i66 Additional 'Remarks on tlie

brighten: Wykehamift in the upper form. Of this circumftance the founder muft have been apprized, as it may be fairly prefumed that he was an expert Geometrician; and whilft improving himfelf in the art of Numbering, he might repeatedly have found caufe to make the fame complaint ^vhich the ingenious Aldhelm did to

Hedda, a prelate of his fee, that the long and intricate calculations

bore *fo grievoufly upon him as to make him almoft defperate, and that the labour he had beftowed on the other branches of learning he had attained was trifling in comparifon [j]. This will fuf- ficiently account for Wykeham's not ingrafting Arithmetick on Grammar in his fchtfol at Winchefter; and as Henry VI. was, at Eton and Cambridge, a ftricl: copier of Wykeham's plan, and as Arithmetick was then a fcience of immenfe labour from the limit- ed ufe of the Arabic numerals, it was an elementary mode of in- itruclion that would have been then premature. But in the fixteenth century the cafe was materially altered. Of the power and the convenience of Arabic numerals there could not have been then a doubt, though they were but little ufed in confequenct: of a pertinacious adherence to an old habit. Early In that century, if not in the fifteenth, a book in Englifh was cer- tainly publifhed to teach the manner of accounting by cyphers ; and in 1543 there was a fchoolmafter in London who taught to Iteep accounts after a book of his own compiling. The " Path- -waie" to the art of numbering being thus rendered fmooth and fa- cile, it muft appear ftrange that in two fchools inftituted for the [s] Anglia Sacra, V. XI. ,p. 7, De vita Alclhelmi. " De ratione vero calculations quid commemorDndum ; cum tantae fupputationis imm'mens defperatio colla mentis oppreflerit ; ut ornnem praeteritum leclionis laborem vparvi penderem, cujus me pridem fecreta cubicula nofle credideram ; et ut fententia beati Hieronymi, dum fe occafio obtulit, utar, )ul tnlhi prius vldebar Sclolus, wtfus capi effe difdpulus; fie quod tandem fuperna gratia fretus, difEcilima rerum argumenta jet calculi fuppofition.es, quas partes numeri appellant, lecYionis inftantia rq>eri." improvement