XIV 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OE ARTHUR CAYLEY. 
assertiveness which were leading features of Cayley’s character: and this impression 
is confirmed by the recollections of a fellow-pupil, Mr. T. C. Wright, who says:— 
“...We fellow-pupils knew that Arthur Cayley had been the Senior Wrangler 
of his year, and that he possessed extraordinary abilities; but they were not 
indicated by his personal bearing, and the retiring modesty of his disposition 
prevented him from ever alluding to the honours he had won at Cambridge. 
He had one of the most unsophisticated minds I have ever known; jokes, and 
the badinage of the pupil-room, seemed to be delightful novelties to him, and 
his face beamed with amusement as he listened to them without taking much 
part in the conversation, being content to devote his time assiduously to work 
which I suspect was not altogether congenial to his taste....” 
But if the modest, almost shy, man did not display his honours, he could not 
conceal his powers; and very soon his clearness of head, his almost intuitive grasp of 
the principles of any subject that came before him, his capacity for work and his 
power of concentration, made him a favourite pupil. He was called to the Bar on 
3rd May, 1849, and thereafter he had no occasion to wait for business. Mr. Christie 
was always ready to supply him with at least as much conveyancing work as he was 
willing to undertake: but no advice, no encouragement, no opening however favourable, 
least of all any wish for fame or fortune, could tempt him to subside into a large 
practice. He restricted himself to “ devilling ” for Mr. Christie, and he limited the 
amount of work he would undertake in this way, always refusing work that came to 
him at first hand. There is no doubt that, had he remained at the Bar and devoted 
himself to its business, he could have made a great legal reputation and a substantial 
fortune: even as it was, some of his drafts* have been made to serve as models. But 
the spirit of research possessed him; it was not merely will but an irresistible impulse 
that made the pursuit of mathematics, not the practice of law, his chief desire. To 
achieve this desire, he reserved with jealous care a due portion of his time; and he 
regarded his legal occupations mainly as the means of providing a livelihood. 
He remained at the Bar for fourteen years. Between two and three hundred papers 
are the mathematical outcome of that period; and they include some of the most 
brilliant of his discoveries. Among these papers are to be found the majority of his 
famous memoirs on quantics (particularly the sixth memoir, in which he develops his 
theory of geometry, and shows that all geometry can be made entirely descriptive), 
his work upon matrices, numerous contributions to the theory of symmetric functions 
of the roots of an equation, the elaborate calculations connected with the development 
of functions arising in the planetary and the lunar theories, and his valuable reports 
on theoretical dynamics. The enormous range over which his papers of these fourteen 
years extend is not more remarkable than the vigour of his contributions to knowledge; 
and a reference to them will show that he frequently recurs to some given problem, 
always adding something to the development. 
* In Davidson’s Precedents and Forms in Conveyancing (third edition, 1878), vol. hi. Part II. p. 1067, 
the author adds a footnote, calling “attention to the remarkable skill exhibited in [a] settlement, the work 
of Mr. Arthur Cayley.”