CHARACTERS. 



721 



eidents, one of which had nearly 

 proved fatal to his sight, the other 

 to his lite. Being left alone in a 

 room, in attempting to scrape some 

 soot from a chimney, he fell into 

 the fire, and his clothes were in- 

 stantly in Uames : his cries brought 

 the servants to his assistance, and 

 he was preserved with some difficul- 

 ty ; but his face, neck, and arms 

 were much burnt. A short time 

 afterwards, when his attendants 

 "were putting on his clothes, which 

 were , imprudently fastened with 

 hooks ; he struggled, either in play 

 or in some childish pet, and a hook 

 ■was fixed in his right eye. By due 

 care, under the directions of Dr. 

 Mead, whose friendship with his 

 family continued unabated after his 

 father's death, the wound was heal- 

 ed ; but the eye was so much weak- 

 ened, that the sight of it ever re- 

 mained imperfect. 



His propensity to reading, which 

 had begun to display itself, was, for 

 a time, checked by these accidents ; 

 but the habit was acquired, and, 

 after his recovery, he indulged it 

 without restraint, by perusing eager- 

 }y any books that came in his way, 

 and with an attention proportioned to 

 his ability to comprehend them. In 

 his fifth year, as he was one morn- 

 ing turning over theleavesofa Bible, 

 ■ in his mother's closet, his attention 

 •was forcibly arrested by the sublime 

 description of the angel in the tenth 

 chapter of the Apocalypse ; and the 

 impression which his imagination 

 received from it was never effaced. 

 At a period of mature judgment, 

 he considered the passage as equal 

 in sublimity to any in the inspired 

 ■writers, and far superior to any 

 that could be produced from mere 

 human compositions ; and he was 

 fond of retracing and mentiouinj 

 Vol. XIA'J. 



the rapture which he felt when he 

 first read it. In his sixth year, by 

 th .' assistance of a friend, he was 

 initiated in the rudiments of the 

 Latin grammar, and he committed 

 some passages of it to memory ; but 

 the dull elements of anew language, 

 having nothing to captivate his 

 childish attention, he made little 

 progress in it : nor was he encou- 

 raged to perseverance by his mother, 

 who, intending him for a public 

 education, was unwilling to perplex 

 his mind Avith the study of a dead 

 language, before he had acquired a 

 competent knowledge of his native 

 tongue. 



At Michaelmas, 1753, in the close 

 of his seventh year, he was placed 

 at Harrow school, of which the 

 worthy and amiable Dr. Thackeray 

 was then head master. The amuse- 

 ments and occupations of a school- 

 boy arc of little importance to the 

 public ; yet it cannot be uninterest- 

 ing or uninstructive to trace the 

 progress of a youth of genius or 

 abilities, from his earliest efforts to 

 that proficiency in universal litera- 

 ture which he afterwards attained. 

 During the two first years of his re- 

 sidence at Harrow, he was rather 

 remarked for diligence and appli- 

 cation than for the superiority of 

 his talents, or the extent of his ac- 

 quisitions ; and his attention was 

 almost equally divided between his 

 books and a little garden, the culti- 

 vation and embellislimcnt of which 

 occupied all his leisure hours. Ilis 

 faculties, however, necessarily gain- 

 ed strength by exercise; and, during 

 his school vacations, the sedulity of 

 a fond parent was, without inter- 

 mission, exerted to improve his 

 knowledge of his own languat^c. 

 She also taught him the rudiments 

 of drawing, in which she excelled. 

 3 A Id 



