seem as odd to us as it would have seemed thirty years ago
that half-a-crown should pay carriage for a deed from Derby to London, and
leave margin for a bottle of wine: in our day, the Post-office and the
French treaty would just manage it between them. But Flamsteed does not
limit his friend to one bottle; he adds, "If you expend more than the
half-crown, I will make it good after Whitsuntide." Collins does not
remember exactly where he had met James Gregory, and mentions two equally
likely places thus: "Sir, it was once my good hap to meet with you in an
alehouse or in Sion College." There is a little proof how universally the
dinner-hour was twelve o'clock. Astronomers well know the method of finding
time by equal altitudes of the sun before and after noon: Huyghens calls it
"le moyen de deux egales hauteurs du soleil devant et apres _diner_."[563]

There is one mention of "Mr. Cocker,[564] our famous English graver and
writer, now a schoolmaster at Northampton." This is the true Cocker: his
genuine works are specimens of writing, such as engraved copy-books,
including some on arithmetic, with copper-plate questions and space for the
working; also a book of forms for law-stationers, with specimens of legal
handwriting. It is recorded somewhere that Cocker and another, whose name
we forget, competed with the Italians in the beauty of their flourishes.
This was his real fame: and in these matters he was great. The eighth
edition of his book of law forms (1675), published shortly after Cocker's
death, has a preface signed "J. H." This was John Hawkins, who became
possessed of Cocker's papers--at least he said so--and {308} subsequently
forged the famous Arithmetic,[565] a second work on Decimal Arithmetic, and
an English dictionary, all attributed to Cocker. The proofs of this are set
out in De Morgan's _Arithmetical Books_. Among many other corroborative
circumstances, the clumsy forger, after declaring that Cocker to his dying
day resisted strong solicitation to publish his Arithmetic, makes him write
in the preface _Ille ego qui quondam_[566] of this kind: "I have been
instrumental to the benefit of many, by virtue of those useful arts,
writing and engraving; and do _now_, with the same _wonted alacrity_, cast
this my arithmetical mite into the public treasury." The book itself is not
comparable in merit to at least half-a-dozen others. How then comes Cocker
to be the impersonation of Arithmetic? Unless some one can sho