On the Account of the Cornnierciuni Epistolicum. 441 



about the same age as his friend Dr. Pemberton, with whom he 

 studied medicine at Paris : Pemberton was born in 1694. The 

 two lived in closest friendship and neighbourhood to the end of 

 their lives : Pemberton died early in 1771, leaving his books to 

 Wilson, who lived to publish his friend's course of Chemistry, 

 with a memoir, and died* himself on Sept. 29 of the same year. 

 Wilson also describes himself as the friend of Brook Taylor, 

 and to this I have Taylor's attestation. In 1722, Wilson pub- 

 lished Pemberton's answer to his questions about Cotes, Epistola 

 ad Amicum de Cotesii inventis, with an appendix in 1723 (London, 

 4to). In his copy of the first, now in my possession, Taylor 

 wrote E libris Br. Taylor Ex dono eximii parts amicorum, autoris 

 D. H. Pemberton, atque editoris D. J. Wilson. Consequently, 

 Wilson lived in friendship with at least two, and probably more, 

 of those who had a direct connexion with the controversy ; and 

 that he was a very good mathematician, a high fluxionist, is 

 obvious from the letter which Pemberton addressed to him. 

 Again, his qualifications as an historian of research and accuracy 

 are well attested by his sketch of the history of navigation, 

 written for and published in Robertson's work on that subject, 

 and reprinted by Baron Maseres in the fourth volume of the 

 Scriptores Logarithmici. In 1761, as executor of his friend 

 Robins, he published some works of the latter, in two octavo 

 volumes ; and at the end of the second volume he added, by way 

 of appendix to Robins' s tracts on the Analyst controversy, a very 

 elaborate and well-referenced discussion on several points of the 

 fluxional controversy. That he should have written this without 

 consultation with his most familiar friend Pemberton, or that a 

 single point of it capable of difference of opinion should have 

 escaped discussion between them, is incredible; and that any 

 fact on which Pemberton's memory differed from his own should 

 have been repeated over and over again by him without statement 

 of the discordance, is still more so. And this most especially as 

 to matters in which Newton was personally concerned. For 

 Pemberton was Newton's latest editor, the last man with whom 

 he advised on matters relating to the great controversy, and who 

 must have been on terms of intimate acquaintance with him at 

 the very time when the republication of the Comm. Epist., and 

 the junction with it of the paper now under discussion, must have 

 made many inquire into the authorship of that paper. 



Now Wilson affirms that Newton wrote, not merely the Re- 

 ettuio in question, but the Ad Lcctorcm, and the remarks on 

 John Bernoulli's letter which terminate the second edition of 



* See the Notes and Queries, vol. v. pp. 362, 399, Rigaud's Historical 

 Essay on i he Prmcijria, ]>. l'»7, and Wilson's own discourse on fluxions pre- 

 sently mentioned. 



