be glad to have readers who have read what he controverts, i. e. Newton's Principia: I wish he may get them; I mean I hope he may obtain them. To none but these would an account of his speculations be intelligible: I accordingly disposed of him in a very short paragraph of description. Now many paradoxers desire notice, even though it be disparaging. I have letters from more than one—besides what have been sent to the Editor of the Athenæum—complaining that they are not laughed at; although they deserve it, they tell me, as much as some whom I have inserted. Mr. Reddie informs me that I have not said a single word against his books, though I have given nearly a column to sixteen-string arithmetic, and as much to animalcule universes. What need to say anything to readers of Newton against a book from which I quoted that revolution by gravitation is demonstrably impossible? It would be as useless as evidence against a man who has pleaded guilty. Mr. Reddie derisively thanks me for 'small mercies'; he wrote me private letters; he published them, and more, in the Correspondent. He gave me, pro viribus suis, such a dressing you can't think, both for my Budget non-notice, and for reviews which he assumed me to have written. He outlawed himself by declaring (Correspondent, Nov. 11, 1856) that I—in a review—had made a quotation which was 'garbled, evidently on purpose to make it appear that' he 'was advocating solely a geocentric hypothesis, which is not true.' In fact, he did his very best to get larger 'mercy.' And he shall have it; and at a length which shall content him, unless his mecometer be an insatiable apparatus. But I fear that in other respects I shall no more satisfy him than the Irish drummer satisfied the poor culprit when, after several times changing the direction of the stroke at earnest entreaty, he was at last provoked to call out, 'Bad cess to ye, ye spalpeen! strike where one will, there's no plasing ye!'
Mr. Reddie attaches much force to Berkeley's old arguments against the doctrine of fluxions, and advances objections to Newton's second section, which he takes to be new. To me they appear 'such as have been often made,' to copy a description given in a review: though I have no doubt Mr. Reddie got them out of himself. But the whole matter comes to this: Mr. Reddie challenged answer, especially from the British Association, and got none. He presumes that this is because he is right, and cannot be answered: the Association is willing to risk itself upon the counter-notion that he is wrong; and need not be answered;
