AUTHOR OF THE TREATISE. XXIX in which its doctrines are taught, and treatises such as that of Barrow, where nothing is stated without the authoritybeing given, and where the whole scheme is exposed to the honest light of day. Before speaking of the Treatise itself, it may be expected that we should give some account of THE AUTHOR OF THE TREATISE. DR ISAAC BARROW, the author of the following Treatise, was born in London, October 1630. He was the son of Mr Thomas Barrow, and grandson of Isaac Barrow, Esq. of Spiney Abbey, a considerable estate in Cambridgeshire. His father, who was linen-draper to Charles I. (an office which, humble as it was, contributed, no doubt, with other considerations, to attach him to the royal family and to the Church of England), followed that unfortunate monarch to Oxford, and after witnessing the tragic scene of his execution, joined Charles II. on the Continent, where he remained till the Restora- tion. The son of the loyal linen draper was early sent to the Charter- house School, and destined for a scholar; but Isaac, like many others who have distinguished themselves in that capacity, mani- fested, in his boyish days, a decided preference of the play-ground to the school-room. His main talent lay in pugilistic achievements, and his delight was to set the other boys a-sparring. He was re- markable, too, for the negligence of his dress. " For his book," says Mr Abraham Hill, " he minded it not; nay, there was then so little appearance of that comfort which his father afterwards received from him, that he often solemnly wished that if it pleased God to take away any of his children, it might be his son Isaac. "* Seldom have parental anticipations been more thoroughly or more agreeably disappointed. Hardly had Isaac escaped from his school-companions, and entered as a student at Trinity College in the University of Cambridge, which he did in 1645, than the whole man.,underwent a change. The reckless, careless youth became an ardent, indefatigable scholar, an acute mathematician, and a pro- found divine. And yet, even under this metamorphosis, it is not difficult to discern, in the subsequent history of the man, some of the leading characteristicsof the boy. His negligence of dress con- tinued with him to the last; but it was the slovenliness no longer of the idle truant, but of the hard student. The obstreperous sports * Some Accounts of the Life of Dr Isaac Barrow, by Abraham Hill, Esq., prefixed to Dr Tillotson's edition of Barrow.
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