Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 6).pdf/15

 nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote tragedies at eight;—Ferdinand de Cordouè was so wise at nine,—'twas thought the Devil was in him;—and at Venice gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was Antichrist, or nothing.—Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,—finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics at eleven,—put forth their commentaries upon Servius and Martianus Capella at twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:—But you forget the great Lipsius, quoth Yorick, who composed a work the day