HALLEY, EDMUND. 



HALLIWELL, JAMES ORCHARD, F.R.S. 



270 



In 1698 King William, who had heard of his magnetic theory, gave 

 him the commission of captain in the navy, with the command of a 

 small vessel, and instructions to observe the variation of the magnet, 

 and the longitude and latitude in the American settlements, and to 

 attempt the discovery of land south of the Western Ocean. He set 

 out in November, but was compelled to return by the insubordination 

 of his first lieutenant. Having tried this officer by a court-martial, 

 _he set out again in September, with the same ship and another, 

 ' observed in many parts of the Atlantic as far as the ice would per- 

 mit, touched at the Canaries, Madeira, Cape de Verd Islands, St. 

 Helena, Brazil, Barbadoes, and returned September 1700, not having 

 lost a man by sickness during the whole of the voyage. He published 

 in 1701 a chart of the variation of the magnet in all seas of the known 

 world, and immediately afterwards sailed to survey the coasts of the 

 Channel, of which he also published a chart. He was then twice suc- 

 cessively ordered to the coast of the Adriatic, to assist in the forma- 

 tion acd repairs of harbours in the emperor's dominions, and returned 

 to England in November 1703, just in time to succeed Dr. Wallis, 

 who had died a few weeks before, in the Savilian chair of geometry 

 at Oxford. 



If Halley was active and energetic, he was no less universal. The 

 captain-professor found an unfinished translation by Dr. Bernard of a 

 tract of Apollonius, and, though he did not understand Arabic, under- 

 took to complete the work. [AroLLOuius, BERO.EUS.] A manuscript 

 Life of Halley in the Bodleian Library (read before the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society ; see their ' Monthly Notice,' December 1834,) says, 

 " This he did with much success, through his being so great a master 

 of the subject, that I remember the learned Dr. Sykes (our Hebrew 

 professor at Cambridge, and the greatest naturalist of his time when 

 I was at that university), told me that Mr. Halley, talking with him 

 upon the subject, showed him two or three passages which wanted 

 emendation, telling him what the author said, and what he should 

 have said, and which Dr. Sykes found he might with great ease be 

 made to Bay, by small corrections he was by this means enabled to 

 make in the text. Thus, I remember Dr. Sykes expressed himself, 

 Mr. Halley made emendations to the text of an author he could not 

 so much as read the language of." It is not necessary (after the 

 article last cited) to say more of the splendid edition of the whole of 

 Apollonius, published in 1710. 



Tlie ' Miscellanea Curiosa,' a collection of pieces, mostly from the 

 ' Philosophical Transactions,' many of them by himself, was superin- 

 tended by him, and published in 1708. 



Halley resided at Oxford for some years after his appointment to 

 the Savilian chair, nor do we know when he again became a per- 

 manent resident in London: it was however not later than 1713, for 

 in that year he became secretary to the Royal Society. He had been 

 assistant-secretary before, as far back as 1685, and the Transactions 

 from 1686 to 1692 were superintended by him. From the manner in 

 which his name is mixed up with the affair of Flamsteed, he must 

 have resided in town for some years previous to 1713. [FLAMSTEED.] 

 In the article cited we have called Flamsteed's work the Principia of 

 practical astronomy ; and it were to be wished the connection of 

 Halley with the printing of this one had been as creditable as that 

 which links his name with the 'Principia' of Newton. It is difficult to 

 say to what extent Halley was involved in originating any of the 

 unworthy proceedings to which we allude; and we must protest 

 against his being made a scapegoat for Newton, in which position 

 even Flamsteed seemed inclined to place him, as well as several more 

 recent writers on the controversy. Neither the position nor the 

 character of Halley renders it likely that he would prefer making a 

 tool of Newton to any direct mode of aggression. The committee 

 appointed by Prince George of Denmark must bear the blame of 

 all the formal proceedings ; and in that committee the name of 

 Halley is not found, though it is on the list of those who pub- 

 lished the Commercium Epistolicnm, a position which we cannot 

 defend. 



At the beginning of 1720, after the death of Flamsteed, Halley was 

 appointed astronomer-royal. In the previous yean he had been 

 employed in completing his lunar and planetary tables, which were 

 then ready to be published. But upon his appointment to Greenwich 

 he revived bis old idea of observing the moon through a revolution of 

 her nodes. It was doubtful that at the age of sixty-four be should 

 live to complete on undertaking which required nineteen years of 

 health ; but he did undertake it, and did live to finish it. The result 

 is the comparison of nearly 2000 observed lunar places with his pre- 

 viously formed tables. He died on the 14th of January 1741-42, in 

 the eighty -sixth year of his age. 



The remarks on the personal character of Halley which appear in 

 the cloge of Mairan were furnished, it is asserted, by his friend 

 Mr. Folkes, and their justice must be allowed so far as they speak of 

 his prodigious information and activity. His disinterestedness in 

 money matters ia supposed to be attested by his request to Queen 

 Caroline not to increase the salary of the astronomer-royal on his 

 appointment to that office, lest it should afterwards become an object 

 of ambition to incompetent persons; but, though allowing that Halley 

 was not greedy of gain, we see but little to commend in this act of a 

 man of independent fortune. The social qualifications of Halley were 

 ruch as endeared him to his friends ; and he could, when no partiality 



stood in the way, be fair and just to others. Thus Mairan remarks on 

 his not having treated either Des Cartes or Vieta with the injustice 

 which their memory received from several English writers. It were 

 to be wished that he had been as free from personal as from national 

 prepossessions, and that Liebnitz and Flamsteed had received their 

 due from the friend of Newton. In his edition of the observations 

 of the latter [FLAMSTEED] he inserted a preface containing culpable 

 misrepresentations, an account of which is to be found in Mr. Baily's 

 work. We shall also cite the following suppression. In all the 

 editions of the ' Synopsis Cometica ' published during Halley's life, a 

 numerical deduction from observations is given, to which the following 

 is appended : " At the moment of the first example the comet was 

 observed at London to be close to the second star of Aries, of which 

 it was nine minutes north, and three minutes east ; the observer being 

 Robert Hook." But in the augmented edition left by Halley to be 

 published with his tables, the comet, at the same hour as in the pre- 

 ceding, is nine or ten minutes north of the star of Aries, and nearly 

 in the same longitude ; the observer being no longer Robert Hook, 

 but Auzout and another. Doubtless Halley had quarrelled with Hook 

 (as almost everybody was obliged to do) in the interval ; and though 

 the example was evidently worked for comparison with Hook's 

 observation, at the same moment, we find it struck out in favour of 

 one by Auzout in the same hour. 



But though the scientific fame of a philosopher be no excuse for 

 that suppression of his faults to which biographers are prone, still less 

 should the latter be allowed to colour our views of the former. 

 Among the Englishmen of his day Halley stands second only to 

 Newton, and probably for many years after the publication of the 

 ' Principia,' he was the only one who both could and would rightly 

 appreciate the character and coming utility of that memorable work. 

 His own attention was too much divided to permit of his being the 

 mathematician which he might have been ; but nevertheless his papers 

 on pure mathematics show a genius of the same order of power, 

 though of much less fertility, than that of John Bernoulli. We shall 

 close this article with a brief account of his printed writings, and of 

 the most remarkable points in them. 



The separate works of Halley consist of the ' Catalogus Stellaruin 

 Australium,' &c., London, 1679, translated into French by M. Royer 

 in the same year; the work of Apollonius 'De Sectione Ratiouis,' 

 Oxford, 1706; the ' Conic Sections of Apollonius,' Oxford, 1710; the 

 unfortunate edition of Flamsteed's ' Historia Ccelestis,' London, 1712; 

 and the planetary tables published in 1749, though printed for the 

 most part in 1717-19. The superintendence of this work is attributed 

 to Bradley, though it is evident that he did not write the preface. 

 Besides the preceding there are from eighty to a hundred memoirs, 

 including many of small importance, in the ' Philosophical Trans- 

 actions.' 



In astronomy we owe to Halley 1, the discovery and the detection 

 of the amount of what is called the long inequality of Jupiter and 

 Saturn, which he confidently expected would be shown to be a conse- 

 quence of the law of gravitation, as was afterwards done ; 2, the 

 detection, by comparison of ancient and modern observations of 

 eclipses, of the slow acceleration of the moon's mean motion ; 3, the 

 first prediction of the return of a comet ' Halley's Comet ; ' 4, the 

 explanation of the appearance of Venus in the day-time at particular 

 seasons, arising out of the now well-known method of estimating the 

 brilliancy of the planet ; 5, the recommendation to observe the transit 

 of Venus for the determination of the sun's parallax. 



The following is a list of the most remarkable labours of Halley 

 out of astronomy, arranged in the order of publication : 1, on tho 

 variation of the compass ; 2, the law according to which the mercury 

 falls in the barometer while the instrument ascends, being the first 

 application of this instrument to the measurement of heights ; 3, 

 theory of the trade-winds ; 4, construction of equations of the third 

 and fourth degree ; 5, estimation of the quantity of vapour raised from 

 the sea ; 6, inquiry into the point at which Julius Caesar made his 

 entry into Britain ; 7, tables of mortality, from observations made at 

 Breslau, the first of the kind constructed ; 8, application of Algebra 

 to the problem of lenses ; 9, method of constructing logarithms, a 

 celebrated paper, reprinted in Sherwin's 'Logarithms;' 10, improve- 

 ments in the diving-bell. Those papers only have been mentioned which 

 refer to points on which Halley's name ia inseparably connected with 

 the history of the progress of science. 



(Biographia Britannica.) 



* HALLIWELL, JAMES ORCHARD, F.R.3., was born in 1821. 

 He is the son of the late Thomas Halliwell, Esq., of Button, in 

 Surrey, and received his early education under the late Charles 

 Butler, author of the ' Introduction to the Mathematics," &c. At an 

 early age he devoted himself to antiquarian researches, more espe- 

 cially directing his attention to the literary history and antiquities of 

 this country, as embodied in the various early works of prose or 

 poetry. He is the author and editor of many books on this and 

 cognate subjects, which he has brought to light and illustrated by the 

 light of cotemporary history. He is chiefly known ta the world by a 

 variety of papers and more elaborate works on Shaksperian criticism, 

 amounting, we believe, to between twenty and thirty in number. Of 

 his original works the most important are his 'History of Free- 

 masonry,' his ' Life of Shakspeare,' a ' Treatise on the Literature of 



