Mr. Editor,--Although your cleverly conceived publication may be considered as more applicable to men of letters than to men of figures, yet I doubt not you will entertain the subject I am about to propound: because, in the first place, "whole generations of men of letters" are implicated in the criticism; and, in the next place, because however great, as a man of figures, the critic may be, the man of letters criticised was assuredly greater. Professor de Morgan has discovered a flaw in the great Johnson! and, in obedience to your epigraph, "_when found make a note of it_," he _has_ made a note of it at the foot of page 7, of _The Companion to the Almanac for 1850_,--eccola:-- "The following will show that a palpable absurdity will pass before the eyes of _generations of men of letters_ without notice. In Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ (chapter viii. of the edition with chapters), there is given a conversation between Dr. Adams and Johnson, in which the latter asserts that he could finish his Dictionary in three years. "ADAMS. 'But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.'--JOHNSON. 'Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.' No one of the numerous editors of Boswell has _made a note upon this_, although many things as slight have been commented upon: it was certainly not Johnson's mistake, for he was a clear-headed arithmetician. How many of our readers will stare and wonder what we are talking about, and what the mistake is!" Certes, I for one, plead guilty to staring, and wondering what the Professor is talking about. I cannot for a moment imagine it possible, that he could base such a criticism, so announced, upon no better foundation than that mere verbal transposition of the words Englishman and Frenchman. The inversion deceives no person, and it is almost more appropriate to the colloquial jocularity of the great Lexicographer's bombast than if the enunciation had been more strictly according to rule. Besides, the correctness of the expression, even as it stand, is capable of defence. Let the third and fourth terms be understood as referring to _time_ instead of to _power_, and the proportion becomes "as three to sixteen hundred, so is" (the time required by) "an Englishman to" (that required for the same work by) "a Frenchman." Or, if natives be referred to in the plural,--then, as three to sixteen hundred, so are Englishmen to Frenchmen; that is, such is the number of each required for the same amount of work.