100 LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 



telligent readers, and particularly because you have conde- 

 scended not only to permission but favourable assistance : for 

 which I dayly look on myselfe (as well as thousands others) 

 as obliged to all gratefull acknowledgement as far as my pre- 

 sent or future capacity may reach. My desire and serious 

 study shal be to serve your interest, as far as I may understand 

 it, and be accepted in my endeavours. I know the notions 

 you bestow upon the treatise are not valuable even by Jewells, 

 but yet I see nothing litle or sordid in it for you to accept of 

 some gratuity, although incomparably beneath the obligation 

 you have laid upon us. If I might be so bold my request 

 would be to have from you a hint of your thoughts concern- 

 ing it. 5 Tis true Mr. Collins and I have discoursed hereabout, 

 but he is not nor shal be in the least acquainted with the open 

 proposall which my confidence of your pardon makes. Whe- 

 ther he hath in his letters anything that looks this way I know 

 not, but the full satisfaction I have of my own integrity to 

 endeavour your truest service puts me on the adventure. And 

 methinks it is much more respectfull to your goodnesse to be 

 open and sincere, than either to expresse myselfe tenderly 

 and obscurely, or, which is worse, to be altogether ignorant of 

 what behaviour may become us in this present case. My 

 bookseller I know will not be very unmannerly herin : and 

 I would deal with him as from my own motion did I know 

 what were proper, but he shall never know from me directly 

 or indirectly that I ever scribbled a syllable about the affair. 

 You need not fear any inconveniency in being free to me in 

 this matter even as to your son. I am not so great a stranger 

 to morality or conscience as to use such forward expressions, 

 had I not uprightnesse to support them. And, although I 

 may not despair of being an incomparable gainer by any 

 service I can undertake for you, yet I conceive I am not 

 herin selfish beyond what reverence and gratitude allow me. 

 But if any thing in the premises be any way peccant and 

 offensive, I submit to your correction and it shall be, if you 

 please, as if it were unwritten. As for the book, the com- 

 positor hath made your last papers fill a great deal of room, 

 something of the paper of March 5 running into R, which 

 loose print they ever told me their letters would needs require. 

 I have written out the primes to above 30000, in the first 10M 

 I find 1227 (counting 1 for a prime, which possibly Guld: 

 omitted, and so made 1226), in the 2d xM 3031, in the 3rd 

 xM 983, in the 30000, 3241. But my purpose is to prove 

 the whole table of incomposits again before I finish this ca- 

 talogue. Mr. Collins hath lent me Kinckhuysen's Conicks 

 (in Low Dutch) and Mydorgius, on which I spend some time 



