PECULIAR TO MAN. 119 



innate ideas was at its height ; and Peter seemed the very 

 subjeet for determining the question. Count Zinzendorf 

 wished that he should be entrusted to his charge, that he 

 might watch the developement of his innate ideas ; but the 

 King had already placed him at the disposal of the Princess 

 of Wales, the afterwards celebrated Queen Caroline, who 

 confided the precious trust to Dr. Arbuthnot, still for the 

 purpose of investigating his innate ideas. 



Swift has immortalized him in his humorous production, 

 It cannot rain but it pours ; or, London strewed with Rarities. 

 Linn jsus gave him a niche in the Sysiema Naturce, under 

 the denomination of " Juvenis Hanoveranus :" Buffon, De 

 Paauw, and J. J. Rousseau, have extolled him as the true 

 child of nature, the genuine unsophisticated man. Mon- 

 BODDo* is still more enthusiastic, declaring his appearance to 

 be a much more important occurrence than the discovery of 

 the planet Uranus, or than if astronomers, to the catalogue 

 of stars already known, had added thirty thousand new ones. 



Amidst these expectations and honours, a few circum- 

 stances were either unknown or overlooked, calculated to 

 raise great doubts of Peter's fitness for such high destinies, 

 and to produce an unpleasant suspicion that he had not en- 

 tirely escaped the contaminating influence of civilized life. 



When he was first met with, a small fragment of a shirt 

 hung about his neck ; and the whiteness of his thighs, com- 

 pared to his brown legs, proved that he must have worn 

 breeches, but not stockings. His tongue was very large, 

 and little capable of motion ; so that an army surgeon at 

 Hameln thought of attempting to set it free by cutting the 

 frenum ; but did not perform the operation. Further, some 

 boatmen, in descending the Weser, had seen, at different 

 points on the banks of the river, a poor naked boy, and had 

 given him something to eat ; and, lastly, it was ascertained 

 that a widower at Llichtringen had had a dumb child ; who, 

 having been lost in the woods in 17 23, returned home again ; 



» *' I consider his history as a brief chronicle or abstract of the history of 

 the progress of human nature, from the mere animal to the first stage of civi- 

 lized life." — Antient Metaphysics, \. iii. p. 57. 



