the like, been made a pretext for begging; even to be asked to purchase a book is of the very rarest occurrence—it has happened, and that is all.
These discoverers despise one another: if there were the concert among them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something to a very genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my own door, saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he picked it up in my pocket for an introduction, I know not. But that day week came another Frenchman to my house, and that day fortnight a French lady; both failed, and I had no more trouble. The same thing happened with Poles. It is not so with circle-squarers, &c.: they know nothing of each other. Some will read this list, and will say I am right enough, generally speaking, but that there is an exception, if I could but see it.
I do not mean, by my confession of the manner in which I have sinned against the twenty-four hours, to hold myself out as accessible to personal explanation of new plans. Quite the contrary: I consider myself as having made my report, and being discharged from further attendance on the subject. I will not, from henceforward, talk to any squarer of the circle, trisector of the angle, duplicator of the cube, constructor of perpetual motion, subverter of gravitation, stagnator of the earth, builder of the universe, &c. I will receive any writings or books which require no answer, and read them when I please: I will certainly preserve them—this list may be enlarged at some future time.
There are three subjects which I have hardly anything upon; astrology, mechanism, and the infallible way of winning at play. I have never cared to preserve astrology. The mechanists make models, and not books. The infallible winners—though I have seen a few—think their secret too valuable, and prefer mutare quadrata rotundis—to turn dice into coin—at the gaming-house: verily they have their reward.
I shall now select, to the mystic number seven, instances of my personal knowledge of those who think they have discovered, in illustration of as many misconceptions.
1. Attempt by help of the old philosophy, the discoverer not being in possession of modern knowledge. A poor schoolmaster, in rags, introduced himself to a scientific friend with whom I was talking, and announced that he had found out the composition of the sun. 'How was that done?'—'By consideration of the four elements.'—'What are they?'—'Of course, fire, air, earth, and
