404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mind of tliis young person, and had appeared to slacken Hs marcli; 

 and I, between the sight of so young an age and the charm of such 

 an elocution, do not know which to believe — ^what I see or what I 

 hear." * 



It was not only in French that Agnesi made wonderful progress. 

 She followed also the lessons in Latin which the Abbate D. Nicolo 

 Jemelli gave to one of her brothers, and when nine years old she 

 translated from Italian into Latin an essay which she recited before 

 several auditors. She thus maintained — nearly two hundred years 

 before Marya Cheliga and Maria Pognon — the right of women to 

 study letters, the fine arts, and science if they feel called to it. This 

 essay is dedicated to Dom Augustino Tolotta, a friend of her family 

 and a very well educated man, to whom she modestly attributed all 

 the merit of it. She mentions in it, among other celebrated women, 

 Cornelia Piscopia (the oracle of seven languages), to whom the Uni- 

 versity of Padua awarded the laureate of philosophy, and Madame 

 Dacier, translator of Homer. 



Agnesi's coming out was then a brilliant one, and the rest of 

 her life did not contradict the hopes it awakened in the minds of her 

 friends. When eleven years of age she knew enough Greek to 

 recite the Office of the Virgin in that language, a pious practice 

 which she kept up till her death. Long before reaching her twentieth 

 year, besides speaking Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, she was 

 acquainted with German and Spanish. These many idioms, accord- 

 ing to Mazzuclielli,f caused no confusion in her mind, and she trans- 

 lated freely from one language into another. She also left in 

 manuscript a Greek translation of II Comhattimento spirituale of 

 P. Lorenzo Scupoli, the two books of Supplements to Quintus Cur- 

 tius of Preikshemius, translated into French, Italian, German, and 

 Greek; three small volumes of a Greek and Latin Lexicon contain- 

 ing more than thirteen thousand words; and a Greek translation of a 

 work on mythology. ^ 



Miss Agnesi's health was seriously disturbed by so close applica- 

 tion, and in December, 1730, the doctors advised her father to find 

 some way of diverting her mind from her studies. But she, in the 

 ardor of her application, doing everything with passion, followed 



* The sonnet was dedicated, ^^ Alia nobile fanchdla D. Maria Gaetano Agnesi, che rieW 

 eta cinque parla mirabilmente Francese'" (To the noble child Donna Maria Gaetano Agnesi, 

 ■who, when five years old, spoke French admirably), and was written in Italian. We give it 

 m an English unversified translation. 



f Mazzuchelli. Gli Scrittori d'ltaha, vol. i (I'zgS), Part I, p. 198. 



X The Ambrosian Library of Milan possesses, besides, numerous scientific manuscripts 

 of Agnesi which bear witness to her prodigious industry. The principal among them are : 

 Metafisica e fisica, tisica e matematica, Studi di Cosmografia, Gnomonica geometrica, Fisica 

 6 matematica, Studi e correspondenze sopra varii punte del Trattato analitico. 



