brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in
translating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir WILLIAM JONES, at
Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each
schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the
_Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess
that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he
displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and
taste so prevalent in his literary character. FLORIAN'S earliest years
were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old
translation of the Iliad: whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size
or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and
raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body: collecting the ashes in an
urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his
Patroclus or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish
sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, Gonsalvo of
Cordova, and William Tell. BACON, when a child, was so remarkable for
thoughtful observation, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him "the young
lord-keeper." The boy made a remarkable reply, when her Majesty,
inquiring of him his age, he said, that "He was two years younger than
her Majesty's happy reign." The boy may have been tutored; but this
mixture of gravity, and ingenuity, and political courtiership,
undoubtedly caught from his father's habits, afterwards characterised
Lord Bacon's manhood. I once read the letter of a contemporary of HOBBES,
where I found that this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on
packs of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was a
fellmonger; and that in the market-place he thus early began to vent his
private opinions, which long afterwards so fully appeared in his
writings.

For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a criterion of