197.

[459] See note 439 on page 193.

[460] Edward Waring (1736-1796) was Lucasian professor of mathematics at
Cambridge. He published several works on analysis and curves. The work
referred to was the _Miscellanea Analytica de aequationibus algebraicis et
curvarum proprietatibus_, Cambridge, 1762.

[461] _A Dissertation on the use of the Negative Sign in Algebra...; to
which is added, Machin's Quadrature of the Circle_, London, 1758.

[462] The paper was probably one on complex numbers, or possibly one on
quaternions, in which direction as well as absolute value is involved.

[463] De Morgan quotes from one of the Latin editions. Descartes wrote in
French, the title of his first edition being: _Discours de la methode pour
bien conduire sa raison et chercher la verite dans les sciences, plus la
dioptrique, les meteores et la geometrie qui sont des essais de cette
methode_, Leyden, 1637, 4to.

[464] "I have observed that algebra indeed, as it is usually taught, is so
restricted by definite rules and formulas of calculation, that it seems
rather a confused kind of an art, by the practice of which the mind is in a
certain manner disturbed and obscured, than a science by which it is
cultivated and made acute."

[465] It appeared in 93 volumes, from 1758 to 1851.

[466] _The principles of the doctrine of life-annuities; explained in a
familiar manner ... with a variety of new tables_ ..., London, 1783.

[467] I suppose the one who wrote _Conjectures on the physical causes of
Earthquakes and Volcanoes_, Dublin, 1820.

[468] _Scriptores Logarithmici; or, a Collection of several curious_
_tracts on the nature and construction of Logarithms ... together with same
tracts on the Binomial Theorem_ ..., 6 vols., London, 1791-1807.

[469] Charles Babbage (1792-1871), whose work on the calculating machine is
well known. Maseres was, it is true, ninety-two at this time, but Babbage
was thirty-one instead of twenty-nine. He had already translated Lacroix's
_Treatise on the differential and integral calculus_ (1816), in
collaboration with Herschel and Peacock. He was Lucasian professor of
mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839.

[470] _The great and new Art of weighing Vanity, or a discovery of the
ignorance of the great and new artist in his pseudo-philosophical
writings._ The "great and new artist" was Sinclair.

[471] George Sinclair, probably a native of East Lothian, who died in 1696.
He was professor of philosoph