The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-25
SOME MARvELs OF rRECOCITY.
Childhood Accomplishments of Sew
eraI Great Men.

CniluhoOu accompaniment or Sew
eraI Great Men.
William Mathews in Philadelphia Satur.
day Evening Post.
The stories told in biographies of the
precocity of many eminent men almost
stagger belief Yet no fact regarding
great men is better attested than that
the mental faculties of a large proportion
of them-especially great artists, poets
and scholars-were developed early. Mo-
Fart, who could write tunes when years
old, was the despair of mis- instructors.
who could teach him nothing AT the age
of he astonished the Parisians by his
performance on the organ and by his i'm
provisation, and published two of his own
musical compositions. Schuberts instruc-
tor complained that he was always max
ing the Notifying discovery That he could
tell his pupil nothing which he did nor
know beforehand. Beethoven was a stand
ing puzzle to his professors, and chuck
led over the difficulties which they could
not explain by reference to any authori-
tative work on thorough-bass.
Mendelssoin by his eighth year had ac-
quired such mastery over the piano thar
he played it with wonderful finish and N
the theory of music he had made such
progress that he had detected in con-
certo of Bach six of those dread offenses
against the grammar of music, consecu-
tive tifths. When, at the age of Il. he
was placed under Moscheles, the latter
wrote in his diary: This afternoon l
gave Felix Mendelssohn his first lesson,
without losing sight for single moment
of the fact that / was sitting next mas
Ter, not a pupil" At 16 the youth read
Wieland's Shakespeare, and. with all the
vigor of the eagle summing his newly per-
fectGA pinions, threw off the immortal
overture to the Midsummer Nights
Dream" When the boy, Nicolo Paganani,
was sent to Parma to study undNr Ales-
sandro Rolla, the great musician, on
hearing him play, told him to go home;
ne could teach him nothing. The result
was the same when young Turner, des-
| tined to such eminence as a painter, was
sent to school to learn drawing. short
time ago the first prize at the Paris Con-
servatory of Music was won by a girl
named Renie who was but 10 years old,
and was so small that the pedals of the
piano had 10 be raised to enable her TO
reach them.
One of the chief combatant In the IA
nous ancient and modern learning contro-
VerSy which ragged about two centuries
ago in England was William WottOn d.
D., who had been graduated ait Cambridge
at the age of 10, and afterward distin-
guished himself by his attachments in
Latin, Greek and other oriental languages.
Al 10 Alexander Hamilton was found COM
petent to take charge of mercantile es-
tablishment at IS he wrote papers which
were attributed to several leading men OF
the nation; at 20 he was the confidant OF
Washington, and at q he had mastered
the intricate subject of finance.
In our day Sir William Rowan Hanil-
ton. whom Wordsworth declared to be one
of the two most wonderful men he had
ever known (the other was Coleridge), was
a still greater marvel of precocity. When
but years and months old he read
Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the last with
the points; at he had acquired French
and Italian, and could extemporize IN
Latin description of a landscape through
which he walked; at he had fair
knowledge of Arabic. and was eagerly be-
ginning Sanscrit Before he had complet-
ed his tenth year he was grounded in tne
Chaldee, Syriac, Hndustani, Malay, Man,
rsti, Bengal, and other languages, ana
was about to begin the Chinese. To have
acquired even a smattering of all these
tongues would have been extraordinary
enough: but that his knowledge was very
much more than a smattering has been
shown.