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 Faure[380] and Joseph Scaliger[381] come
into my head: my reader may look back for them.

"Three circlesquarers to the manner born,
Switzerland, France, and England did adorn,
De Faure in equations did surpass,
Joseph at contradictions was an ass.
Groaned Folly, I'm used up! What shall I do
To make James Smith? Grinned Momus, _Join the two_!"

{239}

As to my _locus poenitentiae_,[382] 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,

"Bien pose sur un coussinet."[383]

Joanna Southcott[384] 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 to "favor the writer with
a proof" that I still continue of opinion that "the best of the argument is
in my jokes, and the best of the joke is in his arguments." I will not so
favor him. At the very outset I told him in plain English that he has the
whiphand of all the reasoners in the world, and in plain French that _il a
perdu le droit d'etre frappe de l'evidence_[385]; I might have said
_pendu_.[386] To which I now add, in plain Latin, _Sapienti pauca, indocto
nihil_.[387] The law of Chancery says that he who will have equity must do
equity: the law of reasoning says that he who will have proof must see
proof.

The introduction of things quite irrelevant, by way of repro