Elegy and Appreciation for John Downes

I suppose he was by nature fully as great a genius as Sir Isaac Newton. I will mention but two or three instances of it: When he was at school learning Algebra, he came one day to his master and said, "Sir, I can prove this proposition a better way than it is proved in the book." His master thought it could not be, but upon trial, acknowledged it to be so. Sometime after, his father sent him to Newcastle with a clock which was to be mended. He observed the clockmaker's tools and the manner how he took it in pieces and put it together again; when he came home, he first made himself tools, and then made a clock which went as true as any in the town. I suppose such strength of genius as this has scarcely been known in Europe before.

The Journal of John Wesley