He instantly agreed to it, and I presently
found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional
fund for buying 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 often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful
of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook'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 usually attend temperance in eating
and drinking.
And now it was that, being on some occasion made asham'd of my
ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed in learning when
at school, I took Cocker's book of Arithmetick, and went through
the whole by myself with great ease. I also read Seller's and
Shermy's books of Navigation, and became acquainted with the little
geometry they contain; but never proceeded far in that science.
And I read about this time Locke On Human Understanding,
and the Art of Thinking, by Messrs. du Port Royal.
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English
grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were
two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter
finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method;
and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates,
wherein there are many instances of the same method.
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