[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 I was yet a child, no childish play
  To me was pleasing:  all my mind was set
  Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
  What might be public good:  myself I thought
  Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
  All righteous things.

[Footnote A:  Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, “Instead of the thoughtless levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy of maturer life.  He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by constraint.  His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most serious cast.”  Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says—­“Robert’s countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind:”—­Ed.]