OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 193 



Furopean reputation rests and will rest — was a translation of the 

 M.'canique Celeste of Laplace, accompanied with an extensive exi^lan- 

 atory commentary, making a work, which existed one may say in 

 mere abstraction before, as accessible to all public and popular pur- 

 poses as its essential nature would permit."* 



Dr. Bowditch's work was not that of a mere translator and com- 

 mentator. The subject was brouglit down to the date of publication, 

 and was illustrated by the labors of geometers and astronomers who 

 had succeeded Laplace. Such mathematicians as Lacroix, Legendre, 

 Bessel, and Puissant recognized the great value of these additions. 

 Mr. Babbage, in a letter to Dr. Bowditeh, under date of August 5, 

 1832, wrote: "It is a proud circumstance for America that slie has 

 preceded her parent country in such an undertaking ; and we in Eng- 

 land must be content that our language is made the vehicle of the 

 sublimest portion of human knowledge, and be grateful to you for 

 rendering it more accessible." Letters of similar import were received 

 by Dr. Bowditeh from Airy, Francis Baily, Herschel, the Bishop of 

 Cloyne (Dr. Brinkley), and Cacciatore. 



The Council of the Royal Astronomical Society of London,t in 

 noticing Dr. Bowditch's commentary and notes upon Laplace, ex- 

 presses its appreciation in these terms : " An expert mathematician 

 would find most of them {the notes) useless ; but to the student who 

 has sufficient knowledge to understand, without the habit of previous 

 investigation which the reading of Laplace always requires, the work 

 of Dr. Bowditeh is invaluable. We see in it, not the performance 

 of a practised analyst, but the record of the steps by which the trans- 

 lator became one ; and a person more familiar with the most modern 

 form of analysis than he appears to have been at the time when he 

 wrote would probably have tilled his commentary with difficulties of 

 the same order as those of his author. This, however, was not done ; 

 and the work, as it stands, is most unquestionably fitted to bring the 

 Mecanique Celeste within the grasp of a number of students exceed- 

 ing five times, at least, that of those who could master Laplace by 

 themselves. 



" The name of Dr. Bowditeh must be long remembered m the 

 United States by the impulse which such a work as his commentary 

 cannot fail to give to analysis in that country. The undertaking re- 

 quired sound knowledge, power of combining brevity and clearness, 



* London Athenaeum, 1838, pp. 451, 452. 

 t Memoirs, vol. xi. pp. 300, 301. 



VOL. XXIV. (n. S. XVI.) 13 



