Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/32

 1740, 2 vols. 8vo., by L. M. Kahle, is a professedly bibliographical work; and dates from about the time when Newton's system began to find general favor on the continent. After describing Motte's English version (1730) of the Principia, Kahle adds that one instance will be quite enough to show the bad faith of the version. He then quotes the celebrated scholium in which Newton admits the claim of Leibnitz, and quotes Motte's translation, which is of course of a very different purport; adding that the English translator, in order to deprive Leibnitz of honour, has been impudent enough (eo usque procedit impudentiae) to alter Newton's words. Had the bibliographer remembered, or taken care to ascertain, that Newton himself published three editions, he would have found that Motte was correctly translating from the third of them, and that the substitution was made by Newton himself. At the same time, Kahle's blunder may serve to warn translators that they ought to be very precise in stating the editions on which their versions are made and the most important, at least, of the variations: together with a sufficient description of the previous editions. And further, foreigners should take notice that English writers are well able to pay in kind any confusion made among the writings of Newton. In proof of this, we have, since the preceding sentences were written, fallen in with a recent work in which Kahle is placed under suspicion of having, under the name of Kayle, answered Voltaire by plagiarizing an answer written by Kable seventeen years before Voltaire wrote.

[19] If we ourselves should have fallen into any mistakes, they will serve our purpose, as helping to prove the truth of our title. They will do us a service of the same kind which a lapse of memory of Mr. Macaulay's does for him. In his review (which, like the work itself, is much too short) of the Pilgrim's Progress, speaking of the tediousness of the Fairy Queen, he