10 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



can only look on his acquirements at that time as attain- 

 able with the greatest ease by one who had evidently that 

 gift in great force. 



After spending about three years teaching in this school 

 he left Eaglesfield. About this time, getting on in life as 

 he thought, he first saw an umbrella in Cockermouth, and 

 bought one, thinking, as he afterwards expressed it, that he 

 was now becoming a gentleman. This happened in 1781, 

 when he became assistant to his cousin, George Bewley, 

 who kept a school in Kendal. His brother Jonathan had 

 been there as assistant for some time previously. In this 

 place twelve years of his life were spent, and here his true 

 education began. He had learned some Latin and Greek, 

 but neither now nor at any time of his life does he seem to 

 have attended much to literature or philology. He is said 

 to have had such an excellent memory that he repeated some 

 of Anacreon's Odes forty years after he had read them, but 

 a few of Anacreon's musical lines seem to be the common 

 property of school boys, who learn them easily from their 

 sound, whilst this knowledge gives no indication whatever 

 of proficiency in the language. A few old Greek books 

 were sold with the rest of his library, partly his own and 

 partly his brother's small stock, at Kendal. The Greek 

 dictionary, a Schrevelius, seems never to have been used. 

 Reading Greek books was no sport for a man who made 

 forty thousand meteorological observations. 



In Kendal he became acquainted with Mr. Gough, a man 

 who although blind from infancy, was possessed of high 

 scientific attainments. The mutual assistance rendered is 

 best expressed in Dalton's own words. " For about eight 

 years during my residence in Kendal, we were intimately 

 acquainted; Mr. Gough was as much gratified with imparting 

 his stores of science, as I was in receiving them : my use to 

 him was chiefly in reading, writing, and making calculations 

 and diagrams ; and in participating with him in the pleasure 



