therefore, a laudable gratification in enabling the rising generation to
pluck some of that fruit from the tree of knowledge which they themselves
never tasted at all. Here he remained till he was nearly seventeen; and
here he acquired a little French, a little Greek, a little Latin, a
little mathematics, a little logic, and a little geography, "with the use
of the globes." In short, he brought away with him a little learning, for
the obtaining of which his father had not paid a little money. He
subsequently enlarged his Lilliputian stock of ideas, by assiduously
prosecuting his studies at home, three days a-week, and three hours
a-day, when he was attended by masters in elocution, Italian, boxing,
fencing, and the other sciences. This eager cultivation of his mind he
pursued till he was two and twenty, and then took his station in about
the third degree of fashionable society, as a scholar and a man of taste.
His father had determined he should be a _gentleman_, and therefore very
properly guarded against the "anachronism," as he used to call it, of
giving him a profession. It is believed, (at least it has been
inculcated,) that there exists, in every human mind, a master, or ruling
passion--a predominating inclination towards some particular object or
pursuit. Mr. Henry Augustus Constantine Stubbs, was in this respect, as
well as in many others, like the rest of his species. He had _his_ ruling
passion, and, but that his father had made him a GENTLEMAN, he was sure
nature had intended him for the Roscius of his age. From his earliest
childhood, when he used to recite, during the Christmas holidays, "_Pity
the sorrows of a poor old man_," and astonish his father's porter (who
had a turn that way himself) with his knowing, _all by heart_, "My name
is Norval, on the Grampian hills,"--to his more matured efforts of, "Most
potent, grave, and reverend signiors," or, "My liege, I did deny no
prisoners,"--the idea of being an actor had constantly fascinated his
imagination.