SIMSON. 487 



this notion respecting the ancients : a notion which, 

 among others, no less a writer than Wallis had 

 strongly maintained.* 



Dr. Simson is by some supposed to have had at one 

 time the intention of discussing at large the proper 

 limits of the ancient and the modern analysis in the 

 investigation of mathematical truths. This no doubt 

 appears to be the meaning of a passage in his preface to 

 the Conic Sections : " In quantum autem differat ana- 

 lysis geometrica ab ea quse calculo instituitur algebraico, 

 atque ubi hcec aut ilia sit usurpanda, alias disseren- 

 dum" Professor Robison thought he had seen a por- 

 tion of the work ; but he must have been mistaken ; 

 for in answer to Mr. Scott's letter urging him to pub- 

 lish this, and referring to the preface in the w r ords just 

 cited, he expressly says, that though this passage might 

 well mislead, he never meant, except by " blundering 

 in the expression, anything of the kind, had no paper, 

 and never wrote anything about the matter :" and this 

 was written in 1764, four years before his death, and 

 eleven or twelve years after Professor Robison attended 

 his class. Nothing can be more clear than that between 

 1764 and his death, in 1768, he never attempted any 

 work of moment; much more any work such as the one in 



* Algebra Prsef. " Hanc Grsecos olim habuisse non est quod 

 dubitemus ; sed studio celatara, nee temere propalandam. Ejus 

 effectus (utut clam celatae) satis conspicui apud Archimedem, 

 Apollonium, aliosque." It is strange that any one of ordinary 

 reflection should have overlooked the utter impossibility of all the 

 geometricians in ancient times keeping the secret of an art which 

 must, if it existed, have been universally known in the mathematical 

 schools, and at a time when every man of the least learning or even 

 of the most ordinary education was taught geometry. 



