Some Odd Pastimes.
Spinosa, after studying assiduously for hours, would amuse himself by setting spiders to fighting. His laughter was said to have been positively alarming on the occasion of especially exciting combats. Socrates loved to play with children, and Tycho Brahé to polish spectacle glasses. D'Andilly, a translator of Josephus, spent his leisure in cultivating trees, while Barclay, author of the Argenis, was as devoted to his flowers as Celia Thaxter. Balzac collected crayon portraits, and the Abbé de Maroles, prints. Politian was never so happy as with his lute. The learned monk Petavius would gravely whirl his chair for five minutes at the end of every second hour of theological research, while Dr. Samuel Clarke was an expert chair and table jumper. Swift was often seen running up and down the steps of the deanery. Shelley's fondness for sailing paper boats is well known, but few know that he once folded a fifty-pound bank-note and sent it bobbing down the current of the Serpentine. But all will be glad to know that the shallop was finally moored in safety lower down the river. This launching somehow reminds us of the first stanza of Lear's Owl and Pussy Cat.
Geoffrey Cartwright.