The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-12-06
SOME FAMOUS OUNCES.
Numerous Famous Men Known as
Such While in School

buCp Wnllo IN CCnOOls
FROM the London Standard.
The youth Of high scholastic attachments
who is always carrying of prizes naturally
raises hopes Of his subsequent success in q
particular career OF course, the most is
made of him. He is not only a credit TO
himself, but to his teachers; to the latter,
indeed, be is a practical certifoate-a "hu-
man document" Of the frat class.
Finally, be leaves school, and It Is oonti-
IDENTIFY predicted that If be does not achieve
victory in the battle of life, it can only be
on account of some moral flaw which has
not yet had time 10 declare itself But the
dull boy" seldom receives the benefit of
the doubt in any speculation as to bis
future.
Once dubbed ounce" or reputed "slow,"
and he is allowed to develop in the shade;
emerging from which, he satisfies or sur
prises his friends only because nothing was
expected OF him. No enc can dispute the
claim of Sir Isaac Newton TO q monument
In Westninter abbey, nor to the praise
conferred by POpe's well-known spitaph:
Nature, and Natures laws, lay hid by night;
God said Let Newton bel" and all was light
Nevertheless the greatest of English phil
osOphers was q so-cRlled Ounce" at school.
Sir David Brewster tells us in his Life"
that Newton made Ii tie progress until one
day the boywho was above him having given
him severe kick in the stomach from
which he suffered great pain, he labored in
cessantly until he got above him In the
school, and from that time continued to rise
until he was the head hoy"
In the same illustrious fame is a monu-
meEt to another Isaac, not, perhaps, so uni
versally known as his great namesake, but
showing genius in his maturer years for
which the friends of his youth were by no
means prepared. Isaac Barrow was not
only an idle and quarrelsome lad, but was
80 dull and stupid in his early years that his
father once remarked to a neighbor that 'if
God took away any Of his children he
trusted it would be Isaac, az he feared he
would never be fit for anything In the
world"
But there was evidently something more
than mere animal pugnacity 10 young Bar
row. As divine he stands as one of the
great triumvirate of the Church of Eng
land with Taylor and Hooker. AS mathe-
matician. under the designation of 1.-The
most learned man an England" he was APP
pointed master Of Trinity College, Cam
bridge.
As a wit he more than once administered
unanswerabls yer bal chasti sement to Lord
Rochester, ''the wittiest of the witty"
It is worth remembering that Isaac Bar
row and Isaac Newton-the dull boys" of
their respective families-became associated
at Cambridge, where the latter had Barrow
for his mathematical tutor, and we NAV
perhaps be allowed to wonder whether these
two men Of consummate attainments ever
compared notes on their alleged want of
capacity in childhood.
Not only philosophers and divines, bat
some of the most trenchant satirists and
brilliant humorists were dull enough as
boys. 1t has been said of Swift in his best
days that "he displayed either the blasted
lightning of satire or the lambert and
meteorlike oaricatures of frolicsome humor. !"
And yet this vigorous disputant was
deemed fit subject for FOOLS cap at
school. Afterward, at the Dublin Univer-
sity "he was by scholars esteemed block
head" who was denied bis degree on his
first applica ton and obtained it with great
difficulty on the second. Goldsmith's fame
was grated upon boy hood Of wholly un-
recognized capabilities.
"Never was 80 dull boy, ;" was the report
of the relative who first undertook TO teach
him his letters At every school we hear of
the inspired idiot" Of the future as ''shy.
thick, awkward boy" the constant butt of
his companions, by whom he was thought
to be "little better than fool" johnson
describes Goldsmith as a ''plant that flow
cred late" and even during the four years
of his college course few signs Of genius
were disco verable.
But however late the flower, the root was
there; and OF Goldsmith 1t may be said in a
special sense that the child was the father
Of the man.
Sheridan gave almost no promise in child
hood or his failure brilliancy. His mother
pronounced Richard Brinsley" to be 1.-The
dullest and most helpless of her sons" and
he was sent hame from DR.. Whyte's acade-
my with the reputation Of being an impene-
trable Ounce, who wrote ''thiuk" for
thing But he must have been able to
think O thing or two even in those days, for
at 20 he had written The School for Scan
dal." Of which Leigh Hunt observes. sit is
very concentration and capitalization of
all that is sparkling, clear and compact in
the materials Of pure comedy"
1t should, however, be mentioned that a
more judicious Of the youthful Sheridan's
preceptors, Samuel Parr, one Of the masters
at Harrow. detected the latent spark OF his
pupils genius, and aided it by judicious
cultivation. Douglass Jerrold, another and
scarcely less keen wit of a more modern
school, wrote "Black-eyed Susan" when he
was 81, aud contributed to Punch the i'm
mensely popular "Caudle Lectures" not long
afterward.
But at 9 years OF age young Jerrold had
been scarcely able TO read, and it was not
until be was apprenticed to a printer. after
serving for some time as a midshipman at
sea, that be showed either desire or capacity