322 Biographical Account of [May, 



works were written in French. The city in which he was born has 

 become a part of the French empire. France therefore has indis- 

 putably the riglit of boasting of one of the greatest geniuses that 

 have done honour to the sciences. 



His father was rich, and had made an advantageous marriage ; 

 but was rained by hazardous undertaliings. Let us not, however, 

 lament the situation of M. Lagrange. He himself viewed it as the 

 first cause of all the good fortune that afterwards befell him. " Had 

 I been in possession of a fortune," said he, " I should not probably 

 have studied mathematics." In what other situation would he have 

 found advantages that could enter into comparison with those of a 

 tranquil and studious life, with that splendid series of discoveries in 

 a branch of science considered as the most difficult, and with that 

 personal respectability which was continually increasing to the very 

 last period of his life. 



His taste for mathematics did not appear at first. He was pas- 

 sionately devoted to Cicero and Virgil, before he could read Archi- 

 medes and Newton. He then became an enthusiastic admirer of 

 the geometry of the ancients, which he preferred to the modern 

 analysis. A memoir which the celebrated Halley had composed 

 long before, to demonstrate the superiority of the analytic method, 

 had the glory of converting him, and of teaching him his true 

 destiny. He devoted himself to this new study with the same 

 success that he had had in the synthesis, and which was so decided 

 that at the age of 16 he was Professor of Mathematics in the Royal 

 Military School. The extreme youth of a Professor is a great ad- 

 vantage to him when Xxii has shown extraordinary abilities, and 

 when his pupils are no longer children. All the pupils of M. 

 Lagrange were older than himself, and were not the le:-s attentive 

 to his lectures on that account. He distinguished some of them, 

 whom he made his friends. 



From this association sprung the Academy of Turin, which in 

 1759 published a first volume entitled Acts of a private Society. 

 We see there the young Lagrange directing the philosophical 

 researches of the physician Cigna, and the labours of the Chevalier 

 de Saluces. He furnished to Foncenex the analytical part of his 

 memoirs, leaving to him the task of developing the reasoning upon 

 which the formulas depended. In these memoirs, which do not 

 bear his name, we observe that purely analytical method, which 

 afterwards characterized his great productions. He had found a 

 new theory of the lever. It constitutes the third part of a memoir, 

 which was very successful. Foncenex, in recompense, was placed 

 at the head of the Marine, which the king of Sardinia formed at 

 that time. The two first parts have the same style and seem 

 written by the same person. Do they likewise belong to Lagrange > 

 He never expressly laid claim to them ; but what may give us 

 some light into the real author, is that Foncenex soon ceased to 

 enrich the volumes of the new Academy, and that Montucla, igno- 

 rant of what Lagrange revealed to us during the latter part of his 



