“I am persuaded that there is no science, however abstruse, nay, no trade or manufacture, which may not be taught by a didactic poem. In that before you, an attempt is made (not unsuccessfully, I hope) to _enlist the imagination under the banners of Geometry_. _Botany_ I found done to my hands. And though the more rigid and unbending stiffness of a mathematical subject does not admit of the same appeals to the warmer passions, which naturally arise out of the _sexual_ (or, as I have heard several worthy gentlewomen of my acquaintance, who delight much in the poem to which I allude, term it, by a slight misnomer no way difficult to be accounted for—the _sensual_) system of Linnæus;—yet I trust that the range and variety of illustration with which I have endeavoured to ornament and enlighten the arid truths of Euclid and Algebra, will be found to have smoothed the road of Demonstration, to have softened the rugged features of Elementary Propositions, and, as it were, to have strewed the _Asses’ Bridge_ with flowers.” Such is the account which Mr. HIGGINS gives of his own undertaking, and of the motives which have led him to it. For our parts, though we have not the same sanguine persuasion of the _absolute perfectibility_ of our species, and are in truth liable to the imputation of being more satisfied with _things as they are_, than Mr. HIGGINS and his associates;—yet, as we are, in at least the same proportion, less convinced of the practical influence of didactic poems, we apprehend little danger to our readers’ morals from laying before them Mr. HIGGINS’S doctrine in its most fascinating shape. The poem abounds, indeed, with beauties of the most striking kind,—various and vivid imagery, bold and unsparing impersonifications; and similitudes and illustrations brought from the most ordinary and the most extraordinary occurrences of nature—from history and fable—appealing equally to the heart and to the understanding, and calculated to make the subject of which the poem professes to treat rather amusing than intelligible. We shall be agreeably surprised to hear that it has assisted any young student at either University in his mathematical studies. We need hardly add, that the plates illustrative of this poem (the engravings of which would have been too expensive for our publication) are to be found in Euclid’s Elements, and other books of a similar tendency. LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.[196] ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST CANTO.