CHILDHOOD PATTERN OF GENIUS—McCURDY 537 
there was a great deal too much educational pressure put upon him. 
Bernardo was proud of Torquato’s talents and ambitious as to his 
future. He forced him on and took scudi from a slender purse to pay 
for special lessons in Greek. But a cousin came to Rome from Bergamo 
to share in Torquato’s studies. No bookworm was this lad, but full of 
fun and a thorough boy. Nothing could have been luckier” [38, p. 31]. 
A little later he had as his companion in the study of the graces 
(horsemanship, jousting, etc.) a boy of 8, son of Duke Guidobaldo. 
Otherwise he seems to have associated primarily with men, often men 
of great dignity and learning. 
Pope, the only child of his mother (there was a half-sister more than 
9 years older), was from the earliest period a domestic idol, as Stephen 
says. His father and mother, both 46 at his birth, and a nurse, con- 
centrated their affection upon him, which must have been all the more 
intense because he was sickly, and humpbacked like his father. “The 
religion of the family made their seclusion from the world the more 
rigid, and by consequence must have strengthened their mutual ad- 
hesiveness. Catholics were then harassed by a legislation which would 
have been condemned by any modern standard as intolerably tyran- 
nical” [28, p. 2]. Most of his education was accomplished at home, 
with some help from a family priest and his father, who corrected his 
early rhymes. From 12 he threw himself into his studies so passion- 
ately that his frail constitution threatened to break down. 
Pitt was born at the high peak of his father’s career as Prime Min- 
ister of England. When the title of Earl of Chatham was conferred 
on him, this second son, then 7, exclaimed, “I am glad that I am not 
the eldest son. I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa.” 
Partly because of his feeble health, the boy was brought up at home 
under the instruction of his father and a tutor. His father concen- 
trated upon developing his oratorical powers. At 14 he was sent to 
Cambridge, where he was placed in the care of a sound scholar, who 
remained his inseparable companion, and practically his only one, 
for more than 2 years. He had no social life there. He read with fa- 
cility such books as Newton’s “Principia” and the obscurest of the 
Greek poets. “Through his whole boyhood, the House of Commons 
was never out of his thoughts, or out of the thoughts of his instructors” 
hier p. L297" 
Musset was the second son in a family devoted to literature, “an in- 
fant prodigy on whom the intelligence of his brother, 6 years his 
elder, did not fail to exercise a stimulating effect. Alfred developed 
his mind in the constant companionship of Paul much more rapidly 
than he would have in the company of children his own age” [5, p. 
12]. He was notable from early childhood for his sensitivity, charm, 
emotional ardor, dramatic power, and susceptibility to feminine 
beauty. At a very tender age he was already disappointed in love. 
