REMARKABLE PRECOCITY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3737, 7 July 1883, Page 4

REMARKABLE PRECOCITY.

Professor Ilcniy J. S. Smith, of Oxford, •whose death has already been announced, was a precocious student in childhood. He was ablo to read English at two years of age, nnd at four he began, unaided, the study of Greek. From then until his eleventh year his only tutor was his mother. He entered Rugby at fifteen, in the last yeur of Dr. Arnold's headmaster-ship, and was at ono placed in tho next to the highest form, and would have been placed in the highest had tho rules of the school allowed a new student that rank. At eighteen he gained the Baliol scholarship, and, in spite of a year of illness, carried off the Ireland scholarship, and took his degree, an oldfashioned "Double-First," at the age of twenty-four. His vigor and activity of intellect never waned. Says Nature (London): Of some men it is said that thoy wero never young, of others that they became old while their contemporaries were etill lads; arid it has been stated that in scientific thought the best and most original ideas have always been conceived before tho age of thirty. But Henry Smith was as young and vigorous in intellect at the age of fifty-six, the limit to which he attained, as he was when he gained the first of his many University honors. It was his freshness of mind, his vivid appreciation and intelligent enjoyment of everything going on, not only in science but also in life, whether social or political, which made us forget that his years were passing away. It was his genial presence, his nympathetio attention, his ready counsel, his sound judgment, hi.s happy mode of dealing with both men and things, which make us al-

ready feel the loss which we cannot, as yet, fully appreciate, but which we can never hope completely to replace.