Читать книгу William Oughtred - Cajori Florian - Страница 7

Aubrey gives information about the appearance and habits of Oughtred:

He was a little man, had black haire, and blacke eies (with a great deal of spirit). His head was always working. He would drawe lines and diagrams on the dust…

He [his oldest son Benjamin] told me that his father did use to lye a bed till eleaven or twelve a clock, with his doublet on, ever since he can remember. Studyed late at night; went not to bed till 11 a clock; had his tinder box by him; and on the top of his bed-staffe, he had his inke-horne fix’t. He slept but little. Sometimes he went not to bed in two or three nights, and would not come downe to meales till he had found out the quaesitum.

He was more famous abroad for his learning, and more esteemed, then at home. Severall great mathematicians came over into England on purpose to converse with him. His countrey neighbours (though they understood not his worth) knew that there must be extraordinary worth in him, that he was so visited by foreigners…

When learned foreigners came and sawe how privately he lived, they did admire and blesse themselves, that a person of so much worth and learning should not be better provided for…

He has told bishop Ward, and Mr. Elias Ashmole (who was his neighbour), that “on this spott of ground” (or “leaning against this oake” or “that ashe”), “the solution of such or such a probleme came into my head, as if infused by a divine genius, after I had thought on it without successe for a yeare, two, or three.”..

Nicolaus Mercator, Holsatus.. went to see him few yeares before he dyed…

The right hon^ble Thomas Howard, earle of Arundel and Surrey, Lord High Marshall of England, was his great patron, and loved him intirely. One time they were like to have been killed together by the fall at Albury of a grott, which fell downe but just as they were come out.14

Oughtred’s friends convey the impression that, in the main, Oughtred enjoyed a comfortable living at Albury. Only once appear indications of financial embarrassment. About 1634 one of his pupils, W. Robinson, writes as follows:

I protest unto you sincerely, were I as able as some, at whose hands you have merited exceedingly, or (to speak more absolutely) as able as willing, I would as freely give you 500 l. per ann. as 500 pence; and I cannot but be astonished at this our age, wherein pelf and dross is made their summum bonum, and the best part of man, with the true ornaments thereof, science and knowledge, are so slighted…15

In his letters Oughtred complains several times of the limitations for work and the infirmities due to his advancing old age. The impression he made upon others was quite different. Says one biographer:

He sometimes amused himself with archery, and sometimes practised as a surveyor of land… He was sprightly and active, when more than eighty years of age.16

Another informant says that Oughtred was

as facetious in Greek and Latine as solid in Arithmetique, Astronomy, and the sphere of all Measures, Musick, etc.; exact in his style as in his judgment; handling his Cube, and other Instruments at eighty, as steadily, as others did at thirty; owing this, he said, to temperance and Archery; principling his people with plain and solid truths, as he did the world with great and useful Arts; advancing new Inventions in all things but Religion. Which in its old order and decency he maintained secure in his privacy, prudence, meekness, simplicity, resolution, patience, and contentment.17