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Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco’s book De Sphaera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. Pennant’s first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby’s work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur’s History of Insects, which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet, that he hastened to obtain a copy; after many difficulties in procuring this costly work, its possession gave an unalterable direction to his future life. This naturalist indeed lost the use of his sight by his devotion to the microscope.

Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar accident. “I found a work of De Foe’s, entitled an ‘Essay on Projects,’ from which perhaps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of the principal events of my life.”

I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to write his Schoolmaster, one of the few works among our elder writers, which we still read with pleasure.

At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments at Windsor, a number of ingenious men were invited. Secretary Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on account of their master’s severity, which he condemned as a great error in the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defence of hard flogging. Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the secretary. Sir John Mason, adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted Sir William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the boy’s genius, and not the preceptor’s rod. Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham’s notions. Sir Richard Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to the queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside, and frankly told him that, though he had taken no part in the debate, he would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal; that he knew to his cost the truth that Ascham had supported; for it was the perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this defect in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance which produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.