to cut you up with the pen as occasion shall
serve, I remain, etc. (April 21, 1852)."

I received polite thanks, but not a word about the body of the letter: my
argument, I suppose, was admitted.

SOME DOGGEREL AND COUNTER DOGGEREL.

I find among my miscellaneous papers the following _jeu d'esprit_, or _jeu
de betise_,[719] whichever the reader pleases--I care not--intended, before
I saw ground for abstaining, to have, as the phrase is, come in somehow. I
think I could manage to bring anything into anything: certainly into a
Budget of Paradoxes. Sir W. H. rather piqued himself upon some caniculars,
or doggerel verses, which he had put together _in memoriam_ [_technicam_]
of the way in which A E I O are used in logic: he added U, Y, for the
addition of _meet_, etc., to the system. I took the liberty of concocting
some counter-doggerel, just to show that a mathematician may have
architectonic power as well as a metaphysician.

DOGGEREL.
BY SIR W. HAMILTON.
A it affirms of _this_, _these_, _all_,
Whilst E denies of _any_;
I it affirms (whilst O denies)
Of some (or few, or many).

Thus A affirms, as E denies,
And definitely either;
Thus I affirms, as O denies,
And definitely neither.

A half, left semidefinite,
Is worthy of its score;
U, then, affirms, as Y denies,
This, neither less nor more.

Indefinito-definites,
I, UI, YO, last we come;
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And this affirms, as that denies
Of _more_, _most_ (_half_, _plus_, _some_).

COUNTER DOGGEREL.
BY PROF. DE MORGAN.
(1847.)
Great A affirms of all;
Sir William does so too:
When the subject is "my suspicion,"
And the predicate "must be true."

Great E denies of all;
Sir William of all but one:
When he speaks about this present time,
And of those who in logic have done.

Great I takes up but _some_;
Sir William! my dear soul!
Why then in all your writings,
Does "Great I" fill[720] the whole!

Great O says some are not;
Sir William's readers catch,
That some (modern) Athens is not without
An Aristotle to match.

"A half, left semi-definite,
Is worthy of its score:"
This looked very much like balderdash,
And neither less nor more.

It puzzled me like anything;
In fact, it puzzled me worse:
Isn't schoolman's logic hard enough,
Without being in Sibyl's verse?

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At last, think