393 



VINCE, SAMUEL. 



VINCENT DE PAUL, SAINT. 



396 



visit in Germany. Villoison accordingly left Venice and went to 

 Weimar, where he spent about a year in searching the library of that 

 capital. The results of his learned inquiries were published in his 

 * EpistoltB Vimarienses, in quibua multa Graccorum Scriptorum loca 

 emendautur ope librornm Ducalis Bibliothecse,' Zurich, 4 to, 1783. 

 The year after he edited at Strasburg a Greek translation of the Old 

 Testament, which he had discovered at Venice, and had been made by 

 a Jew iu the 9th century of our era. In 1785 he accompanied tho 

 French ambassador at the court of Constantinople, Count Choiseul 

 Gouffier, to Constantinople, and travelled about for three years in the 

 islands of the Archipelago and the continent of Greece. His hopes of 

 finding manuscripts of ancient authors not yet published were disap- 

 pointed, but he made himself perfect master of the modern Greek 

 language, and collected a vast quantity of materials partly with a view 

 to make a new and improved edition of Tournefort's travels, and 

 partly to write a complete description of ancient and modern Greece. 

 But the unhappy condition in which he found his country on his 

 return prevented the realisation of these plans. Villoison withdrew 

 to Orleans, and began to read through all the ancient authors in order 

 to collect materials for his great work on Greece. After the storms 

 of the Revolution had passed away, he returned with his literary 

 treasures to Paris, and having lost the greater part of his property, 

 he began a course of lectures on the Greek language, in which how, 

 ever ho did not meet with much success. He was made a member of 

 the National Institute of France, and Napoleon I. afterwards appointed 

 him professor of ancient and modern Greek in the College de France, 

 but he had scarcely entered upon this office when he was seized by an 

 illness which terminated in his death on the 26th of April 1805. The 

 ' Memoirs ' of the Academy of Inscriptions contain several valuable 

 papers by Villoisou. The materials for his great work on Greece, in 

 fifteen large quarto volumes, as well as his remarks on Tournefort and 

 on Montl'aucon's ' Palaeographia Grscca,' of which he likewise intended 

 to publish a new edition, are in manuscript in the royal library of 

 Paris. 



Villoison was a man of prodigious learning : he possessed an extra- 

 ordinary memory, and a quick and penetrating mind ; but his thirst 

 for knowledge was so great, that he scarcely allowed himself time to 

 digest that which he had acquired, and all the defects of his works 

 arise more or less from this haste and want of reflection. 



VINCE, SAMUEL, a distinguished mathematician, and Plumian 

 Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in the Univer- 

 sity of Cambridge. He took orders, and he was promoted to the 

 archdeaconry of Bedford. He died in December 1821. 



Professor Vince was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1786, 

 having previously written a paper on friction, which was published in 

 the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1785. This paper, which pos- 

 sesses considerable originality and merit, contains a description of 

 many experiments made on that subject. In the 'Philosophical 

 Transactions' for 1795 there is a paper by Vince, entitled ' Observa- 

 tions on the Theory of the Motion and Resistance of Fluids,' in which 

 are described several experiments relating to the discharges of water 

 through pipes inserted, in vertical positions, in the bottom of vessels. 

 From these it is shown that, when the pipes are less than one inch in 

 length, the ratio between the quantities discharged from a simple 

 orifice and from a pipe are not exactly to one another in the sub- 

 duplicate ratio of the depths, that is, of the distance from the upper 

 surface of the water in the vessel to the orifice and to the lower extre- 

 mity of the pipe ; the results of the experiments are however found 

 to agree better with the theory in proportion as the pipes are longer. 

 Another paper by Vince, which is entitled ' Experiments on the 

 Resistance of Bodies moving in Fluids,' was published in the volume 

 of the 'Transactions' for 1798. These experiments were made with 

 bodies at considerable distances below the surface ; and it was found 

 that when the body is a plane surface, and also when it is a hemi- 

 sphere moving with the flat side foremost, the experimented resistances 

 differed from the results of the general theory in the ratio of 3 to 2 

 nearly. The ratio between the resistance experienced by a plane 

 surface at rest, when struck by a fluid in motion, and that which 

 took place when the same plane was made to move in the fluid, the 

 latter being at rest, was found to be nearly as 6 to 5 ; and this result 

 agrees with that which was obtained by Du Buat. 



In conjunction with the Rev. James Wood, Professor Vince pub- 

 lished at Cambridge a ' Course of Mathematics and Natural Philo- 

 sophy, for the Use of Students in the University ; ' and of this valuable 

 work there have since been several editions with considerable improve- 

 ments : the parts written by Vince are entitled ' Elements of Conic 

 Sections, intended as Preparations for the reading of Newton's Prin- 

 cipia' 'Principles of Fluxions;' 'Principles of Hydrostatics;' and 

 ' Elements of Astronomy.' In 1790 came out his 'Treatise of Prac- 

 tical Astronomy,' in 4to, containing descriptions of the constructions 

 and the uses of astronomical instruments ; but his principal work is 

 a ' Complete System of Astronomy,' which was published at Cam- 

 bridge iu 8 vols. 4to. (1797 to 1808). The first volume contains 

 accounts of the phenomena and motions of the moon and planets, 

 deduced from observations : part of the second is occupied with the 

 sul'jpct of physical astronomy, or investigations from the theory of 

 general attraction, concerning the precession of the equinoxes, the 

 movements of the moon and planets, of the apsides and nodes of the 



orbits, and the variations to which the inclinations of the orbits are 

 subject : the remainder consists of several tables, of great utility in 

 the solution of problems relating to practical astronomy. The third 

 volume contains a complete series of astronomical tables with precepts 

 for their use ; they consist of Delambre's tables of the sun, moon, and 

 planets, and of the satellites of Jupiter, and Burg's tables of the moon ; 

 the epochs being changed to the first day of January at Greenwich 

 mean noon. 



Professor Vince published a pamphlet entitled ' The Credibility of 

 Christianity Viudicated,' in answer to Hume's objections in his 'Essay 

 on Miracles;' and, in 1806, one entitled 'Observations on tho Hypo- 

 theses which have been assumed to account for the Cause of Gravi- 

 tation on Mechanical Principles.' The latter was read before the 

 Royal Society, and was intended to be the Bakerian Lecture ; but, for 

 some reason, it was not published in the ' Transactions.' The writer 

 endeavours to disprove Newton's supposition that gravity may be 

 accounted for by means of an elastic fluid, and he concludes that the 

 formation and preservation of the universe must be ascribed to the 

 immediate agency of the Deity. He also published four Sermons, 

 which he had preached before the university. The subject of these 

 discourses is a confutation of atheism, from the laws and constitution 

 of the heavenly bodies ; the various adaptations of the parts of the 

 solar system to one another are exhibited, and offered as proof of 

 design in its formation ; and the correspondence of certain phenomena 

 in that system to those which have been observed iu the stars called 

 fixed, is stated as an evidence that the universe is under the superin- 

 tendence of one Being. 



VINCENT, EARL ST. [JEBVIS, JOHN.] 



VINCENT DE PAUL, SAINT, was born on the 24th of April 

 1576, at Ranquines in the parish of Pouy, near the Pyrenees, in the 

 present department of the Landes. He was the third son of Guil- 

 laume de Paul, who owned and cultivated a small farm in that pariah. 

 The narrow means of his family promised him a life of laborious toil, 

 and till the age of twelve he assisted his parents in the care of their 

 farm. He had however from early youth manifested so great an 

 acuteness of intellect and sensibility of disposition, that they were 

 induced to endeavour to give him a suitable education. He was 

 placed as a student in a convent of the Cordeliers at Acqs, the resi- 

 dence of the bishop of his diocese. At the age of sixteen, he was con- 

 sidered qualified to become tutor to the children of M. de Commet, an 

 advocate of Acqs, and the magistrate of his native village. This 

 situation enabled him at the same time to relieve his parents from the 

 expenses attendant on his education, and to prepare himself for the 

 ministry of the church, to which he had now determined upon devoting 

 himself. He assumed the tonsure on the 20th of December 1 596, and 

 the next year he went to Toulouse, in order to follow the course of 

 theology of that university. But he was compelled, on account of the 

 slender pittance which was allowed him, to combine the duties of a 

 teacher with those of a student. In the year 1600, after having 

 received the previous orders, he was made a priest by the Bishop of 

 Perigueux ; in the same year the offer was made him of the parish of 

 Tilh, one of the most valuable in the diocese of Acqs, which he 

 declined in order to devote himself more entirely to the study of theo- 

 logy. In this study, notwithstanding the difficulties under which he 

 laboured, he soon became eminent, and on the 12th of October, ll>04, 

 obtained the degree of bachelier des lettres, with a permission to 

 lecture. 



In 1605, a legacy of fifteen hundred livres, which had been left him 

 by a friend who had died at Marseille, compelled him to make a 

 journey to that city. After taking possession of his legacy, he was 

 returning by sea, when he was taken prisoner by some Tunisian 

 corsairs, and was wounded in the conflict. He has left us a minute 

 relation of his capture and imprisonment, in a letter written to his 

 early patron, M. de Commet, on his return to France in 1607, of which 

 there is a copious extract in the ' Biographie Universelle." During his 

 captivity at Tunis and Algiers, he became the slave of three successive 

 masters ; the last of them, an Italian renegade, he converted to his 

 former faith. After a delay of ten months, he was sufficiently fortu- 

 nate to induce his master to forego the temporal advantages of a resi- 

 dence in a land where he was obliged to conceal his profession of 

 Christianity, and to escape with him to France, in which country they 

 landed on the 28th of June 1607. At Avignon, the penitent renegade 

 was publicly readmitted to the privileges and consolations of the 

 religion he had denied. Shortly afterwards the vice legate of the 

 pope, Paul V., who had performed this ceremony, induced Vincent 

 and his companion to accompany him to Rome. He there became 

 acquainted with the ambassador of the French king, who selected 

 him to be the bearer of an important and confidential message to 

 Henry IV. He arrived in Paris at the commencement of the year 

 1609, and obtained several interviews with the king. His time how- 

 ever he chiefly devoted to the service of the sick of 1'Hopital de la 

 Charite, near which he had taken up his residence. 



The period of Vincent's residence in Paris was embittered by an 

 accusation of robbery made against him by a fellow-lodger, a native of 

 the same province as himself, and for six years he was unable to clear 

 him.-elf of the charge. During that time, though suffering severely 

 from the cruel imputation, he contented himself, when questioned 

 concerning it, with a simple denial, joined to the remark that " God 



