having shewn him something of the nature of the business, he asked him if he thought he could now undertake to cut types himself. Caslon requested a day to consider the matter; and then answered that he thought he could. Upon this, Mr. Bowyer and two of his friends advanced him a small capital; and with no other preparation, he set up in his new business. In this he speedily acquired such reputation, that instead of the English printers importing their types any longer from Holland, as had before that time been the custom to a very considerable extent, those cast by him were frequently exported to the Continent.

The great disadvantage which had to be surmounted by some of the individuals we have just mentioned, and others similarly situated, was the time they had lost before commencing the pursuit to which they eventually dedicated themselves. This circumstance involved the necessity of acquiring an acquaintance sometimes even with the most elementary principles of their art, at a period of life when their habits were already formed, and a certain degree of aversion con tracted for what we may call the discipline of apprenticeship in the rudiments of any art or profession.

Considerable as this disadvantage must have been, we see how completely it was overcome by their perseverance and honourable ambition. Thus, in another field of enterprize, OLIVER CROMWELL, who never fought a battle that he did not win, was forty-two years old before he entered the army; and his contemporary (born, indeed, the same year with himself), the immortal BLAKE, who stands in the very front rank of our captains and patriots, and may be considered as the founder of the system of naval tactics, adopted after his time, and who was the first of our commanders who ventured to attack a battery with ships, was in his fiftieth year when he first went to sea.

In the pursuit, too, of literature and science, we have many instances of persons who, in the same manner, have become schoolboys, as it were, in their manhood or old age; and, undismayed by the reflection that their spring, and sometimes their summer likewise, of life was already spent and gone, have given themselves with as much alacrity of heart to the work of that education, of which circumstances, or their own heedlessness, had prevented the earlier commencement, as if they had been yet as much children in years as they were in learning. Life is short, certainly; and a youth lost in idleness makes a fearful subtraction from its scanty sum: but this is the true way to repair that loss, and to make our few years many. We do not comprehend, however, among those who have distinguished themselves by acquisitions made late in life, all such as may have merely familiarized themselves with a new branch of knowledge after the regular period of education was over. The history of any devotee of learning is the history of a series of acquisitions, which terminates only with his life itself; and will very often embrace much that may, in one sense, be termed elementary study, even in its latest stages. Thus, the student of languages, for example, if he proposes to survey any considerable portion of his mighty subject, must lay his account with being obliged to learn vocabularies and grammar rules to the end of his days. That wonderful scholar, Sir WILLIAM JONES, who, in addition to great acquirements in various other departments of knowledge, had made himself acquainted with no fewer than twenty-eight different languages, was studying the grammars of several of the oriental dialects up to within a week of his lamented death. At an earlier period of his life, when he was in his thirty-third year, he had resolved, as appears from a scheme of

G

study found among his papers, "to learn no more rudiments of any kind; but to perfect himself in, first, twelve languages, as the means of acquiring accurate knowledge of history, arts, and sciences." These were the Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, German, and English. When he was afterwards induced, however, from the situation he held in India, to devote himself more especially to Oriental learning, he extended his researches a great way even beyond these ample limits. In addition to the tongues already enumerated, he made himself not only completely master of Sanscrit, as well as less completely of Hindostanee and Bengalee, but to a considerable extent also of the other Indian dialects, called the Tibetian, the Pâli, the Phalavi, and the Deri; to which are to be added, among the languages which he describes himself to have studied least perfectly, the Chinese, Russian, Runic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Dutch, Swedish, and Welsh*.

It is only, however, when an individual commences the study of foreign languages in his maturer years, that we are entitled to quote him as an example of the peculiar sort of perseverance and intrepidity we are at present considering. Thus, the old Roman, CATO the Censor, in all respects an extraordinary man, shewed his force of character very strikingly, by setting himself to learn Greek in his old age. At this time the study of this language was very rare at Rome:-and the circumstance renders the determination of Cato, and his success, the more remarkable. In so far as his native literature was concerned, Cato was before this one of the most learned of his countrymen: but he certainly had never experienced what it was to study a foreign

* See
P. 107.

language till now. Our own ALFRED the Great-one of the most perfect characters in history-affords us a still more illustrious example of what may be done by those who are not only advanced in life before they have an opportunity of acquiring what is commonly called learning, but even by those whose most elementary education has been begun comparatively late. Alfred had reached his twelfth year before he had even learned his alphabet; and an interesting anecdote is told of the occasion on which he was first prompted to apply himself to books. His mother, it seems, had shewn him and his brothers a small volume, illuminated, or adorned, in different places with coloured letters, and other such embellishments, as was then the fashion. Seeing it excite the admiration of the children, she promised she would give it to him who should first learn to read it. Alfred, although the youngest, was the only one of the four, perhaps, who had spirit even to attempt getting possession of the prize on such conditions-at least, it was he who actually won it; for he immediately, we are told, went and procured a teacher for himself, and in a very short time, by his assistance, was able to perform the task set him by his mother, and to claim the promised reward. Yet it appears to have been a long while after this before he was enabled to carry his acquirements beyond the mere elements of literature. The miseries to which his kingdom was for so many years exposed from the invasion of the Danes, and the incessant labours and privations to which he was in consequence compelled to submit, left him no leisure, till he had passed at least the twentieth year of his age, to improve his acquaintance with books; and even after he had regained his throne, and re-established his country in peace and independence, he had nearly as many impediments to contend with, from the extreme difficulty of procuring the necessary

instructors. Nearly all those possessed of any degree of learning had disappeared, or been destroyed, during the late confusions. Alfred himself informs us, that when he came to the throne, he knew but few priests in the northern part of the kingdom, and not one to the south of the Thames, who could translate the Latin prayers of the church-service. By searching about, however, in all directions, and sending to foreign countries for what his own could not supply, he at last collected at his court some of the ablest men whom that dark age afforded; and he set himself immediately to profit by their instructions, with a docility and zeal that never can be enough admired. In spite of all his public duties and cares, and a tormenting disease, which scarcely ever left him a moment of rest, it was his custom, we are told, day and night, to employ his whole leisure time, either in reading books himself, or in having them read to him by others. Still, however, although he used to have such Latin books as he could procure interpreted to him by his learned friends, his native language was for a long time after this period the only one he knew. It would appear, indeed, by the account of Asser, one of his instructors, who has left us a very interesting biography of his royal pupil, that he had reached his thirtyninth year before he began to attempt translating anything from the Latin tongue himself. He and Asser, we are informed, were one day conversing together as usual, when the latter taking occasion to introduce a quotation from a particular author, the king was so much struck with the passage, that he desired it might be immediately inscribed on one of the blank leaves of a small religious manual, which he was wont to carry about with him in his bosom. This became the commencement of a collection of favourite sentences from the Latin writers, which Alfred, ever