busts of the Roman emperors, and is said to have read Latin and Greek as well as his native language, before he had completed his fourth year.

CHAPTER VII.

PRECOCIOUS TALENTS.

No common error is attended with worse consequences to the children of genius than the practice of dragging precocious talent into early notice, of encouraging its growth in the hot-bed of parental approbation, and of endeavouring to give the dawning intellect the precocious maturity of that fruit which ripens and rots almost simultaneously. Tissot has admirably pointed out the evils which attend the practice of forcing the youthful intellect. "The effects of study vary," says this author, "according to the age at which it is commenced: long-contined application kills the youthful energies. I have seen children full of spirit attacked by this literary mania beyond their years, and I have foreseen with grief the lot which awaited them; they commenced by being prodigies, and they ended by becoming stupid. The season of youth is consecrated to the exercise of the body, which strengthens it, and not to study, which debilitates and prevents its

growth. Nature can never successfully carry on two rapid developements at the same time. When the growth of intellect is too prompt, its faculties are too early developed, and mental application is permitted proportioned to this developement, the body receives no part of it, because the nerves cease to contribute to its energies; the victim becomes exhausted, and eventually dies of some insidious malady. The parents and guardians who encourage or require this forced application, treat their pupils as gardeners do their plants, who, in trying to produce the first rarities of the season, sacrifice some plants to force others to put forth fruit and flowers which are always of a short duration, and are inferior in every respect to those which come to their maturity at a proper season."

Johnson is, indeed, of opinion, that the early years of distinguished men, when minutely traced, furnish evidence of the same vigour or originality of mind, by which they are celebrated in after life. To a great many memorable instances this observation does not apply, but in the majority it unquestionably holds good, and especially in those instances in which the vigour which Johnson speaks of displays itself in the developement of a taste for general literature, and, still more for philosophical inquiries.

Scott's originality was early manifested as a story-teller, and not as a scholar; the twenty-fifth seat at the high school in Edinburg was no uncommon place for him. Yet was the future writer of romance skilful in the invention and narration of "tales of knight-errantry, and battles, and enchantments!"

"Before seven years of age," says Boccaccio, "when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some little tales."

Newton, according to his own account, was very inattentive to his studies, and low in his class, but was a great adept at kite-flying, with paper lanthorns attached to them, to terrify the country people of a dark night with the appearance of comets; and when sent to market with the produce of his mother's farm, was apt to neglect his business, and to ruminate at an inn over the laws of Kepler.

Bentham, we are told, was a remarkable forward youth, reading Rapin's England at the age of three years, as an amusement; Telemachus, in French, at the age of seven; and at eight the future patriarch of jurisprudence, it appears, was a proficient on the violin.

Buonarroti, while at school, employed every moment he could steal from his studies in drawing.

Professor Lesley, before his twelfth year, had such a talent for calculation, and geometrical exercise, that when introduced to Professor Robinson, and subsequently to Playfair, those gentlemen were struck with the extraordinary powers which he then displayed.

Goethe, in childhood, exhibited a taste for the fine arts; and at the age of eight or nine wrote a short description of twelve scriptural pictures.

Franklin, unconsciously, formed the outline of his future character from the scanty materials of a tallow-chandler's library; and the bias which influenced his after-career, he attributes to a perusal in childhood of Defoe's Essay on Projections.

All these, with the exception of Scott and Lesley, arrived to extreme old age; but there is nothing in the early indication of the ruling pursuit of their after lives, that was likely to exert an unfavourable influence on health. Those early pursuits were rather recreations than laborious exertions, and far different in their effects from those we have spoken of in the preceding instances of precocious talent. That difference in the various kinds of literary and scientific pursuits, and the influence of each on life, the following tables