II

and from Shevling back again, merely to see Stevinus’s flying chariot.⁠⸺⁠He was a very great man! added my uncle Toby (meaning Stevinus )⁠—He was so, brother Toby , said my father (meaning Piereskius )⁠⸺⁠and had multiplied his ideas so fast, and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever⁠—at seven years of age, his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old,⁠—with the sole management of all his concerns.⁠—Was the father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle Toby :⁠—I should think not, said Yorick :⁠—But what are these, continued my father⁠—(breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm)⁠—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in Grotius , Scioppius , Heinsius , Politian , Pascal , Joseph Scaliger , Ferdinand de Cordouè , and others⁠—some of which left off their substantial forms at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without them;⁠—others went through their classics at seven;⁠—wrote tragedies at eight;⁠— Ferdinand de Cordouè was so wise at nine,⁠—’twas thought the Devil was in him;⁠—and at Venice gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was Antichrist , or nothing.⁠⸺⁠Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,⁠—finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven,⁠—put forth their commentaries upon Servius and Martianus Capella at twelve,⁠—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:⁠⸺⁠But you forget the great Lipsius , quoth Yorick , who composed a work the day he was born:⁠⸺⁠They should have wiped it up, said my uncle Toby , and said no more about it.