Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

sedentary and studious way of life, might make him look older than he really was. His person was thin and meagre, his stature moderately tall, and his air and walk had all the little particularities observed in persons of his profession. His memory was extraordinary. His pupils frequently invited him to spend an evening with them, when he would often entertain us with long and curious details out of the Roman, Greek, and Arabic histories. His morals were good, he was addicted to no vice, was sober and temperate, modest and diffident of himself, without any tincture of conceitedness or vanity. In his lectures, he would frequently observe to us, that such an idiom in Hebrew, resembled one in Latin or Greek; then be would make a pause, and seem to recall his words, and ask us, whether it were not so?

So much merit and industry met with little reward, and procured him a subsistence not much better than what his trade might have produced; as I remember, his subscriptions amounted to no more than 20 or 307. per annum. That part of learning which he excelled in, was cultivated and encouraged by few. Unfortunately for him, the Rev. Mr. Gagnier, a French gentleman, skilled in the oriental tongues, was in possession of all the favours the University could bestow in this way, for he was recommended by the heads of houses to instruct young gentlemen, and employed by the professors of those languages to read public lectures in their absence.

Such uncommon attainments in a person, who made so mean an appearance, led some to suspect that he was a Jesuit under this disguise. These suspicions were heightened by his modesty and diffidence, his affecting sometimes to talk of foreign cities and countries, his frequenting the University church only, where by way of exercise the sermons treat more of speculative and controversial points, than practical ones. But these suspicions were without any other foundation; for after I left the University, I lived in a family, where I met with a woman who was a native and inhabitant of Norwich, who came there on a visit. I took this opportunity of making many inquiries about him. She confirmed many of the particulars before mentioned, and assured me that she knew him from a child, that he was born and bred up in the city, and never heard or knew he was absent from it any considerable time, till his removal to Oxford.

The memory of so extraordinary a person, who was so strik ing an example of diligence and industry, deserves to be per petuated. Such an attempt is an act of justice due to such merit, and cannot but be of service to the world. I heartilywish that these imperfect memoirs may induce one of his fellow

citizens to correct, improve, and complete them, especially since the late Rev. Mr. Bloomfield, in his History of the City of Norwich, if I remember right, takes no notice of a man, who did honour to the place of his nativity, and his country.

ACCOUNT OF JEDEDIAH BUXTON.

The accounts of Jedediah Buxton, which have already been published in the Magazine, were so extraordinary, that many have questioned if they were true; and several letters have been sent to the editor by his friends, to know whether they were fictions written merely for amusement, or whether they were intended as satires upon the pretensions or performances of any adept in arithmetical calculations. To the assurances which were then given of the certainty of the facts, upon the known integrity of the gentlemen by whom they were communicated to the press, much stronger testimony may now be

added.

His grandfather, John Buxton, was vicar of Elmeton in Derbyshire, and his father, Wm. Buxton, was schoolmaster of the same parish; but Jedediah, notwithstanding the profession of his father, is extremely illiterate, having, by whatever accident, been so much neglected in his youth as never to have been taught to write. How he came first to know the relative proportions of numbers and their progressive denominations, he does not remember; but to this he has applied the whole force of his mind, and upon this his attention is constantly fixed, so that he frequently takes no cognizance of external objects, and when he does, it is only with respect to their numbers. The same attention of his mind appears as well by what he hears as by what he sees. If any space of time is mentioned, he will soon after say, that it is so many minutes; and if any distance of way, he will assign the number of hair's breadths, without any question having been asked, or any calculation expected by the company.

By this method, he has greatly increased the power of his memory with respect to figures, and stored up several common products in his mind, to which he can have immediate recourse; as the number of minutes in a year, of hair's breadths in a mile, and many others. When he once comprehends a question, which is not without difficulty and time, he begins to work with amazing facility, and will leave a long question half wrought, and, at the end of several months, resume it, beginning where he left off, and proceeding regularly till it is completed.

His memory would certainly have been equally retentive, with respect to other objects, if he had attended to other objects with equal diligence; but his perpetual applica

tion to figures has prevented the smallest acquisition of any other knowledge, and his mind seems to have retained fewer ideas than that of a boy of ten years old, in the same elass of life. He has been sometimes asked, on his return from church, whether he remembered the text, or any part of the sermon, but it never appeared that he brought away one sentence. His mind, upon a closer examination, being found to have been busied, even during divine service, in its favourite operation, either dividing some time or some space into the smallest known parts, or resolving some question that had been given him as a test of his abilities. His power of abstraction is so great, that no noise interrupts him; and, if he is asked any question, he immediately replies, and returns again to his calculation, without any confusion, or the loss of more time than his answer required. His method of working is peculiar to himself, and by no means the shortest or the clearest, as will appear by the following example:

He was required to multiply 456 by 378, which he had completed as soon as a person in company had produced the product in the common way; and upon being requested to work it audibly, that his method might be known, he multiplied 456 first by 5, which produced 2280, which he again multiplied by 20, and found the product, 45600, which was the multiplicand multiplied by 100; this product he again multiplied by 3, which produced 136800, which was the sum of the multiplicand multiplied by 300; it remained, therefore, to multiply it by 78, which he effected by multiplying 2280 (the product of the multiplicand multiplied by 5) by 15; 5 times 15 being 75; this product being 34200, he added to the 136800, which was the multiplicand multiplied by 300, and this produced 171000, which was 375 times 456; to complete his operation, therefore, he multiplied 456 by 3, which produced 1368, and having added this number to 171000, he found the product of 456 multiplied by 378 to be 172368.

Thus it appears that his arithmetic is perfectly his own, and that he is so little acquainted with the common rules as to multiply 456 first by 5, and the product by 20, to find what sum it would produce multiplied by 100, whereas, if he had added two noughts, to the figures, he would have obtained it at

once.

The only objects of Jedediah's curiosity, except figures, were the king and royal family, and his desire to see them was so strong, that, in the beginning of the spring, he walked to London on purpose, but at last returned disappointed, the king having just removed to Kensington as Jedediah came into London. He was, however, introduced to the Royal Society, whom he called the volk of the Siety Court: the gentlemen

[ocr errors]

who were present, asked him several questions in arithmetic, to prove his abilities, and dismissed him with a handsome gratuity. During his residence in London, he was carried to see King Richard III. performed at Drury Lane playhouse, and it was expected either hat the novelty and the splendour of the show would have fixed him in astonishment, or kept his imagination in a continual hurry; or that his passions would, in some degree, have been touched by the power of action, if he had not perfectly understood the dialogue; but Jedediah's mind was employed in the playhouse just as it was employed at church. During the dance he fixed his attention upon the number of steps; he declared after a fine piece of music, that the innumerable sounds produced by the instruments had perplexed him beyond measure, and he attended even to Mr. Garrick only to count the words that he uttered, in which, he says, he perfectly succeeded.

Jedediah is now safely returned to the place of his birth, where, if his enjoyments are few, his wishes do not seem to be more he applies to his labour, by which he subsists with cheerfulness; he regrets nothing that he left behind him in London, and it is still his opinion, that a slice of rusty bacon affords the most delicious repast.

ACCOUNT OF ROBERT HILL, THE LEARNED TAILOR OF

BUCKINGHAM.

Robert Hill was born at Tring, in Hertfordshire, where an old relation having taught him his letters, he learned to read by himself at home. This acquisition was so remarkable in a child, that he was, for the first time, sent to school, but was, by some accident, prevented from going there longer than seven weeks, during which time, however, he learned to write. When he was about fourteen years of age, he was put apprentice to a stay-maker and tailor at Buckingham; but his desire of knowledge being still predominant, he contrived to gratify it under every possible disadvantage. With the first money that he could scrape together he purchased Beza's Latin Testament and a Latin Grammar. He then applied to the boys at the free school and got himself employed by them, to run on errands, or to render them such other service as was in his power, having always first stipulated, that in return they should tell him the English of the Latin words in some rule of his Grammar. In proportion to the knowledge he acquired, he became more sensible of what was yet wanting; and as soon as he was able, he added a Gradus to his Testament and Grammar, by which he was assisted in his pronunciation. As there are few difficulties insurmountable by perservering labour, Hill, at the expiration of

his apprenticeship, had not only learned his trade, but could read and understand several Latin authors tolerably well.

He was now known to the neighbouring gentlemen, one of whom, upon the death of his son, gave him some of his books, and among others, there happened to be a Greek Testament, This was a new object of curiosity, and not being able to rest while he had a book in his possession which he could not read, he immediately applied himself to learn Greek. In this arduous task, he received some assistance from a young gentleman at Buckingham, and in about three years, he began to read a Greek author with some pleasure. The same restless curiosity and desire of knowledge, which thus attached him to books, induced him not to follow his business at home, but to travel the country, as an itinerary mender of clothes and stays; but in this state of poverty and dissipation, he was still a hard student, and when he was four and thirty years of age he began

to learn Hebrew.

[ocr errors]

The first book that he read for this purpose happened to be Shindler's Grammar; but as all books that are written to instruct those who have no master, in the first rudiments of science, suppose many things to be known which they ought to teach, Hill found several deficiencies in Shindler, which he was at a loss to supply; and after much labour and much contrivance, he thought if he could, in his peregrinations, associate himself with some Jew, who, like himself, was travelling the country for a subsistence, he might take the same rout, and should be able to get such instruction as he wanted. This project he immediately put in execution, and finding an itinerary Jew at Oakingham, he communicated his scheme, and stated his difficulties. The Jew was very ready to assist him, but Hill found him not able; this inability, however, he supposed to be accidental, and therefore applied himself to many others, but to all with as little success. To Hill, however, nothing was less eligible than to relinquish his purpose, he therefore had recourse to other Hebrew Grammars, of which he read eleven, some answered his purpose best in one particular and some in another, but not any one of them contained all that he expected to find, though he thinks, upon the whole, Mayer's is the best. After he had thus acquired the knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and made himself acquainted with whatever such travels as his could produce to his observation, almost constantly studying half the night that he might pursue his journey and his business in the day, he returned to Buckingham, where he still continues buried in obscurity, and scarcely subsisting by his labour, but perfectly contented with his condition, extremely modest and diffident in his discourse, and

« ElőzőTovább »