SD1304.2. Aubrey de Vere to William Rowan Hamilton
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 14.
Curragh Chase,
St. John’s Day [27 December], 1846
You cannot wish us many returns of this season more heartily than we wish you the same, nor could you have sent us a Christmas present which we could have valued more than the news of your discovery. The preceding day I was staying at Adare, and there I read, with a glow and enthusiasm which I have not felt on such matters for many a year, a statement in a newspaper respecting some great scientific discovery recently made by you. You may be sure that we canvassed it with no inconsiderable ardour, and thought of the day when the dropping of an apple suggested, as is said, to Newton the course of investigation the result of which was that the gates of knowledge “lifted up their heads” many a cubit higher than they had ever done before, and that much of the glory of God entered in upon our lowly sphere. One cannot depend much on newspaper statements: the first thing I heard of your discovery was that you had found out some calculus by which we should be enabled to find out the “centre of the universe”: this is, however, a problem which, like the mystery of life, must always, I fear, remain at an infinite distance from human ken: the next thing I heard was that your calculus would enable us to find out the centre round which the sun and our whole solar system revolves. If this be true, I should think it must be the greatest discovery ever made, and, if men were wise, it would make peace in the world for some time, for men would have something more to think about than the petty squabbles of the hour.
You must now sit down immediately, and tell me whatever you can tell and I can understand about your discovery. It will have a peculiar value at this moment when one’s thoughts are necessarily, though painfully, so much engaged with the details of earthly trouble that surround one in this period of distress. There is a secularity which insensibly arises from exertions even made for the good of others. I shall be very grateful to you if you can raise my thoughts for a season into the sidereal regions of brightness, peace, and healing influence.
Has your discovery any connexion with the theory of quaternions discussed in the papers which you sent me lately? I was very much obliged to you for them, though alas! as you know, such matters are “too wonderful and excellent for me,” except so far as their metaphysical principles or scientific results can be given independently of technical expression, and without a demand on mathematical acquirement. …
Thank you for your sister’s sonnet. I hope it may be regarded as a proof that she has not been forgetful of song, and an earnest of a new contribution from her to our poetical stores. It would be a great pity if she were not to go on cultivating that poetic faculty which she possesses in so remarkable a degree. Do you know Miss Barrett’s poetry? It is full of genius, though overstrained and injured by eccentricities and want of simplicity. I was also much interested in the Sonnet addressed to you [by Digby Starkey]; and hope and trust that you will every day be more acknowledged as the mathematical Columbus that he calls you. …
Text: R.P. Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (London, 1885), pp. 543–544.
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