

80 LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 



other part tell us that it is ab auctore perlecta variisque in locis 

 emendata, yet I have given orders to leave it out, and to binde 

 his Principia Philosophice apart for you ; whereby halfe the 

 price is abated. I suppose I shall have it to-morrowe, and 

 then I shall soone finde some ship to send it by : for such 

 opportunittes betweene this towne and Hamburg are very fre- 

 quent. 



Des Cartes himself is gone into France. Monsieur Hardy 

 tells us, in a letter lately written, that Des Cartes met him 

 in Paris, and blamed him for offering so much mony to our 

 Arabicke professor at Utrecht, for his Arabicke manuscript 

 of Apollonius. Which Mr. Hardy interprets as a signe of envy 

 in Des Cartes, as being unwilling that we should esteeme the 

 ancients, or admire any man but himselfe for the doctrine of 

 lignes courbes. 



But I think France alone will afford me argument for a 

 large letter, and therefore I leave it till the next time. 



Come we therefore to England. And first for Mr. War- 

 ner's Analogickes, of which you desire to know whether they 

 be printed. You remember that his papers were given to his 

 kinsman, a merchant in London, who sent his partner to bury 

 the old man : himselfe being hindred by a politicke gout, 

 which made him keepe out of their sight that urged him to 

 contribute to the parliament's assistance, from which he was 

 exceedingly averse. So he was looked upon as one that ab- 

 sented himselfe out of malignancy, and his partner managed 

 the whole trade. Since my comming over, the English mer- 

 chants heere tell me that both he and his partner are broken, 

 and now they both keepe out of sight, not as malignants, but 

 as bankrupts. But this you may better inquire among our 

 Hamburg merchants. In the meane time I am not a little 

 afraid that all Mr. Warner's papers, and no small share of 

 my labours therein, are seazed upon, and most unmathe- 

 matically divided between the sequestrators and creditors, 

 who (being not able to ballance the account where there ap- 

 peare so many numbers, and much troubled at the sight of 

 so many crosses and circles in the superstitious Algebra and 

 that blacke art of Geometry) will, no doubt, determine once 

 in their lives to become figure- casters, and so vote them all 

 to be throwen into the fire, if some good body doe not re- 

 prieve them for pye-bottoms, for which purposes you know 

 analogicall numbers are incomparably apt, if they be accu- 

 rately calculated. 



I cannot tell you much better ne\vs of my analyticall spe- 

 culations, of the finishing of which you desire to heare. I 

 came over hither in December last, not bringing any of my 



