(Blaise), one of the greatest geniuses and best writers France has produced, was born at Clermont in Auvergne, in the year 1623. His father, Stephen Pascal, born in 1588, and of an ancient family, was president of the court of aids in his province; he was a very learned man, an able mathematician, and a friend of Des Cartes. Having an extraordinary tenderness for this child, his only son, he quitted his office in his province, and went and settled at Paris in 1621, that he might be quite at leisure for the instruction of him; and Blaise never had any master but his father. From his infancy he gave proofs of a very extraordinary capacity: for he desired to know the reason of every thing; and when good reasons were not given him, he would seek for better; nor would he ever yield his assent but upon such as appeared to him well grounded. There was room to fear, that with such a cast of mind he would fall into free thinking, or at least into heterodoxy; yet he was always very far from any thing of this nature.

What is told of his manner of learning the mathematics, as well as the progress he quickly made in that science, seems almost miraculous. His father, perceiving in him an extraordinary inclination to reasoning, was afraid lest the knowledge of the mathematics would hinder his learning the languages. He kept him therefore as much as he could from all notions of geometry, locked up all his books of that kind, and refrained even from speaking of it in his presence. He could not, however, make his son restrain from musing upon proportions; and one day surprized him at work with charcoal upon his chamber-floor, and in the midst of figures. He asked him what he was doing? I am searching, says Pascal, for such a thing; which was just the 32d proposition of the first book of Euclid. He asked him then how he came to think of this? It was, says Pascal, because I have found out such another another thing; and so going backward, and using the names of bar and round, he came at length to the definitions and axioms he had formed to himself. Does it not seem miraculous, that a boy should work his way into the heart of a mathematical book, without ever having seen that or any other book upon the subject, or knowing anything of the terms? Yet we are assured of the truth of this by Madam Perier, and several other writers, the credit of whose testimony cannot reasonably be questioned. He had, from henceforward, full liberty to indulge his genius in mathematical pursuits. He understood Euclid's Elements as soon as he cast his eyes upon them; and this was not strange; for, as we have seen, he understood them before. At 16 years of age he wrote a treatise of conic sections, which was accounted by the most learned a mighty effort of genius; and therefore it is no wonder that Des Cartes, who had been in Holland a long time, should, upon reading it, choose to believe, that Mr Pascal, the father, was the real author of it. At nineteen, he contrived an admirable arithmetical machine, which was esteemed a very wonderful thing; and at twenty-three, having seen the Torricellian experiment, he invented and tried a great number of other new experiments.

After he had laboured abundantly in mathematical and philosophical disquisitions, he forsook those studies and all human learning at once; and determined to know nothing, as it were, for the future, but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He was not 24 years of age, when the reading some pious books had put him upon taking this holy resolution; and he became as great a devotee as any age has produced. Mr Pascal now gave himself up entirely to a state of prayer and mortification. He had always in his thoughts these great maxims, of renouncing all pleasure and all superfluity; and this he practised with rigour even in his illnesses, to which he was frequently subject, being of a very invalid habit of body: for instance, when his sickness obliged him to feed somewhat delicately, he took great care not to relish or taste what he ate. He had no violent affection for those he loved; he thought it sinful, since a man possesses a heart which belongs only to God. He found fault with some discourtesies of his sister, which she thought very innocent; as if she had said upon occasion, that she had seen a beautiful woman, he would be angry, and tell her, that she might raise bad thoughts in footmen and young people. He frequently wore an iron girdle full of points next to his skin; and when any vain thought came into his head, or when he took particular pleasure in any thing, he gave himself some blows with his elbow, to redouble the prickings, and to recall himself to his duty.

Though Mr Pascal had thus abstracted himself from the world, yet he could not forbear paying some attention to what was doing in it; and he even interested himself in the contest between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The Jesuits, though they had the popes and kings on their side, were yet decried by the people, who brought up afresh against them the assassination of Henry the Great, and all the old stories that were likely to make them odious. Pascal went farther; and by his Lettres Provinciales, published in 1656, under the name of Louis de Montalte, made them the subject of ridicule. "These letters," says Voltaire, "may be considered as a model of eloquence and humour. The best comedies of Moliere have not more wit than the first part of these letters; and the sublimity of the latter part of them is equal to anything in Bossuet. It is true, indeed, that the whole book was built upon a false foundation; for the extravagant notions of a few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits were artfully ascribed to the whole society. Many absurdities might likewise have been discovered among the Dominican and Franciscan casuists: but this would not have answered the purpose; for the whole raillery was to be levelled only at the Jesuits. These letters were intended to prove, that the Jesuits had formed a design to corrupt mankind; a design which no sect or society ever had, or can have." Voltaire calls Pascal the first of their satyriasts; for Defreux says he must be considered as only the second. In another place, speaking of this work of Pascal, he says, that "examples of all the various species of eloquence are to be found in it. Though it has been now written almost 100 years, yet not a single word occurs in it, favouring of that vicefulness to which living languages are so subject. Here then we are to fix the epocha when our language may be said to have assumed a settled form. The bishop of Lucon, son of the celebrated Bussy, told me, that asking one day the bishop of Meaux what work he would covet most to be the author of, supposing his own performances set aside, Bossuet replied, The Provincial Letters." These letters have been translated into all languages, and printed over and over again. Some have said, that there were decrees of formal condemnation against them; and also that Pascal himself, in his last illness, detested them, and repented of having been a Jansenist: but both these particulars are false and without foundation. Father Daniel was supposed to be the anonymous author of a piece against them, intitled, The Dialogues of Cleander and Eudoxus.

Mr Pascal died at Paris the 19th of August 1662, aged 39 years. He had been some time about a work against atheists and infidels, but did not live long enough to digest the materials he had collected. What was found among his papers was published under the title of Pensées, &c. or Thoughts upon religion and other subjects, and has been much admired. After his death appeared also two other little tracts; one of which is intitled, The equilibrium of fluids; and the other, The weight of the mass of air.

To conclude, Mr Pascal was, all things considered, a man of a most singular composition; or, as Mr Bayle says, "a paradoxical individuum of the human kind."