This metadata is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Images made available for download are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 3.0)
This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
in English
Oxford Apr. 30. 1695.
Sir
I thank you for your letter of Apr. 21. by Mr Conan. But I can by no
means admit your excuse for not publishing your Treatise of Light & Colours.
You say, you dare not yet publish it. And why not yet? Or, if not now, when
then? You adde, least it create you some trouble. What trouble now, more
then at another time? Pray consider, how many years this hath lyen
upon your hands allready: And, while it lyes upon your hands, it will stil
be some trouble. (For I know your thoughts must needs be still running
upon it.) But, when published, that trouble will be over. You think, perhaps,
it may occasion some Letters (of exceptions) to you, which you shal be obli
ged to Answer. What if so? 'twill be at your chaise whether to Answer them
or not. The Treatise will answer for itself. But, Are you troubled with no letters for not publishing it? For, I suppose, your other friends call
upon you for it, as well as I; & are as little satisfyed with the delay. Mean
while, you loose the Reputation of it, and we the Benefit. So that you are neither
just to yourself, nor kind to the publike. And perhaps some other may
get some scraps of e
not yours; though he may perhaps never attain to e
you be allready master of. Consider, that 'tis now about Thirty years
since you were master of those notions about Fluxions and Infinite Series; but you have never published ought of it to this day, (which is
worse than
voured to do you right in that point. But if I had published the same or
like notions, without naming you; & the world possessed of anothers Calculus differentialis, instead of your Fluxions: How should this, or the
n
is but playing an After-game for you; to recover (precariously) ex post liminio what you had let slip in its due time. And, even yet, I
see you make no great hast to publish those Letters, which are to be my
Vouchers for what I say of it. And even those Letters at first, were rather
extorted from you, than purely voluntary. You may
piece of this concerning Colours is not quite finished. It may be so: (and
perhaps never will.) But pray let us have what is. And, while that is
printing, you may (if ever) perfect the rest. But if, during the delay,
you chance to
done,) 'tis all lost, both as to you, & as to the publike. It hath been an old com
plaint, that an Englishman never knows when a thing is well. (But will still be
over-doing, & thereby looseth or spoils
desty is a Vertue; but too much Diffidence (especially as the world now goes) is
a Fault. And if men will never publish ought till it be so perfect as that nothing
more can be added to it: themselves & the publike will both be loosers. I hope,
Sir, you will forgive me this Freedome (while I speak the sense of others as well
as my own,) or else I know not how we thus forgive these delays. I could
say a great deal more: But, if you think I have sayd too much allready,
pray forgive this kindness of
Your real friend &
humble servant,
John Wallis.
Dr Gregory gives you his service.