a gross of copies more than would have gone off without me, the world is not worthy of its James Smith!
The only fault of the above is, that there is more connexion than in the process of Faber Cyclometricus: so much, in fact, that the blunders are visible. The utter irrelevance of premises to conclusion cannot be exhibited with the requisite obscurity by any one who is able to follow reasoning: it is high art displayed in a certain toning down of the ægri somnia, which brings them to a certain look of approach to reasoning which I can only burlesque. Mr. J. S. produces something which resembles argument much as a chimpanzee in dolour, because balked of his dinner, resembles a thinking man at his studies. My humble attempt at imitation of him is more like a monkey hanging by his tail from a tree and trying to crack a cocoa-nut by his chatter.
I could forgive Mr. J. S. anything, properly headed. I would allow him to prove —for himself— that the Quadrature of the Circle is the child of a private marriage between the Bull Unigenitus and the Pragmatic Sanction, claiming tithe of onions for repeal of the Mortmain Act, before the Bishops in Committee under the kitchen table: his mode of imitating reason would do this with ease. But when he puts his imitation into my mouth, to make me what he calls a 'real mathematician,' my soul rises in epigram against him. I say with the doll's dressmaker—such a job makes me feel like a puppet's tailor myself—'He ought to have a little pepper? just a few grains? I think the young man's tricks and manners make a claim upon his friends for a little pepper?' De Fauré and Joseph Scaliger come into my head: my reader may look back for them.
As to my locus pœnitentiæ, the reader who is fit to enjoy the letter I have already alluded to will see that I have a soft and easy position; that the thing is really a pillowry; and that I am, like Perrette's pot of milk,
Joanna Southcott never had a follower who believed in her with more humble piety than Mr. James Smith believes in himself. After all that has happened to him, he asks me with high confidence
