raphical suit of clothes,
which might give him some hints of that science, and likewise some
knowledge of the commerce of different nations. He had a French hat with
an African feather, Holland shirts, Flanders lace, English clothes lined
with Indian silk, his gloves were Italian, and his shoes were Spanish:
he was made to observe this, and daily catechized thereupon, which his
father was wont to call "traveling at home." He never gave him a fig or
an orange but he obliged him to give an account from what country it
came. In natural history he was much assisted by his curiosity in
sign-posts; insomuch that he hath often confessed he owed to them the
knowledge of many creatures which he never found since in any author,
such as white lions, golden dragons, etc. He once thought the same of
green men, but had since found them mentioned by Kercherus, and verified
in the history of William of Newburg.

His disposition to the mathematics was discovered very early, by his
drawing parallel lines on his bread and butter, and intersecting them at
equal angles, so as to form the whole superficies into squares. But in
the midst of all these improvements a stop was put to his learning the
alphabet, nor would he let him proceed to the letter D, till he could
truly and distinctly pronounce C in the ancient manner, at which the
child unhappily boggled for near three months. He was also obliged to
delay his learning to write, having turned away the writing-master
because he knew nothing of Fabius's waxen tables.

Cornelius having read and seriously weighed the methods by which the
famous Montaigne was educated, and resolving in some degree to exceed
them, resolved he should speak and learn nothing but the learned
languages, and especially the Greek; in which he constantly eat and
drank, according to Homer. But what most conduced to his easy attainment
of this language was his love of gingerbread: which his father
observing, caused to be stamped with the letters of the Greek alphabet;
and the child the very first day eat as far as Iota. By his particular
application to this language above the rest, he attained so great a
proficiency therein, that Gronovius ingenuously confesses he durst not
confer with this child in Greek at eight years old; and at fourteen he
composed a tragedy in the same language, as the younger Pliny had done
before him.

He learned the Oriental languages of Erpenius, who resided some time
with his father for that