ing at the same time the christian doctrine so perfectly, that it was his task to instruct all the other children in the school. His stature was prodigious: at seven years of age he appeared to have attained his fifteenth year;[1] and at five-and-twenty he had grown in such a proportion, that there was not any person in the kingdom whom he did not, like Saul, exceed from the shoulder upward. He was scarcely ten years of age when he had learned by heart the whole of the Psaltery, with the pious intention of replying to the priest when he accompanied the holy sacrament.
In 1579, he began his grammatical studies; and in the space of two years completed his course of philosophy. At the age of seventeen years, in 1582, he entered into the society of Jesus, and was received, as a noviciate, into the college named St. Joseph, situated in the suburb del Cercado, it being the first the society possessed in the capital. His noviciate and theological studies having been completed in the space of two years, he was appointed professor of philosophy, notwithstanding he had not yet been ordained. This privilege, among the Jesuits, was exclusively enjoyed by father Francisco Suarez in Salamanca, and by our father Menacho in Lima.
He next became professor of theology in the city of Cuzco, and after having resided there for some years, returned to Lima to fill the same chair in the college of San Pablo. The
- ↑ This is not the only example which might be cited, to confute the foreign authors, those who have been engaged in drawing up the Encyclopædias more particularly, who ascribe to the descendants of the Spaniards in America, a diminutive stature.
