224 Miscellanies. 



ment, unsupplied, and hardly any material difficulty either of conception or rea- 

 soning unelucidated."* 



The progress of Dr. Bowditch's last illness was so unremitting, that he was not 

 able to complete the final revision of the whole of this great work. He had, how- 

 ever, corrected the last sheets of the fourth volume a few days before his death , 

 and while his physical powers were scarcely capable of executing what his clear 

 and unclouded intellect dictated. The fifth, and only remaining volume is, com- 

 paratively, of little importance, and it would probably have had but slight revis- 

 ions, even if he had survived. 



On this great work Dr. Bowditch's fame, throughout the scientific world will 

 ultimately rest. And, surely, the most lofty ambition could not desire a more sol- 

 id and lasting monument — a monument, which will endure until that day of deso- 

 lation shall arrive, when no one of the human family shall remain to contemplate 

 the mighty fabric of those heavenly systems, whose structure and laws are inscrib- 

 ed upon it. 



The long study of the French mathematicians, in connection with Dr. B.'s la- 

 bors on La Place's work, had given him a well founded partiality for the French, 

 or Continental mathematical school, so far as that may be said to differ from the 

 English. And on one great question, which in the age of Newton raised such a 

 furious tempest of altercation between the English and Continental mathemati- 

 cians — the quarrel between Newton and Leibnitz for the immortal invention of the 

 difl^erential calculus — Dr. Bowditch did not consider Newton as the exclusive dis- 

 coverer, but, as the more candid of all parties now generally agree, that he and 

 Leibnitz were both original discoverers of that wonderful method of analysis, and 

 that neither of them was a plagiarist from the other, as each had been illiberally 

 called while the controversy was raging. 



The reputation of Dr. Bowditch was such, that he had for many years been a 

 member of various learned societies in Europe and America; and he was one of 

 the few Americans who have been Fellows of the Royal Society of London. In 

 his native Stale he has been for some years the President of the American Acade- 

 my of Arts and Sciences, which is indebted to him for a large share of the reputa- 

 tion it has enjoyed. 



Such is a brief outline of the intellectual character and scientific labors of this 

 eminent man. It need only be added, that in social life he was distinguished for 

 rigid integrity, extraordinary energy of character, and unremitting zeal and perse- 

 verance in whatever he undertook to accomplish ; his manner was ardent, and in- 

 dicative of that warm heart which has now ceased to throb for those friends who 

 enjoyed the happiness of his society ; his deportment was, in an extraordinary de- 

 gree, unaffected and simple ; and he had a frankness in expressing his opinions, 

 which an age of artificial civility would feel to be a standing reproof of its own 

 heartlessness, and would hardly consent to rank among the virtues. 



How saddening is the i-eflection, that these high intellectual and moral endow- 

 ments, from which we had fondly, perhaps unreasonably, hoped for still further 

 benefits to the world, should now lie powerless, prostrate, and in ruins before us ! 

 Never has there been an individual in our country, solely devoted to the pursuits 

 of science and the tranquil walks of private life, and shunning the allurements of 

 that political notoriety which is the distempered and all-absorbing passion of the 

 day, whose death has been more generally and deeply lamented — ■ 

 " Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit" — 

 " We read his history in a nation's eyes ;" 

 and the demonstrations of sorrow in every face are at once a spontaneous homage 

 to science, and a heart-felt tribute to eminent private worth. 



* London Quarterly Review, vol. 47, July, 1832. 



