Even at this time, Volta's interest in the physical sciences was very marked. There is still extant a Latin poem of about five hundred verses, in which he sets forth the observations of Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, whom it used to be the custom to call the Father of Modern Chemistry. This poem shows his thorough familiarity with the work of the great English investigator. Volta's model was Lucretius. Lest it should be a source of surprise that an Italian scientist had recourse to Latin for even a poetic account of scientific discoveries, it may be well to recall that Latin was still the universal language of science at that time, and Volta's great contemporary in electricity, Galvani, wrote his original monograph on animal electricity in that language, and even the Father of Pathology wrote his first great treatise, De Causis et Sedibus Morborum, in that tongue. As to his adoption of verse as a vehicle for scientific writing, it must not be forgotten that, at the time when Volta was writing his poem, another distinguished writer on scientific subjects, Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin of the last generation, was composing his "Zoonomia; or, Animal Biography," in English verse. Didactic verse was quite the fashion of the time, and some of it, even when it came from acknowledged poets, had not more poetry than Volta's effusion. As if to make up for his lack of linguistic faculty when young, Volta seems to have had a special gift for languages when he grew older. Before the age of twenty, he knew French as well as his mother tongue, read German and English fluently, and Low Dutch and Spanish were not beyond his comprehension. Besides his verses in Latin he wrote poetry also in French and Italian, always with cleverness at least, and at times with true poetic feeling. While attending the Jesuit school, he expressed, it is said, a desire to enter the Order. As his father, however, had been with the Jesuits for eleven years and had then given up his studies, his family feared a repetition of such an experience; and so his clergymen uncles took him away from the school and sent him for a while to the Seminary at Benzi. After a time Volta abandoned the idea of becoming a priest, but would not consent to follow the wishes of the family council further, at least not to the extent of becoming a lawyer. Though he studied law for a time, he constantly wandered away to the reading of books on the natural sciences and to the study of natural objects. Finally he was allowed to give up law to devote himself exclusively to science.