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to the public. I beg to be understood as a warm and declared friend to that and every other mode which can be devised of ascertaining the Longitude at sea, so long as they keep within the bounds of reason and probability. Here are now two methods before the public; would to God there were two hundred! The importance of the object would warrant public encouragement to them all; but, called upon to say something on the subject, I think it incumbent upon me to point out those limits beyond which its utility cannot, from the nature of the thing, be extended.
The method of finding the Longitude by the Moon, in which Mr. Maskelyne is in a pecuniary way interested,[1] is this.—If the apparent distance
- ↑ So he was, by his own account, when at Barbadoes; where a curious scene occurs (given in the Preface) which explains the tendency of the examination thus commented on, if we have recourse to a dry Spanish proverb, quoted in Croxall's Æsop; viz. "The man who has injured you, will never forgive you."[subnote 1] He certainly left himself too open to the charge of ingratitude (the sin by which the Angels fell) for had William Harrison, supported by Sir John Lindsay, exerted his right to exclude him from taking observations that were to determine the correctness of the Timekeeper, he would not only have lost the handsome recompense he was to have for the voyage (£800 besides his expenses) but his future prospects for achieving either the Longitude or lawn sleeves, would have been extremely prejudiced.
- ↑ In a quarrel between two Ladies (Mrs. Fitzherbert and Miss Paget) well known at the west end of the town, in their day, and the former of
