Regularity in habits was impossible to a student who had prolonged
fits of what he called his mathematical trances. Hours for rest and
hours for meals could only be snatched in the occasional the lucid
intervals between one attack of Quaternions and the next. When
hungry, he would go to see whether any thing could be found on the
sideboard; when thirsty, he would visit the locker, and the one
blemish in the man's personal character is that these latter visits
were sometimes paid too often.
As an example of one of Hamilton's rare diversions from the all-
absorbing pursuit of Quaternions, we find that he was seized with
curiosity to calculate back to the date of the Hegira, which he found
on the 15th July, 622. He speaks of the satisfaction with which he
ascertained subsequently that Herschel had assigned precisely the
same date. Metaphysics remained also, as it had ever been, a
favourite subject of Hamilton's readings and meditations and of
correspondence with his friends. He wrote a very long letter to Dr.
Ingleby on the subject of his "Introduction to Metaphysics." In it
Hamilton alludes, as he has done also in other places, to a
peculiarity of his own vision. It was habitual to him, by some
defect in the correlation of his eyes, to see always a distinct image
with each; in fact, he speaks of the remarkable effect which the use
of a good stereoscope had on his sensations of vision.
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