NOTED PRECOCIOUS. CHILDREN.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4916, 11 October 1884, Page 4

NOTED PRECOCIOUS. CHILDREN.

Baillet mentions one hundred and sixtythree children endowed with extraordinary talents, among whom few arrived at an advanced age. The two sons of Quintillian, so vaunted by their father, did not Teach their tenth year. Hermagenes, who, at the age of fifteen, taught rhetoric to Marcus Aurelius, who triumphed over the most celebrated rhetoricians of Greece, did not die, but at 24 lost his faculties and forgot all he had previously acquired. Pica di Mirandola died at twenty-two; Johannes Secundus, at twenty-five, having at tbe aga of fifteen composed admirably Greek and Latin verses, and become profoundly versed in jurisprudence and letters. Pascal, whose genius developed itself at ten years old, did not attain the third of a century. In 1791, a child was born at Lubeck named Henri Heinekem, whose precocity was miraculous. At ten months of. age he spoke distinctly; at twelve he learned the Pentateuch by rote, and in fourteen months was perfectly ac« quainted with the Old and New Testaments. At two years of age he was bs familiar with ancient history as the most erudite authors of antiquity. Sansbn and Danville only could compete with him in geographical knowledge. Cicero would have thought him an alter ego on hearing him converse in Latin, and in modern languages he was equally proficient. This wonderful child was unfortunately carried off in its fourth year. According to a proverb," the sword wore out the sheath."