We have BOCCACCIO'S own words for a proof of his early natural tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of the gods:--"Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some little tales." Thus the "Decamerone" was appearing much earlier than we suppose.

DESCARTES, while yet a boy, indulged such habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his companions "The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever settling the cause and the effect.

He was twenty-five years of age before he left the army, but the propensity for meditation had been early formed; and he has himself given an account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of the progress of his genius; of the secret struggle which he so long maintained with his own mind, wandering in concealment over the world for more than twenty years, and, as he says of himself, like the statuary labouring to draw out a Minerva from the marble block.

MICHAEL ANGELO, as yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing; and when his noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was disturbing the line of their ancestry, forced him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to the chisel: the art which was in his soul would not allow of idle hands.
LOPE DE VEGA, VELASQUEZ, ARIOSTO, and TASSO, are all said to have betrayed at their school-tasks the most marked indications of their subsequent characteristics.
This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in MURILLO.

This young artist was undistinguished at the place of his birth.