TALBOT3328

Trinity College, Cambridge
July 12. 1836

My dear Talbot

I should have been most happy to have accepted your kind invitation to Lacock Abbey if I had not had already two invitations on my books – one to the Master of Magdalene’s at Botleigh

& the other to Bowood; I assure you that I very much regret my inability to come to you

I hope you are getting on with the printing of your paper ¹ & it is a most valuable accession to our knowledge of a part of analysis which is not very extensively cultivated: Have you seen Poisson’s memoir in Crelle’s Journal? ² I saw it yesterday for the first time I have been reading Jerrard’s ³ memoirs on the resolution of Equations of the 5^th & higher degrees: ⁴ I believe his position to be quite untenable: the assumption of more than n (the degree of the equation [illegible]) in the series

[illegible deletion] P + Qx +Nx² + Sx³ [&c &c] = Y= 0

which is necessary for his method appears to me to be fatal to the whole [illegible]: for xⁿ, x²ⁿ, x^[3n?] … x ^[illegible]n may be always expressed by means of the primitive equation, by terms of the [illegible deletion] powers of x which are less than n [&?] the coefficients of the equation. Hamilton started this objection & has shown that his [illegible deletion] reducing equation ([illegible] form) will seem illusory by its terms being all zero. I shall give the whole question a thorough examination before I come to Bristol

Believe me My dear Talbot most truly yours
Geo Peacock

H. F. Talbot Esq
31 Sackville St
London