122 Reviews and Notices of Books. 
look forward to the probable issue of future controversies, and to 
imagine or invent new objections, the removal of which would 
exhibit the position which they maintained in a clearer light ;—in 
a word, they aimed at acquiring the character which Charles the 
Second gave to Barrow: ‘‘ that he was not a fair man; he left 
nothing to be said by any one who came after him.” 
There are a host of cotemporaries who, each in his own way and 
in his particular department, aimed at the same thing—the witty 
South; the learned, pious, imaginative, but impulsive Jeremy 
‘Taylor, now dazzling you with gorgeous imagery described in sooth- 
ing cadences and harmonious rhythms, now dashing in your face a 
stream of authorities, and overwhelming you with the profusion of 
his learning; the able but inelastic Owen, whose theological 
writings filled seven volumes in folio, twenty in quarto, and about 
thirty in octavo ; and other men like these. 
This tendency of the age in which Barrow lived—to exhaustive- 
ness of treatment and copiousness of expression—must not be lost 
sight of by those who would form a just estimate of the lectures 
to which we are anxious to direct attention. The reader must 
not approach them with the expectation of finding anything cor- 
responding with the Lecons of Langrange and Cauchy, or the As- 
tronomical Lectures of Airy. He will not do well to judge them 
by comparison with the present Lucasian lectures, excellent 
though these are. He will appreciate them if he apply the stand- 
ard of Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh rather than that 
of Sir Wiliam Hamilton of Dublin; admirable both, but with 
this marked characteristic difference, that the latter refers only 
to what a thing is, the former deals also with what other minds 
have made of it, what other readers have thought of it :—the 
latter treats of the matter as a point in philosophy; the former 
views it as a question for philosophers. 
Barrow’s mode of treating a subject leads to a display of learn- 
ing which borders on pedantry. In discussing the name and 
excellence of mathematics, he perfectly dazzles his reader with 
quotations from the classics, Now an alumnus of the modern 
school is apt to wince under the weight of these authorities. He 
has been taught to be cautious how he receives any dogma. The 
errors of the so-called Aristotelian teaching which preceded Bacon 
have been so triumphantly paraded before him, that he is apt to 
suspect any reasoning which appeals to the old thinkers. But is 
he altogether justified in this course of proceeding ? May not the 
opinions of the great men who laid the foundations have some 
value, at least in the abstract sciences, where the materials out of 
which the structure is raised undergo no change from age to age ? 
The opinions of judges learned in the law are the capital of the 
lawyer. In matters of fact, the opinion of the judge is not asked ; 
but in matters of right and wrong, it is all-powerful. And thus, 
