This drama he divided into three acts, and on its termination he improvised
a poem in terza rima on the subject of the contest of Ajax and Ulysses
for the armour of Achilles.
Wonderful, however, as this act of improvising may appear, it is not
perhaps so much so as the mathematical faculty of a youth of eight years of
age, Yorkshireman by birth, who has lately exhibited his talent for
arithmetical calculation improvised in England and who in a few seconds,
from mental calculation, could give the cube root of a number containing
fifteen or sixteen figures.
Is not all this a confirmation of Doctor Gall's theory on craniology? viz.,
that our faculties depend on the organisation of the scull. I think I have
seen this frequently exemplified at Eton. I have known a boy who could not
compose a verse, make a considerable figure in arithmetic and geometry; and
another, who could write Latin verse with almost Ovidian elegance, and yet
could not work the simplest question in vulgar fractions. Indeed, I think
there seems little doubt that we are born with dispositions and
propensities, which may be developed and encouraged, or damped and checked
altogether by education.
I have become acquainted with several families at Rome, so that I am at no
loss where to spend my evenings.
