read
"The Whole Duty of Man," from a great part of which I could derive no
instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which
from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced
that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of
knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having
his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other
excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an
amusing variety of objects, may not grow weary.'

He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of
his religious progress. 'I fell into an inattention to religion, or an
indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in
which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat
in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I
used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till
my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church.
I then became a sort of lax TALKER against religion, for I did not much
THINK against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would
not be SUFFERED. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call to a Holy
Life, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are),
and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me;
and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion,
after I became capable of rational inquiry.' From this time forward
religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; though, with the
just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his
practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.

The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the
time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. Enough
has been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me that from his
earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to
an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of
the ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone; that Horace's Odes
were the compositions in which he took most delight, and it was long
before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read
SOLIDLY at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and
Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which
he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but