But whether he thought the price demanded was too great, or whether he expected, as few would buy them, the bookseller would be obliged to lower his price, he left them on his hands. Soon after Mr. Wild heard of them, and purchased them. Some weeks after, the dean called at the shop, and inquired for the MSS. but was informed they were sold. Chagrined at his disappointment, he asked the name and profession of the person who had brought them. On his being told he was a tailor; "Run instantly," said the dean, in a passion, " and fetch them, if they are not cut in pieces to make measures." He was soon relieved from his fears, by Mr. Wild's appearance with the MSS. He inquired whether he would part with them, but was answered in the negative. The dean hastily asked what he did with them? he replied, "I read them." He was desired to read, which he did; he was then bid to render a passage or two into English, which he did readily and exactly. Amazed at this, the dean, partly at his own expense, partly by a subscription, raised among persons, whose inclinations led them to this kind of learning, sent him to Oxford, where, though he was never a member of the University, he was, by the dean's interest, admitted to the Bodleian Library, and employed for some years in translating, or making extracts out of oriental MSS. Thus he bid adieu to his needle.

About 1718, I found him at Oxford, and learned Hebrew of him; but do not recollect how long he had been there before. He was there known by the name of the Arabian Tailor. All the hours that the library was open, he constantly attended; when it was shut, he employed most of his leisure time in teaching the oriental languages to young gentlemen, at the moderate price of half a guinea a language, except for the Arabic, for which, as I remember, he had a a guinea.

About 1720, he removed to London, where he spent the remainder of his life, under the patronage of the famous Dr. Mead; there I saw him at the latter end of 1721. When he died I know not, but in 1734 his translation, out of the Arabic, of Al-Mesra, or Mahomet's Journey to Heaven, was published. In the dedication, which was addressed to Mr. Mackrel, of Norwich, it is said to be a posthumous work. It is the only piece of his that ever was printed, and I have heard him read it in MS.

When I knew him, he seemed to be about 40, though his sedentary and studious way of life might make him look older than he really was. His person was thin and meagre, his stature moderately tall, and his air and walk had all the

little particularities observed in persons of his profession. His memory was extraordinary. His pupils frequently invited him to spend an evening with them, when he would often entertain us with long and curious details out of the Roman, Greek, and Arabic histories. His morals were good, he was addicted to no vice, was sober and temperate, modest and diffident of himself, without any tincture of conceitedness or vanity. In his lectures he would frequently observe to us, that such an idiom in Hebrew resembled one in Latin or Greek; then he would make a pause, and seem to recal his words, and ask us, whether it were not so?

So much merit and industry met with little reward, and procured him a subsistence not much better than what his trade might have produced; as I remember, his subscriptions amounted to no more than 20 or 301. per annum. That part of learning which he excelled in, was cultivated and encouraged by few. Unfortunately for him, the Rev. Mr. Gagnier, a French gentleman, skilled in the oriental tongues, was in possession of all the favours the University could bestow in this way; for he was recommended by the Heads of Houses to instruct young gentlemen, and employed by the professors of those languages to read public lectures in

their absence.

Such uncommon attainments in a person who made so mean an appearance, led some to suspect that he was a Jesuit under this disguise. These suspicions were heightened by his modesty and diffidence, his affecting sometimes to talk of foreign cities and countries, his frequenting the University church only, where, by way of exercise, the sermons treat more of speculative and controversial points, than practical ones. But these suspicions were without any other foundation: for after I had left the University, I lived in a family, where I met with a woman who was a native and inhabitant of Norwich, who came there on a visit. I took this opportunity of making many inquiries about him. She confirmed many of the particulars before-mentioned, and assured me that she knew him from a child, that he was born and bred up in that city, and never heard or knew he was absent from it any considerable time, till his removal to Oxford.

The memory of so extraordinary a person, who was so striking an example of diligence and industry, deserves to be perpetuated. Such an attempt is an act of justice due to such merit, and cannot but be of service to the world. I heartily wish that these imperfect memoirs may induce one of his fellow citizens to correct, improve, and complete

them, especially since the late Rev. Mr. Bloomfield, in his History of the City of Norwich, if I remember right, takes no notice of a man, who did honour to the place of his nativity, and his country.

1755, March.

Z.A.

XI. Account of John Ludwig, a Saxon Peasant.

MR. URBAN,

IN the course of your entertaining work you have given us an account of a peasant, who, though otherwise extremely illiterate, had yet acquired surprising skill in numbers; and, as he could not write, was able to work any arithmetical question by mere memory. You have also given us an account of a poor tailor, who acquired the knowledge of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages, while he was sitting on his board, or wandering about the country in search of work. I now send you an account, in many particulars, more extraordinary than either of these, which I shall be glad to see laid up in your Repository.

Yours, &c.

T. S.

IT is usual for the commissaries of excise in Saxony to appoint a peasant in every village in their district to receive the excise of the place, for which few are allowed more than one crown, and none more than three.

Mr. Christian Gotthold Hoffman, who is chief commissary of Dresden, and the villages adjacent, when he was auditing the accounts of some of these peasants in March, 1753, was told, that there was among them one John Ludwig, a strange man, who, though he was very poor and had a family, was yet continually reading in books, and very often stood the greatest part of the night at his door, gazing at the stars.

This account raised Mr. Hoffman's curiosity, and he ordered the man to be brought before him. Hoffman, who expected something in the man's appearance that corresponded with a mind superior to his station, was greatly surprized to see the most rustic boor he had ever beheld. His hair hung over his forehead down to his eyes, his aspect was sordid and stupid, and his manuer was, in every respect,

that of a plodding ignorant clown. Mr. Hoffman, after contemplating this unpromising appearance, concluded, that as the supposed superiority of this man was of the intellectual kind, it would certainly appear when he spoke; but even in this experiment he was also disappointed. He asked him, if what his neighbours had said of his reading and studying was true? and the man bluntly and coarsely replied, "What neighbour has told you that I read and study? If I have studied, I have studied for myself, and I don't desire that you or any body else should know any thing of the matter." Hoffman, however, continued the conversation, notwithstanding his disappointment, and asked several questions concerning arithmetic and the first rudiments of astronomy; to which he now expected vague and confused replies. But in this too he had formed an erroneous prognostic; for Hoffman was struck not only with astonishment but confusion, to hear such definitions and explications as would have done honour to a regular academic in a public examination.

Mr. Hoffman, after this conversation, prevailed on the peasant to stay some time at his house, that he might further gratify his curiosity at such times as would be most convenient. In their subsequent conferences he proposed to his guest the most abstracted and embarrassing questions, which were always answered with the utmost readiness and precision. The account which this extraordinary person gives of himself and his acquisitions, is as follows:

John Ludwig was born the 24th of February, 1715, in the village of Cossedaude, and was, among other poor children of the village, sent very young to school. The Bible, which was the book by which he was taught to read, gave him so much pleasure, that he conceived the most eager desire to read others, which, however, he had no opportu→ nity to get into his possession. In about a year his master began to teach him to write, but this exercise was rather irksome than pleasing at first; but when the first difficulty was surmounted, he applied to it with great alacrity, espe cially as books were put into his hand to copy as an exercise; and he employed himself almost night and day, not in copying particular passages only, but in forming collections of sentences, or events that were connected with each other. When he was ten years old, he had been at school four years, and was then put to arithmetic, but this em barrassed him with innumerable difficulties, which his master would not take the trouble to explain, expecting that he should content himself with the implicit practice of positive rules. Ludwig, therefore, was so disgusted with

árithmetic, that after much scolding and beating he went from school, without having learned any thing more than reading, writing, and his catechism.

He was then sent into the field to keep cows, and in this employment he soon became clownish, and negligent of every thing else; so that the greater part of what he had learned was forgotten. He associated with the sordid and the vicious, and he became insensible like them. As he grew up he kept company with women of bad character, and abandoned himself to such pleasures as were within his reach. But a desire of surpassing others, that principle which is productive of every kind of greatness, was still living in his breast; he remembered to have been praised by his master, and preferred above his comrades, when he was learning to read and write, and he was still desirous of the same pleasure, though he did not know how to obtain it.

In the autumn of 1735, when he was about twenty years old, he bought a small Bible, at the end of which was a catechism, with references to a great number of texts, upon which the principles contained in the answers were founded. Ludwig had never been used to take any thing upon trust, and was, therefore, continually turning over the leaves of his Bible, to find the passages referred to in the catechism; but this he found so irksome a task, that he determined to have the whole at one view, and, therefore, set about to transcribe the catechism, with all the texts at large brought into their proper places. With this exercise he filled two quires of paper, and though when he began, the character was scarcely legible, yet, before he had finished, it was greatly improved; for an art that has been once learned is easily recovered.

In the month of March, 1736, he was employed to receive the excise of the little district in which he lived, and he found that in order to discharge this office, it was necessary for him not only to write, but to be master of the two first rules of arithmetic, addition and subtraction. His ambition had now an object; and a desire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather, better than others of his station, determined him once more to apply to arithmetic, however hateful the task, and whatever labour it might require. He now regretted that he was without an instructor, and would have been glad at any rate to have practised the rules without first knowing the rationale. His mind was continually upon the stretch to find out some way of supplying this want, and at last he recollected that one of his school-fellows had a book from which examples of several rules were taken by the master to exercise the scholars. He, therefore,