ttle obscure here, and in deriving
his equation (_f_) a page of explanation would be well bestowed.

One thing let me recommend, if you use as principles either this, or
that of virtual velocities, or any other, state them broadly and in
general terms.... You will think me, I fear, a rough critic, but I
think of Horace's _good critic_,

Fiet Aristarchus: nec dicet, cur ego amicum
Offendam in nugis? Hae nugae seria ducent
In mala,

and what we can both now laugh at, and you may, if you like, burn as
nonsense (I mean these remarks), would come with a very different
kind of force from some sneering reviewer in the plenitude of his
triumph at the detection of a slip of the pen or one of those little
inaccuracies which _humana parum cavit natura_....

Very faithfully yours,
J. HERSCHEL.

* * * * *

[About the same time my father received a letter from Dr. Whewell,
afterwards Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, dated 2nd November,
1831, in which he says:--]

"I beg you to offer my best thanks to Mrs. Somerville for her kind
present. I shall have peculiar satisfaction in possessing it as a
gift of the author, a book which I look upon as one of the most
remarkable which our age has produced, which would be highly
valuable from anyone, and which derives a peculiar interest from its
writer. I am charged also to return the thanks of the Philosophical
Society here for the copy presented to them. I have not thought it
necessary to send the official letter containing the acknowledgment,
as Mrs. Somerville will probably have a sufficient collection of
specimens of such character. I have also to thank her on the part of
our College for the copy sent to the library. I am glad that our
young mathematicians in Trinity will have easy access to the book,
which will be very good for them as soon as they can read it. When
Mrs. Somerville shows herself in the field which we mathematicians
have been labouring in all our lives, and puts us to shame, she
ought not to be surprised if we move off to other ground, and betake
ourselves to poetry. If the fashion of 'commendatory verses' were
not gone by, I have no doubt her work might have appeared with a
very pretty collection of