which many of the volumes related (their original possessor having been a medical gentleman), that he resolved to give up commerce, and to dedicate his life to literature and science. The late eminent French botanist, VILLARS, suddenly became enamoured of natural science from looking into an old work on medicine which he chanced to find at a house where he was staying.

The French dramatist, JoLY, was the son of a keeper of a coffee-house in Paris, where a sort of literary club was wont to meet. One evening a tale of Madame de Murat's was the subject of their conversation; and the warm encomiums they united in bestowing upon it arrested in an extraordinary degree the attention of Joly. As soon as the club broke up he retired to his bedroom, spent the night in writing, and, before morning, had contrived the plan of a drama in verse, and advanced a considerable way in its composition. A few days more enabled him to complete his work; which, to the astonishment of his father's literary guests, he put into their hands at their next meeting, requesting their opinion of it. The proposal of having the performance read excited at first only the merriment of the assembled critics; but its merits were soon felt and acknowledged; and, when it had been heard to the end, there was only one opinion as to the certainty of its success if it should be represented on the stage. Accordingly, the piece, entitled a "School for Lovers," in three acts, was brought out, and received with great applause. Joly now gave himself up to literature; but, although he afterward produced several other dramatic compositions, it is remarked that scarcely any of them equalled his first performance. The late French Orientalist, JOURDAIN, was originally intended for the law, and had been placed with a notary, when, in the year 1805, the admiration he heard bestowed upon Anquetil du Perron, then newly dead, who had in his

youth enlisted as a private soldier in a corps going to India, in order that he might enjoy an opportunity of studying the Eastern languages, kindled in him an irresistible passion to devote himself to similar pursuits. Jourdain was at this time only seventeen years of age, and died when just thirty. Yet in that short interval he had acquired a distinguished name as an Oriental scholar, and had given to the world a variety of able works, among which may be especially mentioned a very learned statistical account of Persia, in five volumes, which appeared when the author was only in his twentysixth year.

We will mention only a very few other instances of the manner in which accidental, and apparently trivial, occurrences have sometimes operated in exciting latent genius. The Italian sculptor BANDINELLI is said to have been first led to turn his thoughts to the art of statuary by a great fall of snow which happened when he was a boy at his native city of Florence. He fashioned a statue of the snow, which was conceived to give a striking indication of his talent for modelling. The late eminent English engraver, RICHARD EARLOM, is reported to have been originally inspired with a taste for the art of design, by seeing the ornaments on the lord-mayor's state coach, which happened to have been painted by the elegant pencil of Cipriani. The famous German printer, BREITKOPF, the inventor of moveable types for printing music, and of many other improvements in typography and letterfounding, was first inspired with a liking for his profession, which he had originally embraced on compulsion, by falling in with a work of Albert Durer, in which the shapes of the letters are deduced from mathematical principles.

CHAPTER XVI.

Knowledge of Languages-Hill; Wild; Eugene Aram: Purver.-Miscellaneous Examples-Abbé Hauy; Moses Men

delsohn.

IF mechanical invention does not necessarily imply much study of books, and may seem, on that account, a province of intellectual exertion fitted for persons who have not enjoyed the advantages of a regular education, as being one in which natural sagacity and ingenuity, as much as literary attain ments, are requisite to ensure advancement, the same thing can hardly be said of another department, in which self-taught genius has frequently made extraordinary progress; we mean the study of languages. This is the sort of knowledge, indeed, which, in common parlance, is more peculiarly called learning. Its acquisition, in the circumstances alluded to, can only be the result of a love for, and familiarity with, books, and of what we may call the literary habit thoroughly formed.

There are three purposes for which languages may be studied, independently of their gratifying that general desire of information which makes both the acquirement and the possession of all knowledge delightful. One use, and an infinitely important one, to be made of the knowledge of languages, is the study of that intellectual mechanism by which they have been formed, and of which they present us, as it were, with the impress or picture. Another department of philosophy to which this knowledge is a key, is that relating to the early history of our race, and the origin of the different nations by whom the earth is peopled; a subject to

many parts of which we have no other guide than the evidence of language, but upon which this evidence, skilfully interpreted, may be made to throw the surest of all light. But the motive which most generally induces the student to seek an acquaintance with foreign or ancient tongues, is, of course, that he may be able to read the books written in them, and thus obtain access to worlds of intellectual treasure from which he would be otherwise entirely, or almost entirely, shut out; for no satisfactory knowledge of any foreign literature is to be acquired through translations. Of many works traslations do not exist, or are not accessible, when the original is; and of many there can be no adequate translation. The man whose knowledge of the literature of another age or country is confined to translations, is in the situation of the untravelled reader, who may, indeed, learn something of foreign lands from the descriptions of those who have visited them; but a person familiar with the language of another people has that sort of access to their literature, which he would have to the general knowledge of their country and their manners who was in possession of one of the talismans of eastern fiction, by which he could transport himself thither at a wish.

ROBERT HILL, as the Rev. Joseph Spence, who has published what he styles "A Parallel, after the manner of Plutarch," between Hill and the celebrated Florentine, Magliabecchi, informs us, was born in 1699, at Miswell, near Tring, in Hertfordshire, of parents in humble life, who had scarcely been married a year when his father died. Five years after this event, however, his mother was married a second time to a tailor at Buckingham; but, upon removing to that place, she left Robert at Miswell, in charge of his grandmother. The old woman herself taught him to read, and afterward sent him to school for seven or eight weeks to learn

writing, which was all the school education he ever received. He then went to reside with an uncle who lived at Tring Grove, by whom he was employed to drive the plough and do other country work. At last, when he was about fifteen years of age, it was resolved to bind him an apprentice to his father-in-law the tailor. With him he remained for the usual period of seven years, in which time he learned that business. In the year 1716 he chanced to get hold of an imperfect Latin Accidence and Grammar, and about three fourths of a Littleton's Dictionary. He had already begun to be a great reader, purchasing candles for himself with what money he could procure, and sitting up at his books a great part of the night, the only time he had any leisure; but these acquisitions gave additional force to a desire he had for some time felt to learn Latin, originally excited, as he declared, by some epitaphs in that language in the church, which his curiosity made him wish very much to be able to read. Next year, however, he was sent back to Tring Grove, in consequence of the smallpox raging in Buckingham; and, in the hurry of departure, he left his Latin books behind him. It was a year and a quarter before he returned to Buckingham, and during that interval he was employed in keeping his uncle's sheep, an occupation in which he said he was very happy, as, to use his own expression," he could lie under a hedge and read all day long." The only books he had with him were the "Practice of Piety," the "Whole duty of Man," and a French Grammar, which he read so often through that at last he had them almost all by heart. When he got back to Buckingham, however, he found his old Latin Grammar, and this set him anew on his classical studies. Here he derived considerable assistance from some of his young companions, who were attending the Free Grammar School of the place, and whom he used