the whole circle of the mathematical and
philosophical sciences, and wrote useful books on every one of them": this
is quite true; and even at this day he is read by twenty where Horne is
read by one; see the stalls, _passim_. All that I say of him, indeed my
knowledge of the tract, is due to this contemptuous mention of a more
durable man than himself. My assistant secretary at the Astronomical
Society, the late Mr. Epps,[338] bought the copy at a stall because his eye
was caught by the notice of "Old Ben Martin," of whom he was a great
reader. Old Ben could not be a Fellow of the Royal Society, because he kept
a shop: even though the shop sold nothing but philosophical instruments.
Thomas Wright, similarly situated as to shop and goods, never was a Fellow.
The Society of our day has greatly degenerated: those of the old time would
be pleased, no doubt, that the glories of their day {154} should be
commemorated. In the early days of the Society, there was a similar
difficulty about Graunt, the author of the celebrated work on mortality.
But their royal patron, "who never said a foolish thing," sent them a sharp
message, and charged them if they found any more such tradesmen, they
should "elect them without more ado."

Horne's first pamphlet was published when he was but twenty-one years old.
Two years afterwards, being then a Fellow of his college, and having seen
more of the world, he seems to have felt that his manner was a little too
pert. He endeavored, it is said, to suppress his first tract: and copies
are certainly of extreme rarity. He published the following as his maturer
view:

A fair, candid, and impartial state of the case between Sir Isaac
Newton and Mr. Hutchinson.[339] In which is shown how far a system of
physics is capable of mathematical demonstration; how far Sir Isaac's,
as such a system, has that demonstration; and consequently, what regard
Mr. Hutchinson's claim may deserve to have paid to it. By George Horne,
M.A. Oxford, 1753, 8vo.

It must be remembered that the successors of Newton were very apt to
declare that Newton had demonstrated attraction as a _physical_ cause: he
had taken reasonable pains to show that he did not pretend to this. If any
one had said to Newton, I hold that every particle of matter is a
responsible being of vast intellect, ordered by the Creator to move as it
would do if every other particle attracted it, and gifted with power to
make its way