yriac, and most of
the modern languages, disputed in divinity, law and all the sciences, was
skilful in history, both ecclesiastical and profane; in a word, so
universally and solidly learned at eleven years of age that he was looked
on as a miracle. Dr. Lloyd, one of the most deep-learned divines of this
nation in all sorts of literature, with Dr. Burnet, who had severely
examined him, came away astonished, and told me they did not believe
there had the like appeared in the world. He had only been instructed by
his father, who being himself a learned person, confessed that his son
knew all that he himself knew. But what was more admirable than his vast
memory was his judgment and invention, he being tried with divers hard
questions which required maturity of thought and experience. He was also
dexterous in chronology, antiquities, mathematics. In sum, an
_intellectus universalis_ beyond all that we reade of Picus Mirandula,
and other precoce witts, and yet withal a very humble child.' This
prodigy was the son of the Rev. Henry Wotton, minister of Wrentham,
Suffolk. Sir William Skippon, a parishioner, in a letter yet extant,
describes the wonderful achievements of the little fellow when but five
years old. He was admitted at Katherine Hall, Cambridge, some months
before he was ten years old. In after-years he was the friend and
defender of Bentley and the antagonist of Sir William Temple in the great
controversy about ancient and modern learning. He died in 1726, and was
buried at Buxted, in Sussex. It is clear that there was no such
intellectual phenomenon in all London under the Stuarts as that little
Wrentham lad.

Of that village, when I came into the world, my father was the honoured,
laborious and successful minister. The meeting-house, as it was called,
which stood in the lane leading from the church to the highroad, was a
square red brick building, vastly superior to any of the ancient
meeting-houses round. It stood in an enclosure, one side of which was
devoted to the reception of the farmers' gigs, which, on a Sunday
afternoon, when the principal service was held, made quite a respectable
show when drawn up in a line. By the side of it was a cottage, in which
lived the woman who kept the place tidy, and her husband, who looked
after the horses as they were unharnessed and put in the stable close by.
The backs of the gigs were sheltered from the road by a hedge of lilacs,
and over the gateway a gi