Note 380 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

The origin of his taste for mathematics was purely accidental: begun in love, it continued to dotage. According to Aubrey, he was forty years old when, “being in a gentleman’s library, Euclid’s Elements lay open at the 47th Propos. lib. i., which, having read, he swore ‘This is impossible!’ He read the demonstration, which referred him back to another—at length he was convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry. I have heard Mr. Hobbes say that he was wont to draw lines on his thighs and on the sheets a-bed.”