Sir William Hamilton to Mr Combe. 16, Great King Street, 14th April, 1827. ́ MY DEAR SIR,-I have just received your letter, and will have great pleasure in complying with either of your requests; but I cannot be certain that the use of a room, for a separate lecture in the University, would be allowed by those whom it might be necessary to consult. Your friend, the Principal, however, will not be indisposed, I am sure, to stretch a point of academical etiquette in your favour; and you may depend upon all my little interest with the other members of the Senatus. If the first alternative be taken, as it would not be pleasant for either of us that all and sundry should be suffered to harangue on the occasion, it will, I think, be expedient to limit the reply to yourself; but if you wish that any other person should be permitted to speak, I have no objection.. In conclusion, may I presume to add an expression of sincere esteem, and trust that, however we may differ in some opinions, nothing on my part should ever be construed into the slightest disrespect of your distinguished ability and candour. I remain, &c. W. HAMILTON. Mr Combe to the Very Rev. Principal Baird. Edinburgh, 14th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-I use the freedom to annex copy of a correspondence betwixt Sir William Hamilton and me, on the subject of my delivering a lecture, for the benefit of the distressed operatives, in answer to his objections against Phrenology, and most respectfully solicit the permission of the Senatus Academicus to give a reply at the conclusion of his demonstration. With the view of benefiting the operatives, the ticket for both lectures might be raised to 5s. If this is not approved of, may I be honoured with the use, on Friday, at one o'clock, of the same class-room used by Sir William Hamilton? In November last, the University of Cambridge gave the use of a hall belonging to them to Dr Spurzheim, for his whole course of lectures on Phrenology; so that the admission of one of its advocates within the precincts of a college is not without precedent. An early answer, for the sake of advertising, will be obliging.I remain, &c. GEORGE COMBE. Mr Combe to Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh, 16th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-Immediately on receipt of your letter of 14th April, I wrote to Principal Baird, soliciting the permission of the Senatus Academicus to make a reply to your demonstration; but sufficient time has not yet elapsed to enable the Principal to consult the Senate and report. Wednesday, however, fast approaches, and the opportunity of giving publicity to my purpose of replying becomes daily less. Might I, therefore, so far trespass on your indulgence, as to make a farther proposition, namely, that you would postpone your demonstration till Friday, Saturday, or Monday next,-permit the reply to be advertised along with the announcement of your lecture, the ticket of admission to both to be raised to 5s.,-and in case the Senate shall deny me the use of the same class-room you Occupy, that you would transfer your lecture to the Assembly Rooms? I need not point out how greatly such an arrangement would increase the funds for the poor, and promote the cause of truth. I agree most readily that the reply shall be confined to myself, and I prefer commencing when you terminate. In allusion to the kind expressions in your letter in regard to myself, permit me to say, that in no instance do I view a philosophical opponent otherwise than as a friend; and that in all my intercourse with you, and, in particular, in the discussions which we have occasionally maintained on the subject of Phrenology, I have met with nothing, on your part, but extensive information, great acuteness, and the most mild and courteous spirit in enforcing your objections; and that your prompt and handsome compliance with my request for the benefit of a reply has greatly added to your many previous claims on my esteem.I am, &c. GEORGE COMBE. Dr Andrew Duncan, Jun. to Mr Combe. Edinburgh College, 16th April, 1827. SIR, I am directed by the Senatus Academicus to transmit to you the enclosed extract from the minutes of a meeting held this day. I have the honour to remain, &c. ANDREW DUNCAN, Jun. Sec. Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh, held 16th April, 1827. "It was resolved that the request of Mr Combe (he not being a "member of the Senatus) could not be granted." ANDREW DUNCAN, Jun. Sec. Sir William Hamilton to Mr Combe. 16, Great King Street, 16th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR, I have just returned from a meeting of the Senatus Academicus, and am sorry that the unanimous resolution in relation to your request, communicated through the Principal, was, that without a violation of established rule, and the introduction of an inconvenient precedent, no person, not a member of their body, could be permitted to lecture within the University. I was likewise compelled to submit to the opinion of all my colleagues, that to request you to make any observations on my paper would be wholly unacademical. Should you wish to inspect the crania which I shall exhibit, I will be happy to have you along with me when I arrange them, previous to my demonstration, at 12 o'clock. I shall be much disappointed at not hearing your lecture, if you propose to deliver it during this week, as I go out of town on Thursday morning, and do not return till Saturday at soonest. I had written so far when I received your letter of to-day. In reply, I shall only say, that I cannot bring myself to acquiesce in your proposal, which I think would serve no purpose for the furtherance of truth, and has withal too much the appearance of a public disputation. If I can do any thing to secure to you the same audience who may attend me, you may depend on my endeavours. Could not the persons who have tickets of mine have a preference to your lecture, which will probably be very crowded ?— I remain, &c. W. HAMILTON. Mr Combe to Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh, 16th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-I am favoured with your letter of this date, announcing the decision of the Senatus Academicus. As my leading object was to offer an answer to your objections, not only before the particular audience to whom they were urged, but to take up the particular positions on which you founded them, and to refer to the identical specimens which you used in your demonstration, and as these ends cannot be adequately accomplished by a lecture delivered on a different day, in a different place, and, to some extent at least, to a different audience, no course remains for me, but to solicit that you will publish your statements with your earliest convenience, and in the meantime grant me your permission to publish the correspondence that has passed between us. I am much obliged by your offer to show me the skulls to which you refer. Had I been allowed to make my own commentary on them, I should have readily accepted of the invitation, and in return solicited your attention to the collection of casts and crania belonging to the Phrenological Society; but as matters now stand, it appears to me preferable that my inspection of them should be postponed till after publication of your objections. While I regret that the arenas of the Royal Society and College, which you selected, precluded me from replying to your remarks in the presence of those to whom they were addressed, yet I cannot conclude this correspondence without returning my warmest acknowledgments for the handsome manner in which you indivi dually met my proposal of an answer the moment it was submitted to your consideration.-Believe me to remain, &c. GEORGE COMBE. Sir William Hamilton to Mr Combe. 16, Great King Street, 16th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-In reply to your request that I should agree to a publication of our correspondence, I beg leave to offer my reasons for declaring myself averse from such a proceeding. In your first letter to me, you requested as an alternative, that I would apply in your behalf for the use of a room in the University. Confident, therefore, that the matter was wholly between ourselves, and that I should at all events have a communication from you before any other step was taken, I wrote you my acquiescence; and though I did not mark my letter as confidential, the manner in which I alluded to Principal Baird evidently showed that it was not intended to go beyond yourself. I do not imagine for a moment, that you intended any want of courtesy to me in carrying my communication to the Principal, and in making, moreover, through him, a request to the Senatus that they should consent to an arrangement which concerned me, but in which my acquiescence had not been asked. But though I am far from attributing any blame whatever to you on the occasion, (and did not even therefore allude to this in my last letter), still a permission from me to publish the correspondence would sanction what, though not wrong in intention, I must think not quite correct in performance. At the same time I can see no end to be answered by the publication, which could not be quite as well accomplished by a statement on your part, if you indeed think a statement is required.—I remain, W. HAMILTON. &c. Mr Combe to Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh, 17th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-In reply to your letter received of this date, I beg to express my regret that in any particular I should have acted contrary to your wishes. I understood your letter of 14th April to contain an indirect suggestion that I should apply to Principal Baird, and while I acknowledge that this interpretation must have been erroneous, because you say that it was in opposition to your intentions, I beg to assure you that nothing was farther from my purpose than to fail in any point of duty or respect either to yourself or the Senatus Academicus. I shall avail myself of the privilege of stating the import of the letters on my own responsibility ; and, with unimpaired regard, subscribe myself, &c. GEORGE COMBE. Sir William Hamilton to Mr Combe. 16, Great King Street, 18th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-I have just read in the Scotsman of to-day a statement by you regarding our correspondence, and cannot avoid animadverting on one part of it, which totally (though no doubt unintentionally) misrepresents the tenour of my last letter. I did not, as you state, disapprove of your " applying to the Senatus "Academicus in your own name, after I had expressed my inten"tion of doing so." I never dreamt that you were bound to make such an application through me, though you had requested it, and I had agreed to the proposal. You had a perfect right to take and to change your own measures in your own way. But what I could not appear as approving, was your interference, without any authority from me, in my concerns, to the extent of even proposing a plan to the Senatus of regulating my lecture. After so full an abstract of the other letters, you might also, I think, besides merely saying that "I wrote that my first letter, although not marked, was "confidential," have added my reasons for thinking that its confidential nature could not be ambiguous. May I beg that you will take the means of correcting the erroneous impression that your statement may produce, in regard to my disinclination to authorise the publication of our letters.I remain, &c. W. HAMILTON. Mr Combe to Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh, 19th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-It gives me much regret that I should have failed in any degree in correctly representing your views. The "Statement" was prepared with every possible care and scrupulosity on my part, and submitted, moreover, to the revisal of several friends, who are not unknown to you, and who compared it with the correspondence to ensure accuracy and fairness. Since receiving your letter of 18th April, I have again read over the letters, aud still feel at a loss to understand the nature and extent of the misrepresentation of the tenour of your previous communication; but, as my earnest desire has all along been to do you ample justice, I shall publish any correction with which you may favour me, not inconsistent with my own letters, and remain, &c. GEORGE COMBE. Sir William Hamilton to Mr Combe. Edinburgh, 25th April, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,-I found your letter of the 19th on my return from the country last night. Might I beg a sight of my letter to you before last, not having kept a copy.-I am, &c. VOL. IV. No XV. W. HAMILTON. 2 B |