erra, omnia traham ad me
ipsum."[184]

A VENETIAN BUDGET OF PARADOXES.

Le glorie degli incogniti, o vero gli huomini illustri dell' accademia
de' signori incogniti di Venetia. Venice, 1647, 4to.

This work is somewhat like a part of my own: it is a budget of Venetian
nobodies who wished to be somebodies; but paradox is not the only means
employed. It is of a serio-comic character, gives genuine portraits in
copperplate, and grave lists of works; but satirical accounts. The
astrologer Andrew Argoli[185] is there, and his son; both of whom, with
some of the others, have place in modern works {105} on biography. Argoli's
discovery that logarithms facilitate easy processes, but increase the labor
of difficult ones, is worth recording.

Controversiae de vera circuli mensura ... inter ... C. S. Longomontanum
et Jo. Pellium.[186] Amsterdam, 1647, 4to.

Longomontanus,[187] a Danish astronomer of merit, squared the circle in
1644: he found out that the diameter 43 gives the square root of 18252 for
the circumference; which gives 3.14185... for the ratio. Pell answered him,
and being a kind of circulating medium, managed to engage in the
controversy names known and unknown, as Roberval, Hobbes, Carcavi, Lord
Charles Cavendish, Pallieur, Mersenne, Tassius, Baron Wolzogen, Descartes,
Cavalieri and Golius.[188] Among them, of course, Longomontanus was made
{106} mincemeat: but he is said to have insisted on the discovery of his
epitaph.[189]

{107}

THE CIRCULATING MEDIA OF MATHEMATICS.

The great circulating mediums, who wrote to everybody, heard from
everybody, and sent extracts to everybody else, have been Father Mersenne,
John Collins, and the late Professor Schumacher: all "late" no doubt, but
only the last recent enough to be so styled. If M.C.S. should ever again
stand for "Member of the Corresponding Society," it should raise an
acrostic thought of the three. There is an allusion to Mersenne's
occupation in Hobbes's reply to him. He wanted to give Hobbes, who was very
ill at Paris, the Roman Eucharist: but Hobbes said, "I have settled all
that long ago; when did you hear from Gassendi?" We are reminded of
William's answer to Burnet. John Collins disseminated Newton, among others.
Schumacher ought to have been called the postmaster-general of astronomy,
as Collins was called the attorney-general of mathematics.[190]

{108}

THE SYMPATHETIC POWDER.

A late discourse ... by Sir