, a child greatly celebrated for the wonderfully premature developemerit
, a child greatly celebrated for the wonderfully premature developemerit of
his talents, but whose history will require strong faith, was
born at Lubeck, Feb. 6, 1721, and died mere June 27,
1725, after having displayed the most amazing proofs of
intellectual powers. He could talk at ten months old, and
scarcely had completed the first year of his life, when he
already knew and recited the principal facts contained in
the five books of Moses, with a number of verses on the
creation; at thirteen months he knew the history of the Old
Testament, and the New at fourteen in his thirtieth month,
the history of the nations of antiquity, geography, anatomy, the use of maps, and nearly 8000 Latin words. Before the end of his third year, he was well acquainted with
the history of Denmark, and the genealogy of the crowned
heads of Europe; in his fourth year he had learned the
doctrines of divinity, with their proofs from the Bible; ecclesiastical history; the institutes; 200 hymns, with their
tunes; 80 psalms; entire chapters of the Old and New
Testament; 1500 verses and sentences from ancient Latin
classics; almost the* whole Orbis Pictus of Comenius,
whence he had derived all his knowledge of the Latin language arithmetic; the history of the European empires
and kingdoms; could point out in the maps whatever place
he was asked for, or passed by in his journeys, and recite
all the ancient and modern historical anecdotes relating to
it. His stupendous memory caught and retained every
word he was told; his ever active imagination used whatever he saw or heard, instantly to apply some examples or
sentences from the Bible, geography, profane or ecclesiastical history, the “Orbis Pictus,
” or from ancient classics. At the court of Denmark he delivered twelve speeches
without once faltering; and underwent public examinations on a variety of subjects, especially the bistory of
Denmark. He spoke German, Latin, French, and Low
Dutch, and was exceedingly good-natured and well-behaved, but of a most tender and delicate bodily constitution; never ate any solid food, but chiefly subsisted on
nurses milk, not being weaned till within a very few months
of his death, at which time he was not quite four years old.
There is a dissertation on this child, published by M. Martini at Lubeck, in 1730, where the author attempts to
assign the natural causes for the astonishing capacity of
this great man in embryo, who was just shewn to the world,
and snatched away. This was addressed to M. Christ, de
Schoeneich, the child’s tutor, who had published an account of him, and is given entire in vol. V. of “The Republic of Letters.
” Schoeneich’s account was republished
so lately as 1778 or 1779 in German.