I have always remembered with
gratitude Dr MacDonnell's conduct, in carefully putting me on a fair
footing in this matter. I returned by Holyhead, and arrived at
Birmingham on Apr. 23rd. While waiting there and looking over some
papers relating to the spherical aberration of eye-pieces, in which I
had been stopped some time by a geometrical difficulty, I did in the
coffee-room of a hotel overcome the difficulty; and this was the
foundation of a capital paper on the Spherical Aberration of
Eye-pieces. This paper was afterwards presented to the Cambridge
Philosophical Society.
"About this time a circumstance occurred of a disagreeable nature,
which however did not much disconcert me. Mr Ivory, who had a good
many years before made himself favourably known as a mathematician,
especially by his acquaintance with Laplace's peculiar analysis, had
adopted (as not unfrequently happens) some singular hydrostatical
theories. In my last Paper on the Figure of the Earth, I had said that
I could not receive one of his equations. In the Philosophical
Magazine of May he attacked me for this with great heat. On May 8th I
wrote an answer, and I think it soon became known that I was not to be
attacked with impunity.
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