242 Biography of M, Le Comte Lagrange. 



which saw his birth too had become French. France then, 

 has incontestably the right of being proud of one of the 

 greatest men who has honoured the sciences. 



His father was wealthy, had made an advantageous 

 marriage, but was ruined by hazardous enterprises. Let 

 us not hence pity M. Lagrange. He himself received this 

 misfortune as the first cause of all what afterwards befel 

 him most happily. S'il avait eu de la fortune, said he him- 

 self, iln eunt prohahlement pas fait sonttat desmdthematiques. 

 And in another career, what advantages could he have 

 found, that had entered into comparison with those of a 

 calm and studious life, with that brilliant train of success, 

 uncontested in a department reputed eminently difficult, 

 and with that personal esteem, which he saw increase till 

 his last moment. 



A taste for mathematics, however, was not that which 

 he first manifested. He had a strong passion for Cicero 

 and Virgil before being able to read Archimedes and 

 Newton. Soon he became an admirer no less passionate 

 of the geometry of the ancients, which he at first preferred 

 to the modern analysis. A memoir which the celebrated 

 Halley had long before composed, expressly to show the 

 superiority of analysis, had the glory of converting M. 

 Lagrange, and revealed to him his true destination. 



He then gave himself up to this new study with the same 

 success which he had obtained in synthesis, and which had 

 been so marked, that at the age of sixteen* years he was 

 professor of mathematics in the royal school of artillery. 

 The extreme youth of a professor is for him but a greater 

 advantage, when he has shown extraordinary talents and 

 at the same time his eleves are not children. All those of 

 Lagrange were older than himself and were not thence less 

 attentive to his lessons. He selected some of them whom 

 he made his friends. 



From this association sprang the Academy of Turin, 

 which published in 1759 a first volume, under the title of 

 Actes de la societt privee. We therein see Lagrange direct- 

 ing the physical researches of Doctor Cigna, and the works 

 of the Marquis de Saluces. He furnished to Foncenex the 

 analytical part of his memoirs, at the same time leaving to 



• Others snv fifteen or nineteen. 



