A few typical instances from Lancaster must here suffice. Savonarola was solitary, pondering, meditating, felt profoundly the evils of the world and need of reform, and at twenty-two spent a whole night planning his career. Shelley during these years was unsocial, much alone, fantastic, wandered much by moonlight communing with stars and moon, was attached to an older man. Beecher was intoxicated with nature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspiration of his life. George Eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and became a clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies for the poor and for animals, and had fitting spells of misanthropy. Edison undertook to read the Detroit Free Library through, read fifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, and says he has read comparatively little since. Tolstoi found the aspect of things suddenly changed. Nature put on a new appearance. He felt he might commit the most dreadful crimes with no purpose save curiosity and the need of action. The future looked gloomy. He became furiously angry without cause; thought he was lost, hated by everybody, was perhaps not the son of his father, etc. At seventeen he was solitary, musing about immortality, human destiny, feeling death at hand, giving up his studies, fancying himself a great man with new truths for humanity. By and by he took up the old virtuous course of life with fresh power, new resolutions, with the feeling that he had lost much time. He had a deep religious experience at seventeen and wept for joy over his new life. He had a period before twenty when he told desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for music, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age was discontented, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and profound stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowledge which consumed his days with fire, and "with passionate longing to drain the cup of experience at a draft." He was "at the morning hour when the whole world turns to gold." "The boy had suddenly become a poet." Chatterton was too proud to eat a gift dinner, though nearly starved, and committed suicide at seventeen for lack of appreciation. John Hunter was dull and hated study, but at twenty his mind awoke as did that of Patrick Henry, who before was a lonely wanderer, sitting idly for hours under the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteen and acquired several languages in less than two years. Gifford was distraught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, became a shoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was savagely unsociable, sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. Rittenhouse at fourteen was a plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinite time and space. Benjamin Thompson was roused to a frenzy for sciences at fifteen; at seventeen walked nine miles daily to attend lectures at Cambridge; and at nineteen married a widow of thirty-three. Franklin had a passion for the sea; at thirteen read poetry all night; wrote verses and sold them on the streets of Boston; doubted everything at fifteen; left home for good at seventeen; started the first public library in Philadelphia before he was twenty-one. Robert Fulton was poor, dreamy, mercurial, devoted to nature, art, and literature. He became a painter of talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen. Bryant was sickly till fourteen and became permanently well thereafter; was precociously devoted to nature, religion, prayed for poetic genius and wrote Thanatopsis before he was eighteen. Jefferson doted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seventeen studied fifteen hours a day. Garfield, though living in Ohio, longed for the sea, and ever after this period the sight of a ship gave him a strange thrill. Hawthorne was devoted to the sea and wanted to sail on and on forever and never touch shore again. He would roam through the Maine woods alone; was haunted by the fear that he would die before twenty-five. Peter Cooper left home at seventeen; was passionately altruistic; and at eighteen vowed he would build a place like his New York Institute. Whittier at fourteen found a copy of Burns, which excited him and changed the current of his life. Holmes had a passion for flowers, broke into poetry at fifteen, and had very romantic attachments to certain trees. J. T. Trowbridge learned German, French, and Latin alone before twenty-one; composed poetry at the plow and wrote it out in the evening. Henry followed a rabbit under the Public Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, read all the fiction the library contained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and developed a passion for the sciences. He was stage-struck, and became a good amateur actor. H. H. Boyesen was thrilled by nature and by the thought that he was a Norseman. He had several hundred pigeons, rabbits, and other pets; loved to be in the woods at night; on leaving home for school was found with his arms around the neck of a calf to which he was saying good-by. Maxwell, at sixteen, had almost a horror of destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. Jahn found growing in his heart, at this age, an inextinguishable feeling for right and wrong—which later he thought the cause of all his inner weal and outer woe. When Nansen was in his teens he spent weeks at a time alone in the forest, full of longings, courage, altruism, wanted to get away from every one and live like Crusoe. T. B. Reed, at twelve and thirteen, had a passion for reading; ran away at seventeen; painted, acted, and wrote poetry. Cartwright, at sixteen, heard voices from the sky saying, "Look above, thy sins are forgiven thee." Herbert Spencer became an engineer at seventeen, after one idle year. He never went to school, but was a private pupil of his uncle. Sir James Mackintosh grew fond of history at eleven; fancied he was the Emperor of Constantinople; loved solitude at thirteen; wrote poetry at fourteen; and fell in love at seventeen. Thomas Buxton loved dogs, horses, and literature, and combined these while riding on an old horse. At sixteen be fell in love with an older literary woman, which aroused every latent power to do or die, and thereafter he took all the school prizes. Scott began to like poetry at thirteen. Pascal wrote treatises on conic sections at sixteen and invented his arithmetical machine at nineteen. Nelson went to sea at twelve; commanded a boat in peril at fifteen, which at the same age he left to fight a polar bear. Banks, the botanist, was idle and listless till fourteen, could not travel the road marked out for him; when coming home from bathing, he was struck by the beauty of the flowers and at once began his career. Montcalm and Wolfe both distinguished themselves as leaders in battle at sixteen. Lafayette came to America at nineteen, thrilled by our bold strike for liberty. Gustavus Adolphus declared his own majority at seventeen and was soon famous. Ida Lewis rescued four men in a boat at sixteen. Joan of Arc began at thirteen to have the visions which were the later guide of her life.
Mr. Swift has collected interesting biographical material[15] to show that school work is analytic, while life is synthetic, and how the narrowness of the school enclosure prompts many youth in the wayward age to jump fences and seek new and more alluring pastures. According to school standards, many were dull and indolent, but their nature was too large or their ideals too high to be satisfied with it. Wagner at the Nikolaischule at Leipzig was relegated to the third form, having already attained to the second at Dresden, which so embittered him that he lost all taste for philology and, in his own words, "became lazy and slovenly." Priestley never improved by any systematic course of study. W.H. Gibson was very slow and was rebuked for wasting his time in sketching. James Russell Lowell was reprimanded, at first privately and then publicly, in his sophomore year "for general negligence in themes, forensics, and recitations," and finally suspended in 1838 "on account of continued neglect of his college duties." In early life Goldsmith's teacher thought him the dullest boy she had ever taught. His tutor called him ignorant and stupid. Irving says that a lad "whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance, will probably obtain every advantage and honor his college can bestow. I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquility of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and, consequently, continue always muddy." Huxley detested writing till past twenty. His schooling was very brief, and he declared that those set over him "cared about as much for his intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby farmers." Humphry Davy was faithful but showed no talent in school, having "the reputation of being an idle boy, with a gift for making verses, but with no aptitude for studies of a graver sort." Later in life he considered it fortunate that he was left so much to himself. Byron was so poor a scholar that he only stood at the head of the class when, as was the custom, it was inverted, and the bantering master repeatedly said to him, "Now, George, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot." Schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar, and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearly became a cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. George Combe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. Heine agreed with the monks that Greek was the invention of the devil. "God knows what misery I suffered with it." He hated French meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. He idled away his time at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." He was essentially self-taught, and acquired most of his knowledge rather late in life. At nineteen he had never heard of botany. Sheridan was called inferior to many of his schoolfellows. He was remarkable for nothing but idleness and winning manners, and was "not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar." Swift was refused his degree because of "dulness and insufficiency," but given it later as a special favor. Wordsworth was disappointing. General Grant was never above mediocrity, and was dropped as corporal in the junior class and served the last year as a private. W. H. Seward was called "too stupid to learn." Napoleon graduated forty-second in his class. "Who," asks Swift, "were the forty-one above him?" Darwin was singularly incapable of mastering any language. "When he left school," he says, "I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification, my father once said to me, 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.'" Harriet Martineau was thought very dull. Though a horn musician, she could do absolutely nothing in the presence of her irritable master. She wrote a cramped, untidy scrawl until past twenty. A visit to some very brilliant cousins at the age of sixteen had much to do in arousing her backward nature. At this age J. Pierpont Morgan wrote poetry and was devoted to mathematics. Booker T. Washington, at about thirteen or fourteen (he does not know the date of his birth), felt the new meaning of life and started off on foot to Hampton, five hundred miles away, not knowing even the direction, sleeping under a sidewalk his first night in Richmond. Vittorino da Feltre,[16] according to Dr. Burnham, had a low, tardy development, lingering on a sluggish dead level from ten to fourteen, which to his later unfoldment was as the barren, improving years sometimes called the middle ages, compared with the remainder which followed when a new world-consciousness intensified his personality.
Lancaster's summaries show that of 100 actors, the average age of their first great success was exactly 18 years. Those he chose had taken to the stage of their own accord, for actors are more born than made. Nearly half of them were Irish, the unemotional American stock having furnished far less. Few make their first success on the stage after 22, but from 16 to 20 is the time to expect talent in this line, although there is a second rise in his curve before and still more after 25, representing those whose success is more due to intellect. Taking the average age of 100 novelists when their first story met with public approval, the curve reaches its highest point between 30 and 35. Averaging 53 poets, the age at which most first poems were published falls between 15 and 20. The average age at which first publication showed talent he places at 18, which is in striking contrast with the average age of inventors at time of the first patent, which is 33 years.
A still more striking contrast is that between 100 musicians and 100 professional men. Music is by far the most precocious and instinctive of all talents. The average age when marked talent was first shown is a little less than 10 years, 95 per cent showed rare talent before 16, while the professional men graduated at an average age of 24 years and 11 months, and 10 years must be added to mark the point of recognized success. Of 53 artists, 90 per cent showed talent before 20, the average age being 17.2 years. Of 100 pioneers who made their mark in the Far West, leaving home to seek fortunes near the frontier, the greatest number departed before they were 18. Of 118 scientists, Lancaster estimates that their life interest first began to glow on the average a little before they were 19. In general, those whose success is based on emotional traits antedate by some years those whose renown is more purely in intellectual spheres, and taking all together, the curves of the first class culminate between 18 and 20.
While men devoted to physical science, and their biographers, give us perhaps the least breezy accounts of this seething age, it may be, because they mature late, nearly all show its ferments and its circumnutations, as a few almost random illustrations clearly show:
Tycho Brahe, born in 1596 of illustrious Danish stock, was adopted by an uncle, and entered the University of Copenhagen at thirteen, where multiplication, division, philosophy, and metaphysics were taught. When he was fourteen, an eclipse of the sun occurred, which aroused so much interest that he decided to devote himself to the study of the heavenly bodies. He was able to construct a series of interesting instruments on a progressive scale of size, and finally to erect the great Observatory of Uraniberg on the Island of Hven. Strange to say, his scientific conclusions had for him profound astrological significance. An important new star he declared was "at first like Venus and Jupiter and its effects will therefore first be pleasant; but as it then became like Mars, there will next come a period of wars, seditions, captivity, and death of princes, and destruction of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air, pestilence, and venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn, and thus will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment, and all kinds of sad things!" He says that "a special use of astronomy is that it enables us to draw conclusions from the movements in the celestial regions as to human fate." He labored on his island twenty years. He was always versifying, and inscribed a poem over the entrance of his underground observatory expressing the astonishment of Urania at finding in the interior of the earth a cavern devoted to the study of the heavens.
Galileo[17] was born in 1564 of a Florentine noble, who was poor. As a youth he became an excellent lutist, then thought of devoting himself to painting, but when he was seventeen studied medicine, and at the University of Pisa fell in love with mathematics.
Isaac Newton,[18] born in 1642, very frail and sickly, solitary, had a very low piece in the class lists of his school; wrote poetry, and at sixteen tried farming. In one of his university examinations in Euclid be did so poorly as to incur special censure. His first incentive to diligent study came from being severely kicked by a high class boy. He then resolved to pass him in studies, and soon rose to the head of the school. He made many ingenious toys and windmills; a carriage, the wheels of which were driven by the hands of the occupants, and a clock which moved by water; curtains, kites, lanterns, etc.; and before he was fourteen fell in love with Miss Storey, several yeas older than himself. He entered Trinity College at Cambridge at eighteen.
William Herschel, born in 1738, at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, when he was eighteen, was a performer in the regimental band, and after a battle passed a night in a ditch and escaped in disguise, to England, where he eked out a precarious livelihood by teaching music. He supported himself until middle age as an organist. In much of his later work he was greatly aided by his sister Caroline. When he discovered a sixth planet he became famous, and devoted himself exclusively to astronomy, training his only son to follow in his footsteps, and dying in 1822.
Agassiz[19] at twelve had developed a mania for collecting. He memorized Latin names, of which he accumulated "great volumes of MSS.", and "modestly expressed the hope that in time he might be able to give the name of every known animal." At fourteen he revolted at mercantile life, for which he was designed, and issued a manifesto planning to spend four years at a Cermem university, then in Paris, when he could begin to write. Rooks were scarce, and a little later he copied, with the aid of his brother, several large volumes, and had fifty live birds in his room at one time.