6. _Application for the reward at home._ An agricultural laborer squared the circle, and brought the proceeds to London. He left his papers with me, one of which was the copy of a letter to the Lord Chancellor, desiring his Lordship to hand over forthwith 100,000 pounds, the amount of the alleged offer of reward. He did not go quite so far as M. de Vausenville, who, I think in 1778, brought an action against the Academy of Sciences to recover a reward to which he held himself entitled. I returned the papers, with a note, stating that he had not the knowledge requisite to see in what the problem consisted. I got for answer a letter in which I was told that a person who could not see that he had done the thing should "change his business, and appropriate his time and attention to a Sunday-school, to learn what he could, and keep the _litle_ children from _durting_ their _close_." I also received a letter from a friend of the quadrator, informing me that I knew his friend had succeeded, and had been heard to say so. These letters were printed--without the names of the writers--for the amusement of the readers of _Notes and Queries_, First Series, xii. 57, and they will appear again in the sequel. [There are many who have such a deep respect for any attempt at thought that they are shocked at ridicule even of those who have made themselves conspicuous by pretending to lead the world in matters which they have not studied. Among my anonyms is a gentleman who is angry at my treatment of the "poor but thoughtful" man who is described in my introduction as recommending me to go to a Sunday-school because I informed him that he did not know in what the difficulty of quadrature consisted. My impugner quite forgets that this man's "thoughtfulness" chiefly consisted in his demanding a hundred thousand pounds from the Lord Chancellor for his discovery; and I may add, that his greatest stretch of invention was finding out that "the clergy" {13} were the means of his modest request being unnoticed. I mention this letter because it affords occasion to note a very common error, namely, that men unread in their subjects have, by natural wisdom, been great benefactors of mankind. My critic says, "Shakspeare, whom the Pro^r (_sic_) may admit to be a wisish man, though an object of contempt as to learning ..." Shakespeare an object of contempt as to learning! Though not myself a thoroughgoing Shakespearean--and adopting the first half of the opinion given by George III, "What! is there not sad stuff? only one must not say so"--I am strongly of opinion that he throws out the masonic signs of learning in almost every scene, to all who know what they are. And this over and above every kind of direct evidence. First, foremost, and enough, the evidence of Ben Jonson that he had "little Latin and less Greek"; then Shakespeare had as much Greek as Jonson would call _some_, even when he was depreciating. To have any Greek at all was in those days exceptional.