The editor of the Maitland Club edition of Sir Thomas Urquhart's Works has some qualms of conscience about reprinting this treatise. With a touch of humour, which only true Philistines will fully appreciate, he says that some apology may appear necessary, _even to an Antiquarian Club_,[161] for reprinting a work apparently so unintelligible and useless; and accordingly he shelters himself behind the opinion of Mr Wallace, the Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh at that time (1834). "I have," says Mr Wallace, who had been asked to examine the work, "looked at Sir Thomas Urquhart's _Trissotetras_, but I hardly know what to think of it. The book is not absolute nonsense, but is written in a most unintelligible way,[162] and so as never book was written before nor since. On this account it is truly a literary curiosity. There appears to have been a perverted ingenuity exercised in writing it, and I imagine that, with some patience, the author's plan might be understood, but I doubt if any man would take the trouble; for, after he had overcome the difficulty, there is nothing to reward his labour. I presume the object of the author was to fix the rules of Trigonometry in the memory, but no writer since his time has adopted his invention. Indeed, I do not observe the least mention of his book in the history of mathematical science. Yet, for his time, he seems not to have been a bad mathematician. Urquhart speaks in terms of great praise of Napier, yet not greater than he deserved. I infer from this that he was well acquainted with the subject as then known. The book in question is certainly a _curious_, if not a valuable relic of Scottish genius in the olden time, and it is a good specimen of the pedantry and fantastic taste of the Author. If, therefore, by reprinting his works, it be intended to give a true portraiture of him, _The Trissotetras_ should on that account, and I see no better reason, again pass through the press."[163]