Scarcely had he been welcomed into the world under auspices so cheering as those recently mentioned, than the fortunes of his family took an adverse turn. Bernardo was summoned away from the delightful retirement of Sorrento, to join his patron in the war which had just broken out between the emperor Charles V. and Francis I., and in which the prince brilliantly distinguished himself. Meanwhile, if we are to believe his nursery traditions, the little Torquato was giving, even from his cradle, proofs of the spirit that was in him, scarcely less extraordinary than if, like Hercules, he had strangled serpents, or like another poet of old, attracted bees to his lips, whether to gather or to deposit sweetness there we need not stay to enquire. Manso, his latest and most munificent patron, his first and most encomiastic biographer, (whose memoir, like Boccaccio's of Dante, reads more like romance than reality in many passages, and no where more than in this instance,) says, that the child, even during his first year, gave evidence of the divinity of his genius. For scarcely had he attained his sixth month, when, contrary to the usage of children, he began not only to let loose his tongue (or to prattle _a snodar la lingua_), but even to speak outright, and that in such a manner that he was never known to lisp (or clip) his syllables, as all other infants do, but formed his words complete, and gave them perfect utterance. If this be true, his marvellous faculty of speech, like the produce of a premature spring, must have suffered an early blight: for he himself records that, in speaking, he was little favoured by nature, having an unconquerable impediment of tongue; whence he preferred to communicate his thoughts rather in writing than by the audible voice, when he meant to win attention or produce impression. His own testimony is so far at variance with the assertion of his friend Manso respecting his early fluency, that he appeals for confirmation of the fact that he is a stammerer (probably to no very inconvenient degree) to some of his correspondents. But we are told, on the same authority, that the infant was equally precocious in the faculties of the mind; that he could reason, explain his thoughts, and answer questions with surprising intelligence. Moreover, to crown the climax, it is said that he seldom cried, and never laughed; the only exception, it may be presumed, of a healthy child since the world began; but that he was grave, dignified, and sage, and announced by his behaviour that he was destined for some great design.