2OO Life of Count Rumford. 



an article on Popular Science, in the London Quarterly 

 Review for April, 1849, comments with sharpness upon 

 the different faults of some philosophers and some com- 

 mentators in respectively failing to clear up the ob- 

 scurities in their subjects, or in over-explaining and 

 tediously illustrating easy texts. He commends Frank- 

 lin and Cobbett as admirable examples, in that, re- 

 membering the toil and difficulty with which they had 

 overcome the embarrassments attending their unaided 

 investigation of abstruse subjects, they had taken spe- 

 cial pains to make those subjects easy and plain to their 

 readers. At the same time his Lordship thus finds 

 matter of ridicule in the Essays of Rumford : 



"The scientific works of Count Rumford abound in 

 examples of the ludicrous extent to which sensible men 

 will sometimes carry their exposition of matters known 

 to everybody. In one of his economic treatises he 

 gives a receipt for a pudding, and then a page of de- 

 scription how to eat it. The concluding sentence will 

 serve for a specimen : { The pudding is to be eaten 

 with a knife and fork, beginning at the circumference 

 of the slice [in a cavity 'of the centre of which he had 

 directed that a piece of butter be left to melt] and 

 approaching regularly towards the centre, each piece 

 of pudding being taken up with the fork and dipped 

 into the butter, or dipped into it in part only, as is 

 commonly the case, before it is carried to the mouth.' ' 

 This does indeed seem trifling, as his Lordship asserts ; 

 but the Count's whole minute description is pertinent, 

 as it really makes a difference how the " Indian Pud- 

 ding" is eaten. The Count himself apologizes for his 

 details, alleging " the importance of giving the most 

 minute and circumstantial information respecting the 



