e importance of the subject merits an extraordinary attention, or
when we have any peculiar opportunities of procuring information. The
particulars here inserted we thought proper to annex, by way of note,
to the following passages, quoted from the magazine for December,
1740, and for February, 1741."

P. 377. _At the age of nine years he not only was master of five
languages._

French, which was the native language of his mother, was that which he
learned first, mixed, by living in Germany, with some words of the
language of the country. After some time, his father took care to
introduce, in his conversation with him, some words of Latin, in such
a manner that he might discover the meaning of them by the connexion
of the sentence, or the occasion on which they were used, without
discovering that he had any intention of instructing him, or that any
new attainment was proposed.

By this method of conversation, in which new words were every day
introduced, his ear had been somewhat accustomed to the inflections
and variations of the Latin tongue, he began to attempt to speak like
his father, and was in a short time drawn on, by imperceptible
degrees, to speak Latin, intermixed with other languages.

Thus, when he was but four years old, he spoke every day French to his
mother, Latin to his father, and high Dutch to the maid, without any
perplexity to himself, or any confusion of one language with another.

P. 377. _He is no stranger to biblical criticism._

Having now gained such a degree of skill in the Hebrew language, as to
be able to compose in it, both in prose and verse, he was extremely
desirous of reading the rabbins; and having borrowed of the
neighbouring clergy, and the jews of Schwabach, all the books which
they could supply him, he prevailed on his father to buy him the great
rabbinical Bible, published at Amsterdam, in four tomes, folio, 1728,
and read it with that accuracy and attention which appears, by the
account of it written by him to his favourite M. le Maitre, inserted
in the beginning of the twenty-sixth volume of the Bibliotheque
germanique.

These writers were read by him, as other young persons peruse romances
or novels, only from a puerile desire of amusement; for he had so
little veneration for them, even while he studied them with most
eagerness, that he often diverted his parents with recounting their
fables and chimeras.

P. 381. _In his twelfth year he applied more particularly to