EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
him orally was the only good method that had been proposed. "But," he adds, "as I have not met with great encouragement here in England among this civil and proud people, I have laid it aside for some other place. When I tell them that I have some project about longitude, they treat it as an impossibility; and so I do not wish to discuss it here. . . . As my speculations made me for a time not so sociable as is serviceable and useful for me, and as my spirits are somewhat exhausted, I have taken refuge for a short time in the study of poetry, that I might be somewhat recreated by it.[1] I intend to gain a little reputation by this study on some occasion or other during this year, and I hope I may have advanced in it as much as may be expected from me; but time and others will perhaps judge of this. Still after a time I intend to take up mathematics again, although at present I am doing nothing in them; and if I am encouraged, I intend to make more discoveries in them than any one else in the present age. But without encouragement this would be sheer trouble, and it would be like non profecturis litora
- ↑ An early recreation of his, as shown in some verses written in his twelfth year.
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