Volume 1

Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters.

Date:
[1819?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    inulerstood a question, he began to work with amazing facility, after his own method, without the use of pen, pencil, or chalk, or even under¬ standing the common rules of arithmetic, as taught in the schools. He would stride over a piece of land or a field, and tell you the contents of it almost as exact as if you had measured it by the chain. In this manner he measured the whole lordship of Elmton, of some thousand acres,belonging to Sir John Rhodes, andbrought him the contents, not only in acres, roods, and perches, but even in square inches. After this, for his own amusement, he reduced them into square hair-breadths, computing forty-eight to each side of the inch. His memory was so great, that, while resolving a question, he could leave off, and resume the operation again, where he left off, at the end of a week, a month, or several months, and proceed regularly till it was com¬ pleted. His mind would doubtless have been equally retentive with respect to other objects, if he had attended to them with equal diligence; but his perpetual application to figures prevented the smallest acquisition of any other knowledge. He was sometimes asked, ‘on his return from church, whether he remembered the text, or any VOL. I. K