fantastic
ruminations, and there I should have composed many a poem, had I then
known to write either in verse or prose in any language whatever."

[Footnote A: This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth
and James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently
alluded to by the satirists of the time. BEN JONSON, in his "Every Man in
his Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting
"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's
your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine
wit, sir."--ED.]

An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other noble and mighty
spirit of our times, who could most truly exhibit the history of the youth
of genius, and he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy TASSO:--

--From my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering.

The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his
mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel:

Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled,
Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.

BOSSUET would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary
task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's
villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the
_bos suetus aratro_ which frequent flogging had made them classical enough
to quote.

The learned HUET has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecutions
of his schoolmates, to divert him from his obstinate love of study. "At
length, in order to indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while
they were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might read
and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and started in his burrow
the future man of erudition. Sir WILLIAM JONES was rarely a partaker in
the active sports of Harrow; it was said of GRAY that he was never a boy;
the unhappy CHATTERTON and BURNS were singularly serious in youth;[A] as
were HOBBES and BACON. MILTON has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his
school-life--

When