ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT of the LIFE OF JOHN PHILIP BARRETIER [46].
"As the nature of our collections requires that our accounts of
remarkable persons and transactions should be early, our readers must
necessarily pardon us, if they are often not complete, and allow us to
be sufficiently studious of their satisfaction, if we correct our
errours, and supply our defects from subsequent intelligence, where
the importance of the subject merits an extraordinary attention, or
when we have any peculiar opportunities of procuring information. The
particulars here inserted we thought proper to annex, by way of note,
to the following passages, quoted from the magazine for December,
1740, and for February, 1741."
P. 377. _At the age of nine years he not only was master of five
languages._
French, which was the native language of his mother, was that which he
learned first, mixed, by living in Germany, with some words of the
language of the country. After some time, his father took care to
introduce, in his conversation with him, some words of Latin, in such
a manner that he might discover the meaning of them by the connexion
of the sentence, or the occasion on which they were used, without
discovering that he had any intention of instructing him, or that any
new attainment was proposed.
By this method of conversation, in which new words were every day
introduced, his ear had been somewhat accustomed to the inflections
and variations of the Latin tongue, he began to attempt to speak like
his father, and was in a short time drawn on, by imperceptible
degrees, to speak Latin, intermixed with other languages.
Thus, when he was but four years old, he spoke every day French to his
mother, Latin to his father, and high Dutch to the maid, without any
perplexity to himself, or any confusion of one language with another.