Dear Sir,
Dr Dance's blunders are most provoking; but such blunders and mis-representations of our views will some time or other be exposed and corrected. – I have been so often exposed to such misrepresentations that I do not feel them. A Paper by Melloni <1>in ye last No of the Phil. Mag. contains a most ignorant criticism on my results regarding the spectrum. I can scarcely take the trouble of counteracting <2> them.
I have spent 2 or 3 months in a most troublesome investigation of the subject of circular crystals I have examined nearly 300 substances in search of this property, and have obtained many curious results, & beautiful examples of various kinds of circular crystallisation; and now that my labour is over I can scarcely be at the trouble of committing the results to paper. The pleasure of success is over, and the reputation of having succeeded seems not worth the trouble of [seeking?] it . – I have studied your circular crystals from their infancy till their death, which when they are not protected <3> means a life of about 3 months. In their morbid anatomy their structure is apparent, & phenomena which utterly puzzled me exhibited their cause clearly on disintegration of the crystals.
The Editor of the North British Review <4> is the Revd Dr Hanna <5> Morningside Editor. <6> The 17th No, which I hope will contain the Review of your work, <7> is on the Eve of publication.
I see by the Post mark that your letter <8> is written in London; but not knowing your Address I send this to Lacock Abbey.
Believe me to be Ever most Truly yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards College
St Andrews
April 25th 1848
H.F. Talbot Esqr
&c &c &c
Notes:
1. M. Melloni, ‘Researches on the Radiations of Incandescent Bodies, and on the Elementary Colours of the Solar Spectrum’, Philosophical Magazine, s. 3, v. 32, no. 215, April 1848, pp. 262–76.
2. However, see D. Brewster, ‘On the Elementary Colours of the Spectrum, in reply to M. Melloni’, Philosophical Magazine, v. 32, 1848, pp. 489–494.
3. For Brewster’s method of protecting and preserving the crystals, see Doc. No: 06105.
4. At the time, a journal of the Free Church.
5. William Hanna (1808–1882).
6. Sic. Evidently a slip for ‘Edinburgh’.
7. Probably WHFT, English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847).
8. Not traced.