rent parts of England. Thus he visited
Windsor, Marlborough, Bath, Oxford, Salisbury, Devizes, Gloucester,
Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Doncaster, York, Cambridge, and many
other places, so that he probably saw a great deal more of England than
the majority of men in his position. Thus, too, he learned much about
the country and about all branches of rural economy. He had not yet
seriously given himself to literature, although his third work was
published in 1656, _An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Cerus de
Rerum Natura. Interpreted and made English Verse_.

In January, 1658, heavy sorrow fell upon Evelyn by the death of his
younger son, an infant prodigy, and a sad and wonderful example of a
young brain being terribly overtaxed. 'After six fits of a quartan ague
with which it pleased God to visite him, died my dear Son Richard, to
our inexpressible grief and affliction, 5 yeares and 3 days old onely,
but at that tender age a prodigy for witt and understanding; for beauty
of body a very angel; for endowment of mind of incredible and rare
hopes. To give onely a little taste of them, and thereby glory to God,
he had learn'd all this catechisme who out of the mouths of babes and
infants does sometimes perfect his praises: at 2 years and a halfe old
he could perfectly read any of ye English, Latine, French, or Gothic
letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had before
the 5th yeare, or in that yeare, not onely skill to reade most written
hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and
most of ye irregular; learn'd out "Puerilis," got by heart almost ye
entire vocabularie of Latine and French primitives and words, could make
congruous syntax, turne English into Latine, and _vice versa_, construe
and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives,
verbs, substantives, elipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a
considerable progress in Comenius's Janua; began himselfe to write
legibly, and had a stronge passion for Greeke. The number of verses he
could recite was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of
playes, which he would also act; and when seeing a Plautus in one's
hand, he ask'd what booke it was, and being told it was comedy, and too
difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious
application of fables and morals, for he had read AEsop; he had a
wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers
proposi