susceptible of shame to excess, but
inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
_child_."[A]

[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
inclination, indicated by various little matters."]

That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive
of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
but when they describe the elder Crebillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
unparalleled atrocity.

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
said Arthur, who inquired