Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/487

 Budget. A few anti-paradoxers brought in common sense: but to the mass of the readers of the journal it all seemed to be the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Some said that the influx of scientific paradoxes killed the journal: but my belief is that they made it last longer than it otherwise would have done. Twenty years ago I recommended the paradoxers to combine and publish their views in a common journal: with a catholic editor, who had no pet theory, but a stern determination not to exclude anything merely for absurdity. I suspect it would answer very well. A strong title, or motto, would be wanted: not quite so coarse as was roared out in a Cambridge mob when I was an undergraduate—'No King! No Church! No House of Lords! No nothing, blast me!'—but something on that principle.

At the end of 1867 I addressed the following letter to the Athenæum:—

December 31, 1867.

thanks for the present of Mr. James Smith's letters of Sept. 28 and of Oct. 10 and 12. He asks where you will be if you read and digest his letters: you probably will be somewhere first. He afterwards asks what the of the Athenæum will be if, finding it impossible to controvert, it should refuse to print. I answer for you, that We-We of the Athenæum, not being Wa-Wa the wild goose, so conspicuous in 'Hiawatha,' will leave what controverts itself to print itself, if it please.

Philomath is a good old word, easier to write and speak than mathematician. It wants the words between which I have placed it. They are not well formed; pseudomathete and graphomathete would be better: but they will do. I give an instance of each.

The pseudomath is a person who handles mathematics as the monkey handled the razor. The creature tried to shave himself as he had seen his master do; but, not having any notion of the angle at which the razor was to be held, he cut his own throat. He never tried a second time, poor animal! but the pseudomath keeps on at his work, proclaims himself clean-shaved, and all the rest of the world hairy. So great is the difference between moral and physical phenomena! Mr. James Smith is, beyond doubt, the great psendomath of our time. His $3 1⁄8$ is the least of a wonderful chain of discoveries. His books, like Whitbread's barrels, will one day reach from Simpkin & Marshall's to Kew, placed upright, or to Windsor laid lengthways. The Queen will run away on their near approach, as Bishop Hatto did from the rats: but Mr. James Smith will follow her were it to John o' Groats.

The philomath, for my present purpose, must be exhibited as giving