point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum
total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise,
whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly
on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting
that in the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous
calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows: "Every
moment dies a man, And one and a sixteenth is born." I may add that
the exact figures are 1.067, but something must, of course, be
conceded to the laws of metre. ~Charles Babbage, letter to Alfred,
Lord Tennyson, about a couplet in his "The Vision of Sin"
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