L I N N U S. 7 



The case of Linn^us, "whose parents had resolved to make him 

 embrace a calling quite opposite to that prescribed to him by nature 

 and genius, has likewise been that of no small number of other 

 men, who have afterwards raised their name to immortality. Luther 

 was intended for a lawyer, and became the reformer of the church. 

 Tycho Brake, v/as to have studied politics, and by his own inclina- 

 tion acquired the celebrity of one of the first astronomers of his time. 

 Shakespeare was to have wielded the yard-measure of a linen-dra- 

 per, which his father had wielded before him ; but his unrivalled parts 

 rendered him the first pattern of tragical poesy : In short, to recur to 

 the moderns, Voltaire was to have been a barrister and counsellor 

 of parliament ; but instead of the pandefts he studied the writings of 

 the beaux esprits, and became himself the first of the age he lived in. 

 Tournefort and Boerhaave were destined to wear the cassock, 

 but the former rose to be the greatest botanist of the last, and the 

 latter the greatest physician of the present century. 



The resolution of the parent of young Linnteus, who preferred 

 binding his son an apprentice to a shoemaker to letting him become a 

 botanist, sprung at leaft, considering a man of his circumstances, from 

 a pure sentiment of parental fondness. What prospeft of a solid in- 

 come could he flatter himself for his son, if the latter applied to 

 botanical study ? — What reason had he to think that his son would 

 once shine as the firft connoisseur and reformicr of that science ? And 

 had he adopted medical pursuits as an additional exertion of his mental 

 faculties, how much more arduous and uncertain must have proved a 

 career in which he would have erred unsupported by fortune ? — To 

 acquire eminence in those sciences a proper competence was absolutely 



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