respondence between Mr. Taylor and his reverend self on the subject of the Liverpool Observatory; and which my servants, not knowing whence it came, accepted this morning at the postman's hands, as a matter of course. I think it right thus publicly to inform the reverend divine that on the printer of his work assuring me that he himself sent it me by his reverence's orders, I returned it into the printer's hands without having read one word of it; that I mean to continue in all the ignorance I now enjoy of its contents, unless some friend should inform me that his reverence has so meddled with me in his pamphlet that my perusal of it is indispensable,3 satisfied as I am per 66 pharmaceutical ignorance." He was forced to unravel his own mystery in a subsequent number, and justified himself by writing to the bishops individually, informing their lordships that his "swashing blow" was meant for me, and not, as many persons believed, for their lordships. I warned him then that he had better let our respective professions alone. The valuable class of medical practitioners, to which he belongs by birth and education, has been too often made the butt of saucy wits to leave the dullest man without the power of retort. Were I like-minded with my adversary, I could “knog his gallipots about his knave's costard," (speaking metaphorically, for I have no intention to give occasion for a criminal information), but I will not be provoked into such a contest. I pray you "reform it altogether." My profession has no connexion with the very simple question,-what has Sir James been doing these fifteen years to "justify his patron's bounty ?" The answer, if answer there be, may be given in half the space of the advertisement, and surely we have waited long enough for it. Secondly, Sir J. South says- -or rather means to say, for his English is scarcely better than his Greek-that he and "some gentlemen he might name" had declined any communication with me, and that I was aware of the fact. Some years ago a gentleman, then very intimate with Sir James, and acting, as I suppose, in concert with him, did secure the last word in a discussion which he had provoked by returning a letter to me unopened. This, I thought then, and think now, was a piece of bad manners. Though I have had some opportunity of repaying the intended affront with interest since, I have not yielded to the temptation, perhaps because I did not feel the point of the insult. Sir James copied this example on the following occasion. While under cross-examination respecting his large equatoreal, he declared, with more valour than discretion, that "he was as competent to perform certain astronomical computations as I" was, and proposed "that we should be shut up in a room for trial." I immediately accepted the challenge, and sent him a note soon after to remind him of it, which he returned unopened, guessing, I presume, the contents. Now it is shrewdly suspected by those who best know him, that Sir James, in geometry, has never crossed the Asses Bridge; that in algebra, he took fright at the abstruse properties of + and —; and that in computation, he never employs logarithms or trigonometrical tables, and for the best possible reason. If this be so, and I am pretty sure of the fact, there was some prudence in eschewing investigation; but the mode is scarcely to be commended. Except Sir Andrew Aguecheek, I never heard of any man who thought it a good jest "to challenge one to the field, and then break promise with him, and make a fool of him." Sir James has odd notions of humour. 3 I do not know whether Sir James has any friend who will inform him of the nature and extent of "my reverence's meddling" with him; but if he had fifty such friends the result would be the same. The mention of some fectly with the following sentiments of the original correspondence, by a disinterested person-a man of education and a gentleman-who, as editor of the Liverpool Mercury, writes in that journal of the 23d of May last as follows: 4 "THE REV. R. SHEEPSHANKS. This personification of the cacoethes scribendi may be assured, that had we been able to find sufficient space for his first moderate letter, it would have appeared at once; but the fact is, that far more important communications than his, which were in type before it was even written, have not yet gained friend is just a tub for the whale, merely thrown out to cheat his readers into a belief that he could say something if he would. Sir James South, when he wrote his advertisement, had no more idea of replying to me than he had of substantiating his thirty-nine libellous charges against the Royal Society, or of being shut up in a room with me for examination. It is one of his many doubles, and one to which he has frequently had recourse,-a sort of promissory-note for some distant and unnamed day which will scarcely prove negotiable. His notion of looking after his character by deputy is a shift too, but more original. When Sir James next reads his Esop's fables he may perhaps learn that a man had better mind his own interests himself. This is a more humiliating acknowledgment of incompetency than I ever expected from the once confident and blustering Sir James South. He is so closely in communication with Mr. Taylor, the Liverpool Mercury, and its editor that he carefully keeps by him a scrap of impertinence, which is untrue both in fact and opinion. I am almost certain that he has read Mr. Taylor's half of the controversy; and if so, he knows that, in the main point-the necessity for a meridian mark—I am right and Mr. Taylor wrong. Sir James in his working days, i. e. some twenty years ago, had no meridian mark, and I alluded to him at p. 31 for that reason. He dare not make himself responsible for Mr. Taylor's follies, and he is neither so prudent as to give no opinion, nor so honest as to give a true one. He does not see that by espousing a side confessedly without examination he places himself in a dishonest as well as in a foolish position. That Sir James should condescend to pick up his opinions in practical astronomy from the editor of a newspaper, himself a sort of disciple to Mr. John Taylor, of Liverpool, is blackening his own face and eating much dirt" with a vengeance. 66 But the editor of the Liverpool Mercury is a disinterested person—a man of education and a gentleman. "Make your vaunting true, I shall be glad to learn of noble men." The editor will have some difficulty, I fancy, in proving his disinterestedness, and in his proper person only undertakes to be funny. His education I don't question, except that it does not include mathematics, or astronomy, or logic, or Italian, or any thing touched upon in my dispute with Mr. Taylor; and as to his being a gentleman, he shall have the appellation from me when he shews by his conduct that he deserves it. Sir James's testimony on such matters reminds me of what Gibbon says respecting a certain Abu Rafe, the evidence to a miraculous tale of Ali's prowess. "Abu Rafe was an eye-witness; but who will be witness for Abu Rafe?" Sir James has pledged himself to so many things which have never come to pass, that his credit is rather below par. Should he feel inclined, or should "some friend" think it "indispensable" for him, to dispute this assertion, let him call upon me for my proofs. a niche in our columns. We now rejoice at our escape from any connexion with his subsequent productions, for of all the specimens of arrogant assumption and Billingsgate language we ever met with, his writings present the fiercest concentration. They are utterly unbecoming a gentleman or a clergyman, and prove the author to be even less acquainted with the virtues of good temper and humility, which ought to adorn a Christian minister, than he confesses himself to be with the mathematics.' "Your obedient Servant, "J. SOUTH." "Observatory, Kensington, Tuesday night, Sept. 30, 1845." London: Printed by George Barclay, Castle Street, Leicester Square. |