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But father Paul, finding a court life not agreeable to his temper, quitted it two years afterwards, and retired to his beloved privacies, being then not only acquainted with the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee languages, but with philosophy, the mathematicks, canon and civil law, all parts of natural philosophy, and chymistry itself; for his application was unremitted, his head clear, his apprehension quick, and his memory retentive.
Johnson refers, I suppose, to a passage in Dryden which he quotes in his Dictionary under mechanick: 'Many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in mathematicks, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick operation.
In ten days he was able to solve all the problems in the doctrine of the globes, and had attained ideas so clear and strong of all the systems, as well ancient as modern, that he began to think of making new discoveries; and for that purpose, laying aside, for a time, all searches into antiquity, he employed his utmost interest to procure books of astronomy and of mathematicks, and made such a progress in three or four months, that he seemed to have spent his whole life upon that study; for he not only made an astrolabe, and drew up astronomical tables, but invented new methods of calculation, or such at least as appeared new to him, because they were not mentioned in the books which he had then an opportunity of reading; and it is a sufficient proof, both of the rapidity of his progress, and the extent of his views, that in three months after his first sight of a pair of globes, he formed schemes for finding the longitude, which he sent, in January, 1735, to the Royal society at London.
It is true they have men there who teach Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification, which they call the Mathematicks; but what Learning they had there, I might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Three years which he had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be suspected to speake or understand Latin."
At length, his propension to the study of physick grew too violent to be resisted; and, though he still intended to make divinity the great employment of his life, he could not deny himself the satisfaction of spending some time upon the medical writers, for the perusal of which he was so well qualified by his acquaintance with the mathematicks and philosophy.
Barretier drew up, that night, some positions in philosophy, and the mathematicks, which he sent immediately to the press, and defended, the next day, in a crowded auditory, with so much wit, spirit, presence of thought, and strength of reason, that the whole university was delighted and amazed; he was then admitted to his degree, and attended by the whole concourse to his lodgings, with compliments and acclamations.
He may be said to owe to the difficulties of his youth an advantage less frequently obtained by princes than literature and mathematicks. The necessity of passing his time without pomp, and of partaking of the pleasures and labours of a lower station, made him acquainted with the various forms of life, and with the genuine passions, interests, desires, and distresses, of mankind.
For I was not only carefull to direct all my thoughts in generall according to its rules, but I from time to time reserv'd some houres, which I particularly employd to practice it in difficulties belonging to the Mathematicks, loosening from all the principles of other Sciences, which I found not stable enough, as you may see I have done in divers explain'd in my other following discourses.
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