graphy as an important science. As he himself wrote, "the most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation; like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes; but it serves, in hands which know how to use it, to determine the places of more important bodies." His evidence before the Royal Commission on the British Museum in 1850, (Questions 5704*-5815,* 6481-6513, and 8966-8967), should be studied by all who would comprehend the principles of bibliography or the art of constructing a catalogue, his views on the latter subject corresponding with those carried out by Panizzi in the British Museum Catalogue. A sample of De Morgan's bibliographical learning is to be found in his account of Arithmetical Books, from the Invention of Printing (1847), and finally in his Budget of Paradoxes. This latter work consists of articles most of which were originally published in the Athenæum, describing the various attempts which have been made to invent a perpetual motion, to square the circle, or to trisect the angle; but De Morgan took the opportunity to include many curious bits gathered from his extensive reading, so that the Budget as reprinted by his widow (1872), with much additional matter prepared by himself, forms a remarkable collection of scientific ana. De Morgan's correspondence with contemporary scientific men was very extensive and full of interest. It remains unpublished, as does also a large mass of mathematical tracts which he prepared for the use of his students, treating all parts of mathematical science, and embodying some of the matter of his lectures. De Morgan's library was purchased by Lord Overstone, and presented to the university of London.
From the above enumeration it will be apparent that the extent of De Morgan's literary and scientific labours was altogether extraordinary; nor was quality sacrificed to quantity. On the contrary every publication was finished with extreme care and accuracy, and no writer can be more safely trusted in every thing which he wrote. It is possible that his continual efforts to attain completeness and absolute correctness injured his literary style, which is wanting in grace; but the estimation in which his books are held is shown by the fact that they are steadily rising in market price. Apart from his conspicuous position as a logical and mathematical discoverer, we may conclude that hardly any man of science in recent times has had a more extensive, though it may often be an unfelt influence, upon the progress of exact and sound knowledge.[1]
De Morgan has left no published indications of his opinions on religious questions, in regard to which he was extremely reticent. He seldom or never entered a place of worship, and declared that he could not listen to a sermon, a circumstance perhaps due to the extremely strict religious discipline under which he was brought up. Nevertheless there is reason to believe that he was of a deeply religious disposition. Like Faraday and Newton he entertained a confident belief in Providence, founded not on any tenuous method of inference, but on personal feeling. His hope of a future life also was vivid to the last.
In the year 1866 a life as yet comparatively free from trouble became clouded by the circumstances which led him to abandon the institution so long the scene of his labours. The refusal of the council to accept the recommendation of the senate, that they should appoint an eminent Unitarian minister to the professorship of logic and mental philosophy, revived all De Morgan's sensitiveness on the subject of sectarian freedom; and, though his feelings were doubtless excessive, there is no doubt that gloom was thrown over his life, intensified in 1867 by the loss of his son George Campbell De Morgan, a young man of the highest scientific promise, whose name, as De Morgan expressly wished, will long be connected with the London Mathematical Society, of which he was one of the founders. From this time De Morgan rapidly fell into ill-health, previously almost unknown to him, dying on the 18th March 1871. An interesting and truthful sketch of his life will be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, for the 9th February 1872, vol. xxii. p. 112, written by Mr Ranyard, who says, "He was the kindliest, as well as the most learned of men—benignant to every one who approached him, never forgetting the claims which weakness has on strength.(w. s. j.)
DEMOSTHENES was born in 384 B.C. His father, who bore the same name, was an Athenian citizen belonging to the deme of Pæania. His mother, Cleobule, was the daughter of Gylon, a citizen who had been active in procuring the protection of the kings of Bosporus for the
Athenian colony of Nymphæon in the Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region. Early life.On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry. The boy had a bitter foretaste of life. He was seven years old when his father died, leaving property (in a manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery) worth about £3500, which, invested as it seems to have been (20 per cent. was not thought exorbitant), would have yielded rather more than £600 a year. £300 a year was a very comfortable income at Athens, and it was possible to live decently on a tenth of it. Nicias, a very rich man, had property equivalent, probably, to not more than £4000 a year. Demosthenes was born, then, to a handsome, though not a great fortune. But his guardians—two nephews of his father, Aphobus and Demophon, and one Therippides—abused their trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he came of age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps between £50 and £60 a year. Demosthenes, after studying with Isæus—then the great master of forensic eloquence and of Attic law, especially in will cases[2]—brought an action against Aphobus, and gained a verdict for about £2400. But it does not appear that he got the money; and, after some more fruitless proceedings against Onetor, the brother-in-law of Aphobus, the matter was dropped,—not, however, before his relatives had managed to throw a public burden (the equipment of a ship of war) on their late ward, whereby his resources were yet further straitened. Professional work for the law-courts.He now became a professional writer of speeches or pleas for the law-courts, sometimes speaking himself. Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made himself a tolerable speaker,—how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up hill, how he shut himself up in a cell, having first guarded himself against a longing for the haunts of men by shaving one side of his head, how he wrote out Thucydides eight times, how he was derided by the Assembly and encouraged by a judicious actor who met him moping about the Peirams. This work kept up in later years.
He certainly seems to have been the reverse of athletic (the stalwart Æschines upbraids him with never having been a sportsman), and he probably had some sort of defect or impediment in his speech as a boy. Perhaps the most interesting fact about his work for the law-courts is that he seems to have continued it, in some measure, through the most exciting parts of his great political career. The speech for Phormio belongs to the same year as the plea for Megalopolis. The speech for Bœotus "Concerning the Name" comes between the First Philippic and the First Olynthiac. The speech against Pantænetus comes between the speech "On the Peace" and the Second Philippic.
- ↑ In a notice of De Morgan's character it is impossible to omit a reference to his witty sayings, some specimens of which are preserved in Dr Sadler's most interesting Diary of Henry Crabb-Robinson (1869), which also contains a humorous account of H. C. R. by De Morgan. It may be added that De Morgan was a great reader and admirer of Dickens; he was also fond of music, and a fair performer on the flute.
- ↑ In Jebb's Attic Orators from Antiphon to Tsaeos, vol. ii. p. 267 f., the traditions of the relation between Demosthenes and Isæus are examined in detail. It is there shown that the intercourse of the men can scarcely have been either intimate or prolonged, but that Demosthenes undoubtedly learned from Isæus the art of grappling with a forensic adversary in close and strenuous argument.
