forced
upon the Association, for Mr. Smith informs us that he {106} 'gave the
Section to understand that he was not the man that would permit even the
British Association to trifle with him.' In other words, the Association
bore with and were bored with the paper, as the shortest way out of the
matter. Mr. Smith also circulated a pamphlet. Some kind-hearted man, who
did not know the disorder as well as we do, and who appears in Mr. Smith's
handsome octavo as E. M.--the initials of 'eminent mathematician'--wrote to
him and offered to show him in a page that he was all wrong. Mr. Smith
thereupon opened a correspondence, which is the bulk of the volume. When
the correspondence was far advanced, Mr. Smith announced his intention to
publish. His benevolent instructor--we mean in intention--protested against
the publication, saying 'I do not wish to be gibbeted to the world as
having been foolish enough to enter upon what I feel now to have been a
ridiculous enterprise.'

"For this Mr. Smith cared nothing: he persisted in the publication, and the
book is before us. Mr. Smith has had so much grace as to conceal his kind
adviser's name under E. M., that is to say, he has divided the wrong among
all who may be suspected of having attempted so hopeless a task as that of
putting a little sense into his head. He has violated the decencies of
private life. Against the will of the kind-hearted man who undertook his
case, he has published letters which were intended for no other purpose
than to clear his poor head of a hopeless delusion. He deserves the
severest castigation; and he will get it: his abuse of confidence will
stick by him all his days. Not that he has done his benefactor--in
intention, again--any harm. The patience with which E. M. put the blunders
into intelligible form, and the perseverance with which he tried to find a
cranny-hole for common reasoning to get in at, are more than respectable:
they are admirable. It is, we can assure E. M., a good thing that the
nature of the circle-squarer should be so completely exposed as in this
volume. The benefit which he intended Mr. James Smith may be {107}
conferred upon others. And we should very much like to know his name, and
if agreeable to him, to publish it. As to Mr. James Smith, we can only say
this: he is not mad. Madmen reason rightly upon wrong premises: Mr. Smith
reasons wrongly upon no premises at all.

"E. M. very soon found out that, to all appearance, Mr. Smith