There is much private history which will never come to light, _caret quia vate sacro_,[442] because no Budgeteer comes across it. Many years ago a man of business, whose life was passed in banking, amused his leisure with quadrature, was successful of course, and bequeathed the result in a sealed book, which the legatee was enjoined not to sell {279} under a thousand pounds. The true ratio was 3.1416: I have the anecdote from the legatee's executor, who opened the book. That a banker should square the circle is very credible: but how could a City man come by the notion that a thousand pounds could be got for it? A friend of mine, one of the twins of my zodiac, will spend a thousand pounds, if he have not done it already, in black and white cyclometry: but I will answer for it that he, a man of sound business notions, never entertained the idea of [pi] recouping him, as they now say. I speak of individual success: of course if a company were formed, especially if it were of unlimited lie-ability, the shares would be taken. No offence; there is nothing but what a pun will either sanctify, justify, or nullify:
"It comes o'er the soul like the sweet South That breathes upon a bank of _vile hits_."
The shares would be at a premium of 3-1/8 on the day after issue. If they presented me with the number of shares I deserve, for suggestion and advertisement, I should stand up for the Archpriest of St. Vitus[443] and 3-1/5, with a view to a little more gold on the bridge.
I now insert a couple of reviews, one about Cyclopaedias, one about epistolary collections. Should any reader wish for explanation of this insertion, I ask him to reflect a moment, and imagine me set to justify all the additions now before him! In truth these reviews are the repositories of many odds and ends: they were not made to the books; the materials were in my notes, and the books came as to a ready-made clothes shop, and found what would fit them. Many remember Curll's[444] bequest of some very good titles {280} which only wanted treatises written to them. Well! here were some tolerable reviews--as times go--which only wanted books fitted to them. Accordingly, some tags were made to join on the books; and then as the reader sees.
I should find it hard to explain why the insertion is made in this place rather than another. But again, suppose I were put to make such an explanation throughout the volume. The improver who laid out grounds and always studied what he called _unexpectedness_, was asked what name he gave it for those who walked over his grounds a second time. He was silenced; but I have an answer: It is that which is given by the very procedure of taking up my book a second time.
