to hold, the Supreme Pontiff of cyclometers, the vicegerent of St. Vitus upon earth, the Mamamouchi of burlesque on inference. I begin with a review of him which appeared in the Athenæum of May 11, 1861. Mr. Smith says I wrote it: this I neither affirm nor deny; to do either would be a sin against the editorial system elsewhere described. Many persons tell me they know me by my style; let them form a guess: I can only say that many have declared as above while fastening on me something which I had never seen nor heard of.
The Quadrature of the Circle: Correspondence between an Eminent Mathematician and James Smith, Esq. (Edinburgh, Oliver & Boyd; London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.)
"A few weeks ago we were in perpetual motion. We did not then suppose that anything would tempt us on a circle-squaring expedition: but the circumstances of the book above named have a peculiarity which induces us to give it a few words.
"Mr. James Smith, a gentleman residing near Liverpool, was some years ago seized with the morbus cyclometricus.[[203]] The symptoms soon took a defined form: his circumference shrank into exactly 3-1/8 times his diameter, instead of close to 3-16/113, which the mathematician knows to be so near to truth that the error is hardly at the rate of a foot in 2,000 miles. This shrinking of the circumference remained until it became absolutely necessary that it should be examined by the British Association. This body, which as Mr. James Smith found to his sorrow, has some interest in 'jealously guarding the mysteries of their profession,' refused at first to entertain the question. On this Mr. Smith changed his 'tactics' and the name of his paper, and smuggled in the subject under the form of 'The Relations of a Circle inscribed in a Square'! The paper was thus forced upon the Association, for Mr. Smith informs us that he
'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
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 got a circle of 3-1/8 times the diameter by making it the supposition to set out with that there was such a circle; and then finding certain consequences which, so it happened, were not inconsistent with the supposition on which they were made. Error is sometimes self-consistent. However, E. M., to be quite sure of his ground, wrote a short letter, stating what he took to be Mr. Smith's hypothesis, containing the following: 'On AC as diameter, describe the circle D, which by hypothesis shall be equal to three and one-eighth times the length of AC.... I beg, before proceeding further, to ask whether I have rightly stated your argument.' To which Mr. Smith replied: 'You have stated my argument with perfect accuracy.' Still E. M. went on, and we could not help, after the above, taking these letters as the initials of Everlasting Mercy. At last, however, when Mr. Smith flatly denied that the area of the circle lies between those of the inscribed and circumscribed polygons, E. M. was fairly beaten, and gave up the task. Mr. Smith was left to write his preface, to talk about the certain victory of truth—which, oddly enough, is the consolation of all hopelessly mistaken men; to compare himself with Galileo; and to expose to the world the perverse behavior of the Astronomer Royal, on whom he wanted to fasten a conversation, and who replied, 'It would be a waste of time, Sir, to listen to anything you could have to say on such a subject.'
"Having thus disposed of Mr. James Smith, we proceed to a few remarks on the subject: it is one which a journal would never originate, but which is rendered necessary from time to time by the attempts of the autopseustic to become
heteropseustic. To the mathematician we have nothing to say: the question is, what kind of assurance can be given to the world at large that the wicked mathematicians are not acting in concert to keep down their superior, Mr. James Smith, the current Galileo of the quadrature of the circle.