point out.

It will perhaps be deemed presumptuous, after naming those illustrious
characters--those "demigods of fame"--to allude to Augustus Merton,
who, although he obtained the distinction of first wrangler at
Brazennose, Oxford, and carried off a multitude of prizes from that
seat of learning, may yet be thought an inadequate testimony of
the fact with which we set out, more especially when placed in
juxtaposition with the Miltons, the Shakespeares, the Raphaels, and
the Tassos of the world. We discuss not this point. We claim for
him no equality with these august names; and yet, with all such
reservations, do we set him forward as no unmeet proof of the
soundness of our assertion.

Merton was gifted with fine genius, and with a person all but
faultless. In stature he rose to six feet, and was slightly but
elegantly formed; while his whole air bespoke at once the gentleman
and scholar. Those who have seen his fine Spanish countenance, dark
eyes, and rich clustering hair,--the whole communicating dignity,
grace, and interest to his natural melancholy,--will not soon efface
his imposing image from their remembrance. His talents were of a
highly-diversified order. He was a first-rate Grecian and had he
turned his attention exclusively to that language might have contested
the palm with Porson himself; nor do those who are best qualified to
judge hesitate to place him upon an equality with Burney, Young
or Parr. He was also an excellent Latinist, and had a profound
acquaintance with geometry, and the other branches of mathematical
science. For knowledge of the various eastern tongues he was no
unequal match for Lee, of Cambridge; while his acquirements in natural
philosophy, political economy, and metaphysics, were such as