ROBERT BOYLE. 



guage he could readily enough express himself in prose, and 

 began to be no dull proficient in the poetic strain." " Although, 

 however," he adds, "naturally addicted to poetry, he forbore, 

 in after-life, to cultivate his talent for that species of composition, 

 because, in his travels, having by discontinuance forgot much 

 of the Latin tongue, he afterwards never could find time to 

 redeem his losses by a serious study of the ancient poets." 

 From all this it is evident that the natural bent of his mind did 

 not incline him very strongly to classical studies \ and as, for 

 the most obviously wise purposes, there has been established 

 among men a diversity of intellectual endowments and tenden- 

 cies, and every mind is most efficient when it is employed most 

 in accordance with its natural dispositions and predilections, it 

 was just as well that the course of his education was now 

 changed. In his eleventh year he and one of his brothers were 

 put under the charge of a Mr. Marcombes, a French gentleman, 

 and sent to travel on the Continent. In the narrative of his 

 early hfe, in which he designates himself by the name of Philo- 

 retus, Mr. Boyle has left us an account of his travelling tutor. 

 " He was a man," says he, " whose gait, his mien, and outside, 

 had very much of his nation, having been divers years a traveller 

 and a soldier; he was well fashioned, and very well knew what 

 belonged to a gentleman. His natural were much better than 

 his acquired parts, though divers of the latter he possessed, 

 though not in an eminent, yet in a competent degree. Scholar- 

 ship he wanted not, having in his greener years been a professed 

 student in divinity ; but he was much less read in books than 

 men, and hated pedantry as much as any of the seven deadly 

 sins. . . . Before company he was always very civil to his 

 pupils, apt to eclipse their failings, and set off their good quali- 

 ties to the best advantage. But in his private conversation he 



