April 1, 1853, while engaged in making some notes on a logical point, an idea occurred which was perfectly new to me, on the mode of conciliating the notions _omnipresence_ and _indivisibility into parts_. What it was is no matter here: suffice it that, since it was published elsewhere (in a paper on _Infinity_, _Camb. Phil. Trans._ vol. xi. p. 1) I have not had it produced to me. I had just finished a paragraph on the subject, when a parcel came in from a bookseller containing Heywood's[96] _Analysis of Kant's Critick_, 1844.
{ 50} On turning over the leaves I found (p. 109) the identical thought which up to this day, I only know as in my own paper, or in Kant. I feel sure I had not seen it before, for it is in Kant's first edition, which was never translated to my knowledge; and it does not appear in the later editions. Mr. Heywood gives some account of the first edition.
In the broadsheet which gave account of the dying scene of Charles II, it is said that the Roman Catholic priest was introduced by P. M. A. C. F. The chain was this: the Duchess of Portsmouth[97] applied to the Duke of York, who may have consulted his Cordelier confessor, Mansuete, about procuring a priest, and the priest was smuggled into the king's room by the Duchess and Chiffinch.[98] Now the letters are a verbal acrostic of _Père Mansuete a Cordelier Friar_, and a syllabic acrostic of _PortsMouth and ChifFinch_. This is a singular coincidence. Macaulay adopted the first interpretation, preferring it to the second, which I brought before him as the conjecture of a near relative of my own. But Mansuete is not mentioned in his narrative: it may well be doubted whether the writer of a broadside for English readers would use _Père_ instead of _Father_. And the person who really "reminded" the Duke of "the duty he owed to his brother," was the Duchess and not Mansuete. But my affair is only with the coincidence.