EDMUND, a distinguished self-taught mathematician, was born in Scotland; but neither the place nor the time of his birth is well known; nor have we any memoirs of his life, except a letter from the Chevalier de Ramfay, author of the Travels of Cyrus, in a letter to Father Cattel, a Jesuit at Paris, and published in the Memoirs de Trevoux, p. 109, as follows: "True genius overcomes all the disadvantages of birth, fortune, and education; of which Mr Stone is a rare example. Born a son of a gardener of the duke of Argyle, he arrived at eight years of age before he learnt to read.—By chance a servant having taught young Stone the letters of the alphabet, there needed nothing more to discover and expand his genius. He applied himself to study, and he arrived at the knowledge of the most sublime geometry and analysis, without a master, without a conductor, without any other guide but pure genius.

"At 18 years of age he had made these considerable advances without being known, and without knowing himself the prodigies of his acquirements. The duke of Argyle, who joined to his military talents a general knowledge of every science that adorns the mind of a man of his rank, walking one day in his garden, saw lying on the grass a Latin copy of Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated Principia. He called some one to him to take and carry it back to his library. Our young gardener told him that the book belonged to him. 'To you?' replied the duke. 'Do you understand geometry, Latin, Newton?' I know a little of them, replied the young man with an air of simplicity arising from a profound ignorance of his own knowledge and talents. The duke was surprised; and having a taste for the sciences, he entered into a conversation with the young mathematician: he asked him several questions, and was astonished at the force, the accuracy, and the candour of his answers. 'But how (said the duke) came you by the knowledge of all these things?' Stone replied, 'A servant taught me, ten years since, to read: Does one need to know anything more than the 24 letters in order to learn every thing else that one wishes?' The duke's curiosity redoubled—he sat down upon a bank, and requested a detail of all his proceedings in becoming so learned.

"I first learned to read, said Stone: the masons were then at work upon your house: I went near them one day, and I saw that the architect used a rule, compasses, and that he made calculations. I inquired what might be the meaning and use of these things; and I was informed that there was a science called Arithmetic: I purchased a book of arithmetic, and I learned it.—I was told there was another science called Geometry: I bought the books, and I learnt geometry. By reading I found that there were good books in these two sciences in Latin: I bought a dictionary, and I learned Latin. I understood also that there were good books of the same kind in French: I bought a dictionary, and I learned French.. And this, my lord, is what I have done: it seems to me that we may learn everything when we know the 24 letters of the alphabet."

"This account charmed the Duke. He drew this wonderful wonderful genius out of his obscurity; and he provided him with an employment which left him plenty of time to apply himself to the sciences. "He discovered in him also the same genius for music, for painting, for architecture, for all the sciences which depend on calculations and proportions."

"I have seen Mr Stone. He is a man of great simplicity. He is at present sensible of his own knowledge; but he is not puffed up with it. He is possessed with a pure and disinterested love for the mathematics, though he is not solicitous to pass for a mathematician; vanity having no part in the great labour he sustains to excel in that science. He despises fortune also; and he has solicited me twenty times to request the duke to give him less employment, which may not be worth the half of that he now has, in order to be more retired, and less taken off from his favourite studies. He discovers sometimes, by methods of his own, truths which others have discovered before him. He is charmed to find on these occasions that he is not a first inventor, and that others have made a greater progress than he thought. 'Far from being a plagiary, he attributes ingenious solutions, which he gives to certain problems, to the hints he has found in others, although the connection is but very distant,' &c.

Mr Stone was author and translator of several useful works; viz. 1. A New Mathematical Dictionary, in 1 vol. 8vo, first printed in 1726. 2. Fluxions, in 1 vol. 8vo, 1730. The Direct Method is a translation from the French, of Hofpital's Analyse des Infiniments Petits; and the Inverse Method was supplied by Stone himself. 3. The Elements of Euclid, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1731. A neat and useful edition of those Elements, with an account of the life and writings of Euclid, and a defence of his Elements against modern objectors. Beside other smaller works. "Stone was a fellow of the Royal Society, and had inserted in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. xli. p. 248.), an 'Account of two species of lines of the 3d order, not mentioned by Sir Isaac Newton or Mr Stirling.'"

Jerome, the son of a reputable seaman, was born in the parish of Sconie, in the county of Fife, North Britain. His father died abroad when he was but three years of age, and his mother, with her young family, was left in very narrow circumstances. Jerome, like the rest of the children, having got the ordinary school education, reading English, writing, and arithmetic, betook himself to the business of a travelling chapman. But the dealing in buckles, garters, and such small articles, not suiting his superior genius, he soon converted his little stock into books, and for some years went through the country, and attended the fairs as an itinerant bookseller. There is great reason to believe that he engaged in this new species of traffic, more with a view to the improvement of his mind than for any pecuniary emolument. Formed by nature for literature, he possessed a peculiar talent for acquiring languages with amazing facility. Whether from a desire to understand the Scriptures in their original languages, or from being informed that these languages are the parents of many others, he began his philological pursuits with the study of the Hebrew and Greek tongues; and, by a wonderful effort of genius and application, made himself so far matter of these, without any kind of assistance, as to be able to interpret the Hebrew bible and Greek Testament into English ad aperturam libri. At this time he did not know one word of Latin. Sensible that he could make no great progress in learning, without the knowledge of at least the grammar of that language, he made application to the parish schoolmaster for his assistance. Some time afterwards, he was encouraged to prosecute his studies at the university of St Andrews. An unexampled proficiency in every branch of literature recommended him to the esteem of the professors; and an uncommon fund of wit and pleasantry rendered him, at the same time, the favourite of all his fellow students, some of whom speak of him to this day with an enthusiastic degree of admiration and respect. About this period some very humorous poetical pieces of his composition were published in the Scots Magazine. Before he had finished his third session, or term, at St Andrew's, on an application to the college by the master of the school of Dunkeld for an usher, Mr Stone was recommended as the best qualified for that office; and about two or three years after, the matter being removed to Perth, Mr Stone, by the favour of his Grace the Duke of Atholl, who had conceived a high opinion of his abilities, was appointed his successor.

When he first went to Dunkeld, he entertained but an unfavourable opinion of the Gaelic language, which he considered as nothing better than a barbarous inarticulate gibberish; but being bent on investigating the origin and descent of the ancient Scots, he suffered not his prejudices to make him neglect the study of their primitive tongue. Having, with his usual fidelity and success, mastered the grammatical difficulties which he encountered, he set himself to discover something of the true genius and character of the language. He collected a number of ancient poems, the production of Irish or Scottish bards, which, he said, were daring, innocent, passionate, and bold. Some of these poems were translated into English verse, which several persons now alive have seen in manuscript, before Mr Macpherson published any of his translations from Ossian.

He died while he was writing and preparing for the press a treatise, intitled, "An Inquiry into the Original of the Nation and Language of the ancient Scots, with Conjectures about the Primitive State of the Celtic and other European Nations;" an idea which could not have been conceived by an ordinary genius. In this treatise he proves that the Scots drew their original, as well as their language, from the ancient Gauls. Had Mr Stone lived to finish this work, which discovers great ingenuity, immense reading, and indefatigable industry, it would have thrown light upon the dark and early periods of the Scottish history, as he opens a new and plain path for leading us through the unexplored labyrinths of antiquity. But a fever put an end to his life, his labours, and his usefulness, in the year 1757, being then only in the 30th year of his age. He left, in manuscript, a much esteemed and well-known allegory, intitled, "The Immortality of Authors," which has been published and often reprinted since his death, and will be a lasting monument of a lively fancy, sound judgement, and correct taste. It was no small ornament of this extraordinary character, that he paid a pious regard to his aged mother, who survived him two years, and received an annual pension from the Duke of Atholl as a testimony of respect to the memory of her son.