of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
but when they describe the elder Crébillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
unparalleled atrocity.

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his
son. The old man's answer is remarkable--"Of my son, not of me; for I have
thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this
child will not labour for me, for anything that I and my wife will do; but
always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles,
and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be
made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons;
"they were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of
them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them.
And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius--
the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the
family, who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve
brothers, was the youth averse to the common labour, and dreaming of
chivalry amidst a herd of cows.

A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and has first to
encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, unassisted by that feeble