140 Reviews, and Notices respecting New Books. 
by one who will be universally considered as most competent to 
form a correct judgement :—and to very many who have beendwell- 
ing with grief and wonder upon the painful impressions created by 
this Review of an unpublished book, the following decisive expres- 
sion of Mr. Whewell’s opinion will be very grateful : 
‘I shall conclude; leaving it to the reader to decide—whether 
the blame of intemperate virulence of feeling and irrational violence 
of conduct does not rest solely with Flamsteed ;—whether Newton’s 
philosophical and moral character do not come out from this exa- 
mination BLAMELESS and ADMIRABLE, as they have always been 
esteemed by thinking men;—and whether the Reviewer has not 
shown extraordinary ignorance of that part of scientific history 
which he has pretended to elucidate, and unaccountable blindness 
and perverseness in his use even of the ex parte evidence which 
he had before him.” 
Mr. Whewell’s pamphlet evinces the clear-sightedness and candour 
for which he is distinguished, Though a very short, itis a very ad- 
mirable and interesting production, and entitles its author to rank 
as high for moral discrimination, as he does for scientific attain- 
ments. We shall take the liberty to quote rather largely, knowing 
the interest which must be taken in the subject. With regard to 
the Reviewer's unaccountable blindness, perverseness, and partiality, 
he justly remarks, that “‘ he has taken for his sole guide the state. 
ments of one of the parties, written in the warmth of the moment, 
—has identified himself with Flamsteed’s most petulant feelings, and 
has not corrected them by any attention to the case of the opposite 
party. Whenthe great body of Review Readers are called upon, in 
this temper, to cast away all their reverence * for the most revered 
name of our nation, it must be right that some one should interpose 
a warning, and deprecate judgments of such levity and partiality.” 
“It is to be observed,” adds Mr. Whewell, “ that if we adopt the 
Reviewer's opinion, that Flamsteed was throughout a man bitterly 
wronged, and that there was an extreme of baseness and tyranny 
on the side of the persons with whom he quarrelled, we involve in 
our condemnation almost all the eminent literary and scientific men 
of the day +: for we have, acting with Newton, and sharing in his 
views, not only Halley, the object of Flamsteed’s intense dislike, but 
Gregory, Arbuthnot, Mead, Sloane, Wren. 
« The purpose for which Newton desired that the world should 
pessess the best observations, was the confirmation of the great 
Theory of Universal Gravitation ;—incomparably the greatest dis- 
covery ever made by man; and at that period, we may say, in the 
agony of that latent struggle by which the confirmation and general 
reception of great discoveries is always accompanied. We of the 
present day are accustomed to consider this immense step as effected 
at once, on the publication of the first edition of the Principia in 
1687 ; but we may easily convince ourselves that this was not so. 
Even under the most favourable circumstances, a vast theory like 
* The Edinburgh Review intimates that this reverence has been all a 
mistake, attributable to one Mr. Conduit! 
+ Designated by the Edinburgh Reviewer as ‘ Newton's party”: vide 
infra, p. 144. 
