I myself have had this distemper, but am not much marked with it." But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordinary sports of his mates, he will often substitute for them others, which are the reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young imagination, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have habitually interested them.

The amusements of such an idler have often been analogous to his later pursuits.

ARIOSTO, while yet a schoolboy, seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented by his brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in translating the old French and Spanish romances.

Sir WILLIAM JONES, at Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the _Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and taste so prevalent in his literary character.

FLORIAN'S earliest years were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old translation of the Iliad: whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body: collecting the ashes in an urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his Patroclus or Sarpedon.