VIII. Memoir relating to the Naval Tactics of the late JOHN 

 CLERK, Esq. of Eldin; being a Fragment of an intend- 

 ed Account of his Life. By John Playfair, F. R. S. 

 liOND. & Edin. Professor of Natural Philosophy in the 

 University of Edinburgh. 



(Read April 6. 1818.; 



JL HE author of the Naval Tactics is one of those men who, 

 by the force of their own genius, have carried great improve- 

 ments into professions which were not properly their own. 

 The history both of the sciences and of the arts furnishes seve- 

 ral remarkable examples of a similar nature. Fermat the rival, 

 sometimes the superior of Descartes, one of the most inven- 

 tive mathematicians of a most inventive age, was by profes- 

 sion a lawyer, and had only devoted to science the time that 

 could be spared from the duties of a counsellor or a judge : 

 about fifty years earlier, also, his countryman Vieta had made 

 a like digression from the same employment, and hardly with 

 inferior success. 



Perrault, who, in the fa9ade of the Louvre, has left behind 

 him so splendid a monument of architectural skill and taste, 

 was a physician, and not only practised, but wrote books on 

 medicine. Dr Herschell too, who has made more astrono^ 



VOL. IX. p. I. p mical 



