I have written more than one Harveian Oration for different members of the college, who were my friends. I was present at the delivery of the first which I wrote, and so, unluckily, was Sir William Fordyce, a most excellent scholar. When it was finished, several of the members complimented my friend on the composition; but I had the mortification of hearing Sir William whisper a stander-by, that it was good English Latin. What he said was perfectly true. My next essay was better.” Perhaps it should in strict propriety have been related, that the writer of these memoranda concerning himself, did not proceed to the university wholly unacquainted with mathematical learning, and in justice a tribute of respect should have been paid to one who well deserved it. There were a number of tradesmen of the middle rank, or rather somewhat below it, who formed a society for their mutual improvement and assistance in knowledge. The very idea implies them to be what they actually were, men of considerable talents; indeed, as well as can be remembered, there was not one among them, who does not deserve a separate memoir. Humble and limited as their education must have necessarily been, the very meanest of them had some knowledge of the classics, or had made some proficiency in mathematics and philosophy. It were to be wished, that more particulars could be obtained concerning them. One was the most extraordinary and eccentric character that ever lived, to whom some slight allusion has been made before. He had been apprentice to a cooper, a private soldier, a journey-man-weaver, and a writer to an attorney; yet he was a very good Latin scholar, and had attained no contemptible proficiency in Greek; but he was an excellent mathematician, and of no mean acquirements in philosophical knowledge. As his income was of course exceedingly scanty, he made the experiment upon how little he could actually subsist, in case of necessity; and strange as it may seem, he made something less than a halfpenny a day suffice. He bought a farthing’s worth of potatoes, and a farthing’s worth of salt, and he saved from each day of both, what proved sufficient for his dinner on Sunday.