are addressed to me by the circle-squarers; and,

"O! Gus! tug a mean surd!"

is smart upon my preference of an incommensurable value of [pi] to 3-1/5,
or some such simple substitute. While,

"Gus! Gus! at 'em a' round!"

ought to be the backing of the scientific world to the author of the
_Budget of Paradoxes_.

The whole collection commenced existence in the head of a powerful
mathematician during some sleepless nights. Seeing how large a number was
practicable, he amused himself by inventing a digested plan of finding
more.

Is there any one whose name cannot be twisted into either praise or satire?
I have had given to me,

"Thomas Babington Macaulay
Mouths big: a Cantab anomaly."

NEWTON'S DE MUNDI SYSTEMATE LIBER.

A treatise of the system of the world. By Sir Isaac Newton. Translated
into English. London, 1728, 8vo.

I think I have a right to one little paradox of my own: I greatly doubt
that Newton wrote this book. Castiglione,[290] in his _Newtoni
Opuscula_,[291] gives it in the Latin which appeared in 1731,[292] not for
the first time; he says _Angli omnes Newtono tribuunt_.[293] It appeared
just after Newton's death, without the name of any editor, or any allusion
to Newton's {140} recent departure, purporting to be that popular treatise
which Newton, at the beginning of the third book of the _Principia_, says
he wrote, intending it to be the third book. It is very possible that some
observant turnpenny might construct such a treatise as this from the third
book, that it might be ready for publication the moment Newton could not
disown it. It has been treated with singular silence: the name of the
editor has never been given. Rigaud[294] mentions it without a word: I
cannot find it in Brewster's _Newton_, nor in the _Biographia Britannica_.
There is no copy in the Catalogue of the Royal Society's Library, either in
English or Latin, except in Castiglione. I am open to correction; but I
think nothing from Newton's acknowledged works will prove--as laid down in
the suspected work--that he took Numa's temple of Vesta, with a central
fire, to be intended to symbolize the sun as the center of our system, in
the Copernican sense.[295]

Mr. Edleston[296] gives an account of the _lectures_ "de motu corporum,"
and gives the corresponding pages of the _Latin_ "De Systemate Mundi" of
1731. But no one mentions the _English_ of 1728. This English seems to
agree with the Latin; but there is