CHAPTER VI.
Birth and Early Life of Chopin--National Artists--Chopin embodies in himself the poetic sense of his whole nation--Opinion of Beethoven.
CHOPIN was born in 1810, at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw.

Unlike most other children, he could not, during his childhood, remember his own age, and the date of his birth was only fixed in his memory by a watch given him in 1820 by Madame Catalani, which bore the following inscription: "Madame Catalani to Frederic Chopin, aged ten years." Perhaps the presentiments of the artist gave to the child a foresight of his future! Nothing extraordinary marked the course of his boyhood; his internal development traversed but few phases, and gave but few manifestations.

As he was fragile and sickly, the attention of his family was concentrated upon his health.

Doubtless it was from this cause that he acquired his habits of affability, his patience under suffering, his endurance of every annoyance with a good grace; qualities which he early acquired from his wish to calm the constant anxiety that was felt with regard to him.

No precocity of his faculties, no precursory sign of remarkable development, revealed, in his early years, his future superiority of soul, mind, or capacity.