head of Westminster or Eton, in total ignorance of the business and
conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the
eighteenth century. But these schools may assume the merit of
teaching all that they pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek
languages: they deposit in the hands of a disciple the keys of two
valuable chests; nor can he complain, if they are afterwards lost or
neglected by his own fault. The necessity of leading in equal ranks
so many unequal powers of capacity and application, will prolong to
eight or ten years the juvenile studies, which might be despatched
in half that time by the skilful master of a single pupil. Yet even
the repetition of exercise and discipline contributes to fix in a
vacant mind the verbal science of grammar and prosody: and the
private or voluntary student, who possesses the sense and spirit of
the classics, may offend, by a false quantity, the scrupulous ear of
a well-flogged critic. For myself, I must be content with a very
small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school. In
the space of two years (1749, 1750), interrupted by danger and
debility, I painfully climbed into the third form; and my riper age
was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin, and the rudiments of
the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling in the sports,
the quarrels, and the connections of our little world, I was still
cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt; and my removal
from Westminster long preceded the approach of manhood.

The violence and variety of my complaint, which had excused my
frequent absence from Westminster School, at length engaged Mrs.
Porten, with the advice of physicians, to conduct me to Bath: at the
end of the Michaelmas vacation (1750) she quitted me with
reluctance, and I remained several months under the care of a trusty
maid-servant. A strange nervous affection, which alternately