are addressed to me by the circle-squarers; and,
is smart upon my preference of an incommensurable value of π to 315 or some such simple substitute. Whale,
ought to be the backing of the scientific world to the author of the 'Budget of Paradoxes.'
The whole collection commenced existence in the head of a powerful mathematician during some sieepless nights. Seeing how large a number was practicable, he amused himself by inventing a digested plan of finding more.
Is there any one whose name cannot be twisted into either praise or satire? I have had given to me,
Mouths big: a Cantab anomaly.
A treatise of the system of the world. By Sir Isaac Newton. Translated into English. London, 1728, 8vo.
I think I have a right to one little paradox of my own: I greatly doubt that Newton wrote this book. Castiglione, in his 'Newtoni Opuscula,' gives it in the Latin which appeared in 1731, not for the first time; he says Angli omnes Newtono tribuunt. It appeared just after Newton's death, without the name of any editor, or any allusion to Newton's recent departure, purporting to be that popular treatise which Newton, at the beginning of the third book of the 'Principia,' says he wrote, intending it to be the third book. It is very possible that some observant turnpenny might construct such a treatise as this from the third book, that it might be ready for publication the moment Newton could not disown it. It has been treated with singular silence: the name of the editor has never been given. Rigaud mentions it without a word: I cannot find it in Brewster's Newton, nor in the 'Biographia Britannica.' There is no copy in the Catalogue of the Royal Society's Library, either in English or Latin, except in Castiglione. I am open to correction; but I think nothing from Newton's acknowledged works will prove—as laid down in the suspected work—that he took Numa's temple of Vesta, with a central fire, to be intended to symbolise the sun as the centre of our system, in the Copernican sense.
Mr.Edleston gives an account of the lectures 'de motu corporum,' and gives the corresponding pages of the Latin 'De Systemate
