of criticism directed me to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley, an
original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led from
one book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental
history. Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all that could be
learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks;
and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot,
and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such
vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to
write, or to act; and the only principle that darted a ray of light
into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application to
the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells
imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from
Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of
Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher and Prideaux,
distinguished the connection of events, and engraved the multitude
of names and dates in a clear and indelible series. But in the
discussion of the first ages I overleaped the bounds of modesty and
use. In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of
Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom
study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the
difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew
computation. I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition, that
might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance, of which a
school-boy would have been ashamed.

At the conclusion of this first period of my life, I am tempted to
enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness
of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the
world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never
regretted; and were my poor aunt still alive, she would bear