Lagrange's Memoirs. 65 



_ 



an illustrious Roman family: he was of Parisian extraction, and rel- 

 ative of one Maria Louisa, tire-woman of the mother of Louis XIV, 

 and afterwards wife of Francois Gaston de Betbune.* 



These details are of no importance to the illustrious Geometer, 

 whose renown dispenses with shewing forth a genealogy, but not so 

 to France. She is eager to recal him, and reestablish him under 



° 



her ancient sovereignty. His own name, and that of his mother 

 also, attest a French origin ; all his works are written in French ; the 

 ciiy 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 honored 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 which afterwards befell him most happily. S'il avait eu de la 

 fortune, said he himself, il rteut probablement pas fait son etat 

 des mathematiques. 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 w T hich had been so marked, 

 that at the age of sixteenf 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 atten- 



* Eulogy of Lagrange by Cassali. Padua, 1813. 

 t Others say fifteen or nineteen. 



Vol. XXX.— No. 1. 9 



