"Athenae Oxonienses," that "Halley came to Oxford with skill in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and such a knowledge of geometry as to make a complete dial." Though his studies were thus of a somewhat multifarious nature, yet it is plain that from the first his most favourite pursuit was astronomy. His earliest efforts in practical observation were connected with an eclipse which he observed from his father's house in Winchester Street. It also appears that he had studied theoretical branches of astronomy so far as to be conversant with the application of mathematics to somewhat abstruse(...)".