Littlebury's lame Herodotus, and Spelman's valuable Xenophon, to the
pompous folios of Gordon's Tacitus, and a ragged Procopius of the
beginning of the last century. The cheap acquisition of so much
knowledge confirmed my dislike to the study of languages; and I
argued with Mrs. Porten, that, were I master of Greek and Latin, I
must interpret to myself in English the thoughts of the original,
and that such extemporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate
translations of professed scholars; a silly sophism, which could not
easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any other language than
her own. From the ancient I leaped to the modern world: many crude
lumps of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, Machiavel, Father Paul,
Bower, &c., I devoured like so many novels; and I swallowed with the
same voracious appetite the descriptions of India and China, of
Mexico and Peru.

My first introduction to the historic scenes, which have since
engaged so many years of my life, must be ascribed to an accident.
In the summer of 1751, I accompanied my father on a visit to Mr.
Hoare's, in Wiltshire; but I was less delighted with the beauties of
Stourhead, than with discovering in the library a common book, the
Continuation of Echard's Roman History, which is indeed executed
with more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns
of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was
immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the
summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my
intellectual feast. This transient glance served rather to irritate
than to appease my curiosity; and as soon as I returned to Bath I
procured the second and third volumes of Howel's History of the
World, which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale.
Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention; and some instinct