Precocity is not always a cerebral disease, certainly, tho where
it is pronounced the presumption is not in its favor. Slower
growths are the surer and attain the greater heights. Usually
precocity wants a depth which is not supplied to the subject
in more mature years. With the comparatively few exceptions
that can be noted, it lacks staying power. The most remarkable
case of collapsed precocity that occurs to us is that of the
Englishman Betty, the “young Roscius.” He went on the stage at
the age of twelve years in 1803, played _Hamlet_ and other
prominent characters, and in four years amassed a fortune of
over $150,000, at a time when money was worth twice its present
face value. For twenty-eight nights in Drury Lane he earned
over $3,000 a night. He left the stage to go to school, and
on his return, three years later, made an utter failure and
never amounted to anything as an actor thereafter.--New York
_World_.
(2471)
* * * * *
It is said of Jonathan Edwards that he commenced the study of
Latin at six years of age; at eight he was keenly interested
in spiritual matters. At ten he wrote, like a philosopher, a
quaint and humorous essay on the immortality of the soul, and
at twelve years of age wrote an original paper on the habits of
the flying-spider.
(2472)
* * * * *
Of Mrs. Wesley’s father it is gravely recorded that “when about
five or six years old he began a practise, which he afterward
continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible.”
The phenomenon of a child not six years old who solemnly forms,
in the cells of his infantile brain, the plan of reading twenty
chapters of the Bible every day--and sticks to it through a
long life--would in these modern days be reckoned nothing
less than astonishing. Of Hetty Wesley, the sister of John,
it is on record that at eight years of age she could read the
Greek Testament. Do any such wonderful children exist in these
days?--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”
(2473)
See PRODIGY, A.