At the end of 1867 I addressed the following letter to the _Athenaeum_:

PSEUDOMATH, PHILOMATH, AND GRAPHOMATH.

_December 31, 1867_

Many thanks for the present of Mr. James Smith's letters {338} of Sept. 28
and of Oct. 10 and 12. He asks where you will be if you read and digest his
letters: you probably will be somewhere first. He afterwards asks what the
WE of the _Athenaeum_ will be if, finding it impossible to controvert, it
should refuse to print. I answer for you, that We-We of the _Athenaeum_, not
being Wa-Wa the wild goose, so conspicuous in "Hiawatha," will leave what
controverts itself to print itself, if it please.

_Philomath_ is a good old word, easier to write and speak than
_mathematician_. It wants the words between which I have placed it. They
are not well formed: _pseudomathete_ and _graphomathete_ would be better:
but they will do. I give an instance of each.

The _pseudomath_ is a person who handles mathematics as the monkey handled
the razor. The creature tried to shave himself as he had seen his master
do; but, not having any notion of the angle at which the razor was to be
held, he cut his own throat. He never tried a second time, poor animal! but
the pseudomath keeps on at his work, proclaims himself clean-shaved, and
all the rest of the world hairy. So great is the difference between moral
and physical phenomena! Mr. James Smith is, beyond doubt, the great
pseudomath of our time. His 3-1/8 is the least of a wonderful chain of
discoveries. His books, like Whitbread's barrels, will one day reach from
Simpkin & Marshall's to Kew, placed upright, or to Windsor laid
length-ways. The Queen will run away on their near approach, as Bishop
Hatto did from the rats: but Mr. James Smith will follow her were it to
John o' Groats.

The _philomath_, for my present purpose, must be exhibited as giving a
lesson to presumption. The following anecdote is found in Thiebault's[631]
_Souvenirs de vingt ans de sejours a Berlin_, published in 1804. The book
itself got a high character for truth. In 1807 Marshal Mollendorff[632]
{339} answered an inquiry of the Duc de Bassano,[633] by saying that it was
the most veracious of books, written by the most honest of men. Thiebault
does not claim personal knowledge of the anecdote, but he vouches for its
being received as true all over the north of Europe.[634]

Diderot[635] paid a visit to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the
Second. At that time he was an athei