Here is a young man--they say
he is a lord--who has written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just
because he is a lord, set upon him, laugh at him, and sneer at his writing.
The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has begun. But these
reviewers seem to think {276} that nobody may write poetry, unless he lives
in a garret." Crabb Robinson told this long after to Lady Byron, who said,
"Ah! if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked Wordsworth. He
went one day to meet Wordsworth at dinner; when he came home I said, 'Well,
how did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell you the
truth,' said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to
the end, and that was--_reverence_!'" Lady Byron told my wife that her
husband had a very great respect for Wordsworth. I suppose he would have
said--as the Archangel said to his Satan--"Our difference is po[li =
e]tical."

I suspect that Fielding would, if all were known, be ranked among the
unlucky railers at supposed paradox. In his _Miscellanies_ (1742, 8vo) he
wrote a satire on the Chrysippus or Guinea, an animal which multiplies
itself by division, like the polypus. This he supposes to have been drawn
up by Petrus Gualterus, meaning the famous usurer, Peter Walter. He calls
it a paper "proper to 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 recognized the quadrature of the circle as a well-known
difficulty. Dante compares himself, when bewildered, to a geometer who
cannot find the principle on which the circle is to be measured:

"Quale e 'l geometra che tutto s' affige
Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritruova,
Pensando qual principio ond' egli indige."[439]

{277} And Quarles[440] speaks as follows of the _summum bonum_:

"Or is't a tart idea, to procure
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