have found it."
The quadrature of the circle was indeed the common Dulcinea of the
Quixotes of the time; but they had all been disenchanted. Hobbes alone
clung to his ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was
perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only
genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the
first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary.
His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say,
from not understanding the subject of his inquiries.

When Hobbes published his "De Corpore Philosophico," 1655, he there
exulted that he had solved the great mystery. Dr. Wallis, the Savilian
professor of mathematics at Oxford,[381] with a deep aversion to
Hobbes's political and religious sentiments, as he understood them,
rejoiced to see this famous combatant descending into his own arena.
He certainly was eager to meet him single-handed; for he instantly
confuted Hobbes, by his "Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae." Hobbes, who saw
the newly-acquired province of his mathematics in danger, and which,
like every new possession, seemed to involve his honour more than was
necessary, called on all the world to be witnesses of this mighty
conflict. He now published his work in English, with a sarcastic
addition, in a magisterial tone, of "_Six Lessons to the Professors of
Mathematics in Oxford_." These were Seth Ward[382] and Wallis, both no
friends to Hobbes, and who hungered after him as a relishing morsel.
Wallis now replied in English, by "Due Correction for Mr. Hobbes, or
School-discipline for not saying his Lessons Right," 1656. That part
of controversy which is usually the last had already taken place in
their choice of phrases.[383]

In the following year the campaign was opened by Hobbes with
"~STIGMAI~; or, _marks_ of the absurd Geometry, _rural Language_,
Scottish Church-politics, and Barbarisms, of John Wallis." Quick was
the routing of these fresh forces; not one was to escape alive! for
Wallis now took the field with "Hobbiani Puncti dispunctio! or, the
undoing of Mr. Hobbes's Points; in answer to Mr. Hobbes's ~STIGMAI~,
_id est_, Stigmata Hobbii." Hobbes seems now to have been reduced to
great straits; perhaps he wondered at the obstinacy of his adversary.
It seems that Hobbes, who had been used to other studies, and who
confesses all the algebraists were against him, could not conceive a
point to exist without quantity; or a l