the age of thirteen, electrified the University
of Paris with a tragedy and two comedies,
which he immediately followed up with
pastorals, hymns, and a collection of sonnets,
under the amazing name of Gelodacria.
Ronsard was jealous of the boy. Cardinal
Jérôme de la Rovere, afterwards archbishop
of Turin, was a poet at the age of seven or
eight, and published his poems at the age of
ten. To anything of that sort, however, we
are, in these days, well accustomed. To this
course of proceeding British babes are driven
daily by advice of friends.

A child of the Aldine house of printers
wrote, at fourteen, a commentary on
orthography; which is but a simple and quiet thing
to mention before recording that Zamoiski,
the Pole—who called himself Joannes Sarius
Samoscius—was, at thirteen, the perfect
master of Greek, Latin, Turkish, German,
Sclavonian and Tartar. He wrote them all,
and spoke them all rightly and glibly. He
was at that time learning Arabic.

It is from this book of Baillet's that
Mr. Shandy quoted marvels of wise sons to
Uncle Toby, when that worthy made his
famous commentary upon the legend that
Lipsius composed a work the day he was
born. This, Monsieur Baillet explains as
meaning, not the carnal, but the rational life
of that scholar. Lope de Vega made known
his poetical attainments as soon as he could
speak, and dictated, before he had learnt to
write, his compositions. Monsieur de Peirese,
at the age of seven, obtained leave to educate
the faculties, moral and intellectual, of a
younger brother, and proved, young as he
was, a perfect tutor.

Monsieur Bontillier de Ranca, afterwards
Abbé of La Trappe, published, at the age of
thirteen, a new edition of Anacreon, with
notes in Greek, and in the year sixteen
hundred and seventy-seven, a nameless young
rhetorician, studying at Toulouse, published,
at the same age, in folio, an Universal History,
written in Latin. Salmasius the grammarian,
Milton's victim, who was, in spite of all that
Milton said to him, an able and a worthy
man, made an exact version of Pindar at the
age of ten.

But the best lesson to fathers who have
sons to form, was furnished by the father of
Fortunio Liceti. That philosopher was born
prematurely, and came into the world no
bigger than the palm of a hand. His father,
who was a physician, saw that there was
some life in the very little fellow, showed
him to brethren of the faculty, and made up
his mind to bring him on by hatching in
an oven, comfortably furnished and kept at
an uniform artificial heat. The result of his
industry was a child whom he taught
himself; who lived to the age of eighty, and was,
even as a youth, the author of a treatise on
the Philosophy of the Soul, to which he
gave a name worthy of his great erudition,
Gonopsychanthropologia.

At the door of the oven in which this
philosopher was baked, I will lay down my
batch of solemn boys.

     A PARADOXICAL EXPERIENCE.

IT was certainly a dull, little dinner-party.
Of the four guests two of us were men between
fifty and sixty, and two of us were youths,
between eighteen and twenty; and we had no
subjects in common. We were all intimate
with our host; but we were only slightly
acquainted with each other. I think we should
have got on better if there had been some
ladies among us; but the master of the house
was a bachelor, and, except the parlour-maid,
who assisted in waiting on us at dinner, no
daughter of Eve was present to brighten the
dreary scene. We tried all sorts of subjects;
but they dropped in the most disastrous
manner, one after the other. The elder
gentlemen seemed to be afraid of committing
themselves by talking too freely within
hearing of us juniors; and we, on our side,
restrained our youthful flow of spirits and
youthful freedom of conversation, out of
deference to our host, who seemed once or
twice to be feeling a little nervous about
the continued propriety of our behaviour
in the presence of his respectable guests. To
make matters worse, we had dined at a
sensible hour. When the bottles made their
first round, at dessert, the clock on the
mantlepiece only struck eight. I counted the
strokes; and felt certain, from the expression
of his face, that the other junior guest, who
sat on one side of me at the round table, was
counting them also. When we came to the
final eight, we exchanged looks of despair.
"Two hours more of this! What on earth is
to become of us?" In the language of the
eyes, that was exactly what we said to each
other.

The wine was excellent; and I think we
all came, separately and secretly, to the same
conclusion—that our chance of getting
through the evening was intimately connected
with our resolution in getting through the
bottles. The Port was of some famous
vintage, I forget which; the Madeira was
forty years old; the Claret was a present
from Bordeaux. As a matter of course, we
talked wine. No company of Englishmen can
assemble together for an evening without
doing that. Every man in this country who
is rich enough to pay income tax, has, at one
time or other in his life, effected a very
remarkable transaction in wine. Sometimes
he has made such a bargain as he never
expects to make again. Sometimes he is the
only man in England, not a peer of the realm,
who has got a single drop of a certain famous
vintage which has perished from the face of
the earth. Sometimes he has purchased, with
a friend, a few last left dozens from the cellar
of a deceased potentate, at a price so
exorbitant that he can only wag his head and