GRANTHAM ADDRESS. 283 



he pierced the night of ages, and unfolded a new world to the 

 eyes of the old. 



The arts afford no exception to the general law. Demos- 

 thenes had eminent forerunners, Pericles the last of them. 

 Homer must have had predecessors of great merit, though 

 doubtless as far surpassed by him as Fra Bertolomeo and 

 Pietro Perugino were by Michael Angelo and Eaphael. Dante 

 owed much to Virgil ; he may be allowed to have owed, 

 through his Latin Mentor, not a little to the old Grecian ; and 

 Milton had both the Orators and the Poets of the ancient 

 world, for his predecessors and his masters. The art of war 

 itself is no exception to the rule. The plan of bringing an 

 overpowering force to bear on a given point had been tried 

 occasionally before Frederic II. reduced it to a system, and the 

 Wellingtons and Napoleons of our own day made it the foun- 

 dation of their strategy, as it had also been previously the 

 mainspring of our naval tactics. 



It has oftentimes been held that the invention of Logarithms 

 stands alone in the history of science, as having been preceded 

 by no step leading towards the discovery. There is, however, 

 great inaccuracy in this statement; for not only was the 

 doctrine of infinitesimals familiar to its illustrious author, and 

 the relation of geometrical to arithmetical series well known ; 

 but he had himself struck out several methods of great in- 

 genuity and utility, (as that known by the name of ' Napier's 

 Bones,') methods that are now forgotten, eclipsed as they 

 were by the consummation which has immortalized his 

 name.* So the inventive powers of Watt, preceded as he 

 was by Worcester and Newcomen, but more materially by 

 Gauss and Papin, had been exercised on some admirable con- 



* ' The Rhabdologia,' was only published in 1617, the year he died ; 

 but Napier had long before the invention of logarithms used the contri- 

 vances there described. His ' Canon Mirificus ' was only published by 

 him in 1611 : but it appears from a letter of Kepler that the invention 

 least as early as 1594. The story of Longomontanus having anti- 

 cipated him is a mere fable ; but Kepler believed that one Byrge had at 

 least come near the invention, and he had done much certainly upon 

 natural sines. (Epist. Leips. 1718.) 



