ment of the magnet," and other catastrophes too numerous to mention. In another sense, also, the language employed is bad; it is ambiguous, and this is utterly indefensible in a scientific work. Examples of such ambiguity can be quoted almost without number, but we shall confine ourselves to one or two of the most important. Thus, the words "force," "strength," and "energy," are sometimes used as antagonistic, and anon as synonymous terms. Energy, again, is confounded with "moving force," which has a perfectly definite meaning in no way related to energy. In collisions, we are told, " the heat generated increases as the square of the velocity." This is a palpable mistake, evidently arising from the confusion in the author's mind of the phrase A varies as B (or is proportional to B) with the very different one, A increases as B (i.e., the rate of change of A is proportional to B). Again, what can be the meaning of such a sentence as this: "Let me now pass from the sun to something less-in fact, to the opposite pole of nature"? Or this: "as we proceed light will gradually appear, and irradiate retrospectively our present gloom"! It is needless to collect further examples of this constant perversion of the common meanings not only of scientific, but even of popular, words.

With the exception of these blemishes, and of other more serious faults which we shall presently consider, the volume, so far as it goes, is creditable enough. Many experimental novelties, well suited to the lecture-room, are carefully described; and, on the whole, the work is calculated to prove exceedingly interesting even to the scientific reader. But we look in vain through its pages for so much as a mere mention of Carnot; and, beyond a few casual remarks about the disappearance of heat in the production of mechanical effect, there is nothing to give the reader even a hint, that the laws which regulate the production of work from heat are now as well known and as capable of being popularized, as anything in Natural Philosophy. That radiant heat and light are identical, and that there are many peculiarities in their radiation and absorption by matter, which require only patient experiment for their discovery, was known long ago; and though the new results obtained by the author are curious, and in some cases even startling, they can scarcely, even if completely verified by other experimenters, claim anything like the comparative value which has been assigned them in this work, to the exclusion of so much that is of vital importance.

But the dissipation of energy is not even alluded to; and many other remarkable branches of the subject, due as much to the mathematician as to the experimenter, are alike ignored; though, in a volume with such a title as this, they might be expected to

Dr. Tyndall's Lectures.

69

have found a corner. They can be made intelligible to any educated reader, and ought to have a place in every work, especially a British work, in which the subject is treated with any detail.

But what we most object to in Dr. Tyndall's volume is his erroneous history of the development of the subject. His errors in this way are numerous and great. Thus he says, "Dr. Mayer enunciated the exact relation between heat and work, giving the number which is now known as the mechanical equivalent of heat."" (The italics are our own.) Compare this with the facts as recorded above; first as to the value of Mayer's statements, and second as to the number which Mayer did give. Again, "Mr. Thomson suggested that the stretched India-rubber might shorten" when heated. We cannot fancy that any one would consider this a fair representation of a prediction mathematically deduced, without hypothesis, as a result necessarily following from known facts. The beautiful reasoning of J. Thomson, about the lowering of the freezing-point of water by pressure, is introduced in such a manner that any uninstructed reader would fancy Dr. Tyndall had the chief merit, Messrs. Hopkins and Fairbairn a secondary position, and Thomson merely the credit of making a happy guess, in the establishment of this most important result. For the credit of British science, we hope that Dr. Tyndall will, when a second edition of his really interesting work is called for, pay some attention to the by-no-means microscopic faults which it possesses in such rich profusion.

[Note. Since the above was put in type we have seen in the Philosophical Magazine (Jan. 1864) a brief account of the work of Colding. So far as this enables us to judge, he appears to have been led by a species of metaphysical reasoning to the idea of the conservation of energy; but, unlike other speculators, to have appealed to experiment before publishing his views. The value (350 kilogrammètres) of the equivalent of heat which he thus obtained in 1843 from friction experiments, is not much more accurate than that deduced from Rumford's data, and is not to be compared with Joule's of the same year. Still Colding evidently went to work in the right way, and deserves an amount of credit to which Séguin and Mayer have no claim.]

ART. III-1. Mémoires d'un Bibliophile. Par M. TENANT DE LATOUR. Paris, 1861.

2. The Book-Hunter. Edinburgh, 1863.

By J. HILL BURTON. Second Edition.

NOTHING, we suspect, is less intelligible to the uninitiated than the sort of pleasure which the inveterate book-collector derives from his peculiar pursuit, or than the intense eagerness which he often displays in it. One of the fraternity-a man of vast knowledge, and of great power as a thinker and a writer--after having followed the "business," as he calls it, from early youth to well-nigh fourscore, lately declared that it "had never palled upon him for a single moment." Yet, to most persons, this amassing of literary treasures is simply a "mania;" even Mr. Burton, who ought to know better, has thought proper, in his very pleasant and witty Book-Hunter, to affect the satirical and depreciatory strain; and whether he intended it or not, the impression left on the minds of his readers is, that a collector is a poor lost creature who greatly needs to be taken care of by his friends; an office, by the way, which these same friends (particularly if they happen to belong to the female order), are always very ready to perform. The great Lord Bacon too once threatened Sir Thomas Bodley, whom he found slow to appreciate his new philosophy, with "a Cogitation against Libraries," to be added to the Cogitata et Visa. And we all remember Sir Walter's quiet quizzing of the book-collecting race in the mock heroics which he puts into the mouth of Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck: "Happy, thrice happy, Snuffy Davie; and blessed were the times when thy industry could be so rewarded!"

But notwithstanding our having such high authorities against us, we are about to venture a word or two in defence of this much misunderstood and much calumniated class. And we shall attempt to show that even what are commonly regarded as the oddest and most fantastic of their proceedings, often possess a foundation of intelligent interest which the very dullest must comprehend as soon as it is pointed out to them. To most persons, for instance, the fastidiousness of a genuine book-lover about the editions which he admits into his library; his frequent preference of an old and dingy copy, to the finest modern reprint; and above all, his anxiety to have two or three different editions of the same work in his possession, are quite unaccount

1 Preface to Catalogue of Books, the Property of a Political Economist [J. R. M'Culloch, Esq.], with Critical and Bibliographical Notices. Lond. (privately printed) 1862.

Authors' Editions--Paradise Lost.

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able. To a great many even of those who have a tolerably wide acquaintance with literature, a Baskerville and a Bungay edition are all one. Or if they do get the length of preferring the exquisite beauty of the former to the utter ugliness of the latter, this is the utmost stretch to which their discrimination attains. The only idea they have as to the superior intrinsic value of one edition over another is, that it should be "the latest." And hence, in buying a copy of Jeremy Taylor's Sermons, for example, they would probably turn with contempt from the finest old folio of 1668 or 1678, and select, with unhesitating preference, the smug octavo edition of Mr. Thomas Tegg, in which we lately noticed one of the noblest passages of the great preacher disfigured and rendered unintelligible by having "spritefulness of the morning," converted (no doubt after grave consultation among the collective wisdom of the printingoffice, and much turning over of Johnson) into "spitefulness."

Charles Lamb declares that he could never read Beaumont and Fletcher but in folio, and that he did not know a more heartless sight than the octavo reprints of the Anatomy of Melancholy. And, as generally happens with a saying of Lamb's, his remark, though given as mere matter of sentiment, has an excellent basis of common sense in it. What do our readers think of the fact that, since Milton's own time, there has not been a single edition of the Paradise Lost, in which the text is given strictly as the author left it, and in which the language has not been tampered with in a way that would have given Milton himself (could he have become cognisant of it) the greatest annoyance and vexation? The author of Paradise Lost, let it be remembered, besides being a man of the loftiest genius, was also one of the most profound scholars of his day. From his earliest youth he had" applied himself to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art he could unite to the adorning of his native tongue." And although he disavows, as "a toylsome vanity," making "verbal curiosities his end," it is evident that not only in the formation of his vocabulary, but even in the most minute points of orthography, he was singularly careful and solicitous. The minute lists of errata at the end of some of the original editions of his prose tracts furnish curious illustrations of this. And in several copies of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (the edition of 1644), which lately came under our eye, we noticed that a number of errata had been carefully corrected with a pen. The corrections were the same in each copy, and the handwriting was also the same; so that there could be hardly any doubt that they were made under the immediate super1 The Reason of Church Government, Book second.

intendence of the author himself; a striking instance, as it seemed to us, of his close and anxious attention to typographical exactness. We should be sorry to believe the reports of Milton's cruelty to his daughters, but we have a strong suspicion that he was a terrible torment to his printers.1

It is well known to all who have examined the early editions of the Paradise Lost, that Milton had made the attempt, altogether singular in his day, to introduce regularity and system into English orthography. He was the first Englishman, so far as we know, who did so. Many of his words and modes of spelling, too, are peculiar to himself, and many of them also not only indicated scholar-like knowledge and precision of view on etymological questions, but were adopted by him with a curious attention to musical effect, and with a most felicitous recognition of the close relation between sound and sense. Yet strange as it may seem, every trace of this phase of Milton's mind has been obliterated from his works. In every modern edition all specialty in his language has disappeared. The orthography is carefully toned down to the tame uniformity of present usage, and from no edition published since his own time, is it possible to discover what were Milton's ideas on the subjects referred to, or even that he had any idea upon them at all.2 As an instance

1 Perhaps, however, this may be a failing common to the whole of the "irritable race. We have now before us a copy of the Sibylline Leaves, which seems formerly to have belonged to Mr. Evans, its printer. It is entitled "Waste Office Copy," and has a marginal note, rather strongly indicative of a row in the printing-office. On the poem called "The Nightingale," at the line "And one, low piping, sounds more sweet than all," the insulted and indignant printer has written, "See the proof returned by Mr. Coleridge, for the justice of his charge of 'gratuitous emendation' on my part." "Gratuitous emendation!" what a fine, thundering, many. jointed missile, a sort of verbal chain-shot, to discharge at the head of a printer. It is clear to us that Mr. Coleridge must have been a practised hand at this sort of work, and we do not wonder that Mr. Evans held his breath, and had to content himself with confiding his wrongs in silence to his "Waste Office Copy." The line complained of will be found altered in the later editions. In addition to the above, the volume before us contains several various readings, none of them, however, of any great importance.

2 Perhaps an exception ought to be made in favour of the beautiful edition of the whole works of Milton, published by Pickering in 1851, 8 vols. 8vo. The editor, at least, professes to have followed strictly the author's own editions, and as far as we have examined, the profession seems to have been honourably fulfilled. But as experience has bred in us considerable distrust of Mr. Pickering's editions in general, we must hesitate to guarantee his Milton. A beautiful duodecimo edition of the Paradise Lost was published by the Foulises of Glasgow in 1750 (reprinted in a smaller size, 1761), which bore on the title-page to be "According to the Author's last edition in the year 1672." But, though probably the best edition of the text of Paradise Lost printed in last century, we regret to say that it cannot be relied on for absolute accuracy.