h he had given himself.

I have seen Montucla set down as an _esprit fort_, more than once: wrongly,
I think. When he mentions Barrow's[350] address to the Almighty, he adds,
"On voit, au reste, par la, que Barrow etoit un pauvre philosophe; car il
croyait en l'immortalite de l'ame, et en une Divinite autre que la nature
{161} universelle."[351] This is irony, not an expression of opinion. In
the book of mathematical recreations which Montucla constructed upon that
of Ozanam,[352] and Ozanam upon that of Van Etten,[353] now best known in
England by Hutton's similar treatment of Montucla, there is an amusing
chapter on the quadrators. Montucla refers to his own anonymous book of
1754 as a curious book published by Jombert.[354] He seems to have been a
little ashamed of writing about circle-squarers: what a slap on the face
for an unborn Budgeteer!

Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three notions prevalent
among the cyclometers: (1) that there is a large reward offered for
success; (2) that the longitude problem depends on that success; (3) that
the solution is the great end and object of geometry. The same three {162}
notions are equally prevalent among the same class in England. No reward
has ever been offered by the government of either country. The longitude
problem in no way depends upon perfect solution; existing approximations
are sufficient to a point of accuracy far beyond what can be wanted.[355]
And geometry, content with what exists, has long passed on to other
matters. Sometimes a cyclometer persuades a skipper who has made land in
the wrong place that the astronomers are in fault, for using a wrong
measure of the circle; and the skipper thinks it a very comfortable
solution! And this is the utmost that the problem ever has to do with
longitude.

ANTINEWTONIANISMUS.

Antinewtonianismus.[356] By Caelestino Cominale,[357] M.D. Naples, 1754
and 1756, 2 vols. 4to.

The first volume upsets the theory of light; the second vacuum, vis
inertiae, gravitation, and attraction. I confess I never attempted these big
Latin volumes, numbering 450 closely-printed quarto pages. The man who
slays Newton in a pamphlet is the man for me. But I will lend them to
anybody who will give security, himself in L500, and two sureties in L250
each, that he will read them through, and give a full abstract; and I will
not exact security for their return. I have never seen any mention of this
book: it has a p