be read before the R—l Society'; and next year 1743, a quarto reprint was made to resemble a paper in the Philosophical Transactions. So far as I can make out, one object is ridicule of what the zoologists said about the polypus: a reprint in the form of the Transactions was certainly satire on the Society, not on Peter Walter and his knack of multiplying guineas.
Old poets have recognised the quadrature of the circle as a wellknown difficulty. Dante compares himself, when bewildered, to a geometer who cannot find the principle on which the circle is to be measured:—
Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritruova,
Pensando qual principio ond' egli indige.
And Quarles speaks as follows of the summum bonum:—
An edge, and keep the practic soul in ure,
Like that dear chymic dust, or puzzling quadrature?
The poetic notion of the quadrature must not be forgotten. Aristophanes, in the Birds, introduces a geometer who announces his intention to make a square circle. Pope, in the Dunciad, delivers himself as follows, with a Greek pronunciation rather strange in a translator of Homer. Probably Pope recognised, as a general rule, the very common practice of throwing back the accent in defiance of quantity, seen in o′rator, au′ditor, se′nator, ca′tenary, &c.
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,—
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now, running round the circle, finds it square.
The author's note explains that this 'regards the wild and fruitless attempts of squaring the circle. The poetic idea seems to be that the geometers try to make a square circle. Disraeli quotes it as 'finds its square', but the originals do not support this reading.
I have come in the way of a work, entitled 'The Grave of Human Philosophies,' (1827) translated from the French of R. de Bécourt by A. Dalmas. It supports, but I suspect not very accurately, the views of the old Hindoo books. That the sun is
