e is in the rubric a special exemption of such as are
made to Welchmen." There is also a rubric to the rules of good society; and
squarers of the circle are among those whom there is special permission not
to answer: they are the wild Welchmen of geometry, who are always
assailing, but never taking, the Garde Douloureuse[219] of the circle. "At
this commentary," proceeds the story, "the Fleming grinned so broadly as to
show his whole case of broad strong white teeth." I know not whether the
Welchman would have done the like, but I hope Mr. James Smith will: and I
hope he has as good a case to show as Wilkin Flammock. For I wish him long
life and long health, and should be very glad to see so much energy
employed in a productive way. I hope he wishes me the same: if not, I will
give him what all his judicious friends will think a good reason for doing
so. His pamphlets and letters are all tied up together, and will form a
curious lot when death or cessation of power to forage among book-shelves
shall bring my little library to the hammer. And this time may not be far
off: for I was X years old in A.D. X^2; not 4 in A.D. 16, nor 5 in A.D. 25,
but still in one case under that law. And now I have made my own age a
problem of quadrature, and Mr. J. Smith may solve it. But I protest against
his method of assuming a result, and making itself prove itself: he might
in this way, as sure as eggs is eggs (a corruption of X is X), make me
1,864 years old, which is a great deal too much.

{125}

_April 5, 1864._--Mr. Smith continues to write me long letters, to which he
hints that I am to answer. In his last, of 31 closely written sides of
note-paper, he informs me, with reference to my obstinate silence, that
though I think myself and am thought by others to be a mathematical
Goliath, I have resolved to play the mathematical snail, and keep within my
shell. A mathematical _snail_! This cannot be the thing so called which
regulates the striking of a clock; for it would mean that I am to make Mr.
Smith sound the true time of day, which I would by no means undertake upon
a clock that gains 19 seconds odd in every hour by false quadrature. But he
ventures to tell me that pebbles from the sling of simple truth and common
sense will ultimately crack my shell, and put me _hors de combat_.[220] The
confusion of images is amusing: Goliath turning himself into a snail to
avoid [pi] = 3-1/8, and James Smith, Esq., of the Mersey Dock Board: and