Dr. H. H. Donaldson, in his essay on the Education of the Nervous System, cites the fact that of the musicians whose biographies were examined by Sully, 95% gave promise before twenty years of age, and 100% produced some work before reaching thirty; of the poets, 75% showed promise before twenty, and 92% produced before they were thirty years of age (216. 118). Precocity and genius seem to go together.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CHILD AS TEACHER AND WISEACRE.
The child is father of the man,—Wordsworth.
And wiser than the gray recluse
This child of thine.—Whittier.
And still to Childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns.—Whittier.
Wisdom of Childhood.
In his beautiful verses—forming part of one of the best child-poems in our language—
"And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns,"—
Whittier has expressed that instinctive faith in the wisdom of childhood that seems perennial and pan-ethnic. Browning, in Pippa's Song, has sounded even a deeper note:—