If a man who
makes a false quantity, or attributes Lycidas to Keats, is generally
admitted to be uncultured, I resent it very much that no stigma
attaches to the gentleman who cannot do short division. I remember
once at school having to do a piece of Latin prose about the Black
Hole of Calcutta. It was a moving story as told in our prose book, and
I had spent an interesting hour turning into fairly correct and wholly
uninspired Latin--the sort of Latin I suppose which a small uneducated
Roman child (who had heard the news) would have written to a
school-boy friend. The size of the Black Hole was given as "twenty
foot square." I had no idea how to render this idiomatically, but I
knew that a room 20 ft. square contained 400 square feet. Also I knew
the Latin for one square foot. But you will not be surprised to hear
that my form master, a man of culture and education, leapt upon me.
"Quadringenti," he snapped, "is 400, not 20."
"Quite so," I agreed. "The room had 400 square feet.
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