Little Richard showed wonderful promise even in those years of childhood.  At the Kreuzschule, where his education began, he developed an ardent love for the Greek classics, and translated the first twelve books of the Odyssey, outside of school hours.  He devoured all stories of mythology he could lay hands on, and soon began to create vast tragedies.  He revelled in Shakespeare, and finally began to write a play which was to combine the ideas of both Hamlet and King Lear.  Forty-two persons were killed off in the course of the play and had to be brought back as ghosts, as otherwise there would have been no characters for the last act.  He worked on this play for two years.

Everything connected with the theater was of absorbing interest to this precocious child.  Weber, who lived in Dresden, often passed their house and was observed with almost religious awe by little Richard.  Sometimes the great composer dropped in to have a chat with the mother, who was well liked among musicians and artists.  Thus Weber became the idol of the lad’s boyhood, and he knew “Der Freischuetz” almost by heart.  If he was not allowed to go to the theater to listen to his favorite opera, there would be scenes of weeping and beseeching, until permission was granted for him to run off to the performance.

In 1827 the family returned to Leipsic, and it was at the famous Gewandhaus concerts that the boy first heard Beethoven’s music.  He was so fired by the Overture to “Egmont,” that he decided at once to become a musician.  But how—­that was the question.  He knew nothing of composition, but, borrowing a treatise on harmony, tried to learn the whole contents in a week.

It was a struggle, and one less determined than the fourteen-year-old boy would have given up in despair.  He was made of different stuff.  Working alone by himself, he composed a sonata, a quartette and an aria.  At last he ventured to announce the result of his secret studies.  At this news his relatives were up in arms; they judged his desire for music to be a passing fancy, especially as they knew nothing of any preparatory studies, and realized he had never learned to play any instrument, not even the piano.

The family, however, compromised enough to engage a teacher for him.  But Richard would never learn slowly and systematically.  His mind shot far ahead, absorbing in one instance the writings of Hoffmann, whose imaginative tales kept the boy’s mind in a continual state of nervous excitement.  He was not content to climb patiently the mountain; he tried to reach the top at a bound.  So he wrote overtures for orchestras, one of which was really performed in Leipsic—­a marvelous affair indeed, with its tympani explosions.

Richard now began to realize the need of solid work, and settled down to study music seriously, this time under Theodor Weinlig, who was cantor in the famous Thomas School.