 willingly would I be silent, but Justice calls upon me to speak, though my Feelings are wounded by the Description. What shall I say then? Shall I call them with Dr. Hurd in one of his Dialogues, a Set of "Bearded Boys?"
And would you invite our liberal and noble Youth to resort hither? Can you expect that their free Spirits will stoop to be lectured by these? Or that their Minds

can ever be formed and tutored by such Pedants, in a Way that fits them for the real Practice of the World and of Mankind?

But let us chuse an Instance for Illustration. Let one suffer for the Rest, and be selected as a Subject for Dissection. And can we want a Subject, whilst Euclid is before us? A Fellow whose only Pleasure and Delight lies in plaguing every body of equal Genius but less Erudition than himself. A Fellow, whose very Instructions are Insults, who forces Science upon you, Nolens volens, as an Apothecary does Physic; thrusts Rhomboids, Parallelograms and Parallelopipedons down your Throat, like Pistol's Leek; crams you with Pentagons, Hexagons and Quindekagons, till your Head is

as full of odd Shapes and Figures as a Chinese Manuscript, or an Egyptian Necromancer's Talisman, or the Hieroglyphics of a greasy Buttery Account Book. A Fellow who claps a triangular Mathematical Yoke or Collar round your Neck, as they do round a Hog's, to prevent your getting thro' the Parallels of a five-barr'd Gate, and feasting in the Turnip Field of Classical Knowledge on the other Side of it.
Evil Communication, says the old Copy-book, corrupts good Manners; and for my Part, I declare honestly that I can hardly consider that Knowledge as respectable, which I behold prostituted and contaminated by a Communication with the most despicable of Characters.

I can't help connecting my Ideas of one with the other; and then, damn 'em, I hate both. And yet, get them by themselves, the Mathematics are good intelligent Things enough. And very useful too, for a Land Surveyor or Builder of Bridges. I'm sure I look up to them with Fear and Reverence, as a Thief does to a Gibbet, and only pray secretly that it may never be my Case.
And then he is such an inveterate unchristian Rascal in his Resentments,
Letting the Sun go down upon his Wrath.
An absolute Polypheme;
Nec visu Facilis, nec Dictu Affabilis ulli.
In short, ten Times worse than Pedant, or any of his Compeers, in as much at least
