es, Professor Davies--whose signature
of PEN-AND-INK (Vol. ii., p. 8.) affords but a flimsy disguise for his
well-known _propria persona_--that "it was a great mistake for these
authors to have written their principal works in the Latin language, as it
has done more than anything else to prevent their study among the only
geometers of the eighteenth century who were competent to understand and
value them;" and it is no less singular than true, as the same writer
elsewhere observes, "that whilst Dr. Stewart's writings were of a kind
calculated to render them peculiarly attractive to the non-academic school
of English geometers, they remain to this day less generally known than the
writings of any geometer of these kingdoms." The same remarks, in a
slightly qualified form, may be applied to most of the writings of Simson;
for although his edition of Euclid is now the almost universally adopted
text-book of geometry in England, at the time of its first appearance in
1756 it did not differ so much from existing translations as to attract
particular attention by the novelty of its contents. Moreover, at this time
the impulse had already been given and was silently exerting its influence
upon a class of students of whose existence Dr. Simson appears to have been
completely ignorant. In one of his letters to Nourse (_Phil. Mag._, Sept.
1848, p. 204.) he regrets that "the taste for the ancient geometry, or
indeed any geometry, seems to be quite worn out;" but had he instituted an
examination of those contemporary periodicals either wholly or partially
devoted to mathematics, he would have been furnished with ample reasons for
entertaining a different opinion.

We have every reason to believe that the publication of Newton's
_Principia_ had a powerful effect in diffusing a semi-geometrical taste
amongst the academical class of students in this country, and it is equally
certain that this diffusion became much more general, when Motte, in 1729,
published his translation of that admirable work. The nature of the
contents of the _Principia_, however, precluded the possibility of its
being adapted to form the taste of novices in the study of geometry; it
served rather to exhibit the _ne plus ultra_ of the science, and produced
its effect by inducing the student to master the rudimentary treatises
thoroughly, in order to qualify himself for understanding its
demonstrations, rather than by providing a series of models for his
imitation