John Evelyn, a very learned English writer, was born in 1620, and died in 1706. He published several works, all of which are valuable. His treatises upon Natural History are greatly valued. He kept a diary, which has been published, and which contains much that is interesting. Of one of his children, who died early, he gives us the following account:

"After six fits of ague, died, in the year 1658, my son Richard, five years and three days old, but, at that tender age, a prodigy of wit and understanding; for beauty of body, a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. To give only a little taste of some of them, and thereby glory to God:

"At two years and a half old, he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. He had, before the fifth year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular and most of the irregular; learned Pericles through; got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and[Pg 79] words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relative verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius\'s Janua; began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek.

"The number of verses he could recite was enormous; and when seeing a Plautus in one\'s hand, he asked what book it was, and being told it was comedy and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals, for he had read ?sop. He had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid, that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them.

"As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and his sense of God: he had learned all his catechism early, and understood the historical part of the Bible and Testament to a wonder—how Christ came to mankind; and how, comprehending these necessaries himself, his godfathers were discharged of their promise. These and like illuminations, far exceeding his age and experience, considering the prettiness of his address and behavior cannot but leave impressions in me at the memory of him. When one told him how many days a Quaker had fasted, he replied, that was no wonder, for Christ had said \'man should not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.\'

"He would, of himself, select the most pathetic Psalms, and chapters out ............