monstrate; but went in
sullenness and silence to my new master, to whom I was soon after
bound[E] till I should attain the age of twenty-one.

The family consisted of four journeymen, two sons about my own age, and
an apprentice somewhat older. In these there was nothing remarkable; but
my master himself was the strangest creature! he was a presbyterian,
whose reading was entirely confined to the small tracts published on the
Exeter Controversy. As these (at least his portion of them) were all on
one side, he entertained no doubt of their infallibility, and being
noisy and disputatious, was sure to silence his opponents; and became,
in consequence of it, intolerably arrogant and conceited. He was not,
however, indebted solely to his knowledge of the subject for his
triumph: he was possessed of Fenning's Dictionary, and he made a most
singular use of it. His custom was to fix on any word in common use, and
then to get by heart the synonym, or periphrasis by which it was
explained in the book: this he constantly substituted for the other, and
as his opponents were commonly ignorant of his meaning, his victory was
complete.

With such a man I was not likely to add much to my stock of knowledge,
small as it was; and indeed nothing could well be smaller. At this
period I had read nothing but a black letter romance called Parismus and
Parismenus, and a few loose magazines which my mother had brought from
South Molton. The Bible, indeed, I was well acquainted with; it was the
favourite study of my grandmother, and reading it frequently with her,
had impressed it strongly on my mind; these then, with the Imitation of
Thomas a Kempis, which I used to read to my mother on her death-bed,
constituted the whole of my literary acquisitions.

As I hated my new profession with a perfect hatred, I made no progress
in it; and was consequently little regarded in the family, of which I
sunk by degrees into the common drudge: this did not much disquiet me,
for my spirits were now humbled. I did not, however, quite resign the
hope of one day succeeding to Mr. Hugh Smerdon, and therefore secretly
prosecuted my favourite study at every interval of leisure.

These intervals were not very frequent; and when the use I made of them
was found out, they were rendered still less so. I could not guess the
motives for this at first; but at length I discovered that my master
destined his youngest son for the situation to which I aspired.

I possess