1835,] First Astronomer-Royal. 323 



Elizabeth and Katherine, left to his care and protection, 

 when I was aged eight years and two months. 



My first ten years were spent in such employments as 

 children use to pass away their time with ; affording little 

 observable in them. But afterwards my practices began to 

 show my inclination more plain : for when, by my father's 

 care, I had gotten at school so much Latin as might make 

 me understand an elegant English [author], I began to affect 

 the volubility and ranting stories of romances; and, at 

 twelve years of age, I first left off the wild ones, and betook 

 myself to read the better sort of them, which, though they 

 were not probable, yet carried no seeming impossibility in 

 the fiction. Afterwards, as my reason increased, I gathered 

 other real histories ; and by the time I was fifteen years 

 old, I had read, of the ancients, Plutarch's Lives, Appian's 

 and Tacitus's Roman Histories, Holingshed's History of 

 the Kings of England, Davie's Life of Queen Elizabeth, 

 Sanderson's of King Charles the First, Heyling's Geography, 

 and many other of the moderns ; besides a company of ro- 

 mances and other stories, of which I scarce remember a 

 tenth at present. 



But now the providences of God became more observable 

 upon me, and unto me ; for in the latter end of the year 

 1660, and the beginning of 1661, it pleased God to inflict a 

 weakness in my knees and joints upon me. What natural 

 cause might give it an occasion I know not ; but in [the] 

 summer preceding, being bathing myself, together with 

 some boys, my companions, (we might, out of a general 

 consent, enter those baths which Lord Aston had erected 

 on the side of the river), whence returning I found no 

 hurt ; but when I arose the next morning, my body, thighs, 

 and legs were all so swelled, that they would not admit me 

 to get my usual clothes upon them ; which swelling (being 

 laid by rubbing my body and legs with vinegar and clay, 

 but its original being not evacuated) might, I suppose, fall 

 into my joints, and thence cause my present impending 

 weakness. This was, as near as I can remember, the first 

 beginning of my distemper : what other natural cause God 

 made use of in inflicting it upon me I am ignorant. In the 

 year 1662 it increased upon me, and had brought me so weak, 



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