The first of these, John Lewis Candiac, was born at Nismes, in 1719. This strangely gifted child, we are told, was able, in his third year, to speak not only his native French but also Latin. Before he was six years old he spoke also Greek and Hebrew. He was well versed, besides, in arithmetic, geography, ancient and modern history, and even heraldry.[255] But, as might be expected, these premature efforts quickly exhausted his overtaxed powers, and he died of water on the brain in 1726, at seven years of age. Christian Henry Heinecken, a child of equal promise, was cut off even more prematurely. He was born at Lubeck in 1721. He is said to have been able to speak at ten months old. By the time he attained his twelfth month, he had learned, if his biographers can be credited, all the facts in the history of the Pentateuch.[256] In another month he added to this all the rest of the history of the old Testament; and, when he was but fourteen months old, he was master of all the leading facts of the Bible! At two and a half years of age, he spoke fluently, besides his native German, the French and Latin languages. In this year he was presented at the Danish court, where he excited universal astonishment. But, on his return home, he fell sick and died in his fourth year. The third of these marvels of precocity, John Philip Baratier, who is probably known to many readers by Johnson’s interesting memoir,[257] was born at Anspach in the same year with Heinecken, 1721. His career, however, was not so brief, nor were its fruits so ephemeral, as those of the ill-fated children just named. When Baratier was only four years old, he was able to speak Latin, French, and German. At six he spoke Greek; and at nine Hebrew; in which latter language the soundness of his attainments is attested by a lexicon which he published in his eleventh year. Nor was Baratier a mere linguist. He is said to have mastered elementary mathematics in three months, and to have qualified himself by thirteen month’s study for the ordinary thesis maintained at taking out the degree of Doctor of Laws. He was also well versed in architecture, in ancient and modern literature, in antiquities, and even the uncommon science of numismatics. He translated from the Hebrew Benjamin of Tudela’s “Itinerary.” He published a detailed and critical account of the Rabbinical Bible; and communicated to several societies elaborate papers on astronomical and mathematical subjects. This extraordinary youth died at the age of nineteen in 1760.