202 Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers. 



A letter from Mr. Andrew Marshall, dated Dover, Oct. 9, 

 1773, contains a proposal to Nourse to take a translation of 

 the first three books of Simsoni Sect. Con., or a complete 

 translation of the whole work, if Nourse should prefer it. The 

 letter is valuable in one respect, as giving a reason for this 

 proposal. 



" It was at the request of Dr. Matthew Stewart and Dr. William- 

 son professor of Mathematics in the University of Glasgow, that I 

 undertook that translation : and the reason why they interested 

 themselves in it was, that they thought their colleges were not so 

 well attended, while the students were obliged to read a latin book 

 on so abstruse a subject, as they would be, was the text book in 

 English and at a lower price." 



The translation — at least so I judge, but at any rate a trans- 

 lation — was published in Edinburgh by Charles Elliott, in 

 1775. Nourse' s name does not appear among the London 

 publishers on the title-page. It had been well for English 

 science if all the books that Simson and Stewart ever wrote 

 had been printed in our own language. 



Trinity College, Dublin, has been, perhaps, the most tena- 

 cious adherent to the use of Latin in its lectures, exercises and 

 responsions. Amongst the works published for the use of that 

 college was Dr. Hugh Hamilton's Sectiones Conicce, 4to, 1758, 

 in Latin. This work, however, though compulsorily read in 

 college, was otherwise slow in its sale — much slower indeed 

 than its great merit would have led us to expect. In a letter 

 to Nourse in 1768, he says, "there were 600 copies printed, 

 and about 100 of them remained" then in Dublin; whilst he 

 speaks of 230 copies in the hands of Johnston, the London 

 publisher. These last, with the copper-plates and copyright, 

 he offers to Nourse, and ultimately appears to have sold them 

 to him, with all else relating to the work, for two shillings 

 per volume, though he says the print alone cost him more 

 than three shillings per copy. He adds: — 



" You were certainly right in supposing that the treatise would 

 have sold much better had it been written in English, for Johnston 

 told me two years after it was published that he was sure he might 

 in that time have sold almost the whole impression had it not been 

 in latin. This makes me imagine that when you get the Property 

 of Work (and the copperplates which cost me 20£) it may be worth 

 your while to publish a Translation sometime hence, a Person of 

 tolerable skill would translate such a Book as easily as he could 

 transcribe it." 



He then goes on to mention the additions he would make 



