534 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
dustrious and honest and noble and dutiful, finding that such a course 
brought praise from his elders” [10, p. 20 f.]. When the death of his 
warmhearted mother desolated his father and himself, Jeremy “was 
just turned twelve, and was ready for Oxford, if a frail and under- 
sized boy of twelve could be said to be ready for anything” [10, p. 22]. 
Coleridge’s father, though unambitious in general and not very 
attentive to the education of his numerous other children, took special 
pride in him and endeavored from the beginning to prepare him for 
the church. Coleridge was the last of 14 children (10 by his mother), 
and the extreme fondness of his parents aroused the hostility of the 
older boys toward him. They drove him from play and tormented 
him. On one occasion, when he was 8, he ran away from home after 
a ferocious combat with the brother whom he had displaced as baby 
of the family; he was found only after a prolonged search, and he 
remembered all his life the tears of joy on his father’s face and his 
mother’s ecstasy when he was recovered. Death of the father, when 
he was 9, deprived him of his most valued companion. Shortly 
afterward he was sent to a charity school in London. Here he made 
a few friends, notably Lamb, but he lived a great deal in books and 
in his own imagination. 
Voltaire was born 5 years after the death in infancy of the next 
preceding child, and his own life was despaired of daily for the first 
year. His mother was an invalid; his father was a busy lawyer and 
does not seem to have concentrated any particular attention on him, 
beyond desiring that the boy should himself be prepared for law. 
His education at home proceeded under the guidance of three dis- 
tinguished and learned men, particularly the Abbé Chateauneuf, his 
godfather. The two other surviving children were considerably older 
than he; the brother he disliked, but he was fond of his 7-year-older 
sister, and, after his mother’s death when he was 7, it was she to whom 
he was chiefly attached in the family. At 10 he was quartered in the 
best Jesuit school in France by his ambitious and wealthy father; here 
he made the warmest and most lasting friendships in his life, but they 
were with the teachers rather than with the boys. 
Leopardi, the oldest of five children, remained until he was 24, 
practically immured, in the house of his father, the Count, in a town 
which he despised. In Leopardi’s own words: “Had no teachers except 
for the first rudiments, which he learned under tutors kept expressly in 
the house of his father. But had the use of a rich library collected by 
his father, a great lover of literature. In this library passed the chief 
portion of his life, while and as much as permitted by his health, ruined 
by these studies; which he began independently of teachers, at 10 
years of age, and continued thenceforth without intermission, making 
them his sole occupation” [29, p. 2]. His closest companion was his 
brother Carlo, a year younger; but he was reticent even with him. 
