en absurdly about hydrostatics, and to have attacked a
certain Sanders,[472] M.A. So Sanders, assisted by James Gregory, published
a heavy bit of jocosity about him. This story of the authorship rested on a
note made in his {208} copy by Robert Gray, M.D.; but it has since been
fully confirmed by a letter of James Gregory to Collins, in the
Macclesfield Correspondence. "There is one Master Sinclair, who did write
the _Ars Magna et Nova_,[473] a pitiful ignorant fellow, who hath lately
written horrid nonsense in the hydrostatics, and hath abused a master in
the University, one Mr. Sanders, in print. This Mr. Sanders ... is resolved
to cause the Bedel of the University to write against him.... We resolve to
make excellent sport with him."

On this I make two remarks: First, I have learned from experience that old
notes, made in books by their possessors, are statements of high authority:
they are almost always confirmed. I do not receive them without hesitation;
but I believe that of all the statements about books which rest on one
authority, there is a larger percentage of truth in the written word than
in the printed word. Secondly, I mourn to think that when the New Zealander
picks up his old copy of this book, and reads it by the associations of his
own day, he may, in spite of the many assurances I have received that my
_Athenaeum Budget_ was amusing, feel me to be as heavy as I feel James
Gregory and Sanders. But he will see that I knew what was coming, which
Gregory did not.

MR. FREND'S BURLESQUE.

It was left for Mr. Frend to prove that an impugner of algebra could
attempt ridicule. He was, in 1803, editor of a periodical _The Gentleman's
Monthly Miscellany_, which lasted a few months.[474] To this, among other
things, he contributed the following, in burlesque of the use made of 0, to
which he objected.[475] The imitation of Rabelais, a writer {209} in whom
he delighted, is good: to those who have never dipped, it may give such a
notion as they would not easily get elsewhere. The point of the satire is
not so good. But in truth it is not easy to make pungent scoffs upon what
is common sense to all mankind. Who can laugh with effect at six times
nothing is nothing, as false or unintelligible? In an article intended for
that undistinguishing know-0 the "general reader," there would have been no
force of satire, if _division_ by 0 had been separated from multiplication
by the same.

I have followed the above