- 126 Remarks en Dr. Enfield’s Institutes. 
works on the same subject which appeared i in the former 
part of the last century. _The Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, 
and Optics, are chiefly taken from De Rutherforth ; as is 
also the Astronomy, with the exception of the four last chap- 
ters of Part II., which are borrowed from Rowning. The 
Mechanics does not appear to have been derived so exclu- 
sively ee any single source. It is apparent, however, that 
Rutherforth furnished the arrangement. The filling up 1s 
from se authors. ‘The chapters on the perpendicular 
and | Sencent of falling bodies, the vibration of pev- 
dulums, (excepting the cycloidal theory taken from Row- 
ning,) and the motion of projectiles, are chiefly from Helsham. 
A considerable portion of the concluding section on cen- 
tral forces, is copied, nearly in its original form, from the 
Principia. The few pages of the original work devoted 
o Magnetism and Electricity, we presume, were written a- 
new by Dr. Enfield ;—but. the additions made by the Edit- 
or of the second idon- ion, which amount to two 
thirds of the whole, are taken nearly verbatim from the pub- 
lications a ro ee 
The compiler of this work, while sitting with his pen in 
one hand and his author in the other, appears never to have 
indulged for a moment the illiberal suspicion that his author 
might be in the wrong. The consequence is, that when- 
ever his originals erred, the error is faithfully transcribed in- 
into his abridgement.. The number of these errors multi- 
ied in his own hands, from the want of sufficient care to 
shape and adjust materials, detached from their original 
connexions, reduced in their dimensions, and sometimes 
brooke together from heterogeneous sources,—in such a 
manner as to form parts of a connected and harmonious 
whole.—Nor is the praise of judicious selection much bet- 
ter deserved, than that of freedom from error. Proposi- 
tions and scholia of little interest or importanc -e compared 
with others which might have taken their place, often occur : 
complex and unsatisfactory demonstrations are admitted 
where those of superior clearness and elegance were attain- 
able: and while one chapter of an original author is pared 
down to meagerness itself, another is left in a state of 
redundancy. Even in those parts of the work to which no 
Sie can be made on the score either of accuracy or 
importance, occur abrupt transitions in the subject or. man- 
