Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/41

CHAPTER IV.

cambridge.

Universal Language—Purchase Lacroix's Quarto Work on the Integral Calculus—Disappointment on getting no explanation of my Mathematical Difficulties—Origin of the Analytical Society—The Ghost Club—Chess—Sixpenny Whist and Guinea Whist—Boating—Chemistry—Elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1828.

My father, with a view of acquiring some information which might be of use to me at Cambridge, had consulted a tutor of one of the colleges, who was passing his long vacation at the neighbouring watering-place, Teignmouth. He dined with us frequently. The advice of the Rev. Doctor was quite sound, but very limited. It might be summed up in one short sentence: "Advise your son not to purchase his wine in Cambridge."

Previously to my entrance at Trinity College, Cambridge, I resided for a time at Totnes, under the guidance of an Oxford tutor, who undertook to superintend my classical studies only.

During my residence at this place I accidentally heard, for the first time, of an idea of forming a universal language. I was much fascinated by it, and, soon after, proceeded to write a kind of grammar, and then to devise a dictionary. Some trace of the former, I think, I still possess: but I was stopped in my idea of making a universal dictionary by the apparent impossibility of arranging signs in any consecutive