Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI

The consuming zeal for studies on the part of this incomprehensible youth is probably unparalleled. Having read Plutarch in his childhood, he now devoured Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus; China, Arabia, and the Indies dazzled his imagination, and what he could lay hands upon concerning the East was soon assimilated. England and Germany next engaged his attention, and toward the close of his studies he became ardent in examining the minutest particulars of French history. It was, moreover, the science of history, and not its literature, which occupied him—dry details of revenue, resources, and institutions; the Sorbonne, the bull Unigenitus, and church history in general; the character of peoples, the origin of institutions, the philosophy of legislation—all these he studied, and, if the fragments of his notes be trustworthy evidence, as they surely are, with some thoroughness. He also found time to read the masterpieces of French literature, and the great critical judgments which had been passed upon them.[14]