liger, who, with an excess of filial observance, both maintained its truth as obstinately as his father had done, and augmented it by many additional fictions of his own invention.

It is a wiser and nobler spirit which, without despising such distinctions where they really exist, considers it more honourable to have achieved fame and eminence without the advantages of high birth than with their assistance; and does not disdain, therefore, where they have not been possessed, to find its best triumph in their absence. Such was the feeling in which the old Greek painter PROTOGENES acted, who, having passed the earlier years of his life in such obscurity and poverty, that he was obliged to spend the greater part of his time in merely painting the coarse ornaments on the prows of ships, was so far from shewing himself ashamed of his humble origin, when he rose at last to fame and more honourable as well as lucrative employment, that he was wont to introduce representations of the different parts of ships round his pictures, as symbols and memorials of his old occupation. BENEDICT BAUDOUIN, one of the learned men of the sixteenth century, went still further than this. His father had been a shoemaker, and he had himself worked for some years of his life at the same profession-circumstances which he was so little anxious to have forgotten, that, many years after, he wrote and published a very elaborate work on the Shoemaking of the Ancients, in which we find the history of that craft traced, with a profusion of erudition, up to the time of Adam himself. But, perhaps, the most extraordinary example on record of indifference to such matters, is that afforded by the conduct of the celebrated Italian writer GELLI, who, even after he had obtained so much distinction by his writings as to have been elected to the high dignity of consul of the Florentine Academy, and ap

pointed by the grand duke to deliver a course of lectures on Dante, still continued to work at his original profession of a tailor, which he had inherited from his father. He alludes to the circumstance, with much modesty and even dignity, in the introductory oration of his course, which he delivered before the Academy, and which has been published.

It would be easy to continue to a much greater length our enumeration of individuals who, smitten by the love of knowledge, have nobly surmounted the impediments thrown in the way of its acquisition by a humble birth or early indigence. Many of the most remarkable of these cases we shall have an opportunity of introducing under other heads of the subject; but, at present, we may merely mention a few of those which we may not afterwards find so convenient an occasion of noticing. The celebrated Italian poet METASTASIO was the son of a common mechanic, and used when a little boy to sing his extemporaneous verses about the streets. The father of HADYN, the great musical composer, was a wheelwright, and filled also the humble occupation of sexton, while his mother was at the same time a servant in the establishment of a neighbouring nobleman. The father of our own painter, OPIE, was a working carpenter in Cornwall. The following is the account that Dr. Walcot, better known by his assumed name of Peter Pindar, gives us of the circumstances in which he discovered the uneducated artist. 66 Being on a visit to a relation in Cornwall," he observes, "I saw either the drawing or print of a farm-yard in the parlour, and after looking at it slightly, remarked that it was a busy scene, but ill executed. This point was immediately contested by a she cousin, who observed that it was greatly admired by many, and particularly by John Opie, a lad of great genius. Having learned the place of the artist's abode, I immediately

sallied forth, and found him at the bottom of a sawpit, cutting wood by moving the lower part of an instrument which was regulated above by another person. Having inquired in the dialect of the country if he could paint? Can you paient? I was instantly answered from below in a similar accent and language, that he could paient Queen Charlotte and Duke William' (William Duke of Cumberland,) ' and Mrs. Somebody's cot.' A specimen was immediately shewn me, which was rude, incorrect, and incomplete. But when I learned that he was `such an enthusiast in his art, that he got up by three o'clock of a summer's morning to draw with chalk and charcoal, I instantly conceived that he must possess all that zeal necessary for obtaining eminence. A gleam of hope then darted through my bosom; and I felt it possible to raise the price of his labours from eight-pence or a shilling to a guinea a-day. Actuated by this motive, I instantly presented him with pencils, colours, and canvass, to which I added a few instructions." After some time, the Doctor adds, his pupil became so celebrated in the neighbourhood, that he obtained as much employment as he could undertake, in painting heads at half a guinea each, and at last resolved to raise his price to a guinea. He afterwards came to London, and attained great eminence as a portrait painter; upon which he was admitted as an associate of the Royal Academy, and was eventually elected Professor of Painting in that institution. "Born in a rank of

life in which the road to eminence is rendered infinitely difficult," says another Academician, speaking of Opie, "unassisted by partial patronage, scorning with virtuous pride all slavery and dependence, he trusted alone for his reward to the force of his natural powers, and to well-directed and unremitting study. The toils and difficulties of his profession

PARINI. PRIDEAUX.

SAUNDERS. LINNEUS. 43

were by him considered as matter of honourable and delightful contest; and it might be said of him, that he did not so much paint to live, as live to paint."

The parents of SEBASTIAN CASTALIO, the elegant Latin translator of the Bible, were poor peasants, who lived among the mountains in Dauphiny. The Abbé HAUTEFEUILLE, who distinguished himself in the seventeenth century, by his inventions in clock and watchmaking, was the son of a baker. PARINI, the modern satiric poet of Italy, was the son of a peasant, who died when he was in his boyhood, and left him to be the only support of his widowed mother; while, to add to his difficulties, he was attacked in his nineteenth year by a paralysis, which rendered him a cripple for life. The parents of Dr. JOHN PRIDEAUX, who afterwards rose to be Bishop of Worcester, were in such poor circumstances, that they were with difficulty able to keep him at school till he had learned to read and write; and he obtained the rest of his education by walking on foot to Oxford, and getting employed in the first instance as assistant in the kitchen of Exeter College, in which society he remained till he gradually made his way to a fellowship. The father of INIGO JONES, the great architect, who built the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, and many other well-known edifices, was a cloth-worker; and he himself was also destined originally for a mechanical employment. Sir EDMUND SAUNDERS, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of Charles II., was originally an errand-boy at the Inns of Court, and gradually acquired the elements of his knowledge of the law by being employed to copy precedents. LINNEUS, the founder of the science of Botany, although the son of the clergyman of a small village in Sweden, was for some time apprenticed to a shoemaker; and was only rescued from his humble employment by accidentally meeting one day a physician

named Rothman, who, having entered into conversation with him, was so much struck with his intelligence, that he sent him to the university. The father of MICHAEL LOMONOSOFF, one of the most celebrated Russian poets of the last century, and who eventually attained the highest literary dignities in his own country, was only a simple fisherman. Young Lomonosoff had great difficulty in acquiring as much education as enabled him to read and write; and it was only by running away from his father's house, and taking refuge in a monastery at Moscow, that he found means to obtain an acquaintance with the higher branches of literature. The famous BEN JONSON worked for some time as a bricklayer or mason; "and let not them blush," says Fuller, speaking of this circumstance in his English Worthies,' with his usual amusing, but often expressive quaintness, "let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket."

Peter Ramus, one of the most celebrated writers and intrepid thinkers of the sixteenth century, was employed in his childhood as a shepherd, and obtained his education by serving as a lacquey in the College of Navarre. The Danish astronomer, LONGOMONTANUS, was the son of a labourer, and, while attending the academical lectures at Wyburg through the day, was obliged to work for his support during a part of the night. The elder DAVID PAREUS, the eminent German Protestant divine, who was afterwards Professor of Theology at Heidelberg, was placed in his youth as an apprentice, first with an apothecary, and then with a shoemaker. HANS SACHS, one of the most famous of the early German poets, and a scholar of considerable learning, was