THE EINSTEIN HYPOTHESIS [To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOB."]
SIR,—The lines in- which " the lone inventor by his demon haunted" is so dexterously sketched by Prior will be familiar enough to many Johnians, as from the Ode which he wrote as an " exercise " in the year he was elected to a Fellowship—the year after the publication of Newton's Principia. May I take the opportunity of asking any one of your readers whose amusement in tracing the source of the quotation I may, peradventure, have checked too abruptly if he can, en revanche, give me the source of another quotation, which is also much to the point in all such controversies ? I refer to : "Truth, like a torch, the more it's shook it shines." It was adopted by Sir William Hamilton as a motto for the title-page of his Discus- sions on Philosophy. I have little hope of- ever being successful in tracking down this line, which has defied the readers of Notes and Queries for over sixty years.---I am, Sir, &c.,
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