Odyssey, Theocritus, some of Pindar, the Orations of Æschines and Demosthenes on the Crown. In Latin: first six books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, first five books of Livy, the Bucolics and the first six books of the Æneid of Virgil, and part of Cicero de Oratione. In Mathematics: finished the six books of Euclid together with the Eleventh and Twelfth, and the Geometry of West; studied Simpson's Conic Sections, and West's Conic Sections, Numeration and Spherics; and, in Algebra, Hessy's Algebra and Newton's Universal Arithmetic, in which last he performed all the problems without the book, and most of them without any help from the book.
1816. Greek: part of Polybius, Xenophon's Hellenics, the Ajax and Philoctetes of Sophocles, the Medea of Euripides, the Frogs of Aristophanes, and great part of the Anthologia Græca. Latin: all Horace, except the Epodes. Mathematics: Stewart's Propositiones Geometricæ, Playfair's Trigonometry at the end of his Euclid, "Geometry" in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, and Simpson's Algebra.
1817. Greek: Thucydides (the second time), many Orations of Demosthenes, all Aristotle's Rhetoric, of which he made a synoptical table. Latin: Lucretius, all but the last book, Cicero, Ad Atticum, Topica, and De Partitione Oratoria. Mathematics: "Conic Sections" in Encyclopædia Britannica; Simpson's Fluxions, Keill's Astronomy, and Robinson's Mechanical Philosophy.
1818. Greek: more of Demosthenes; four first books of Aristotle's Organon, tabulated in the manner of the Rhetoric. Latin: all Tacitus (except the Dialogue on Oratory), great part of Juvenal, beginning of Quintilian. Mathematics: Emerson's Optics, Trigonometry by Professor Wallace, solution of problems, beginning of article on Fluxions in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Began to learn Logic, read several Latin treatises—Smith, Brerewood, Du Trieu, part of Burgersdicius, Hobbes.
1819 (the year when the letter was written). Greek: Plato's Gorgias, Protagoras, and Republic. Latin: Quintilian, in course of reading. Mathematics: Fluxions, problems in Simpson's Select Exercises. Also, he is now learning Political Economy.
While this enumeration is much fuller than that in the "Autobiography," it omits mention of several works there given: as Sallust, Terence, Dionysius, and Polybius. The private English reading is in both: chiefly Mitford's Greece, Hooke and Ferguson's Rome, and the Ancient Universal History. His composing Roman History, as well as Poetry and a Tragedy, is given in both. The Higher Mathematics of this period is but slightly given in the "Autobiography."
This letter was doubtless intended not merely to satisfy Sir Samuel's curiosity as to his precocity of acquirement, but also to pave the way for the invitation to accompany him to France the following year (1820).
A carefully written diary, extending over the first five months of
