310 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



To Sir J. Herschel. 



91 Adelaide Road, May 3, 1862. 



1862. MY DEAR SIR JOHN, A great many years ago yon stood np 



after dinner at our club, and gave strong hints that your time 

 was nearly up. But you brisked up, took the Mint, overworked 

 yourself, got an illness worth prophesying about, got over it, 

 and committed mathematical papers. Now here you are again, 

 talking about softening of the brain, and a knacker's yard, and 

 all kinds of incom mensurable s. If this mean that you are 

 going to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, why, take off the 

 income tax. If it be really melancholy foreboding, take on a 

 little quinine or brandy and water, and give up the hexameter 

 for six months. It is a mournful metre. 



As to your catalogue of Greek ships and of nebulae, take care 

 you do not mix them accidentally, ' A catalogue of ships which 

 sailed against Troy, reduced to the year 1862,' by Sir J. H., &c. 

 People will stare to see how 2,500 years of precession turn a 

 trireme into a steamship. AH our progress may be only pre- 

 cession of the equinoxes, motion backwards of the zero of 

 reckoning. 



As to the hexameters, it is only now and then remembered 

 that verses among Greeks and Romans were not for recitation, 

 but recitative. An hexameter is a natural measure for a chant. 

 I dare say the rhapsodist in the streets of Athens gave it out 

 something like as a Pnseyite parson gives out the Litany, only 

 with more taste. A famous hexameter might be made out of 

 the opening line of the hymn to the Virgin in * Masaniello,' but 

 our most natural measure is a foot too long, and the last spondee 

 is doubled. 



Yours very truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



