, and found that Francis 

 Maseres, Esq. had left his book upon the Negative Sign there 

 as a present for me. I had a good deal of talk with Mr. Robert- 

 son, and staid supper. He told me that Mr. William Jones 

 wrote that History of Logarithms prefixed to Dodson's Tables of 

 the Antilogarithmic Canon, and that Dodson wrote such a con- 

 fused and odd style that there was neither head nor tail in it. 

 He (Robertson) drew up the examples himself. He also gave 

 me the History of the Mathematical Repository as follows. 

 Mr. Robertson having taught General Conway mathematics, who 

 was then only a Colonel, after he was elected Member of Parlia- 

 ment he called on Mr. Robertson, and told him that since his place 

 in the House hindered his further attendance to mathematical 

 subjects he should give them up, but at the same time should 

 be glad to have those papers which he had learnt copied over. 

 Mr. Robertson not having either time or inclination to do this 

 himself, applied to Mr. Dodson, who again employed another 

 person to copy the papers, but at the same time took a copy for 

 himself. Mr. Robertson did not know this for a long time, 

 not until he began to think on the scheme of publishing a 

 Mathematical Repository himself, the first volume of which was 

 to contain Algebraical questions, and the second Geometrical. 

 He proposed this to Dodson, who readily accepted the offer of 

 joining with him, and afterwards mentioned the plan to Mr. 

 Jones, who was opposed to the project on account of the proba- 

 bility that Robertson would publish some of the methods which 

 Jones had taught him, and which he (Jones) might probably 

 afterwards publish himself. Mr. Robertson on this set the affair 

 aside ; but Dodson went on with it, and the greatest part of the 

 Questions in the first volume, at least 200 of them, were copied 



from Mr. Robertson^s papers Dr. Hooke almost 



starved himself to death. Mr. Jones told Mr. Robertson that 



