292 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2od s. VI. 145., Oct. 9. '58. 



Gairdner, that I make bold to transfer its sub- 

 stance into your pages. It is there suggested that 

 the singular mode of inflicting death in question 

 appears to have prevailed about this time, and he 

 supposes that it was made use of for culprits of 

 rank and eminence when dispatched in secret. 

 Douce quotes a passage from George Chastellain, 

 a Flemish soldier, poet, and historian, exempli- 

 fying the same punishment in another instance, — 

 that of the good Duke Humphrey, and tells us 

 that Chastellain actually avers that he was present 

 at Humphrey's death, and that its method was 

 strangulation in a cask of wine. Did he not tell 

 us that he was an eye-witness, I should imagine 

 the explanation of this to be found in the con- 

 fusion of Humphrey's title, which Chastellain 

 spells Closter, with Clarence, but unless we call 

 in question his veracity, this supposition is un- 

 allowable. 



I may mention that Deuce's conjecture as to this 

 being a common punishment is sufficiently dis- 

 proved by the fact that Humphrey was murdered, 

 and by Comines' evident ignorance of it, for he 

 qualifies the testimony that he gives of the re- 

 ported manner of Clarence's death, as pointed out 

 by Mr. Gairdner. 



I must again difler from your correspondent 

 ■when he asserts that it seems just possible that 

 Fabian meant no more than that Clarence was 

 murdered, and dropt in a wine-cask into the sea, 

 when he said that he was drowned in a barrel of 

 malmsey. This is rendered quite impossible by 

 your correspondent himself in an earlier part of 

 his paper, where he quotes from Fabian the words, 

 " The Duke of Clarence was secretly put to death, 

 and drowned in a barrel of malmsey within the 

 Tower." The words italicised are quite irrecon- 

 cileable with the supposition. 



Although I have thus felt myself compelled to 

 disagree with Mk. Gairdner, I should be unjust 

 not to confess to the ingenuity of his remarks ; 

 and he deserves credit for the attempt, however 

 unsuccessful, to elucidate this dark but highly in- 

 teresting portion of English history. 



Edward West. 



GREATNESS IN DIFFERENT THINGS. 



(2°" S. vi. 216.) 



The last of Mr. Henbury's queries is, Will I 

 assert that those who have been great in mathe- 

 matics have often been great in other things ? I 

 might ask in return what this has to do with the 

 challenge in the reply to which it appears : namely, 

 a challenge to produce a mathematician of whom 

 Swift's Laputan is a fair caricature. I might also 

 ask whether those who are great in any one thing 

 are often great in other things ? But these I pass 

 over. Before I answer the question, I must re- 



duce it to something like precision : there are four 

 vague words in it ; great, mathematics, often, and 

 things. 



If mathematics be used in its large and popular 

 sense, as containing all applications of every kind, 

 it will be necessary to collect other things into 

 lots of somewhat similar extent, And to take wide 

 genera of knowledge. 



As in natural science, all material knowledge 

 except what is contained in our use of the word 

 mathematics ; philosophical letters, philosophy, phi- 

 lology, history, law, politics, &c. ; belles lettres, 

 criticism, fiction, poetry, drama, &c. ; and the 

 fine arts. These must be roughly taken, as nearly 

 unJistinguishable at the boundaries : thus mathe- 

 matics comes very near upon natural science in 

 some matters ; philosophical letters come near to 

 belles lettres in one extreme, and to mathematics in 

 another ; and so on. Taking these five distinc- 

 tions, I say that mathematics and one of the others 

 have met in the same person as often and as 

 brightly as any two of the others, even if we ex- 

 clude the junction of mathematics and natural 

 science ; and oftener, if we include it. And we 

 ought to include it : for mathematics and natural 

 science require qualities quite as distinct, quite as 

 unlikely to meet in great force in one person, as 

 philosophical letters and belles lettres, or philoso- 

 phical letters and fine art. 



The mathematics, from that peculiarity in right 

 of which they share with pure logic the name of 

 exact science, are so far removed, as to method, 

 from what is popular and generally appreciable, 

 that the world at large sees them as distant hills 

 are seen, in which granite, chalk, and grass are all 

 of one blue colour. There is a consequence of 

 this kind. A person will produce instances — such 

 as Dryden — of celebrity in two paths of fame — 

 poetry and the drama — and will thereupon remark 

 that mathematics is seldom joined with anything 

 else. But if this person could get near enough to 

 the mathematics to see them clear of the general 

 blue of the distance, he would know that there is 

 as much distinction between a geometrical and an 

 algebi-aical branch, as between poetry and the 

 drama ; that the qualities which are essential td 

 greatness are even more distinct in the first pair 

 than in the second; that the failures to attain eveh 

 approbation in algebra, among those who have dis- 

 tinguished themselves in geometry, have been 

 more marked than the failiires of certain poets to 

 become dramatists : instances, Robert Simson and 

 Lord Byron. And Monge, as a union of the geo- 

 metrical and the algebraical, would appear far 

 more remarkable than Dryden as a union of the 

 poet and dramatist. And if he reply. Oh ! but 

 Alonge is all mathematics, I might retort that 

 Dryden is all belles lettres. But I should be very 

 sorry if the departments of literature were to me 

 as much blended into one by the blue of the dis- 



