106
APPENDIX.
NO. 1.
and which he has ever been as ready to undertake: but alas! as to his skill in Mechanics, he knows little or nothing of the matter he has ventured to take in hand.[1]
- ↑ Not Adams's proposal to borrow some silver of brother Truliber could be more offensive to that dealer in live bacon than this reiterated charge of ignorance of what, it so happened, the Doctor desired of all things to be thought to possess a consummate knowledge—without prejudice to his reputation as an astronomer, on which he felt sufficiently comfortable, according to precedent, and any compliments levelled to batter in breach at his solid works would have been a waste of powder. His interest being of very material consequence at the Board of Longitude, as he could command the votes from Oxford and Cambridge, and it being discovered that he was constitutionally disposed to inhale the subtle particles from Watchmakers' shops and workrooms, he became of course the Mecænas of horological mechanics:—three of whom, with whose merits we would not be understood to interfere, received mainly through his services £500 each, for their improvements in chronometry; and matters prospered as they should, both with the Patron and his Clients, till one day, like the snuff collector in the Spectator, having taken too large a pinch of—some laudatory stuff, it produced a
there would be six observations each day.—Mr. Harrison informed the Board, he looked upon this to be next to an impossibility, and that he could say so from experience: that he had been kept five months, by order of the Board, at Portsmouth before, and that during that whole time no such thing could have been done: so he hoped they would put it on three different days, and that if they only got one correspondent equal altitude, that should be a sufficient observation for the day.—This was agreed to by the Board: they having first called in Captain Campbell, to have his opinion, which agreed with Mr. Harrison's.
