oman Goddess or a British Queen, whatever
a scholar may suppose. Between these Mr. Reddie has published _The
Mechanics of the Heavens_, 8vo, 1862: this I never saw until he sent it to
me, with an invitation to notice it, he very well knowing that it would
catch. His speculations do battle with common notions of mathematics and of
mechanics, which, to use a feminine idiom, he blasphemes so you can't
think! and I suspect that if you do not blaspheme them too, _you_ can't
think. He appeals to the "truly scientific," and would be glad to have
readers who have read what he controverts, i.e., Newton's _Principia_: I
wish he may get them; I mean I hope he may obtain them. To none but these
would an account of his speculations be intelligible: I accordingly
disposed of him in a very short paragraph of description. Now many
paradoxers desire notice, even though it be disparaging. I have letters
from more than one--besides what have been sent to the Editor of the
_Athenaeum_--complaining that they are not laughed at; although they deserve
it, they tell me, as much as some whom I have inserted. Mr. Reddie informs
me that I have not said a single word against his books, though I have
given nearly a column to sixteen-string arithmetic, and as much to
animalcule universes. What need to say anything to readers of Newton
against a book from which I quoted that revolution by gravitation is
_demonstrably_ impossible? It would be as useless as evidence against a man
who has pleaded guilty. Mr. Reddie derisively thanks me for "small
mercies"; he wrote me private letters; he published them, and more, in the
_Correspondent_. He gave me, _pro viribus suis_,[652] such a dressing you
can't think, both for my Budget non-notice, and for reviews which he
assumed me to have written. He outlawed himself by declaring
(_Correspondent_, Nov. 11, 1856) that I--in a review--had made a quotation
which was "garbled, evidently on purpose {346} to make it appear that" he
"was advocating solely a geocentric hypothesis, which is not true." In
fact, he did his best to get larger "mercy." And he shall have it; and at a
length which shall content him, unless his mecometer be an insatiable
apparatus. But I fear that in other respects I shall no more satisfy him
than the Irish drummer satisfied the poor culprit when, after several times
changing the direction of the stroke at earnest entreaty, he was at last
provoked to call out, "Bad cess to ye, ye spalpeen! strike w