A large number of Luxembourgers were then attending the University of Liège: they clubbed together to have him come to them. He rewarded them by becoming in some way the centre of their meetings, which he enlivened with his witty conversation and his talent for improvising, in the dialect of his country, verses on all sorts of subjects. He soon began to provide for his needs by giving private lessons and taking charge of writing the catalogue of science books in the academic library.

His poetry collection, "E Schréck op de Lëtzebuerger Parnassus" Ⓣ, written entirely in Luxembourgish (including metalinguistic comments), spans 53 pages and is regarded as a founding work of Luxembourgish literature. The book begins with a four-page foreword outlining eleven points on Luxembourgish spelling and pronunciation to facilitate reading the poetry. The collection finishes with a nine-page afterword consisting of comments on Luxembourgish, including further guidance on grammar and spelling. Meyer's use of Luxembourgish for metalinguistic commentary marks this work out as unique amongst contemporary works that have sections on Luxembourgish to contextualise their literary material. ... Although Meyer's work did not initially receive much resonance or praise, the pioneering nature of the work cemented his status as a founding figure in Luxembourgish literature. The earliest ideas for a Luxembourgish spelling outlined by Meyer in this text are predominantly to facilitate reading the poetry in his collection, which is traditionally considered the first "true" work in Luxembourgish.

In this pamphlet I use some notations different from those that are ordinarily followed. However, I beg the reader not to believe that it is through a vain desire to innovate unnecessarily that I have deviated a little from other authors; I have done so with the aim of simplifying and symmetrising my formulas. Moreover, one will see, by examining these notations, that they are almost always founded on the very nature of things; I mean that they recall to the mind a fundamental property of the operation or quantity that they designate. It is with this intention that I represent the sine by $\subset$ and the cosine by $\supset$. For, by bringing these two signs together they form a whole circle, each of which, as a half, is the complement of the other. This circumstance is therefore proper, as we see, to fix in the mind the known property, that the sine of an arc is equal to the cosine of its complement. The use of these two elementary signs presents yet another advantage: it is that by combining them suitably and with slight alterations, we make them suitable for representing the other trigonometric lines, without removing, for that, from these combinations, the character which must always preside over the use of a good notation, and which consists in ensuring that the sign always recalls a property of the thing signified. ...

.. when one day he was busy presenting on the board a problem of higher mathematics, having before his eyes the manual that he had to follow and to which the regulations of the school obliged the teachers to conform in their teaching, he noticed that the author only gave an imperfect solution to the question and threw the book away; then he explained to his students a better method, which was his own.

The act was all the more serious because the author of this book existed and occupied a high position in a neighbouring country. M. Meyer was required to apologise; he replied with his resignation, and when he was asked where he intended to go after having thus renounced his only means of existence: "under the blue sky," he said, "it will not be the first time."

These lessons were written to serve as a text for the course in spherical trigonometry that Colonel Trumper, director of the war depot, had instructed me to give last winter to the staff officers attached to his division. I thought it necessary to publish them as a follow-up to my lessons in rectilinear trigonometry, of which they form the necessary complement.

Without restricting myself to making all the propositions of the spherical depend solely on a single principle, following the example of Lagrange, I indicated in the remarks the possibility of this unitary deduction, by each time linking the propositions demonstrated by various principles, to the fundamental theorem of spherical trigonometry. This way of expounding the principles of science seemed to me to be the only way to reconcile the simplicity and ease of demonstrations, with the uniformity and scientific value of the method.

The reader will doubtless also see with pleasure the constant correlation that I have established between the formulas of the two trigonometries, a correlation that has provided me with a fairly simple means of giving mnemonics to the relations of spherical trigonometry, in particular those which relate to the various cases of the resolution of right triangles.

Meyer's verses, full of originality and humour, are unfortunately intended only for a restricted public, the Luxembourg dialect offering difficulties to the Germans themselves. Indifferent to his own fame as much as heedless of the future, Meyer wrote only to relax, and addressed himself only to his compatriots: however, the curious who would like to appreciate the supple talent and sparkling spirit of the poet, and to initiate themselves at the same time into the mysteries of the language of our neighbours, will find, thanks to Meyer himself and to his friend M Gloden, their task considerably facilitated ...

As soon as he arrived in Liège, Meyer took care of the publication of his courses and of research of a higher order. His volume on the theory of definite integrals and that relating to the calculus of variations reproduce part of the course of higher analysis that he gave at the University of Liège. These are works written for students, the examples abound. They attest that the author was well aware of the issues addressed and that he knew how to present them clearly ...

When I was charged, some time ago, with a course in higher analysis at the University of Liège, beginning this teaching with a series of lessons on definite integrals, I was not slow to realise that, in the absence of any manual, lessons on these subjects, given orally, would hardly be appreciated by the students, because of the difficulty they have in taking sufficiently accurate notes. This reason, together with the high usefulness of the course, led me to publish the text of my lessons; and here I must thank the Royal Society of Sciences of Liège, which was kind enough to help me, in this enterprise, with its disinterested patronage.

If, limited by financial resources, I have not been able to include, within the framework of my work, the development of all definite integrals, at least, by setting out the essential methods for determining their values, I have chosen those of these quantities which are most frequently encountered in applications. Prevented, by the nature of my work, from setting out the properties of the functions and L which M Goudermain introduced into analysis, I regret having been forced to omit a fairly extensive method, based on the passage from hyperbolic functions to circular functions.

Moreover, it is less the development of the integrals themselves that I had in mind, in writing this summary, than to coordinate the various theories which relate to these values, and to give an elementary, sufficiently extensive exposition of them. For this purpose, I have divided my work into six books: the first contains the general principles on the formation and transformation of definite integrals; the second relates to the various methods of determining their values; the third gives the theory of arbitrary functions expressed by periodic series, and of multiple integrals; the fourth is devoted to the theory of Euler's transcendents, and mainly to gamma functions; the fifth makes known the principles for the reduction of multiple integrals; and finally the sixth deals with the integration of partial differential equations using definite integrals.

After 1838, having achieved a stable position, he wrote a dozen textbooks. These were original, and written in simple and precise language; furthermore, Meyer was quick and accurate in his calculations, which were carried out with great ability. His lectures on probability were published only many years after his death, in 1874 by F Folie, based on the author's manuscripts, as the "Cours de Calcul des Probabilites fait a l'Universite de Liege de 1849 a 1857" Ⓣ (F Hayez, Brussels). This work, given the relative dearth of treatises on probability at the time, created something of a stir, and was translated into German in 1879 by Emanuel Czuber under the title "Vorlesungen aber Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung" Ⓣ. It contains a thoroughly researched account of the theory of errors.

This book by Meyer is a very complete summary of the most important works of Daniel Bernoulli, Abraham de Moivre, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Siméon Poisson, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Johann Encke, Iréneé-Jules Bienaymé ... on the calculus of probabilities. One might well suggest that there does not exist a broader treatise on the subject, except for Laplace's "Theorie analytique des probabilites" Ⓣ ... .