the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn
and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious,
and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against
force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of
reprimand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to excess, but
inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
_child_."[A]

[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
inclination, indicated by various little matters."]

That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive