MACKAY, Robert William (1803-82). The Progress of the Intellect, as Exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and the Hebrews, London, 1850, 8vo, contemporary half vellum gilt. FIRST EDITION. Please see provenance notes below. (2)

MACKAY, Robert William (1803-82).  The Progress of the Intellect, as Exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and the Hebrews. London: John Chapman, 1850. 2 volumes, 8vo (214 x 135mm). Very attractively bound in contemporary half vellum gilt, the spine elaborately decorated in gilt with red and green morocco lettering-pieces, marbled edges. Provenance: "Lovelace, Sept. 1857" (signature on title); CHARLES WHEATSTONE (signed contemporary slip inserted at the front of the first volume); "Library, Ben Damph Forest" (library stamp of the Earls of Lovelace on the front free endpaper and coat-of-arms stamped in gilt at the foot of the spines). Also inserted at the front is a one-page autograph letter, in the original envelope, to Lady [ADA] LOVELACE from Charles Wheatstone, dated [18]47, stating, "Dear Lady Lovelace, I give myself the pleasure of accepting your kind invitation for Thursday next, Yours very truly, C. Wheatstone." Augusta Ada Lovelace, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52), was a renowned English mathematician and innovator in computer science. She was also the only legitimate child of Lord and Lady Byron. Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) was an important scientist and inventor. See his extensive entry in DNB (which chooses to omit Ada Lovelace). FIRST EDITION of this controversial work whose author was renowned as a philosopher, chiefly on religious matters, and a free-thinking secularist. It would have found a sympathetic readership in Ada Lovelace, with whose family this copy is clearly connected, and Charles Wheatstone, but it was by no means met with universal approval, as evidenced by this scathing contemporary review by John Relly Beard, a Unitarian minister and theologian, which appeared in The British Quarterly Review in 1850: "The author ... surpassing the magicians of Egypt in dexterity, has not only imitated Divine deeds, but gone far to supersede the necessity of a creative power. Only give him his law of development, and he will transform you a crab into a monkey, and then make the monkey into a man ..." It is interesting to note that this review appeared almost a decade before the first publication of Charles Darwin's magnum opus. In January 1851, the work was also the subject of the first contribution to The Westminster Review - a radical publication Mackay actively supported - by George Eliot, a writer who finds herself rather more in sympathy with some of the book's more controversial themes, and in which, she claimed: "... we find passages of pre-eminent beauty - gems into which are absorbed the finest rays of intelligence and feeling. We believe Mr. Mackay's work is unique in its kind ..." (2)