This tract, which was not printed in the collected works, and is now excessively rare, is mentioned in _Notes and Queries_, 1st S., v, 490, 573; 2d S., ix, 15. The boyish satire on Newton is amusing. Speaking of old Benjamin Martin,[335] he goes on as follows:
"But the most elegant account of the matter [attraction] is by that hominiform animal, Mr. Benjamin Martin, who having attended Dr. Desaguliers'[336] fine, raree, gallanty shew for some years [Desaguliers was one of the first who gave public experimental lectures, before the saucy boy was born] in the capacity of a turnspit, has, it seems, taken it into his head to set up for a philosopher."
Thus is preserved the fact, unknown to his biographers, that Benj. Martin was an assistant to Desaguliers in his lectures. Hutton[337] says of him, that "he was well skilled in the whole circle of the mathematical and philosophical sciences, and wrote useful books on every one of them": this is quite true; and even at this day he is read by twenty where Horne is read by one; see the stalls, _passim_. All that I say of him, indeed my knowledge of the tract, is due to this contemptuous mention of a more durable man than himself. My assistant secretary at the Astronomical Society, the late Mr. Epps,[338] bought the copy at a stall because his eye was caught by the notice of "Old Ben Martin," of whom he was a great reader. Old Ben could not be a Fellow of the Royal Society, because he kept a shop: even though the shop sold nothing but philosophical instruments. Thomas Wright, similarly situated as to shop and goods, never was a Fellow. The Society of our day has greatly degenerated: those of the old time would be pleased, no doubt, that the glories of their day { 154} should be commemorated. In the early days of the Society, there was a similar difficulty about Graunt, the author of the celebrated work on mortality. But their royal patron, "who never said a foolish thing," sent them a sharp message, and charged them if they found any more such tradesmen, they should "elect them without more ado."
Horne's first pamphlet was published when he was but twenty-one years old. Two years afterwards, being then a Fellow of his college, and having seen more of the world, he seems to have felt that his manner was a little too pert. He endeavored, it is said, to suppress his first tract: and copies are certainly of extreme rarity. He published the following as his maturer view: