SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 365 



puerile, like the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which he tried, 

 he says, " Diis propitiis usus ;" some are far too easy 

 to confer any fame, like the restoration of Apollonius's 

 Inclinations ; while his great attempt, an edition of 

 Newton, is confessed by all to be as signal a failure as 

 any on record in the history of science.* 



The escape from such a chief was further enhanced 

 in value by the excellent qualities of him whom the 

 victory kept in the chair. He showed no jealousy of 

 any rival, no prejudice in one person's favour rather 

 than another's. He was equally accessible to all, for 

 counsel and for help ; where his own knowledge did 

 not suffice, he could easily obtain the aid of those more 

 devoted to the subject of the application. His house, 

 his library, his whole valuable collections, were at all 

 times open to men of science ; while his credit, both 

 with our own and foreign Governments, and, if need 

 were, the resource of his purse, was ever ready to help 

 the prosecution of their inquiries. I know of many 

 persons, since eminent, who when only tyros in science, 

 and wholly unknown to fame, have been patronized by 



* The reader who compares Bishop Horsley's praises of his own exploits 

 with the exploits themselves, will readily concur in Professor Playfair's 

 opinion of them expressed delicately but sharply in the fourth volume of 

 the ' Edinburgh Review.' He has not indeed entered into particulars, as 

 to the great failure, the ' Newton.' But who can read an edition of the 

 ' Principia,' the ' Optics,' and the ' Fluxions,' published in 1778-80, and not 

 marvel at the author's apparent ignorance of all that had been done since 

 Sir I. Newton's time? There is not a word of the Calculus of Variations 

 or of Partial Differences, not an allusion to D'Alembert's principle of 

 Dynamics, nor to the objection of the Bernouillis and D' Alembert, touch- 

 ing the Hydraulic Cataract; no reference to the progress of Hydrodyna- 

 mical science; nor to the discoveries of Dollond and others on refraction. 

 Indeed the ' Optics ' is given almost without note or comment, while the 

 comments on the ' Principia' are only upon passages of no difficulty, leaving 

 the darker ones in their original obscurity, unless where reference is made 

 to the commentary of Le Sueur and Jacquier, Varignon and Herman 

 and the Bernouillis are unnoticed. In short no one can read the book, 

 however cursorily, and rise from its perusal with the least respect for the 

 Right Reverend Editor, or the least disposition to admit his claim either as 

 head of the mathematicians whom he marshalled to defeat, or as aspiring 

 to fill the Society's chair. 



