on a private mission, and wanted a _very honest man_. Some one
mentioned Maseres, and told the above story: Pitt saw that he had got the
man he wanted. The mission was satisfactorily performed, and Maseres
remained as Attorney-General.

The _Doctrine of Life Annuities_[466] (4to, 726 pages, 1783) is a strange
paradox. Its size, the heavy dissertations on the national debt, and the
depth of algebra supposed known, put it out of the question as an
elementary work, and it is unfitted for the higher student by its elaborate
attempt at elementary character, shown in its rejection of forms derived
from chances in favor of _the average_, and its exhibition of the separate
values of the years of an annuity, as arithmetical illustrations. It is a
climax of unsaleability, unreadability, and inutility. For intrinsic
nullity of interest, and dilution of little matter with much ink, I can
compare this book to nothing but that of Claude de St. Martin, elsewhere
mentioned, or the lectures _On the Nature and Properties of Logarithms_, by
James Little,[467] Dublin, 1830, 8vo. (254 heavy pages of many words and
few symbols), a wonderful weight of weariness.

The stock of this work on annuities, very little diminished, was given by
the author to William Frend, who paid warehouse room for it until about
1835, when he consulted me as to its disposal. As no publisher could be
found who would take it as a gift, for any purpose of sale, it was
consigned, all but a few copies, to a buyer of waste paper.

Baron Maseres's republications are well known: the _Scriptores
Logarithmici_[468] is a set of valuable reprints, mixed {207} with much
which might better have entered into another collection. It is not so well
known that there is a volume of optical reprints, _Scriptores Optici_,
London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469]
at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes,
Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, the _Principia_ of
the undulatory theory. It also contains, by the sort of whim in which such
men as Maseres, myself, and some others are apt to indulge, a reprint of
"The great new Art of weighing Vanity,"[470] by M. Patrick Mathers,
Arch-Bedel to the University of St. Andrews, Glasgow, 1672. Professor
Sinclair,[471] of Glasgow, a good man at clearing mines of the water which
they did not want, and furnishing cities with water which they did want,
seems to have writt