From John Conwill   September 4th 1841.

Since independence is the thing

Which guides friend Tyndall’s mind

He will not crouch to slave or king

Tho’ to his desk he is confined

May independence urge the soul

Their proud Fenwick ne’er can bend

Fam’d Tyndall – tho’ by fierce control

To his desk he is confined.

But Tyndall said the other day

That independence he resigned –

That – phantom like – it flit away –

And left him to his desk confin’d –

In logic too he shows his skill

Proves that matter ne’er can bind

The power of man’s creative will –

Yet Tyndall’s to his desk confined.

September 4th 1841.

‘My dear Tyndall’

I was almost consumed in the flame of your asserted independence. I was almost annihilated by the electric fluid¹ of your logical deductions, excellent premises and inevitable conclusions, which you have so well produced in order to maintain that though ‘the right of thought cannot be denied, the right of action may’. Did I say in my last letter,² my beloved disciple, that matter and mind can be acted on alike? If I did, I am a very idiot. But as well as I can remember I used two or three interrogatives about independence that I might bring the engines of your mighty mind to act upon that fourteen stone of unmanageable substance which has so decided to control your bodily movements. I feel great pleasure at your explanation of Mr Fenwick’s hospitality to those placed under his superintendence.³ So you tying Mr Fenwick by the legs on a pole is as feasible as for a mouse to tie a bell about a cat’s neck – well to be sure, the poor mouse dare not come within the precincts of Mr puss’s hemisphere, nor can poor Tyndall look upon rattle-snake Fenwick, without being rivetted to his desk. For heaven’s sake spare your poor old teacher – do not bring the artillery of your Ethics to bear on him, pardon whatever inconsistencies may breathe through his epistles to you – because such may happen from his anxiety to behold you face to face.

If action and reaction continue the same,⁴ you are like to remain stationary. I flatter myself that you will add such an impetus to Mr Fenwick’s mind as will compel him to concede to you the privilege of coming to see a beloved mother whose only hope is centered in you. Nero has encountered Paul⁵ but Paul had a firm supporter⁶ who, by his ingenuity, rescued him from the fell fangs of his vile persecutor, and as his generous deliverer has, by a particular investigation, given him a longer day to live, I shall shed further luster round his path by a general illustration.

Assume [triangle] abc – erect gh –gd & <word(s) excised> to df join dh. Construct the <word(s) excised> FJD having JF and FID– supplement of half the abm– continue FI and make Ide– dIe. Lastly join eg then will de, ge, and Te be the three required lines.⁷

You may perceive that the question admits of as many solutions as there are points in the law. There is a nice little crambo⁸ arising out of the above solution which may be put to Paul’s Neroical annihilator – namely– ‘required the locus of the vertices of all the triangles that will fulfill the conditions of the problem’. This is a stickler of my own, though marked with inverted comas; and to disclose to you the secrets, the locus is a hyperbola. A very big word an exterminator.

Your faithful teacher | John Conwill

RI MS JT/1/11/3521

LT Transcript Only