the Town Council of Edinburgh on the plan of Water-Works for their city, and received a fee. The Board of Overseers on 22d May 1722, “approve of what is done as to the compliment given to Doctor Desaguliers.” A letter from Dr. Desaguliers, preserved in the British Museum, is printed in the Biographia Britannica.
To Dr. Scheutzer, from Channel Row, January 15, 17289. “Sir, I intended myself the honour to have waited upon the President [of the Royal Society], to have spoken to him concerning what I told you at Slaughter’s Coffee House; but last Thursday’s work was too much for me in my condition, and caused a relapse, which has confined me to my chamber ever since. I was just free from pain after a long fit of the gout; and standing almost two hours upon my feet that day whilst they were still weak, together with the effect of the cold, gave me a return of pain as well as lameness that very evening. I must beg of you to be my advocate to Sir Hans, to desire him (if there be nothing contrary to form in it), to be so good as to settle my last year’s salary [i.e., to pay it] in the next council, which used to be done generally at the meeting of the Society after the vacation, though now the death of the treasurer hindered it. This would be of great service to me at present, because I am entirely out of money, and have pressing occasions lor it. What else I told you by word of mouth you will also mention when proper, in doing which you will much oblige, &c,
“J. T. Desaguliers.”
Besides being F.R.S., Dr. Desaguliers was a member of several foreign academies, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
Paul Dawson, one of his pupils, took the unwarrantable liberty of publishing in 1719 a quarto volume, called, “Desaguliers’ System of Experimental Philosophy.” The Doctor did not take the trouble of disclaiming the authorship till after the lapse of fifteen years, when he himself produced two quarto volumes, entitled, “A Course of Experimental Philosophy.” In the preface (dated 1734) he thus speaks of his successful career:— " About the year 1713 I came to settle at London, where I have with great pleasure seen the Newtonian Philosophy so generally received among persons of all ranks and professions, and even the ladies, by the help of experiments. Though several ingenious men have since that time, with great success, taught (and do still teach) experimental philosophy in my (or rather Dr. Keill’s) manner, I have had as many courses as I could possibly attend to, the present course which I am now engaged in being the one hundred and twenty-first, since I began at Hart Hall in Oxford in the year 1710. The satisfaction we enjoy by being, in any way, instrumental to the improvement of others is so great, that I can’t help boasting, that — of eleven or twelve persons who perform experimental courses at this time in England and other parts of the world — I have had the honour of having eight of them for my scholars, whose further discoveries become an advantage to myself.”
I may here allude to a handsome pamphlet, illustrated in a superior manner, and printed on large quarto paper, entitled, “The Newtonian System of the world the best model of Government, an Allegorical Poem — to which is added Cambria’s Complaint against the intercalary day in the Leap Year, by J.T. Desaguliers, LL.D., Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Chandos, and F.R.S.; Illustrated with engravings; Westminster, 1728.”[1] The versification, employed instead of prose with a view to entice young or indolent readers, is on Dryden’s model, and (if I remember correctly), this is the first line:
In ancient times, ere bribery did begin.
On the 15th April 1738, he performed some experiments before Frederick, Prince of Wales, at Cliefden House. He also gave his course of Lectures before George II. and the royal family. When Channel Row was ordered to be taken down, to make way for the new bridge at Westminster, he removed to lodgings over the Great Piazza in Covent Garden, where he continued to lecture until his death. He was repeatedly consulted by the government upon the design of Westminster Bridge, of the construction of which his assistant, Charles Labelye, was overseer. At the request of Parliament, he erected a ventilator in a room over the House of Commons.
We get a peep into the lecture-room by reading a letter to a Berlin correspondent from the Baron de Bielfeld, the Prussian Ambassador, dated London, March 6, 1741:—
- ↑ About this time there is evidence of his fame having become European. In a letter to the Earl of Macclesfield, dated Paris, 1st September 1729, Maupertuis says that he sends presentation copies of a new pamphlet ad clarissimos viros Ds de Moivre et Desaguliers. — Correspondence of Scientific Men.)/</; [edited by Rigaud], Oxford, 1841.
