[1857]. To the question “Which is the signally most beautiful of geometrical truths?“ Frankland replies: “One star excels another in brightness, but the very sun will be, by common consent, a property of the circle [Euclid, Book 3, Proposition 31] selected for particular mention by Dante, that greatest of all exponents of the beautiful.”—Frankland, W. B.
The Story of Euclid (London, 1902), p. 70.
As one
Who vers’d in geometric lore, would fain
Measure the circle; and, though pondering long
And deeply, that beginning, which he needs,
Finds not; e’en such was I, intent to scan
The novel wonder, and trace out the form,
How to the circle fitted, and therein