I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good: myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things.

[Footnote A: Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless
levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy
of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many
days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by
constraint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most
serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says--"Robert's
countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious,
contemplative, and thoughtful mind:"--Ed.]

It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained
throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common
amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where
dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This
characteristic of genius was discovered by HORACE in that Ode which
schoolboys often versify. BEATTIE has expressly told us of his Minstrel,

The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.

ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
poet sings,

Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I, like the pleasing cadence of a line,
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.

And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in
their great representatives VIRGIL and HORACE. When they accompanied
Mecaenas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis,
the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by
the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him
to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; so, says he, "should I
return with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." THOMSON was the
hero of his own "Castle of Indolence;"