Page:Books and men.djvu/32

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BOOKS AND MEN.

scientifically by his father, the Italian poet was permitted to relentlessly cram himself. In both cases we see the same melancholy, blighted childhood; the same cold indifference to the mother, as to one who had no part or parcel in their lives; the same joyless routine of labor; the same unboyish gravity and precocious intelligence. Mill studied Greek at three, Latin at eight, the Organon at eleven, and Adam Smith at thirteen. Leopardi at ten was well acquainted with most Latin authors, and undertook alone and unaided the study of Greek, perfecting himself in that language before he was fourteen. Mill's sole recreation was to walk with his father, narrating to him the substance of his last day's reading. Leopardi, being forbidden to go about Recanati without his tutor, acquiesced with pathetic resignation, and ceased to wander outside the garden gates. Mill had all boyish enthusiasm and healthy partisanship crushed out of him by his father's pitiless logic. Leopardi's love for his country burned like a smothered flame, and added one more to the pangs that eat out his soul in silence. His was truly a wonderful intellect; and whereas the English