Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers, 209 



tinacity of Nourse (who formed a higher opinion of him than 

 was at alljust), rather than by any intrinsic merits of their own. 



Of Emerson's personal character this is not the place to say 

 much; and indeed it would be unnecessary to do more than 

 refer to Hutton's Dictionary {in loco) for a description of his 

 eccentricities, were it not for a non-sequitur that has been 

 drawn from his and some similar cases. It surely does 

 not follow that because Emerson and some others habitually 

 indulged in a rough discourtesy of bearing towards others, 

 that it arose from the nature of their studies, or inevitably 

 followed from the tone of feeling generated by mathematics. 

 Why not, then, charge medical studies with the same tendency 

 on the ground of an Abernethy, or the legal on the ground of 

 a Thurlow, belonging to those professions ? The inference 

 is indeed absurd enough ; but many a time in my life have 

 I heard it made. 



However, I have to beg, once for all, that if the non-aca- 

 demic body of mathematicians are decreed to have a head of 

 their school, they may at least be allowed their own choice. 

 That election would fall, without a dissentient voice, on 

 Thomas Simpson. Amongst themselves, he, and not Emerson, 

 virtually fills the post; and they cannot but feel aggrieved by 

 hearing a man whose character they do not respect and whose 

 works they seldom open, thus held up as the prototype of 

 themselves. 



This series of notices of the Nourse papers must necessarily 

 be incomplete without some account of the man who was the 

 real focus of the mathematical literature of his time — now 

 verging upon a century ago. I regret that few materials of a 

 positive kind have fallen in my way from which I can satisfy 

 so reasonable a desire on the part of my readers. Most of 

 the letters are written in more or less of that dry, business- 

 style, that only brings in an interesting incident now and then, 

 and always casually. One series of letters, however, of a more 

 familiar and intimate character, from John Robertson of 

 Portsmouth (author of the Treatise on Navigation, and other 

 works, and subsequently " Clerk " of the Royal Society), 

 throw some light on Nourse's personal character. A few 

 scraps, too, of Nourse's own geometrical speculations betoken 

 a mind of no ordinary powers, and a taste in science such as 

 even few professional mathematicians have evinced. 



From the frequent jocular allusions of Robertson, it would 

 appear that Nourse was a grave self-possessed person, who 

 nevertheless enjoyed a pun or a good joke as well as his friend 

 did. A quiet pipe with its adjuncts in the shop-parlour seems 

 to have been his sum total of indulgence. He rarely quitted his 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 37. No. 249. Sept. 1850. ' P 



