The only fault of the above is, that there is more {238} connection than in the process of Faber Cyclometricus: so much, in fact, that the blunders are visible. The utter irrelevance of premises to conclusion cannot be exhibited with the requisite obscurity by any one who is able to follow reasoning: it is high art displayed in a certain toning down of the _aegri somnia_, which brings them to a certain look of reproach to reasoning which I can only burlesque. Mr. J. S. produces something which resembles argument much as a chimpanzee in dolor, because balked of his dinner, resembles 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.