Newton, when at school, stood at the bottom
of the lowest form but one. The boy above Newton having kicked
him, the dunce showed his pluck by challenging him to a fight, and
beat him. Then he set to work with a will, and determined also to
vanquish his antagonist as a scholar, which he did, rising to the
top of his class. Many of our greatest divines have been anything
but precocious. Isaac Barrow, when a boy at the Charterhouse
School, was notorious chiefly for his strong temper, pugnacious
habits, and proverbial idleness as a scholar; and he caused such
grief to his parents that his father used to say that, if it
pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might
be Isaac, the least promising of them all. Adam Clarke, when a
boy, was proclaimed by his father to be "a grievous dunce;" though
he could roll large stones about. Dean Swift was "plucked" at
Dublin University, and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford
"speciali gratia." The well-known Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Cook {32}
were boys together at the parish school of St. Andrew's; and they
were found so stupid and mischievous, that the master, irritated
beyond measure, dismissed them both as incorrigible dunces.
The brilliant Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy, that he
was presented to a tutor by his mother with the complimentary
accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce.
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