LETTER XI. To the Lords of the Admiralty. MY LORDS, Jan. 2, 1751-2. I HAVE again taken the liberty to attend your lordships, to return you thanks for the notice with which you have been pleased to honour my proposal, and to entreat the continuance of your favour. I beg leave to remind your lordships, that the only test of my tables, and of the system on which they are formed, is experience. Mathematicians, mere mathematicians, are apt to be misled by the prejudices of theory, and perhaps sometimes by those of rivalship. They have no immediate interest in the discovery unless it be made by themselves, and therefore are not very forward to find it in the hands of another. For these reasons, I entreat your lordships to take it into your own examination, or to refer it to some able and candid navigators, that I may have the ho nour of the highest approbation, or at least the satisfaction of being condemned by unexceptionable judges. I am, my lords, &c. LETTER XII. To the Lords of the Admiralty. MY LORDS, I HAVE been long hindered by sickness from attending on your board; but presume to hope that your lordships are not now less willing than before to examine and consider my scheme of the variation, and therefore once more implore the favour of a candid trial. If I might be allowed to propose my own judges, I should desire to be tried only by navigators, as the only persons interested in the success of such undertakings, or rather almost the only persons capable of judging, who have not an interest in opposing every scheme but their own. I am, my lords, your lordships most obedient and most humble servant, Z. WILLIAMS. I PRESUME once more to entreat your lordship's attention to my scheme of the variation of the compass. As all the means hitherto offered for the discovery of the longitude are evidently defective, and all the hypotheses of the magnetic variation, yet proposed, confessedly erroneous; I cannot but hope that your lordship will be pleased to fayour a scheme, by which it is conceived that the variation will be complete, and the longitude, by easy deduction, ascertained; since you know, not only by theory, but by long hazardous experience, how much would be added by this improvement to the safety of navigation. My scheme is easily examined. By an instrument which I have constructed, I shew the variation of any given latitude and longitude; and, as I proceed systematically, a short trial will be sufficient to decide the merit of the performance; for, if the instrument is found to agree with such observations as your lordship shall think worthy of credit, at a few places remote from each other, it may be credited for the interjacent places; it being scarcely to be imagined that an instrument can be constructed upon principles so as to be right in some places without being right likewise in others; as a clock, which we find right at seven and nine, can hardly be conceived wrong at six, eight, or ten. I humbly entreat that your lordship will be pleased to al low me to attend you with my tables and instrument, which many gentlemen of eminence, both in the theory and prac tice of navigation, have thought worthy of their notice, for the curiosity of its construction; but which, I believe, your lordship will find to answer more important purposes. I am, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and most humble servant, Z. WILLIAMS. P. S. My lord, I have taken the liberty to trouble your lordship with a copy of my last letter directed to the Hon. Board of Admiralty, which has not yet been honoured with any notice. LETTER XIV. Dr. Bradley's Report. DOCTOR BRADLEY says, that he had compared Mr. Williams's tables with the best observations; that, in some cases, they agreed pretty exactly, but, in others, the difference amounted to ten, fifteen, or twenty degrees; that Mr. Williams shewed him a magnetical instrument, by which, as he supposed, the tables were constructed; that Mr. Williams concealed the principles upon which it was made, nor would allow him to see the internal construction of it; that, upon the whole, as his tables can only be proved by comparing them with observations, and in several cases the difference was so very great, he did not think that the instrument, in its present state, could be relied upon at sea. 1787, Sept. and Dec. LXI. Letters from Cowley and Dryden to Dr. Busby. MR. URBAN, FROM a collection of letters to Dr. Busby, which I lately purchased, you receive one written by Cowley, undoubtedly original. It is undated; but probably accompanied a present of his two first books of Plants in 1662. For the next month, you shall have two letters from Dryden, and one from Dryden's wife. Yours, &c. J. N. SIR, "I should have made you this mean present before, but that I have been out of town; and as some things are too great, soe this is too little to bee sent farre. If I were not well acquainted with your candour, and your particular favour to mee, it would be madnes to venture this criminal in the presence of soe great and soe long-practised a judge of these matters. It may be a fitter entertainment for some of your schollars than for yourself, and is a more proportionable 1. companion for the hysop than the cedars of Lebanon. I ask, therefore, your pardon for this liberty, and am, with great respect, Sir, your most humble and most faithful servant, A. COWLEY." MR. URBAN, THE three letters herewith sent you are autographs, the first from the wife of Dryden, the other two from that great poet himself. They are addressed (in 1682 and 1683) to the famous Dr. Busby. Yours, &c. "HONNORED SIR, EUGENIO. Ascension-day, 1682. "I HOPE I need use noe other argument to you in excuse of my sonn for not coming to church to Westminster then this, that he now lies at home, and therefore cannot esilly goe soe farr backwards and forwards. His father and I will take care that he shall duely goe to church heare, both on holydayes and Sundays, till he comes to be more nearly under your care in the college. In the mean time, will you pleas to give me leave to accuse you of forgeting your prommis conserning my eldest sonn, who, as you once assured me, was to have one night in a weeke alowed him to lie at home, in considirasion both of his health and cleanliness; you know, Sir, that prommises mayd to women, and espiceally mothers, will never fail to be cald upon; and thearfore I will add noe more but that I am, at this time your remembrancer, and allwayes, honnard Sir, your humble E. DRYDEN." servant, "HONOURD SIR, Wednesday Morning, [1682.] "WE have, with much ado, recovered my younger sonn, who came home extreamly sick with a violent cold, and, as he thinks himselfe, a chine-cough. The truth is, his constitution is very tender; yet his desire of learning, I hope, will inable him to brush through the college. He is allwayes gratefully acknowledging your fatherly kindnesse to him; and very willing, to his poore power, to do all things which may continue it. I have no more to add, but only to wish the eldest may also deserve some part of your good opinion, for I believe him to be of vertuous and pious inclinations; and for both, I dare assure you, that they can promise to themselves no farther share of my indulgence then while they carry themselves with that reverence to you, and that honesty to all others, as becomes them. I am, honourd Sir, your most obedient servant and scholar. SIR, JOHN DRYDEN." [1683.] "IF 1 could have found in myselfe a fitting temper to have waited upon you, I had done it the day you dismissed my sonn from the college; for he did the message; and, by what I find from Mr. Meredith, as it was delivered by you to him; namely, that you desired to see me, and bad somewhat to say to me concerning him. I observ'd likewise somewhat of kindnesse in it, that you sent him away that you might not have occasion to correct him. I examin'd the business, and found it concern'd his haveing been Custos foure or five dayes together. But if he admonished, and was not believed, because other boys combined to discredit him with false witnesseing, and to save themselves, perhaps his crime is not so great. Another fault it seems he made, which was going into one Hawkes his house, with some others; which you hapning to see, sent your servant to know who they were, and he onely returned you my sonn's name: so the rest escaped, I have no fault to find with my sonn's punishment, for that is, and ought to be, teserv'd to any master, much more to you who have been his father's*. But your man was certainly to blame to name him onely; and 'tis onely my respect to you that I do not take notice of it to him. My first rash resolutions were, to have brought things past any composure, by immediately sending for my sonn's things out of the college; but upon recollection, I find I have a double tye upon me not to do it: one, my obligations to you for my education; another, my great tendernesse of doeing any thing offensive to my Lord Bishop of Rochestert, as cheife governour of the * Our poet, John, was elected from Westminster-school to Trin. Coll. Camridge, in 1650; his cousin, Jonathan, in 1656. Of the "two sons" mentioned in this letter, Charles admitted to the school in 1680, went off to Christ Church in 1683; John, admitted in 1682, to Trin. Coll. in 1685. J. N. +Dr. John Dolben. |