Some boys live on encouragement, others seem to work best "up stream." Niebuhr, the traveller, the father of a son no less illustrious, with anything but an originally acute mind, seems to have overcome every disadvantage which the almost constant absence of opportunity could combine. Those who are curious in such matters might easily multiply examples of the foregoing description, and add others where—as in the case of Galileo, Newton, Wren, and many others—the predictions suggested by early physical organization proved as erroneous as the intellectual indications to which we have just adverted.
The truth is, we have a great deal to learn on the subject of mind, although there is no want of materials for instruction. Medicine and surgery are not the only branches of knowledge which require the aid of strictly inductive inquiry. In all, the materials (facts) are abundant.
In Abernethy there was a polarity of character, an individuality, a positiveness of type, which would have made the boy a tolerably intelligible outline of the future man. The evidence is imperfect; it is chiefly drawn from the recollections of a living few, who, though living, have become the men of former days; but still the evidence all inclines one way.
We can quite imagine a little boy, "careless in his dress, not slovenly," with his hands in his pockets, some morning about the year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall, at Wolverhampton Grammar School[7]; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some halfpence, and a knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate sketch of "Old Robertson's" wig. This article, as shown in an accredited portrait[8] now lying before us, was one of those enormous bygone bushes which represented a sort of impenetrable fence round the cranium, as if to guard the precious material within. The said boy just finishing a story to his laughing companions, though no sign of fun appeared in him, save a little curl of the lip, and a smile which would creep out of the corner of his eye in spite of him. I have had the good fortune to find no less than three schoolfellows of Abernethy, who are still living: John Fowler, Esq. of Datchet, a gentleman whom I have had the pleasure of knowing for many years, and who enjoys, in honourable retirement at his country seat, at the age of eighty-two, the perfect possession of all his faculties; William Thacker[9], Esq. of Muchall, about two miles from Wolverhampton, who is in his eighty-fifth year; T. Tummins, Esq. of King Street, Wolverhampton, who is in his eighty-seventh year. To these gentlemen, and to J. Wynn, Esq. also of Wolverhampton, I am principally indebted for the few reminiscences I have been able to collect of the boyish days of Abernethy.