721 



PELL, JOHN. 



PELLICO, SILVIO. 



722 



that he waa bom at twenty-one minutes after one o'clock on that d:iy. 

 He received his grammar education at the free-school of Steyning in 

 Sussex, and mide BO rapid a proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew 

 language*, that at the early age of thirteen he was sent to Trinity College, 

 Cambridge. He never offered himself however a candidate at the election 

 of scholars or fellows of bis college. In 1631 he was admitted to an 'ad 

 eundem ' degree in the University of Oxford, having proceeded to the 

 degree of Master of Arts at Cambridge the previous year. In 1632 he 

 married Ithamaria, second daughter of Mr. Henry Eeginolles, of London, 

 by whom he had four sons and four daughters. During this time he had 

 acquired a mathematical reputation by the publication of several 

 works, and when a vacancy occurred in the mathematical chair at 

 Amsterdam, in 1639, Sir William Boawell, the English resident with 

 the States-general, used his interest that he might succeed to that 

 professorship. It was not filled up however till 1643, when Pell was 

 chosen ; and he greatly distinguished himself in this situation by his 

 lectures on Diophantus, and on various other parts of the mathematics. 

 In 1646, on the invitation of the Prince of Orange, he removed to the 

 new college of Breda, as professor of mathematics, with a salary of 

 1000 guilders per annum. In 1652 he returned to England, but ia 

 two years afterwards, in 1 654, he was chosen, by the Protector Crom- 

 well, agent to the Protestant cantons in Switzerland. He continued 

 in Switzerland till June 23, 1658, when he set out for England, where 

 he arrived about the time of Cromwell's death. His diaries and corre- 

 spondence during this period are still preserved among the Lansdowne 

 manuscripts in the British Museum, and are particularly curious and 

 valuable for the history of this period. His negociatious abroad gave 

 afterwards general satisfaction, as it appeared he had done no small 

 service to the interest of King Charles II. and of the Church of 

 England. Having entered holy orders, he was instituted, in 1661, to 

 the rectory of Fobbing in Essex, with the chapel of Battlesden annexed, 

 on the presentation of the king. In 1673 he was presented, by Dr. 

 Sheldon, then bishop of London, to the rectory of Laingdon in Essex ; 

 and about the same time he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity. 

 Shortly afterwards his patron was translated to the archbishopric of 

 Canterbury, and made him one of his domestic chaplains. Such an 

 appointment is generally considered to be a step to higher preferment, 

 but Dr. Pell waa so intent on the philosophical and mathematical 

 sciences, that he neglected his own interest, and was so imprudent 

 with repect to the management of his worldly affairs, that he would 

 have disgraced the station of a dignitary. Anthony Wood says that 

 " he was a shiftless man, and his tenants and relations dealt so unkindly 

 with him, that they cozened him of the profits of his parsonages, and 

 kept him so indigent that he wanted necessaries, and even paper and 

 ink, to his dying day." In the midst of bis incessant application to 

 his studies, owing to the neglect of his affairs his embarrassments 

 increased, and he contracted debts, which proved the occasion of his 

 being twice in the King's Bench prison. Being at length reduced to 

 great indigence, he was invited by Dr. Whistler, in March 1682, to 

 live in the College of Physicians. Here he continued only for a few 

 mouths, the ill state of hia health rendering it advisable for him to 

 remove to the house of a grandchild of his in St. Margaret's, West- 

 minster. He afterwards removed to the house of Mr. Cothorne, reader 

 of the church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, where he died, on the 

 12th of December 10s5, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and was 

 interred at the expense of Dr. Busby, master of Westminster school, 

 and Hr. Sharp, rector of St. Giles's, in the rector's vault under that 

 church. 



Dr. Pell's reputation as an algebraist and mathematician was great 

 in his own time, and he deservedly holds a high position in the history 

 of the niatbrujatics of the 17th century. It was to Pell that Newtou 

 first developed his invention of fluxions; and the original letter 

 containing his method, which was printed ia the ' Comtnercium Epis- 

 tolicum,' was discovered by the late Professor Rigaud in the library 

 of the Earl of Macclesfield. Dr. Pell published the following works : 

 1, ' A Refutation of Longomoutanus's Discourse, De vera Circuli 

 Mensuro,' 4to, Arnst., 1644, 2pp. 2, 'A Letter to Theodore Haak 

 concerning Easter,' 4 to, Loud., 1664. The original manuscript is in 

 the Britiah Museum, manuscript Sloan., 4410. This is merely in favour 

 of what was then called the New Style, and consists only of seven pages. 

 3, ' An Idea of the Mathematics.' Printed at the end of Mr. John 

 Durie's ' Reformer Library-keeper.' 4, ' A table of Ten Thousand 

 Square Numbers, viz. of all the Square Numbers between and 100 

 millions, and of their Sides or Hoots, which are all the whole numbers 

 between and ten thousand,' folio, Lond., 1672. Ff. 16. 5, 'Rhonius's 

 Algebra, translated out of the High Dutch into English by Thomas 

 Branker, much altered and amended, by Dr. John Pell,' 4to, London, 

 1668. In this work Dr. Pell first invented the mode of registering 

 the steps of difficult equations, which waa then adopted by several 

 writers, but has now fallen out of use : the last work that we know of 

 which contains it is Butler's ' Introduction to the Mathematics,' pub- 

 lished in 1815. Here alao he introduced the character -7- for division, 

 which is now employed. 6, ' An Essay on the Day Fatality of Rome.' 

 Printed in Aubrey's 'Miscellanies,' edit. 1721, p. 22. 



Besides these, he published several single-leaf controversial pam- 

 phlets. Hia manuscripts and letters still remaining are numerous, and 

 perhaps in no similar instance have papers been so carefully preserved. 

 In the British Museum alone are nearly forty folio volumes, none of 



BIOO. D1V. VOL. IV. 



them very small, of his letters and mathematical scraps. These were 

 supposed by Dr. Hutton to have been deposited in the library of the 

 Royal Society, but it has been shown (HalliweU's ' Life of Sir S. 

 Morland,' pp. 27-30) that they are all deposited in the Birch collection 

 of manuscripts in the British Museum, with the exception perhaps of 

 a few manuscript letters. In the Harleian collection there are three 

 other similar volumes, which no doubt belonged to the series, and it 

 is difficult to say how they could have been transferred to that library. 

 Dr. Hutton says that he left some of his manuscripts at Brereton in 

 Cheshire, where he resided some time, being the seat of William Lord 

 Brereton, who had been his pupil at Breda. In August 1644 ho was 

 preparing for the press a new edition of Diophantus, one of his most 

 favourite books, in which he intended to correct the translation and 

 make new illustrations, but this project was never perfected. He 

 designed likewise to publish an edition of Apollonius, but laid it aside 

 in May 1645, at the desire of Golius, who was engaged in an edition of 

 that author from an Arabic manuscript given him at Aleppo eighteen 

 years before. Pell's letters in the Royal Society are addressed princi- 

 pally to Cavendish ; and one out of the series has accidentally found 

 its way into a manuscript in the British Musenm, manuscript Harl., 

 6796. 



PELLERIN, JOSEPH, was born at Marli-le-Eoi, near Versailles, 

 April 27, 1684. He studied at Paris, and, besides the Latin and Greek 

 languages, made himself master of the Italian, Spanish, and English. 

 After completing his college studies, he learned Hebrew, Syriac, and 

 Arabic. His knowledge of the three modern languages procured him, 

 in 1706, a situation in the navy-office (bureau de la marine), where 

 he was employed in making translations and extracts in those lan- 

 guages from the foreign correspondence of the minister. Several 

 letters written in cipher having been seized on board a Spanish 

 frigate on her voyage from Barcelona to Genoa, in 1709, Pelleriu in a 

 few days deciphered them without the keys. They were found to be 

 important communications, some in French for the court of Turin, 

 and some in Italian for the court of Naples. Torcy, then minister for 

 foreign affairs, had an interview with Pellerin, who was soon afterwards 

 appointed private secretary (secretaire de cabinet) to the secretary of 

 state for the navy ; and he held the situation when, oil the death of 

 Louis XIV., the business of the office was transacted by a council. 

 The Comte de Thoulousc, grand admiral of France, made Pelleriu a 

 commissioner of the navy in 1718, and sent him on service to the 

 great harbours of France,; and in 1723 he was destined to make a 

 general inspection of all the harbours, but a change of ministry took 

 place, the council of the navy was suppressed, and other measures 

 were decided on. Pellerin however still continued attached to the 

 department of the minister for the navy, by whom he was appointed 

 commissioner-general, and afterwards was made first clerk of the 

 navy, in which office his activity, probity, and firmness, combined with 

 the suavity of his manners, met with universal approbation. In 1745 

 bodily infirmities compelled him to retire from the public service. 

 His son, who had served in the navy and in the naval department of 

 the government, succeeded him in his office. 



Pellerin, during his long service of about forty years, had used the 

 opportunities which his situations afforded him in the collection of a 

 considerable number of coins and medals, at first from curiosity, but 

 afterwards from a taste for them as monuments of antiquity. To 

 occupy his leisure and alleviate his sufferings, after his retirement, he 

 began to read, explain, classify, and arrange them. His early studies 

 in the oriental languages, as well as in Latin and Greek, were renewed, 

 and became a source of much gratification to him. Such was the 

 origin of that magnificent collection of coins and medals which he 

 formed in the course of the subsequent forty years of his life. He 

 died at Paris, August 30, 1782, in bis ninety-ninth year. 



In the arrangement and classification of his medals Pellerin adopted 

 a system different from that of any previous collector. Instead of 

 distributing them in drawers according to difference of metals, and 

 arranging them alphabetically without reference to the countries to 

 wliich they belonged, he placed them according to certain great 

 geographical divisions, preserving however an alphabetical arrange- 

 ment of the medals of kings, nations, and towns included in each of 

 those divisions. His descriptions of the medals, with his comments 

 and remarks, formed a large Catalogue Raisonnd, which he published 

 under the title of 'Recueil de Me'dailles de Rois, Peuples, et Villes,' 

 &c., 10 volb. 4to, Paris, 1762 to 1778. His delight in his favourite 

 study was such that when upwards of ninety years of age and blind, 

 he composed and wrote with his owu hand, by means of an ingenious 

 contrivance, the last volume of the work, which is entitled 'Addi- 

 tions/ &c. A system of arrangement and classification fcimilar to that 

 of Pellerin was adopted by Eckhel, in his 'Doctrina Numorum 

 Veterum.' [ECKIIEL, J. H.] Pellerin and Eckhel were probably tbe two 

 greatest numismatists who have ever lived. Pellerin's collection, 

 which consisted of 32,500 medals, was bought by the King of France, 

 in 1776, for 300,000 francs. The king afterwards allowed Pellerin, as 

 long as he lived, the use of the whole of the royal collection, which 

 then amounted to about 44,000. 



PELLICO, SILVIO, was born in 1789, at Saluzzo, in Piedmont. 

 His father was Ouorato Pellico, of a respectable family, and in good 

 circumstances. His mother was a native of Chambery in Savoy, who, 

 retaining her maiden name in addition to that of her husband, was 



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