master might extract from Pliny and Buffon some pleasing lessons of
natural history, a science well adapted to the taste and capacity of
children. The Latinity of Phaedrus is not exempt from an alloy of
the silver age; but his manner is concise, terse, and sententious;
the Thracian slave discreetly breathes the spirit of a freeman; and
when the text is found, the style is perspicuous. But his fables,
after a long oblivion, were first published by Peter Pithou, from a
corrupt manuscript. The labours of fifty editors confess the
defects of the copy, as well as the value of the original; and the
school-boy may have been whipped for misapprehending a passage,
which Bentley could not restore, and which Burman could not explain.

My studies were too frequently interrupted by sickness; and after a
real or nominal residence at Kingston School of near two years, I
was finally recalled (Dec., 1747) by my mother's death, in her
thirty-eighth year. I was too young to feel the importance of my
loss; and the image of her person and conversation is faintly
imprinted in my memory. The affectionate heart of my aunt,
Catherine Porten, bewailed a sister and a friend; but my poor father
was inconsolable, and the transport of grief seemed to threaten his
life or his reason. I can never forget the scene of our first
interview, some weeks after the fatal event; the awful silence, the
room hung with black, the mid-day tapers, his sighs and tears; his
praises of my mother, a saint in heaven; his solemn adjuration that
I would cherish her memory and imitate her virtues; and the fervor
with which he kissed and blessed me as the sole surviving pledge of
their loves. The storm of passion insensibly subsided into calmer
melancholy. At a convivial meeting of his friends, Mr. Gibbon might
affect or enjoy a gleam of cheerfulness; but his plan of happiness
was for ever destroyed: and after the loss of his companion he was