EULOGY ON AMPERE. 127 



Plato, Lucretius, Descartes, Pascal, Haller, Voltaire, and of J. J. Rous- 

 seau, effectually settle it; aud should the discussion be ever renewed, 

 Ampere^s letter, several lines of which I have just quoted, could be 

 cited with advantage, and his name added to the distinguished list. 



You may think, perhaps, gentlemen, and not without reason, that I 

 have lingered too long over the poetical works of Ampere. 1 would 

 like to remind you of the four lines, not more, addressed to the cele- 

 brated Ninon de I'Enclos by the great geometer Huygens, and so 

 uncharitably revived by literary w^riters. The law of retaliation 

 authorizes me to contrast, with this unlucky quatrain, the scientific 

 errors of different poets. Boileau might figure in our polemics, if we 

 thought it advisable, as but a sorry votary of the learned Urania, 

 proved by these two lines from his Satire on Women : 



Que Tastrolabe en main, une autre aille cherclier, 

 Si le soliel est fixe on tourne siir son axe — 



"Let another try to discover, with the astrolabe in hand, whether the 

 sun is fixed or whether it turns on its axisP 



The worthy Abbe Delille did not prove himself more orthodox, when 

 he attributes, in a passage in his inaugural, the more brilliant coloring, 

 rapid growth, aud greater fragrance of the tropical productions to the 

 fact that the Sun loarms them from a nearer ]}oint. 



This remarkable instance of scientific knowledge is worthy of being 

 ranked with that conveyed in the line of a man, who surely had never 

 doubled Cape Horn, nor even read Cook's voyages ; a line which should 

 have suggested to the writer to knock from beneath him the Parnas- 

 sian ladder — 



From the frozen to the huming pole ! 



But it seems to me, gentlemen, that within these walls instead of 

 looking for poets who are not savants, it would be better to cite savants 

 who have been something of poets. 



A]MPi:RE, SUIVOIONED TO PARIS, BECOMES TUTOR, AND AFTERWARDS 

 PROFESSOR OF ANALYSIS, AT THE POLY^TECHNIC SCHOOL. 



Lalande and Delambre were delighted with the analytical work of 

 the young professor of Bourg on the calculation of probabilities ; they 

 summoned him to Paris, and gave him the position of tutor in the Poly- 

 technic School, where he acquitted himself with great credit, but not 

 without encountering many trials, results of the retired life he had pre- 

 viously led. Badly advised by friends ignorant of the customs of the 

 place. Ampere made his appearance before his classes, in a school almost 

 military, dressed in a fashionable black coat, miserably made by 

 one of the most uuskUlful tailors of the capital; and for several weeks 

 this unlucky garment was a source of such distraction to more than a 

 hundred young men that they were unable to attend to the treasures of 

 science falling from the liiDS of the savant. 



