io PROFESSOR OWEN ch. I. 



and were beginning to think they had better let 

 the question of fees pass and go off empty handed, 

 when Owen, displaying a considerable share of 

 ready assurance, stepped forward and coolly 

 began from the Latin Grammar, ' Propria quae 

 maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas,' &c. That 

 was quite enough. The farmer handed over 

 his fee with great satisfaction, and Owen achieved 

 a cheap reputation amongst those who were 

 present as the classical scholar of the school. 



' At this period of his life,' so his last surviv- 

 ing sister would relate, ' Richard was very small 

 and slight and exceedingly mischievous, and he 

 hardly grew at all till he was sixteen.' His 

 family were evidently apprehensive — like Mrs. 

 Wilfer's mamma — that it would end by his being 

 a ' small man.' But he soon began to make up 

 for his early want of stature, and when he left 

 the Grammar School he was already a big 

 awkward lad. 



At the age of fourteen Richard Owen had 

 given no signs of a taste for the work to which 

 his life was afterwards devoted. Part of a manu- 

 script treatise on Heraldry still exists, which he 

 wrote about this time, as well as an elaborately 

 painted coat of arms of the Owen and Eskrigge 

 family, with ' R.O. del, 1818,' in the corner. He 

 thus alludes to this work of art : ' My earliest 

 hobby was Heraldry, and a friend of my mother's, 

 by name Miss Taylor, who was sister of the then 



