SNARE OF PRECOCITY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3, 30 April 1912, Page 6

SNARE OF PRECOCITY.

A report of the London County Council makes reference to the tragedy of the backward child, and the almost equal sadness of tile lot of the early genius. Sir James Crichton-Browhc supplies the most interesting contribution on tills subject. Precocity, jie says, is not a thing to bo- desired. The premature snarpucss and cunning of street arabs are proverbial, and arc contrasted with the obtaseness and s mplicity of country children ; but in the long ruiutne country children have the boat of it in intelligence. The infant prodigies who arc brought in after dimier to astonish the guests with the feeblest of commonplaces, unless tiicy die olf, are instances of that kind of precocity that is really a symptom of disease.' Many painful instances are quoted of gifted children who fell victims to tubercular disease just as

they were giving promise of marvellous achievement. Typical eases are those of Lucretio and Margaret Davidson, whose genius was recognised by Washington Irving, and who died from the disease in early girlhood, leaving poetical remains of no mean spirit. A typical case is also that of Pet Marjorie, who repeated Constance’s speech from “King John” to Sir Walter Scott, till lie sobbed, and he died of tubercular meningitis when seven years old, after inditing letters and poems which would have done credit to a woman of forty. “The gods do hate tiiese children,” says one writer on commenting on the report. He cites Cliattorton, who was a hoy poet, and committed suicide at eighteen, and Poe, who died early, and Raphael, who lived only to he 3f. But the citing of cases appears to lead no whither, as against such as those referred to are set those of John Stuart Mill, who began Greek at three years of age, had read the first six dialogues of Plato when tie was seven, and had mastered Robertson’s Histories, Gibbon, and Rollin before he was nine. His life, however, was not (says Sir James) a healthy or a happy one. At twenty ho suffered from an attack of melancholia with suicidal tendencies, and was the victim of brain troubles of (unkind and another to the end of his

days, -'lluskin, again, was strangely precocious, and was sending to the circulating library for books when ho was five, but he, too, although he lived till within a few daxs of Ins eighty-first I birthday, was sunjeet to serious illness at every crisis of his life, while h;s later years were clouded by mental trouble. The comment on the report ends with the obviously truthful statement that the child is happy who is neither backward nor forward, but slowly and steadily climbs to the summit of his powers.