Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers, 199 



his successor Wingrave is of the most ordinary business cha- 

 racter. This might be expected. A few passages even in the 

 dreary list of £ s. d. are not without interest. 



For instance, the price of authorship: — Mr. John Landen 

 thus writes (Aug. 28, 1758) to Nourse, after describing his 

 " Residual Analysis]:" — 



" I would have it very elegantly printed in quarto, (with Wood or 

 Tin Cuts) upon such paper and with such letter as my Lucubrations. 

 If you chuse to purchase the copy you shall have it for less than I 

 would take of any other person. 



"The subject is very interesting, and I p ... ne [illegible — pre- 

 sume ?] a considerable number will be speedily sold ; therefore ex 

 pect you will not give me less than two Guineas per sheet. How- 

 ever I shall leave it to you to pay me according as it shall sell." 



It proved here, as it often does, that an author is himself 

 the very worst judge of what will " sell." Nobody but system- 

 atic collectors of classes of books, knows anything of Lan- 

 den's Discourse on the Residual Analysis, except accidentally 

 by mere name. The philosophy of Landen "never took;" 

 and the truths delivered, or professedly deduced by means of 

 it, were neither new nor in any way remarkable. Still the 

 book was not without merit ; nor the author destitute of very 

 high mathematical powers. He was not, however, deficient 

 in the amour propre ; but, on the contrary, was remarkable 

 for carrying out the principle to an extreme degree. 



Dr. Gregory (who from being " bred and born " in the 

 neighbourhood of Peterborough was likely to be well ac- 

 quainted with the gossip of the place) has informed me that 

 Landen was a man of "imposing presence and imperious man- 

 ners." He was steward to Earl Fitzwilliam, for that nobleman's 

 Northamptonshire estates. The then countess, who appears 

 to have much disliked the bearing of the steward, described 

 an interview between him and her liege lord, as that "between 

 Lord Landen and his steward Mr. Fitzwilliam." 



Landen was perhaps the only non-academic mathematician 

 F.R.8., who did not join with Horsley, Hutton, and the other 

 seceders from the Royal Society on the accession of Sir 

 Joseph Banks to the chair. Philosophy in the Society had 

 then degenerated into Faction: a sort of scientific imitation 

 of Whig-and-Toryism. The contest was one of partisanship, 

 and it was conducted in the true spirit of political party. 

 The naturalists have censured the mathematicians^ and the 

 mathematicians the naturalists, for their conduct in that dis- 

 creditable dispute. The question has descended even to our 



