have influenced the earlier years
of many who have been most distinguished for their virtues or abilities
in after life. He was taught to read by three sisters, of the name of
Russell, who kept a girls' school at Chichester; and pleased himself by
relating that, when in his 63rd year, he presented to one of them, who
still continued in the same employment with her faculties unimpaired, a
recent edition of his Triumphs of Temper. His first instructor in the
learned languages was a master in the same city, who appeared to be so
incompetent to the task he had undertaken, that Mrs. Hayley removed her
son to the school of a Mr. Woodeson, at Kingston. He had not been long
here, when he was seized with a violent fit of illness, which obliged
his mother, who had now fixed her residence in London, to take him home,
after having nursed him for some weeks at Kingston, with little hopes of
life. Of the anxiety with which she watched over him, he has left the
following pathetic memorial in his Essay on Epic Poetry.

Thou tender saint, to whom he owes much more
Than ever child to parent owed before,
In life's first season, when the fever's flame
Shrunk to deformity his shrivel'd frame,
And turn'd each fairer image in his brain
To blank confusion and her crazy train,
'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years,
To bathe thy idiot orphan with thy tears;
Day after day, and night succeeding night,
To turn incessant to the hideous sight,
And frequent watch, if haply at thy view
Departed reason might not dawn anew.

The first sign he gave of returning intellect, was an exclamation on
seeing a hare run across the road as they were taking an airing in
Richmond park. On his recovery, his mother provided him a private tutor
in Greek and Latin, of the name of Ayles, formerly a fellow of King's
College, Cambridge; while she herself, and his nurse, a faithful servant
in the family for more than fifty years, encouraged his early propensity
for English literature; the former by reading to him and the other by
making him recite passages out of tragedies, of which the good woman was
passionately fond.

In August, 1757, his mother placed him at Eton where he remained about
six years, at the end of which time he was removed to Trinity Hall,
Cambridge. Like many others, he acknowledges the illusion of considering
our school-boy days as the happiest of life. The infirmities, which his
sickness had brought on, ma