From Anthony Buckley
Your recent article about the importance of birth order credited Francis Galton with the idea of prising apart the influences of nature and nurture (7 September, p 40). However, Shakespeare uses it in The Tempest Act IV Scene I, where Prospero describes Caliban as “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature/Nurture can never stick”.
He wasn’t the first: 40 or so years before The Tempest, author John Lyly used it in Euphues.
Coventry, West Midlands, UK
