and various other matters in return for his service.
But there is no reason to suppose that he ever occupied
himself very much with wool-weaving. He had a
vocation quite other than that, and if he ever did
make any cloth there must have been some strange thoughts
and imaginings woven into it, as he plied the shuttle.
Most of his biographers, relying upon a doubtful statement
in the life of him written by his son Ferdinand, would
have us send him at the age of twelve to the distant
University of Pavia, there, poor mite, to sit at the
feet of learned professors studying Latin, mathematics,
and cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary
to believe so improbable a statement. What is
much more likely about his education—for
education he had, although not of the superior kind
with which he has been credited—is that
in the blank, sunny time of his childhood he was sent
to one of the excellent schools established by the
weavers in their own quarter, and that there or afterwards
he came under some influence, both religious and learned,
which stamped him the practical visionary that he
remained throughout his life. Thereafter, between
his sea voyagings and expeditions about the Mediterranean
coasts, he no doubt acquired knowledge in the only
really practical way that it can be acquired; that
is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.
What we know is that he had in later life some knowledge
of the works of Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Seneca,
Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair the Arabic
astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel
the Jew; of Isadore the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus
the Britons; of Strabo the German, Gerson the Frenchman,
and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian. These names
cover a wide range, but they do not imply university
education. Some of them merely suggest acquaintance
with the ‘Imago Mundi’; others imply that
selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help
a man’s purpose and of rejecting what is useless
to it, that is one of the marks of genius, and an
outward sign of the inner light.
We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding
out the tasks that are the common heritage of all
small boys; working a little at the weaving, interestedly
enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly
cooling off in his enthusiasm as the pastime became
a task, and the restriction of indoor life began to
be felt. For if ever there was a little boy who
loved to idle about the wharves and docks, here was
that little boy. It was here, while he wandered
about the crowded quays and listened to the medley
of talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond
the masts of the ships into the blue distance of the
sea, that the desire to wander and go abroad upon
the face of the waters must first have stirred in his
heart. The wharves of Genoa in those days combined
in themselves all the richness of romance and adventure,
buccaneering, trading, and treasure-snatching, that