1 2 RISEN B Y PERSE VE RANGE. 



ness ; and from this and other considerations, he determined 

 to adopt that way of living for the future. Having taken 

 this resolution, he proposed to his brother, if he would give 

 him weekly only half what his board had hitherto cost, to 

 board himself, an offer which was immediately accepted. 

 He presently found that by adhering to his new system of 

 diet he could still save half what his brother allowed him. 

 * This,' says he, * was an additional fund for buying of books ; 

 but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest 

 going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained 

 there alone, and despatching presently my light repast (which 

 was often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a 

 handful of raisins or a tart from the pastrycook's, and a 

 glass of water), had the rest of the time till their return for 

 study; in which I made the greater progress, from that 

 greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which 

 generally attend temperance in eating and drinking.' It was 

 about this time that, by means of Cocker's Arithmetic, he 

 made himself master of that science, which he had twice 

 attempted in vain to learn while at school ; and that he also 

 obtained some acquaintance with the elements of geometry, 

 by the perusal of a treatise on Navigation. He mentions, 

 likewise, among the works which he now read, Locke on the 

 Human Understandi?ig, and the Port-Royal Art of Thinking; 

 together with two little sketches on the arts of Logic and 

 Rhetoric, which he found at the end of an English grammar, 

 and which initiated him in the Socratic mode of disputation, 

 or that way of arguing by which an antagonist, by being 

 questioned, is imperceptibly drawn into admissions which are 

 afterwards dexterously turned against him. Of this method 

 of reasoning he became, he tells us, excessively fond, finding 



