hed.

WALSH'S DELUSIONS.

_John Walsh_,[591] of Cork (1786-1847). This discoverer has had the honor
of a biography from Professor Boole, who, at my request, collected
information about him on the scene of his labors. It is in the
_Philosophical Magazine_ for November, 1851, and will, I hope, be
transferred to some biographical collection where it may find a larger
class of readers. It is the best biography of a single hero of the kind
that I know. Mr. Walsh introduced himself to me, {261} as he did to many
others, in the anterowlandian days of the Post-office; his unpaid letters
were double, treble, &c. They contained his pamphlets, and cost their
weight in silver: all have the name of the author, and all are in octavo or
in quarto letter-form: most are in four pages, and all dated from Cork. I
have the following by me:

The Geometric Base, 1825.--The theory of plane angles. 1827.--Three
Letters to Dr. Francis Sadleir. 1838.--The invention of polar geometry.
By Irelandus. 1839.--The theory of partial functions. Letter to Lord
Brougham. 1839.--On the invention of polar geometry. 1839.--Letter to
the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. 1840.--Irish Manufacture. A new
method of tangents. 1841.--The normal diameter in curves. 1843.--Letter
to Sir R. Peel. 1845.--[Hints that Government should compel the
introduction of Walsh's Geometry into Universities.]--Solution of
Equations of the higher orders. 1845.

Besides these, there is a _Metalogia_, and I know not how many others.

Mr. Boole,[592] who has taken the moral and social features of Walsh's
delusions from the commiserating point of view, which makes ridicule out of
place, has been obliged to treat Walsh as Scott's Alan Fairford treated his
client Peter Peebles; namely, keep the scarecrow out of court while the
case was argued. My plan requires me to bring him in: and when he comes in
at the door, pity and sympathy fly out at the window. Let the reader
remember that he was not an ignoramus in mathematics: he might have won his
spurs if he could have first served as an esquire. Though so illiterate
that even in Ireland he never picked up anything more Latin than
_Irelandus_, he was a very pretty mathematician spoiled in the making by
intense self-opinion.

This is part of a private letter to me at the back of a page of print: I
had never addressed a word to him:

{262}

"There are no limits in mathematics, and those that asser