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fixth year, by the affiftance of a friend, he was initiated in the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and he committed fome paffages of it to memory; but the dull elements of a new language having nothing to captivate his childish attention, he made little progress in it; nor was he encouraged to perfeverance by his mother, who, intending him for a public education, was unwilling to perplex his mind with 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 feventh year, he was placed at Harrow School, of which the worthy and amiable Dr. Thackeray was then head master. The amufements and occupations of a school-boy are of little importance to the public; yet it cannot be uninteresting, or uninftructive, to trace the progrefs of a youth of genius and abilities, from his earliest efforts to that proficiency in univerfal literature which he afterwards attained. During the two first years of his refidence at Harrow, he was rather remarked

for diligence and application, than for the fu periority of his talents, or the extent of his acquifitions; and his attention was almoft equally divided between his books and a little garden, the cultivation and embellishment of which occupied all his leisure hours. His faculties however neceffarily gained strength by exercife; and during his school vacations, the fedulity of a fond parent was without intermiffion exerted to improve his knowledge of his own language. She alfo taught him the rudiments of drawing, in which the excelled.

In his ninth year, he had the misfortune to break his thigh-bone in a scramble with his school-fellows, and this accident detained him from school twelve months. After his relief from pain, however, the period of his confinement was not fuffered to pass in indolence; his mother was his conftant companion, and amufed him daily with the perufal of fuch English books, as the deemed adapted to his taste and capacity. The juvenile poems of Pope, and Dryden's Trans

lation of the Eneid, afforded him inceffant delight, and excited his poetical talents, which displayed themselves in the composition of verses in imitation of his favourite authors. But his progress in claffical learning, during this interval, was altogether fufpended; for although he might have availed himself of the proffered inftruction of a friend, in whose house he refided, to acquire the rudiments of Latin, he was then fo unable to comprehend its utility, and had so little relish for it, that he was left unreftrained to pursue his juvenile occupations and amusements, and the little which he had gained in his two first years, was nearly loft in the third.

On his return to fchool, he was however placed in the fame class which he would have attained, if the progrefs of his ftudies had not been interrupted. He was of course far behind his fellow-labourers of the fame ftanding, who erroneously afcribed his infufficiency to laziness or dulnefs, while the mafter who had raised him to a fituation above his powers, required exertions of which he was

incapable, and corporal punishment and degradation were applied, for the non-performance of tasks, which he had never been inftructed to furnish. But in truth he far excelled his school-fellows in general, both in diligence and quickness of apprehension; nor was he of a temper to fubmit to imputations, which he knew to be unmerited. Punishment failed to produce the intended effect; but his emulation was roufed. He devoted himself inceffantly to the perufal of varioùs elementary treatises, which had never been explained nor even recommended to him; and having thus acquired principles, he applied them with fuch fkill and fuccefs, that in a few months he not only recovered the station from which he had been degraded, but was at the head of his clafs: his compofitions were correct, his analyfis accurate, and he uniformly gained every prize offered for the best exercise. He voluntarily extended his ftudies beyond the prescribed limits, and, by folitary labour, having acquired a competent knowledge of the rules of profody, he com

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pofed verfes in imitation of Ovid; a task, which had never been required from any the ftudents in the lower school at Harrow. The behaviour of the mafter to Jones, made an impreffion on his mind, which he ever remembered with abhorrence. Little doubt can be entertained, that he might have been ftimulated to equal exertions, if encouragement had been substituted for severity, and inftruction for difgrace. The accumulation of punishment for his inability to foar, before he had been taught to fly, (I ufe his own expreffion) might have rendered the feelings callous; and a sense of the injustice attending the infliction of it, was calculated to deftroy the refpect due to magisterial authority, and its influence over the scholar. It is a material and perhaps unavoidable defect in the fyftem of education at public schools, that the neceffity of regulating inftruction by general rules, muft often preclude that attention to the tempers and capacities of individuals, by which their attainments might be effentially promoted.