P. 153. Deans Yard, Westminster.—­Several of the annual budgets of abuse, obscenity, and impudent imposture, bearing on their title-pages various names, but written by “John Gadbury, Student in Physic and Astrology,” were dated from “my house, Brick Court, Dean’s Yard, Westminster;” or this slightly varied, occasionally being, “Brick Court, near the Dean’s Yard,” &c.  I have not seen a complete series of Gadbury’s Almanacks, but those I refer to range from 1688 to 1694 (incomplete).  His burial in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in 1704, is noticed by Mr. Cunningham, at p. 313.  As brick was then only used in the more costly class of domestic buildings, this would seem to indicate that prophecy was then a lucrative trade; and that the successor and pupil of the “arch-rogue, William Lilly” was quite as fortunate in his speculations as his master had been.  It is a truth as old as society itself, that “knaves grow rich while honest men starve.”  Whilst Gadbury was “wallowing in plenty,” the author of Hudibras was perishing for want of a crust!

P. 153. Denzil Street.—­Here, about the middle of the street, on the south side, lived Theophilus Holdred, a jobbing watchmaker, whose name will always hold a place in one department of mathematical history.  He discovered a method of approximating to the roots of numerical equations, of considerable ingenuity.  He, however, lost in his day and generation the reputation that was really due to him for it, by his laying claim to more than he had effected, and seeking to deprive other and more gifted men of the reputation due to a more perfect solution of the same problem.  He was, indeed, brought before the public as the tool of a faction; and, as the tools of faction generally are, he was sacrificed by his own supporters when he was no longer of any use to them.

I once called upon him, in company with Professor Leyburn, of the Royal Military College, but I forget whether in 1829 or 1830.  We found him at his bench—­a plain, elderly, and heavy-looking personage.  He seemed to have become “shy” of our class, and some time and some address were requisite to get him to speak with any freedom:  but ultimately we placed him at his ease, and he spoke freely.  We left him with the conviction that he was the bona fide discoverer of his own method; and that he had no distinct conception, even then, of the principle of the methods which he had been led by his friends to claim, of having also discovered Horner’s process before Horner himself had published it.  He did not (ten years after the publication of Horner’s method) even then understand it.  He understood his own perfectly, and I have not the slightest doubt of the correctness of his own statement, of its having been discovered by him fifty years before.