Jack had read all the verses of Byron, and all the romances of Scott.

He talked of Rob Roy, Don Juan, and Pelham; Macbeth and Ulysses; but, above all things, was an ardent admirer of Camoens.

Parts of the Lusiad, he could recite in the original.

Where he had obtained his wonderful accomplishments, it is not for me, his humble subordinate, to say.

Enough, that those accomplishments were so various; the languages he could converse in, so numerous; that he more than furnished an example of that saying of Charles the Fifth--_ he who speaks five languages is as good as five men_.