The accounts given of extraordinary children and adolescents frequently
defy credence.[477] I will give two well-attested instances.
The celebrated mathematician Alexis Claude Clairault (now Clairaut)[478]
was certainly born in May, 1713. His treatise on curves of double curvature
(printed in 1731)[479] received {220} the approbation of the Academy of
Sciences, August 23, 1729. Fontenelle, in his certificate of this, calls
the author sixteen years of age, and does not strive to exaggerate the
wonder, as he might have done, by reminding his readers that this work, of
original and sustained mathematical investigation, must have been coming
from the pen at the ages of fourteen and fifteen. The truth was, as
attested by De Molieres,[480] Clairaut had given public proofs of his power
at twelve years old. His age being thus publicly certified, all doubt is
removed: say he had been--though great wonder would still have been
left--twenty-one instead of sixteen, his appearance, and the remembrances
of his friends, schoolfellows, etc., would have made it utterly hopeless to
knock off five years of that age while he was on view in Paris as a young
lion. De Molieres, who examined the work officially for the _Garde des
Sceaux_, is transported beyond the bounds of official gravity, and says
that it "ne merite pas seulement d'etre imprime, mais d'etre admire comme
un prodige d'imagination, de conception, et de capacite."[481]
That Blaise Pascal was born in June, 1623, is perfectly well established
and uncontested.[482] That he wrote his conic sections at the age of
sixteen might be difficult to establish, though tolerably well attested, if
it were not for {221} one circumstance, for the book was not published. The
celebrated theorem, "Pascal's hexagram,"[483] makes all the rest come very
easy. Now Curabelle,[484] in a work published in 1644, sneers at
Desargues,[485] whom he quotes, for having, in 1642, deferred a discussion
until "cette grande proposition nommee le Pascale verra le jour."[486] That
is, by the time Pascal was nineteen, the _hexagram_ was circulating under a
name derived from the author. The common story about Pascal, given by his
sister,[487] is an absurdity which no doubt has prejudiced many against
tales of early proficiency. He is made, when quite a boy, to invent
geometry _in the order of Euclid's propositions_: as if that order were
natural sequence of investigation. The hexagram at ten years old would be a
hundred times less unlikely.
The instances named are painfully astonishing: I give one which has fallen
out of sight, because it will preserve an imperfect biography. John
Wilson[488] is Wilson of that {222} Ilk, that is, of "Wilson's Theorem." It
is this: if _p_ be a prime number, the product of all the numbers up to
_p_-1, increased by 1, is divisible without remainder by _p_. All
mathematicians know this as Wilson's theorem, but few know who Wilson was.
He was born August 6, 1741, at the Howe in Applethwaite, and he was heir to
a small estate at Troutbeck in Westmoreland. He was sent to Peterhouse, at
Cambridge, and while an undergraduate was considered stronger in algebra
than any one in the University, except Professor Waring, one of the most
powerful algebraists of the century.[489] He was the senior wrangler of
1761, and was then for some time a private tutor. When Paley,[490] then in
his third year, determined to make a push for the senior wranglership,
which he got, Wilson was recommended to him as a tutor. Both were ardent in
their work, except that sometimes Paley, when he came for his lesson, would
find "Gone a fishing" written on his tutor's outer door: which was insult
added to injury, for Paley was very fond of fishing. Wilson soon left
Cambridge, and went to the bar. He practised on the northern circuit with
great success; and, one day, while passing his vacation on his little
property at Troutbeck, he received information, to his great surprise, that
Lord Thurlow,[491] with whom he had {223} no acquaintance, had recommended
him to be a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He died, Oct. 18, 1793,
with a very high reputation as a lawyer and a Judge. These facts are partly
from Meadley's _Life of Paley_,[492] no doubt from Paley himself, partly
from the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and from an epitaph written by Bishop
Watson.[493] Wilson did not publish anything: the theorem by which he has
cut his name in the theory of numbers was communicated to Waring, by whom
it was published. He married, in 1788, a daughter of Serjeant Adair,[494]
and left issue. _Had a family_, many will say: but a man and his wife are a
family, even without children. An actuary may be allowed to be accurate in
this matter, of which I was reminded by what an actuary wrote of another
actuary. William Morgan,[495] in the life of his uncle Dr. Richard
Price,[496] says that the Doctor and his {224} wife were "never blessed
with an addition to their family." I never met with such accuracy
elsewhere. Of William Morgan I add that my surname and pursuits have
sometimes, to my credit be it said, made a confusion between him and me.
Dates are nothing to the mistaken; the last three years of Morgan's life
were the first three years of my actuary-life (1830-33). The mistake was to
my advantage as well as to my credit. I owe to it the acquaintance of one
of the noblest of the human race, I mean Elizabeth Fry,[497] who came to me
for advice about a philanthropic design, which involved life questions,
under a general impression that some Morgan had attended to such
things.[498]
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