272     JAMES   CLERK   MAXWELL
by writing his words in the spaces of a plan of the large
window in the rector's room and learning them in that
setting. Next morning when called to repeat the lesson
he would look at the actual window and see the words there
through his imagination. He was fearful that a change of
place in the class might prevent him from being in a position
to look at the window.
From the beginning of his mathematical course Maxwell
made swift progress. At the age of fourteen he won the
mathematical medal, and wrote to his aunt that his friend
Campbell had "got a letter written too soon congratulating
him upon my medal; but there is no rivalry betwixt us."
He also won a prize for English verse.
His father was keenly interested in his mathematical
success and took him still more regularly to meetings of the
Edinburgh Royal Society and Society of Arts. One of the
lecturers to the Society of Arts was D. R. Hay, whose
theories of the mathematical interpretation of beauty in
form and colour had received much discussion. He spoke
on the mathematical properties of the "egg-and-dart"
patterns in Greek architectural ornaments. These raised
the problem of how perfect ovals might be constructed.
James studied the problem and discovered a method of
drawing ovals with a pencil guided by a thread attached to
pins. The value of economic independence for the encour-
agement of genius now became evident. Mr. Maxwell's
freedom of occupation allowed him to secure immediate
appreciation of his son's achievement as he devoted much
time to visiting Hay and J. D. Forbes, the distinguished
Edinburgh professor, and drawing their attention to the
discovery. Forbes was much impressed by it and put
Maxwell's argument into a form suitable for communica-
tion to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. So before he was
fifteen years old Maxwell was taken by his father to a
meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to hear his first
paper read. Professor Forbes remarked that Mr. Maxwell's
method of drawing ovals was simpler and more general
than Descartes', and that it had not been suspected that
these curves, whose optical properties had been discussed