2'"« S. VI. 145., Oct. 9. '58.3 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



293 



tance as the departments of mathematics to the 

 opponent whom I have supposed. 



But so many geometers are algebraists : must 

 there not be something in common in the posi- 

 tions ? Many poets are dramatists, and I ask the 

 same question. And I answer both questions in 

 the affirmative; the individual men of each one 

 pursuit have temptations to try the other, and op- 

 portunities. Accordingly we are not surprised at 

 the number of algebraist geometers, or dramatist 

 poets, or statesmen lawyers, or scholar historians, 

 or metaphysician jurists, or traveller soldiers, &c. 

 &c. &c. But a successful barrister does not become 

 a dramatist: he wants time, temptation, and oppor- 

 tunity. If his talent lie that way, he becomes a 

 character painter and an actor, perhaps, before a 

 jury. And in general, men choose one pursuit for 

 the staple of their lives, and bring the powers 

 which might have made them great in other things 

 in aid of that one pursuit. Thus, a mere ivriter, 

 a man of powerful style, may gain fame by style 

 alone : but if his matter also make him famous, 

 his style merges. For this reason Laplace will 

 never have due celebrity as a writer of French. 

 In this way a person may show several powers in 

 one vocation. The limitation of occupation will 

 become more necessary as time goes on : for the 

 details of each subject grow larger and larger from 

 day to day. Beetles, butterflies, and moths, are 

 now three separate pursuits. Even the mathema- 

 tics, I mean the pure mathematics, are subdivided 

 to an extent which demands of a person who would 

 pursue his studies to the point of discovery to 

 choose his line. 



I will not discuss the question, on the supposi- 

 tion that mathematics is restricted to pure ma- 

 thematics. This discussion would require an 

 audience of mathematicians. 



I will now notice the ambiguity of the word 

 greatness. Of this there are two kinds, as to 

 matter : celebrity for knowledge of old things ; 

 celebrity for pointing out new ones. These two 

 are often confounded in the blue of the distance. 

 There is no better instance of this than occurs in 

 a celebrated article in the Edinburgh Review, 

 written against the mathematics, in which opinions 

 drawn from men of respectable mathematical 

 knowledge without a spark of originality, and opi- 

 nions drawn from actual advancers of the science, 

 are skilfully indiscriminated. 



Speaking of greatness as to time, I note first the 

 celebrity which, though decided and useful in its 

 day, is now only remembered by the historian. 

 Secondly, there are those whose names live, but 

 not their works. Thirdly, there are those of 

 whom an educated man desires to Vnnyi something, 

 and upon whom a certain class seize, but who are 

 not generally taken to be worth reading through. 

 And lastly, there are those whose names are 

 household words, whose minds help to make all our 



minds by personal acquaintance. Very few are 

 there of this last class who have been so great in 

 two things that both their celebrities are of com- 

 parable amounts. In many, the lesser fame has 

 only kept its head above water by being tied to 

 the greater: but this only when the kinds of cele- 

 brity are akin. Milton's poetry is in one depart- 

 ment, and his prose in another. Shakspeare the 

 poet-dramatist and Shakspeare the poet of other 

 kinds are in very diiferent places. I shall as- 

 tonish some of your readers by telling them that 

 Christopher Wren was a mathematician of no 

 mean reputation : see his name in the index of the 

 J'rincipia. Few know that Leonardo da Vinci 

 and Albert Durer are among the known mathe- 

 maticians. Celebrity of one kind puts out cele- 

 brity of another kind by its stronger light, espe- 

 cially when the man of fame makes one of his 

 pursuits only subservient to the other : this hap- 

 pens with Aristotle and Plato both, as mathemati- 

 cians. Newton is not remembered as one of the 

 ablest public servants who ever held office. The 

 many-sided Halley is known to posterity only 

 under the general term mathematician : but we 

 shall see a counterpart of Newton before we 

 see a counterpart of Halley. To take a very dif- 

 ferent kind of instance, the man of blood, Marat, 

 is not known as the man of science. But this is not 

 an example to end with. Vieta, against whom an 

 opponent, not his own countryman, pleads that he 

 has a right to speak strongly, when he is contending 

 singlehanded against a lawyer, theologian, mathe- 

 matician, orator, and poet, is now only a mathe- 

 matician. And so I might go on through a long 

 list. 



It must not be forgotten that when a mathe- 

 matician acquires another reputation, ten to one 

 that other reputation is the one which is, of the 

 two, most easily appreciated by the world at 

 large. Roger Bacon was before his age in ma- 

 thematics, as in other things ; he had a much 

 better view of what mathematics was to do for 

 physics than his great namesake, who had no view 

 but a wrong one: but his mathematical reputa- 

 tion has been dimmed by the rest of his character. 

 D'Alembert is a very marked instance. He was 

 great as an improver of mathematics, greater as 

 an improver of the application of mathematics 

 to physics : but very many of those who know 

 D'Alembert in literature and philosophy are 

 ignorant of the fact that he wrote volumes of 

 algebra-symbols, and that his Opuscula of this 

 kind run to seven or eight quartos, not to mention 

 what ought, by antithesis, to be called his Opera. 

 He is placed, in common fame, with Voltaire and 

 Diderot : and so is Condorcet, of whom the Penny 

 Cyclopmlia justly remarks that he is not in the 

 very first rank of mathematicians, but very high 

 in the second. 



Suppose that, not misled by names, we ask for 



