Page:Historical account of Lisbon college.djvu/57

 Shirnall's performance was declared par with the best. His competitor, happening to be a nobleman, carried off the prize, but as an acknowledgement the successful but plebeian candidate was presented with an elegant edition of Sponheim's Numismata, which he afterwards gave to the College, and which still exists in the College Library, with the epigram and an account of the incident written at the commencement. The epigram is as follows:

Mr. Edward Barlow, alias Booth, the second of the names above mentioned, was born in 1638, and came to the College in 1659. Though not mentioning the precise period of his quitting the establishment, the Annals bestow the highest enconiums on his talents and virtues. The chief theatre of his labours was his native County of Lancashire, and the principal objects of his solicitude were the poor, whose dress and manner of living he, by choice, adopted.

Abstemiousness, benevolence, and an unaffected simplicity in all his actions, were the virtues for which he was remarkable. The endowments of his mind, were, however, not less rare and conspicuous than the qualities of his heart. &quot; It is thought,&quot; says Dr. Dodd, &quot;the age he lived in could not show a person better qualified by nature for the mathematical sciences. He has told me,&quot; continues the same writer, &quot;that at his first perusal of Euclid, that Author was as easy to him as a newspaper. His name and fame are perpetuated for being the inventor of the repeater watches, but according to the fate of most