Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/220

few years later, who died at the age of five. His accomplishments are almost incredible, but his father declares that at two and a half years old he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. "He had before the fifth year not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs, regular and most of the irregular, got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes; began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious; he had read Æsop, he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. He had learned all his Catechism early, and understood the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder."