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place of his family, and almost of himself. There is authority enough, however, for representing him in his younger days as a tall, awkward boy, remarkable amongst boys for nothing but animation and liveliness of spirits, great talkativeness, clumsiness in his attempts at dexterity and boyish sports, the perfect good nature and complacency with which he bore all the taunts and jeers of his companions, and the great inclination which showed itself even at that age, for acute, but good-humoured retorts. From the awkwardness of his gait, his unwillingness to join in active sports, his fondness for tricks and mimicking, that had something beyond the general habit of boys, or from his being one of those boys to whom such names easily and naturally attach, he was always called Doctor by his school-fellows. When he was very young, he was caught pulling out a little girl's tooth, because he had seen a quack doctor, the celebrated Dr. Katerfelto, amongst some mountebanks in his village, performing the same operation. He was not at all proud of his independence, or bold or forward in personal courage as a boy. He had none of the saucy pertness of a tyrant school-boy, conscious of his own superiority in any thing, but a great share of that amiable sort of prudence and forethought, that marks the cast of mind rather than bodily or mental vigour. On being told of the death of a school-fellow, he said, he did not much wonder, for he was the only boy in the school he ever did or ever could thrash. Strange as it must have seemed to himself, who, of all men living, was

one of the most feeling guardians of the animal creation (maugre what his biographers Meadley, and with a sympathetic, or perhaps copied humanity, Chalmers, have said of his fishing), the only pastime he then joined in was cock-fighting; but it is necessary to say, that by a school, or rather school-boy's charter, leave was obtained by the governors or trustees at the annual audit, for not only the boys, but the masters, to attend a cock-fighting, which the whole neighbourhood frequented. Consequently the keeping and feeding and fighting of cocks became a matter of state policy.

The years of childhood are the same in thousands, who are not afterwards to make a figure in the world; but as bespeaking something peculiarly characteristic in after life, it may be well to observe how far this strong disinclination for common sports and taste for original diversions might lead him to pursue with more satisfaction both a line of life and a mode of signalizing himself so different from the pursuits of his companions, or of his neighbourhood, at that time. By his parents, however, he was reckoned a weak and delicate boy, and this might account to them for his aversion to the rough sports of boys, and might lead himself to indulge in a moody sort of animation, which, without being characteristic of finer feeling, or poetical sensibility, led him to droll tricks with his neighbours, and to win by his kindness and attention, and pleasantry, the favour of all the old women in the neighbourhood. To these and to his sisters he showed an evident preference; such com

pany he courted, and at the cottage fire-side he always found a welcome. He was even at that time fond of fishing, partly perhaps from following the taste of the neighbourhood in one of the finest trout rivers in England, and partly from finding in it a certain quiet whiling away of time, to which he seems at that time to have been partial. He certainly neither professed, nor wished to attain excellence in the art. He was much laughed at by his associates for his clumsy fishing tackle, and want of dexterity; but he continued so remarkably attached to it during the remainder of his life without being signally successful, that his love for it may fairly be imputed rather to his fondness for the quietness and peace, and the workings of the mind that accompany the sport, than any anxiety for the prey. A bite and a nibble were to him a good day's sport at any time of his life, and if by chance he came off with a single rise at his fly, he was fully satisfied. At this age he was remarkable for the keenness and acuteness and shrewdness of his observations. An old woman knitting, or a neighbouring joiner at his work, afforded a rare exercise for his inquisitiveness and originality. These were his usual places of resort when very young, and he used not seldom to sit up all night with one of his neighbours to watch the process of soap-boiling. There is one anecdote given of him in his family, which whether from mere coincidence, or some more worthy prognostication, peculiarly marks that artless disposition which characterised him

through the rest of his life. When a mere boy, probably from the same principle which tempts other boys to imitate their fathers, he was found preaching in the market-cross of his village, and bawling out to a circle of old women and boys, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." "Ay, for sure," said an old lady who was passing, "every body knows thou art a guileless lad."

As to his abilities or attainments at school, his father seemed more disposed to rate them by his general character out of the school, than by any strict or brilliant application to his exercises. If any judgement of his performances can be drawn from his own account, it may seem that he was more observant of the regular discipline of the school, and of his father, and less satisfied with himself by reason of his own indolence, than has been represented. He was kept close to his books; he never stood in need of correction, but stood much in awe of his father, if by chance an exercise was unfinished or idly performed. So far was this carried, that he once, in company with his cousins and another boy who lodged in his father's house, not only ran away from home, but persevered in it, till, at night-fall, finding their beds on a wide and waste moor or peat-moss not so commodious as they had been used to, and not being designed by nature for little heroes, one of them pretended to be a conjuror, and assured them that he had heard something fly past with Whittington's message on a similar occasion, and the next morning

found them at their post. It ought to be mentioned, that this little freak was the only indication given during his life of his ever being weary of his work, or of his ever feeling a wish to desert the task of labouring with his mind rather than his body.

For the credit, however, both of the school and schoolmaster (since that seems rather misrepresented or dubiously spoken of*), it ought to be told that it was then (at the present time peculiarly so) in as high repute as any other of the old grammar schools in the north; that its fame was grounded chiefly on being a classical school; that as to making accomplished classical scholars, it was rather an object with the master to enable them to proceed by grounding them well; and that his son, though by no means brought forward before others, or obtaining any remarkable pre-eminence over any of his competitors, was indebted to him for whatever he obtained of his classical information, and of his classical taste; that he was more particularly indebted to his father for much of that accuracy and exactness in training young minds to the same taste; that his fitness for the office of tutor, in which most of his biographers have made him pre-eminent, was probably the result of this regular and systematic teaching of his father; and that the system of discipline which made so important a part of both his public and private instruction in his more mature years was but the fruit of

* See Quarterly Review.-Meadley.-Chalmers.

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