Learning, when if rises to eminence, will be observed in time, whatever
mists may happen to surround it. Gelasimus, in his forty-ninth year, was
distinguished by those who have the rewards of knowledge in their hands,
and called out to display his acquisitions for the honour of his
country, and add dignity by his presence to philosophical assemblies. As
he did not suspect his unfitness for common affairs, he fell no
reluctance to obey the invitation, and what he did not feel he had yet
too much honesty to feign. He entered into the world as a larger and
more populous college, where his performances would be more publick, and
his renown farther extended; and imagined that he should find his
reputation universally prevalent, and the influence of learning every
where the same.
His merit introduced him to splendid tables and elegant acquaintance;
but he did not find himself always qualified to join in the
conversation. He was distressed by civilities, which he knew not how to
repay, and entangled in many ceremonial perplexities, from which his
books and diagrams could not extricate him. He was sometimes unluckily
engaged in disputes with ladies, with whom algebraick axioms had no
great weight, and saw many whose favour and esteem he could not but
desire, to whom he was very little recommended by his theories of the
tides, or his approximations to the quadrature of the circle.
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