led upon his private
secretary, a young man of taste and accomplishments, to bestow an hour
or two on Edward's education while at Brere-wood Lodge, and left his
uncle answerable for his improvement in literature while an inmate at
the Hall.

This was in some degree respectably provided for. Sir Everard's
chaplain, an Oxonian, who had lost his fellowship for declining to
take the oaths at the accession of George I, was not only an excellent
classical scholar, but reasonably skilled in science, and master of most
modern languages. He was, however, old and indulgent, and the recurring
interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed from his discipline,
occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that the youth was permitted,
in a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he pleased, and when he
pleased. This slackness of rule might have been ruinous to a boy of
slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of
knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a
task-master; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth whose
animal spirits were more powerful than his imagination or his feelings,
and whom the irresistible influence of Alma would have engaged in field
sports from morning till night. But the character of Edward Waverley
was remote from either of these. His powers of apprehension were so
uncommonly quick, as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of
his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from
overrunning his game, that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight,
flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the instructor had to combat
another propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy and
vivacity of talent,--that indolence, namely, of disposition, which
can only be stirred by some strong motive of gratification, and which
renounces study as soon as curiosity is gratified, the pleasure of
conquering the first difficulties exhausted, and the novelty of pursuit
at an end. Edward would throw himself with spirit upon any classical
author of which his preceptor proposed the perusal, make himself master
of the style so far as to understand the story, and if that pleased or
interested him, he finished the volume. But it was in vain to attempt
fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philology, upon
the difference of idiom, the beauty of felicitous expression, or the
artificial combinations of syntax. 'I can read and unde