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Physics of Data Science
and Machine Learning
Physics of Data Science
and Machine Learning
Ijaz A. Rauf
Adjunct Professor
School of Graduate Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada
Associate Researcher
Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
President
Eminent-Tech Corporation, Bradford, ON, Canada
First edition published 2022
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. While all rea-
sonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, neither the author[s] nor the
publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.
The publishers wish to make clear that any views or opinions expressed in this book by individual edi-
tors, authors or contributors are personal to them and do not necessarily reflect the views/opinions of
the publishers. The information or guidance contained in this book is intended for use by medical, sci-
entific or health-care professionals and is provided strictly as a supplement to the medical or other pro-
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instructions and the appropriate best practice guidelines. Because of the rapid advances in medical sci-
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DOI: 10.1201/9781003206743
Typeset in Minion
by codeMantra
Dedicated to:
vii
viii ◾ Contents
5.4
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS 101
5.4.1 Two-Level Full Factorial Design and Analysis 106
5.4.2
Three-Level Full Factorial Design and Analysis 111
5.4.3 Partial Factorial or Fractional Factorial Designs 116
5.4.3.1 Half Fraction of 2k Design 116
5.4.3.2 Orthogonal Array Designs or Taguchi’s
L Designs 118
5.4.4
Historical Data Analysis 120
5.5
SYSTEMS MODELING 121
5.5.1
Linear Models 122
5.5.2
Nonlinear Models 124
REFERENCES, 187
INDEX, 191
Preface: Motivation
and Rationale
xiii
xiv ◾ Preface: Motivation and Rationale
Ijaz A. Rauf
March 2021
Author
xv
xvi ◾ Author
Introduction
DOI: 10.1201/9781003206743-1 1
2 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
to opt for generative models, namely those that allow synthetic data gen-
eration before any observation. Nevertheless, a depiction of nature relies
on numerous assumptions and approximations. In comparison, discrimi-
native models do not have a mechanism for generating the data. These
are based on a series of techniques that view the experimental data as a
direct input, which is then used to refine the fitting model iteratively. This
method is possible thanks to Bayes’ theorem.
There is also plenty that physicists can learn from modern statistics
and probability, and the information theory. Complemented by a few
primary principles from these disciplines, the techniques already mas-
tered by physicists from statistical mechanics and field theory can be
adapted for use in the most complex data analysis tasks facing other dis-
ciplines of science. It may be surprising that mathematical techniques
initially developed in physics, including those necessary to calculate the
partition function, were transferred and further developed into other
research domains. It is time that physicists to learn and reclaim these
advancements.
Continuous
Numerical/Quantitative
Discrete
Data Types
Binary
Qualitative/Descriptive
Categorical
FIGURE 1.2 Data from Table 1.1 transformed into information for the observer
for better decision-making.
An Overview of
Classical Mechanics
DOI: 10.1201/9781003206743-2 11
12 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
laws to different situations, such as the Lagrange, the Hamilton, and the
Hamilton–Jacobi theoretical systems.
Italian French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange
developed a mathematical technique known as the Lagrangian that is a
function of the generalized coordinates, their time derivatives, and time
and contains details about system dynamics. Lagrangian mechanics is
suitable for conservative force systems and, in any coordinate system, for
bypassing constraint forces. It is possible to compensate for dissipative and
induced effects by splitting the external forces into a total of potential and
nonpotential strengths, resulting in a set of modified Euler–Lagrange (EL)
equations. For simplicity, EL equations may use generalized coordinates to
leverage symmetries in the system or the geometry of the constraints that
can simplify the system’s motion solution. As a case of Noether’s theorem,
Lagrangian mechanics also shows conserved quantities and their sym-
metries directly. Lagrangian mechanics is essential for its wide-ranging
applications and for its role in advancing profound physics understanding.
The Hamilton mechanics is the formulation of the theory of static action
by William Rowan Hamilton. He claims that a physical system’s dynamics
are defined by a fundamental equation based on a single function, which
incorporates all the physical details about the system and the forces acting
on it. The variational problem is analogous to and permits the derivation
of the physical system’s differential equations of motion. While initially
formulated for classical mechanics, Hamilton’s principle still applies to
physical fields such as the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. It plays
a vital role in the theories of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory,
and criticality.
2.1 NEWTONIAN MECHANICS
In Newtonian mechanics, a given body’s movement is evaluated in terms
of the forces acting upon it. Space and time are the two fundamental prin-
ciples for the study of motion, all of which are continuous variables. A body’s
location in space must be defined as a function of time to understand and
describe its motion. A coordinate system is used as a reference frame for this
reason. One simple method that we often use is the Cartesian coordinate
method. The position of a point P in a Cartesian coordinate system is speci-
fied by three coordinates (x, y, z) or spherical polar coordinates (r, θ, ϕ), as
shown in Figure 2.1. The particle P motion can then be studied by the change
in the position coordinates over time.
An Overview of Classical Mechanics ◾ 13
, ,
P=
, ,
x
X
y
Y
FIGURE 2.1 Cartesian and spherical coordinate system to describe the position
of a particle.
dp dv d 2r
F= = m = m 2 = ma (2.1)
dt dt dt
14 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
where a stands for acceleration and r is the position vector in the Cartesian
space. Equation 2.1 is also called the particle’s motion equation. It is a
differential equation of the second order. Provided force F, the position
and velocity of a particle are known at a specific time; the particle’s position
and velocity can be found at any other time with the help of the second law.
It means that the correct values of coordinates and velocity (or momentum
p = mv) must be known simultaneously at a given moment to understand
the particle’s trajectory fully.
Third Law of Motion: When an object exerts a force on another object,
there is an equal but opposite in direction force exerted simultaneously
by the second object on the first. In two particles (1 and 2), the force F12
applied by particle 1 on particle 2 is equal but opposite in direction to the
force F21 exerted by particle 2 on particle 1. In other words:
dp1 dp
F12 = − F21 or = − 2 or m1a1 = −m2a2 (2.2)
dt dt
dp d ( r × p ) dL
Γ=r×F =r× = = (2.3)
dt dt dt
dL
Γ =0= implies L = Constant (2.4)
dt
2 2 2
dv m 2
∫ ∫
W12 = F .dr = m .dr = m v dv =
dt 2 ∫ ( )
v 2 − v12 = K 2 − K1 (2.5)
1 1 1
2 2
∫
1
∫
W12 = F .dr = − U ( r ).dr = U1 − U 2
1
(2.6)
n particles P1, P2, …Pn all interacting with each other. Supposing all other
influences are removed from the system, then acceleration a0 induced by
the interaction from the rest of the particles is given as:
where a01 and a02 are accelerations induced on P0 as if P1 and P2 were indi-
vidually interacting with P0. Multiplying both sides of Equation 2.7 with
mass m0 of the particle P0 gives us:
∑ ∑
n n
m1r1 + m2 r2 +…+ mn rn mi ri mi ri
R= = i=1
= i=1
(2.8)
∑
n
m1 + m2 +…+ mn mi M
i=1
force toward the Sun. Newton took up the gravitation problem and proved
that the second law of Kepler is valid for every central force, not just for the
inverse square force due to gravitational attraction.
Newton’s law of gravitation postulates that any object with mass attracts
any other object with mass, with force called gravitation. The third law
stipulates that when gravitational interaction occurs between particles, the
interaction forces must be equal in magnitude, opposite in direction, and
parallel to the straight line that separates the particles. Equation 2.9 sets
the magnitude of the forces of gravitational interaction:
m1m2
F12 = F21 = G (2.9)
R2
Here m1 and m2 are masses of the particles, R is the distance between them,
and G is the universal gravitational constant. G is not dimensionless; its
numerical value depends on the units of mass, length, and force. In SI
units, the constant of gravitation is given by G = 6.67 × 10−11 Nm2/kg2. The
same is true for a mass distributed over a large volume; for example, if M is
the mass of the Earth that is spread over the radius R of the Earth, it can be
treated as a point mass, M being placed at the center of the planet. Thus a
small particle of mass m experiences a force given as:
Mm M
F =G = mg or g = G 2 (2.10)
R2 R
2.2 LAGRANGIAN MECHANICS
During previous sections, we illustrated the usefulness of Newton’s laws
of motion in addressing several issues. Nevertheless, if the system is sub-
ject to external constraints, it can be challenging to solve the equations
of motion, and often it can even be challenging to formulate them. The
forces of constraints are typically very complex or unknown, which hin-
ders formalism. Two separate approaches, Lagrange’s and Hamilton’s
formulas, were created to solve these difficulties. Both methods are con-
structed based on an energy approach so that Newtonian formalism
derives from it.
18 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
2.2.1 Constraints
A constrained object is not able to move in any form freely. The conditions
that restrict the object’s motion are called constraints. For example, in a
container, the gas molecules are limited by the vessel’s walls to travel only
within the box. Mainly there are two types of constraints: holonomic and
nonholonomic. When a system has constraints that are only geometric or
integrable kinematic, it is holonomic. When it does have nonintegrable
cinematic constraints, it is nonholonomic.
Holonomic constraints are those where the conditions of constraint are
expressed as equations connecting the spatial coordinates and time only
and do not require higher-order derivatives such as velocity or acceleration
in the following form:
f ( r1 , r2 , r3 ,rn , t ) = 0 (2.11)
For example, in a rigid body, the distance between any two particles of the
body remains constant during motion, which is expressible as:
2
ri − rj = cij2 (2.12)
where cij is the distance between the particles i and j with position vectors ri
and rj. Another example could be of a beaded particle sliding on a circular
wire of radius a in the xy plane. In this case, the equation of constraints is:
The center of the sphere here is the origin of the coordinate system.
In nonholonomic constraints, the constraints are expressed as relation-
ships between the velocities of the system’s particles as:
f ( x1 , x 2 , …, x1 , x 2 , …, t ) = 0 (2.15)
x 2 + y 2 = l02 (2.16)
x 2 + y 2 = l 2 (t ) (2.17)
where l(t) is the length of the string at time t. Constraints add two types of
technical issues in solving mechanical problems. The ri coordinates are no
longer independent because constraint equations relate them. This problem
is overcome in the case of holonomic constraints by the use of generalized
coordinates. The second problem is because the forces of the constraints
cannot be clearly defined. These are among the problem’s unknowns,
which must be derived from the solution. This difficulty can be overcome if
the problem is formulated in the Lagrangian form, in which the restriction
forces do not appear.
r1 = r1 ( q1 , q2 , …, q3 N − k , t ) , r2 = r2 ( q1 , q2 , …, q3 N − k , t ) , ....,
rN = rN ( q1 , q2 , …, q3N − k , t ) (2.18)
In analogous with Cartesian coordinates, time derivatives q1 , q2 , q3 ,… are
defined as generalized velocities. We have shown that a system’s entire
structure can be determined by n = 3N − k independent generalized coor-
dinates q1 , q2 , q3 ,..., qn . To consider the n q’s as the coordinates of a point in
an n-dimensional space is useful. This n-dimensional space is called the
configuration space, with a coordinate representing each dimension. Since
generalized coordinates are not necessarily coordinates of position, con-
figuration space is not necessarily related to the three-dimensional physi-
cal space. The motion path also does not necessarily resemble the actual
particle spatial direction.
δ Wi = Fi .δ ri = ( Fi e + fi ) .δ ri (2.19)
n n n n
δW = ∑
i =1
δ Wi = ∑(
i =1
)
Fi e + fi .δ ri = ∑
i=1
Fi e .δ ri + ∑ f .δ r = 0
i =1
i i (2.20)
n n
δW = ∑δW = ∑F .δ r = 0
i=1
i
i =1
i
e
i (2.21)
∑( F
i=1
i
e
)
+ fi − p i .δ ri = 0 (2.22)
22 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
∑( F
i=1
i
e
)
− p i .δ ri = 0 (2.23)
∑( F − p ).δ r = 0
i=1
i i i (2.24)
∂ ri ∂r ∂r
∂ri =
∂ q1
δ q1 + i δ q2 + …+ i δ qn =
∂ q2 ∂ qn ∑ ∂∂qr δ q
j
i
j
j (2.25)
∂ ri ∂r ∂r ∂r
ri =
∂ q1
.q1 + i .q2 +…+ i .qn + i =
∂ q2 ∂ qn ∂t ∑ ∂∂qr .q + ∂∂rt
j
i
j
j
i
(2.26)
∂ ri
∑i=1
Fi .δ ri = ∑∑
j
i
.δ q j =
∂ qj ∑Q .δ q
j
j j (2.27)
∑ p .δ r = ∑ ∑ dtd m r ∂∂qr − ∑m r dtd ∂∂qr δ q
i
i i
j i
i i
i
j
i
i i
i
j
j
d ∂ ∂ n
=
dt ∂ q j ∑ i
1
2
mi vi2 −
∂ qj
∑
i
1
2
mi vi2 =
∑( dtd ∂∂ qK − ∂∂ qK )
j =1
j j
(2.28)
Substituting Equations 2.32 and 2.31 in Equation 2.28, we get:
n
∑ dtd ∂∂ qK − ∂∂ qK − Q δ q = 0
j =1
j j
j j (2.29)
Considering
j j
(2.30)
d ∂ K ∂ K ∂U
Equation 2.29 can be rewritten as − + = 0, and if the
dt ∂ q j ∂ q j ∂ q j
∂U
potential U is a function of position only, i.e., = 0, we can write:
∂ q j
d ∂ ∂
(K −U )− (K −U ) = 0 (2.31)
dt ∂ q j ∂ qj
This introduces the Lagrangian function L(q, q, t) = K (q, q, t) − U(q), and
d ∂L ∂L
thus Equation 2.31 can be written as − = 0 for all j = 1,2,3, …, n.
dt ∂ q j ∂ q j
Those n equations are known as Lagrange’s equations, one for each inde-
pendent generalized coordinate. These constitute a set of n differential
equations of the second order for n unknown functions q j(t), and the
general solution includes 2n constants of integration.
For specific systems, the forces acting are not conservative, say where
one component can be obtained from potential, and the other is dissipa-
tive. For such cases, it is possible to write the Lagrange equations as:
d ∂L ∂L ´
− =Qj (2.32)
dt ∂ q j ∂ q j
´
where the force Q j does not arise from the potential.
24 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
2.3 HAMILTONIAN MECHANICS
Lagrangian formulation describes a system of differential equations of
second order, written for a series of variables representing the location
of a physical system of interest. The Hamiltonian theorem implies an
analogous definition of the system’s position and velocity in terms of first-
order equations written for independent variables. Hamiltonian equations
can be derived from Lagrangian ones by successive application, in a the-
ory of differential equations, of two well-known procedures: reduction of
order and change of variables. Both procedures are intended to obtain a
system of equations equal to a given system.
In Lagrangian formalism, generalized coordinates (qi ’s) and generalized
velocities (qi ’s) are used as independent coordinates to formulate complex
issues that result in linear differential equations of second order. In
Hamilton’s formalism, generalized coordinates and generalized momenta
(pi ’s) are essential variables for problem formulation. The formulation is
based primarily on the system’s Hamiltonian function, a combination of
system qi ’s and pi ’s. Mathematically, the resulting linear differential equa-
tions in the first order are simpler to manage. The formalism of Hamilton
also serves as the base for further advances such as quantum mechanics.
The Hamiltonian function for a system is defined as:
H= ∑p q − L(q, q, t )
i
i i (2.33)
dH = ∑ p .dq + q .dp − ∂∂qL dq − ∂∂qL dq − ∂∂Lt dt
i
i i i i
i
i
i
i
= ∑ q .dp − ∂∂qL dq − ∂∂Lt dt
i
i i
i
i (2.35)
dH = ∑ ∂∂ Hq dq + ∂∂ Hp dp + ∂∂Ht dt
i
i
i
i
i (2.36)
∂H ∂H ∂H ∂L
qi = , p i = & =− (2.37)
∂ pi ∂ qi ∂t ∂t
∂H ∂H
qi = and p i = − + Qi (2.38)
∂ pi ∂ qi
M M
g =G 2
or in general in vector form, we can write g ( r ) = −G 2 r̂ (2.39)
r r
where rˆ is the position unit vector and the negative sign indicates that
the gravity always points toward the Earth. The scientific discovery
that inertial mass and gravitational mass are equal with unprecedented
precision amounts contributes to the definition of the gravitational force’s
strength equivalent to the particle’s acceleration. This discovery is the
starting point for the equivalence principle, which contributes to general
relativity. For an independent collection of masses Mi, with the center of
mass located at ri , the gravitational field is given as:
g ( r ) = −G ∑ Mr −(rr− r )
i
i
i
3
i
(2.40)
ρ ( X )d 3 X ( r − X )
g ( r ) = −G
∫∫∫V r−X
3 (2.41)
Considering Gauss’s law for gravity, the gravitational field g(r) can be
described as a gradient of a gravitational potential Φ(r) as follows:
g ( r ) = −∇Φ( r ) (2.42)
1 q
E (r ) = rˆ (2.43)
4πε 0 r 2
E ( r ) = −∇V ( r ) (2.44)
28 ◾ Physics of Data Science and Machine Learning
Equation 2.44a can be used to describe the motion of a test charge particle
in an electrical field.
dv
m = qv × B (2.45)
dt
Taking the dot product with v on both sides, the right side of the equation
becomes zero, thus providing us with the equation:
dv
v.m = 0 or
dt
d 1 2
mv = 0 or K = constant
(2.46)
dt 2
d
m ( vll + v ) = q ( vll + v ) × B (2.47)
dt
Equation (2.9) splits into two equations, one of which describes the motion
of the particle parallel to the field and the other describes the motion per-
pendicular to the magnetic field as:
dvll dv
m = 0 and m = q(v × B ) (2.48)
dt dt
The set of expressions in Equation 2.48 indicates that the velocity com-
ponent parallel to the magnetic field vll is constant. Simultaneously, the
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THE BICENTENARY OF GRAY.
BORN DECEMBER 26, 1716.
who draw his car, and also for his one great lyrical achievement, the
Ode on St. Cecilia’s day. Gray’s admiration for Shakespeare and
Milton as models was tempered by his recognition of what Dryden
had done for the English language, in rendering it more ‘refined and
free.’ To Beattie he wrote, ‘Remember Dryden and be blind to all his
faults,’ and he told him in an interview (according to Mason) that ‘if
there was any excellence in his own numbers he had learned it
wholly from that great poet; and pressed him with great earnestness
to study him, as his choice of words and versification were singularly
happy and harmonious.’ If Dryden’s ‘Alexander’s Feast’ be
compared with the ‘Progress of Poesy’ we can see how successfully
Gray has blended the qualities he most admired in his several
masters. From Dryden he has caught the smoothness and strength
of his line; but Gray’s rhythm owes more to ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Comus’
than to the commonplace movement of Dryden’s ode; while the
imaginative beauty of its many pictures was part of his debt to the
greatest of them all. There is one other great English poet to whom
Gray was ready to acknowledge a debt. He told Norton Nicholls that
he never sat down to compose poetry without reading Spenser for a
considerable time previously. I do not remember that Gray ever
incorporates a Spenserian phrase in his own verse; his instinct
would have told him that the two styles would not agree. But his
instinct would also tell him that to bathe himself in Spenser before
entering the temple of his Muse was a sure way of freeing himself
from any pollution of mind or spirit.
The ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’ was composed at
intervals between 1746 and 1750, and sent to Walpole in June of
that year. Walpole showed it to many friends and in some way it got
into the hands of a publisher, who wrote to Gray announcing his
intention of printing it, and begging his ‘indulgence.’ Gray wrote at
once to Walpole desiring him to let Dodsley print it without delay from
his copy, and it accordingly appeared in February 16, 1751, in a
quarto pamphlet, priced sixpence, and entitled ‘An Elegy wrote in a
Country Church Yard.’ The fashionable solecism must be attributed
to Walpole, who saw the poem through the press, and prefixed this
short ‘advertisement’:
In his letter thanking Walpole for his ‘paternal care’ of the poem
Gray speaks of the advertisement as ‘saving his honour’; which can
only mean that he thought the poem unworthy of being offered to the
public by its author. That this was not a mere affectation is shown by
his annoyance at its instant popularity, which he thought to be due to
its subject. He said it would have been equally popular if written in
prose. He writes to his friend Dr. Wharton, after speaking of ‘A Long
Story,’ which had been ‘shew’d about in Town, and not liked at all’:
‘On the other hand the Stanzas have had the Misfortune by
Mr. W.’s fault to be made still more publick, for wᶜʰ they
certainly were never meant, but is too late to complain. They
have been so applauded, it is quite a Shame to repeat it. I
mean not to be modest; but I mean it is a Shame for those,
who have said such superlative Things about them, that I
can’t repeat them.’
Gray’s modesty was still further tried in the autumn of the same
year by Walpole’s insistence that he should allow his still
unpublished odes, on Spring, on Eton College, and on Walpole’s cat,
with whatever else he had to furnish a volume, to appear with
illustrations by Walpole’s protégé, Richard Bentley, a son of the great
Master of Trinity. The negotiations, so far as we have them in Gray’s
correspondence, are diverting. Gray discovered that it was in
contemplation to prefix his own portrait; this he forbade, though it
was already half engraved. He objected to the proposed title and
insisted that it should be ‘Designs by Mr. R. Bentley for six poems of
Mr. T. Gray,’ on the ground that ‘the verses were only subordinate
and explanatory to the Drawings and suffered to come out thus only
for that reason.’ Lastly, he objected to Dodsley’s proposal to omit the
‘Mr.’ before the names of the poet and artist, as being ‘an uncommon
sort of simplicity that looks like affectation.’ This modesty may have
been excessive, but it is not ridiculous when we reflect that Gray had
not yet produced his finest work, and knew that he had it in him to
write something more worthy of himself and English poetry than the
occasional pieces which Walpole wished to publish, or even than the
deservedly popular Elegy.
In 1757 Walpole issued, as the first book from his new printing-
press at Strawberry Hill, a quarto pamphlet entitled ‘Odes by Mr.
Gray,’ with a vignette on the title-page of his Gothick castle, and a
motto from Pindar ΦΩΝΑΝΤΑ ΣΥΝΕΤΟΙΣΙ which Gray englished as
‘vocal to the intelligent alone.’ It contained two odes, here called
simply Ode I and Ode II, ‘The Progress of Poesy’ and ‘The Bard.’
The first of these odes is undoubtedly Gray’s masterpiece, and
deserves all the study that can be given to it. The subject, that of the
great power of poetry, was one very near to Gray’s heart as well as
to his mind, and the scheme is well thought out. There is no feeling
of strain in any part of it. Personification, with Gray generally a sign
of strain, is kept within the limits approved by the great masters.
Thus we have ‘antic Sports and blue-eyed Pleasures’ just as in the
‘Allegro’ we have ‘Jest and youthful Jollity’; but there is no elaborate
series of abstract figures like that in the two stanzas on the Passions
in the Ode on Eton College. This fashionable personification perhaps
justified itself to Gray as a combination of the imaginative method of
Shakespeare with the clear definition of Dryden. What in
Shakespeare would have been a metaphor, hinted at and
immediately succeeded by another, becomes too often with Gray a
substantial allegorical personage. There seems to us to-day
something essentially unpoetical, because artificial, in the posturing
groups of Furies and Graces, and we wonder that Gray with his fine
critical sense did not feel this. We must recognise, however, that
whenever he is deeply moved he escapes from the snare. Two
consecutive stanzas in the ‘Ode on Vicissitude’ show how his verse
becomes more direct as it deepens in feeling.
if not most modern of all in that quatrain of the ‘Elegy’ which Gray’s
feeling for unity expunged, but which we cannot spare:
Leslie Stephen says happily about Gray and his friends that ‘they
were feeling round vaguely for a new mode of literary and artistic
enjoyment.’ This feeling after something more satisfying to the whole
range of thought and emotion than was afforded by the critical
school of Pope had already given evidence of itself in several ways.
Thomson and Dyer, following each his particular bent, had found
inspiration for poetry in country life and landscape. Gray welcomed
the venture of both these poets. We know from his letters how
attentive was his own observation, and how he took long journeys in
search of the picturesque, especially in mountain scenery; but the
evidence of this in his poetry is only incidental, as in the reference to
‘Snowdon’s shaggy side.’ Another form taken by this dissatisfaction
was the revival of interest in the popular ballad literature. The
discovery by Thomas Percy of his famous folio started a new form of
poetry in which Goldsmith led the way. But though Gray had seen
Percy’s book as early as 1761, it came too late to influence his
production; and we may guess that his mind was too erudite to have
found expression in the simplicity of the ballad. Of far more interest
to him was Macpherson’s discovery of fragments of Highland poetry.
He describes himself as ‘extasié with their infinite beauty’; on which
the late Mr. Tovey, to whom a great debt is owed for his scholarly
edition of Gray’s letters, makes the dry comment that some of the
fragments were worked up from passages in ‘The Bard.’ We may be
glad that Macpherson’s discovery came, like Percy’s, too late to
influence Gray’s own poetry. His interest in the early literature of the
European nations has given us a few fragments from the Norse and
Welch. The remark of Leslie Stephen quoted above referred to the
interest that Gray and Walpole took in Gothic architecture. This
influenced Gray’s poetry only indirectly; but it had some effect in the
way it was presented to the public. When Walpole undertook to
convert his newly purchased house at Twickenham into a Gothick
castle, the artist he employed to help him in his designs was Richard
Bentley; and when Gray had sprung suddenly into fame by the
‘Elegy,’ Walpole urged him to publish his other poems with designs
by Bentley. Whether these deserve the poetical encomium Gray
made upon them, I will not presume to say; but they are undoubtedly
very ‘Gothick.’
It is as a poet that we celebrate Gray’s bicentenary, but those
persons who do not care for poetry may celebrate him as a man and
a letter-writer. As a man he is secure of our affection as soon as we
get to know him, and any one may know him who will read his
letters, of which there is a great store; and still more have come to
light lately, and have been well edited by Mr. Paget Toynbee. There
are few men of letters of so attractive a nature as Gray. Perhaps he
is the most lovable of all except Charles Lamb, and with Lamb,
despite many obvious differences, he has many points in common.
They were both solitary creatures living a recluse life, in the world
but not of it, their best companions among the dead; they were both
exquisite critics; they were both a prey to melancholy, or rather, as
Gray said, to ‘leukocholy’; white bile not black; they had both a
delicate and delightful humour; they were both the soul of gentle
goodness. And so it comes about that the letters of both, in which
they live to us, are among the few external goods which are
necessary to happiness. The charm of a letter of Gray’s lies partly in
this interest of his character, and partly in the perfect felicity with
which everything is said. There is nothing slovenly, or far-fetched, or
pompous, or makeshift; even in the shortest and apparently most
hasty note, his touch is perfectly sure and his taste faultless; if we
except some Hogarthian passages which smack of the age rather
than the individual. It might not seem probable beforehand that the
letters of a man whose days went ‘round and round like the blind
horse in the mill’—‘swinging from chapel or hall home and from
home to hall or chapel’—could have much to say that would be of
general interest. Occasionally, indeed, he goes a journey—the grand
tour with Walpole, or to the Highlands, or to see his friend Wharton at
Old Park, or to Stoke Poges to his relations, and then we get lively
enough descriptions. But these are episodes. The main topics of his
every-day correspondence are his melancholy or his indolence,
Mason’s poetry, Cambridge and Church news, the British Museum,
politics, criticism of current literature,—Rousseau, or Sterne, or
Dodsley’s poets,—his dab of musick and prints,’ gothick, hyacinths,
and the weather. Occasionally, only occasionally, he allows himself
to slip out a little town gossip, ‘as a decayed gentlewoman would a
piece of right mecklin or a little quantity of run tea, but this only now
and then, not to make a practice of it.’
THE REAL THING: ‘S. O. S.’
by william hope hodgson.
Copyright, 1917, by William Hope Hodgson, in the United States of America.
‘Big liner on fire in 55.43 N. and 32.19 W.,’ shouts the Captain,
diving into his chart-room. ‘Here we are! Give me the parallels!’
The First Officer and the Captain figure busily for a minute.
‘North, 15 West,’ says the Master; and ‘North, 15 West,’ assents
the First Officer, flinging down his pencil. ‘A hundred and seventeen
miles, dead in the wind!’
‘Come on!’ says the Captain; and the two of them dash out of the
chart-room into the roaring black night, and up on to the bridge.
‘North, 15 West!’ the Master shouts in the face of the burly
helmsman. ‘Over with her, smart!’
‘North, 15 West, Sir,’ shouts back the big quartermaster, and whirls
the spokes to starboard, with the steering-gear engine roaring.
The great vessel swings round against the night, with enormous
scends, smiting the faces of the great seas with her seventy-feet-
high bows.
Crash! A roar of water aboard, as a hundred phosphorescent tons
of sea-water hurls inboard out of the darkness, and rushes aft along
the lower decks, boiling and surging over the hatchways, capstans,
deck-fittings, and round the corners of the deck-houses.
The ship has hit the fifty-mile-an-hour gale full in the face, and the
engine telegraph stands at full speed. The Master has word with that
King of the Underworld, the Chief Engineer; and the Chief goes
below himself to take charge, just as the Master has taken charge on
deck.
There is fresh news from the Operator’s Room. The vessel
somewhere out in the night and the grim storm is the S.S.
Vanderfield, with sixty first-class passengers and seven hundred
steerage and she is alight forrard. The fire has got a strong hold, and
they have already lost three boats, smashed to pieces as they tried
to launch them, and every man, woman, and child in the boats
crushed to death or drowned.
‘Damn these old-fashioned davits!’ says the Master, as he reads
the wireless operator’s notes. ‘They won’t lift a boat out clear of the
ship’s side, if she’s rolling a bit. The boats in a ship are just
ornaments, if you’ve not got proper machinery for launching them.
We’ve got the new derricks, and we can lower a boat, so she strikes
the water, forty feet clear of the side, instead of bashing to pieces,
like a sixty-foot pendulum, against our side!’
He shouts a question over his shoulder, standing there by the
binnacle:
‘What’s she doing, Mister Andrews?’
‘Twenty and three-quarter knots, Sir,’ says the Second Officer, who
has been in charge. ‘But the Chief’s raising her revolutions every
minute.... She’s nearly on to the twenty-one now.’
‘And even if we lick that we’ll be over five hours reaching her,’
mutters the Master to himself.
Meanwhile the wireless is beating a message of hope across a
hundred miles of night and storm and wild waters.
‘Coming! The R.M.S. Cornucopia is proceeding at full speed in
your direction. Keep us informed how you are....’
Then follows a brief unofficial statement, a heart-to-heart word
between the young men operators of the two ships, across the
hundred-mile gulf of black seas:
‘Buck up, old man. We’ll do it yet! We’re simply piling into the
storm, like a giddy cliff. She’s doing close on twenty-one, they’ve just
told me, against this breeze; and the Chief’s down in the stokeholds
himself with a fourteen-inch wrench and a double watch of stokers!
Keep all your peckers up. I’ll let you know if we speed-up any more!’
The Operator has been brief and literal, and has rather under-
stated the facts. The Leviathan is now hurling all her fifty-thousand-
ton length through the great seas at something approaching a
twenty-two knot stride; and the speed is rising.
Down in the engine-room and stokeholds, the Chief, minus his
overalls, is a coatless demi-god, with life in one hand and a fourteen-
inch wrench in the other; not that this wrench is in any way
necessary, for the half-naked men stream willing sweat in a silence
broken only by the rasp of the big shovels and the clang of the
furnace-doors, and the Chief’s voice.
The Chief is young again; young and a King to-night, and the
rough days of his youth have surged back over him. He has picked
up the wrench unconsciously, and he walks about, twirling it in his
fist; and the stokers work the better for the homely sight of it, and the
sharp tang of his words, that miss no man of them all.
And the great ship feels the effect. Her giant tread has broken into
an everlasting thunder, as her shoulders hurl the seas to port and
starboard, in shattered hills of water, that surge to right and left in
half-mile drifts of phosphorescent foam, under the roll of her
Gargantuan flanks.
The first hour has passed, and there have been two fresh
messages from that vessel, flaming far off, lost and alone, out in the
wild roar of the waters. There has been an explosion forrard in the
burning ship, and the fire has come aft as far as the main bunkers.
There has been a panic attempt to lower two more of the boats, and
each has been smashed to flinders of wood against the side of the
burning ship, as she rolled. Every soul in them has been killed or
drowned, and the Operator in the burning ship asks a personal
question that has the first touch of real despair in it; and there
ensues another little heart-to-heart talk between the two young men:
‘Honest now, do you think you can do it?’
‘Sure,’ says the Operator in the Cornucopia. ‘We’re doing what
we’ve never done at sea before in heavy weather. We’re touching
within a knot of our “trials” speed—we’re doing twenty-four and a half
knots; and we’re doing it against this! Honour bright, old man! I’ll not
deceive you at a time like this. I never saw anything like what we’re
doing. All the engineers are in the engine-room, and all the officers
are on the boat-deck, overhauling the boats and gear. We’ve got
those new forty-foot boat derricks, and we can shove a boat into the
water with ’em, with the ship rolling half under. The Old Man’s on the
bridge; and I guess you’re just going to be saved all right.... You
ought to hear us! I tell you, man, she’s just welting the seas to a
pulp, and skating along to you on the top of them.’
The Operator is right. The great ship seems alive to-night, along
all her shapely eight hundred feet of marvellous, honest, beautiful
steel. Her enormous bows take the seas as on a horn, and hurl them
roaring into screaming drifts of foam. She is singing a song, fore and
aft, and the thunder of her grey steel flanks is stupendous, as she
spurns the mutilated seas and the gale and the bleak intolerable
miles into her wake.
The second and third hours pass, and part of the fourth, in an
intermittent thunder of speed. And the speed has been further
increased; for now the Leviathan is laying the miles astern, twenty-
nine in each hour; her sides drunken with black water and spume—a
dripping, league-conquering, fifty-thousand-ton shape of steel and
steam and brains, going like some stupendous Angel of Help across
the black Desolation of the night.
Incredibly far away, down on the black horizons of the night, there
shows a faint red glow. There is shouting along the bridge.
‘There she is!’ goes the word fore and aft. ‘There she is!’
Meanwhile the wireless messages pulse across the darkness: The
fire is burning with terrible fury. The fore-part of the Vanderfield’s iron
skin is actually glowing red-hot in places. Despair is seizing
everyone. Will the coming Cornucopia never, never come?
The young Operators talk, using informal words:
‘Look out to the South of you, for our searchlight,’ replies the man
in the wireless-room of the Cornucopia. ‘The Old Man’s going to play
it against the clouds, to let you see we’re coming. Tell ’em all to look
out for it. It’ll cheer them up. We’re walking along through the
smother like an express. Man! Man! we’re doing our “trials” speed,
twenty-five and a half knots, against this. Do you realise it—against
this! Look along to the South. Now!’
‘Look at her!’ the officers shout to one another on the bridge; for
the yell of the wind and the ship-thunder is too great for ordinary
speech to be heard. They are staring through their glasses. Under a
black canopy of bellied storm-clouds, shot with a dull red glowing,
there is tossed up on the backs of far-away seas, a far-off ship,
seeming incredibly minute, because of the distance; and from her
fore-part spouts a swaying tower of flame.
‘We’ll never do it in time!’ says the young Sixth Officer into the ear
of the Fifth.
The burning ship is now less than three miles away, and the black
backs of the great seas are splashed with huge, ever shifting
reflections.
Through the glasses it is possible now to see the details of the
tremendous hold the fire has got on the ship; and, away aft, the
huddled masses of the six hundred odd remaining passengers.
As they watch, one of the funnels disappears with an unheard
crash, and a great spout of flame and sparks shoot up.
‘It’ll go through her bottom!’ shouts the Second Officer; but they
know this does not happen, for she still floats.
The searchlight flashes down on to the near water, and the boats
shoot out in the ‘travellers,’ then are dropped clear of the mighty
flanks of the Mother Ship.
The Leviathan lies to windward of them, to break the force of the
seas, and oil bags are put out.
The people in the burning ship greet the ship with mad cheers.
The women are hove bodily into the seas, on the ends of lines. They
float in their cork jackets. Men take children in their arms, and jump,
similarly equipped. And all are easily picked up by the boats, in the
blaze of the rescuer’s searchlights that brood on leagues of ocean,
strangely subdued by the floods of oil which the big ship is pumping
on to the seas. Everywhere lies the strange sheen of oil, here in a
sudden valley of brine, unseen, or there on the shoulder of some
monstrous wave, suddenly eased of its deadliness; or again, the
same fluorescence swirls over some half-league of eddy-flattened
ocean, resting between efforts—tossing minor oil-soothed ridges into
the tremendous lights.
Then the Leviathan steams to leeward of the burning ship, and
picks up her boats. She takes the rescued passengers aboard, and
returns to windward; then drops the boats again, and repeats the
previous operations, until every man, woman, and child is saved.
As the last boat swings up at the end of the great derricks aboard
the Cornucopia there is a final volcano of flame from the burning
ship, lighting up the black belly of the sky into billowing clouds of
redness. There falls the eternal blackness of the night.... The
Vanderfield has gone.
The Leviathan swings round through the night, with her six
hundred saved; and begins to sing again in her deep heart, laying
the miles and the storm astern once more, in a deep low thunder.
THE WAR IN PERSPECTIVE.
by dr. w. h. fitchett.
The present war is the biggest event in secular history—so big
indeed that its scale evades the imagination. Its cause cannot be
condensed into a formula or its story told in a volume. But every war,
sooner or later, finds literary expression; and the present gigantic
struggle needs, and will create, a new literature of its own, beside
which all the rest of secular literature will seem petty. A hundred
years hence professional soldiers will be spelling out its strategy;
toiling historians will be collating and recording its events;
philosophers will be analysing its causes, moralists in spectacles will
be assessing its spiritual elements. What a literature—strategic,
scientific, political, financial, geographical, legal, medical, personal—
it will be!
And when all such questions are dealt with there will yet remain
that aspect of the war which has nothing to do with strategy, or
politics, or finance. It deals with the purely human interests and
emotions of the struggle; its picturesqueness; its dramatic incidents;
the strophe and antistrophe of moral forces it reveals; its literary
aspects, in a word; things in it which would have arrested the
imagination of Shakespeare, and supplied the text for mightier
dramas than ‘Macbeth’ or ‘Hamlet’; incidents that Scott would have
woven into romance; follies which might have given Swift the text for
keener satire than even his ‘Tale of a Tub’; heroisms that a greater
Byron may set to more resounding music than even those famous
lines which tell of Waterloo. And, it may be added, it is possible
already to see in this amazing war some aspects which will do more
than merely challenge the literary imagination, the sense of the
wonderful.
To begin with what is nearest: the new scale of the war, the
strange temper, the terrific weapons with which it is being fought, will
certainly prove, for centuries to come, an irresistible challenge to the
literary imagination. When the first shot in this war was fired, the
whole familiar and accepted arithmetic of battle went suddenly to
wreck. It was a war, not of armies, but of nations. As a result we
have to think of the contending forces in terms of millions.
Australia, for example, supplies a proof of the enormously
expanded scale of this war. The standing army of Imperial Rome
consisted of 260,000 men. Australia is a community of only five
million people; war to it is a totally new experience. Yet it has raised,
equipped, and sent to a battlefield 12,000 miles distant an army
equal in number to the standing army of the Caesars, at the time the
Caesars were the masters of the civilised world. Great Britain affords
another example of the amazingly expanded realm of the war. She
hates standing armies, hates them so much that she will only pass
the Mutiny Act, which makes an army of any sort possible, for a year
at a time. The British formula is a big fleet and a little army. When
this war broke out the regular forces of Great Britain consisted of
only 186,000 men. When the war was not yet two years old, the
British fleet had taken a scale without precedent in history; in
addition Great Britain had raised an army which approached
5,000,000 and in which every man was a volunteer. If the average
Liberal member of Parliament had been told, say, three years ago,
that Great Britain, in addition to having a fleet in scale so
tremendous, would have a land force of 5,000,000, he probably
would have assaulted his interlocutor. But Great Britain, having
raised by voluntary effort those 5,000,000, has actually passed a
Conscription Bill for the remainder of its population.
The battles of to-day take such a scale, last so long, and are
fought under such strange conditions, that we have to invent new
names for them. They are neither ‘sieges’ nor ‘battles,’ but a
combination of both; and so we call them siege-battles. That ‘first
and last of fights, king-making Waterloo,’ when set against the
arithmetic of the present war, dwindles into a skirmish. The little
shallow valley outside Brussels, where Napoleon and Wellington
measured swords with each other, and one of the greatest soldiers in
history ended his career, is in area three miles by two, and lies open