D'ALEMBERT. 413 



love of investigation, to secure the admission of his 

 claims as the original discoverer; but we sometimes find 

 him even querulous as to the remarks of others, and 

 complaining of them for not rendering him justice. In 

 the 'Opuscula,' torn, i., p. 158, we have not only an 

 anxious statement of his having been the first to use the 

 method employed in the 'Essai sur la Resistance des 

 Fluides/ and adding, that "great geometricians had so 

 much valued it as to apply it in their inquiries;" but 

 he objects to their having maintained that his theory 

 was capable of greater extension than he had given it, 

 and observes that he had turned it to other inquiries 

 which had escaped them. In the able and learned 

 article Hydrodynamique, in the 'Diet. Encyc.,' vol. viii., 

 p. 373, he attacks Euler for supposing, in his 'Memoire 

 Acad. de Berlin,' 1 755, that D'Alembert's method in his 

 Essai was not general ; and he adds, "II me semble que 

 M. Euler auroit du rendre plus de justice & mon travail 

 sur ce sujet et convenir de 1'utilite qu'il en avoit tiree." 

 Assuredly if ever man was above all suspicion of either 

 usurping upon others or overrating his own discoveries, 

 it was this most illustrious geometrician, whose inherent 

 richness of invention made him even blarneably careless 

 of his own claims to originality. No one can have 

 contemplated the different periods of D'Alembert's life 

 without being assured that such feelings of jealousy and 

 irritation as appear in the passages just now cited, were 

 not congenial to his nature and to his earlier habits, 

 when his darling science maintained undisputed posses- 

 sion of his mind, excluded all anxiety save in the search 

 after truth, and calmed every temporary ruffling of his 

 composure. The dates these passages bear, of 1761 and 

 1765, long after his admission into the circle of Madame 



