SOME NOTED DUNCES.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1027, 30 March 1894, Page 3

SOME NOTED DUNCES.

♦ Isaac Newton gravitated in his school days always toward the bottom of his class. Dr Chalmers was expelled from* the parish school of Anstruther as a dunce for whom there was no hope. Adam Clark, who rose to be one of the most famous Wesleyan ministers, was pronounced by his father ' a grievous dunce.' Sir David Wilkin, when at school, was one of the idlest and most eccentric of boys. He himself declares that he could draw before he could read, and paint before lie could spell. Charles J. Mathews, the distinguished actor, while relating the story of his life, tells of his education at Merchant Taylor's School. 'I was a dunce.' he says ; '"it is a fact ; there is no disguising the truth.' Henry Ward Beecher, as we learn from his biography, was a dull boy. On Sunday it was usual in his father's family for the children to learn the catechism, but at this exercise Henry always broke down. Walter Scott, while at Edinburgh University, gave little evidence of that genius which was to make him famous. ' Dunce he is, and dunce he will remain,' said Professor Dalzell of him who became the most distinguished of his students. Robert Chalmers, whose name will ever be held in esteem as a pioneer of cheap literature, for six weeks filled a situation in Mitchell Street Leith. ' From that place,' he says, ' I was discharged for no other reason that I can think of but^ that my employer thought me too stupid for to be likely to do him any good.' Dr Samuel Smiles, in his life of George Moore tells us that "at school the the great philanthropist was considered dull. He was much fonder of bathing than of reading. Mr Fisher, one of Moore's first employers, said he had many a' stupid blockhead from Cumberland, but George Moore was the greatest of them all. Mr Haggard was a pupil of Tpswich School, and as a boy he'is described as a' tall lank vouth, with a thick crop of uii^ kempt hair, sharp features, prominent nose, and eyes which had rather a wild, ! look about them. In his classes he ' never took a high place, and both his school mates, and his masters looked on him as rather a stupid boy.