have taught me to relish the Latin poets, had not my friends
discovered in a few weeks, that he preferred the pleasures of
London, to the instruction of his pupils. My father's perplexity at
this time, rather than his prudence, was urged to embrace a singular
and desperate measure. Without preparation or delay he carried me
to Oxford; and I was matriculated in the university as a gentleman
commoner of Magdalen college, before I had accomplished the
fifteenth year of my age (April 3, 1752).

The curiosity, which had been implanted in my infant mind, was still
alive and active; but my reason was not sufficiently informed to
understand the value, or to lament the loss, of three precious years
from my entrance at Westminster to my admission at Oxford. Instead
of repining at my long and frequent confinement to the chamber or
the couch, I secretly rejoiced in those infirmities, which delivered
me from the exercises of the school, and the society of my equals.
As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading,
free desultory reading, was the employment and comfort of my
solitary hours. At Westminster, my aunt sought only to amuse and
indulge me; in my stations at Bath and Winchester, at Beriton and
Putney, a false compassion respected my sufferings; and I was
allowed, without controul or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an
unripe taste. My indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees in the
historic line: and since philosophy has exploded all innate ideas
and natural propensities, I must ascribe this choice to the
assiduous perusal of the Universal History, as the octavo volumes
successively appeared. This unequal work, and a treatise of Hearne,
the Ductor historicus, referred and introduced me to the Greek and
Roman historians, to as many at least as were accessible to an
English reader. All that I could find were greedily devoured, from