the eldest was nineteen and the
youngest still under four.[8] I shall speak directly of the two eldest.
Two daughters were taken in charge by their grandmother Stephen, who was
still living in Scotland; while the two little ones remained with their
father at Stoke Newington, where he now lived, ran about the common and
learnt to ride pigs. James Stephen himself lived four years more,
sinking into deeper difficulties; an execution was threatened during his
last illness, and he died in 1779, leaving hardly enough to pay his
debts.[9]

II. JAMES STEPHEN, MASTER IN CHANCERY

I have now to tell the story of the second son, James, my grandfather,
born in 1758. His education, as may be anticipated, was desultory. When
four or five years old, he was sent to a school at Vauxhall kept by
Peter Annet (1693-1769), the last of the Deists who (in 1763) was
imprisoned for a blasphemous libel. The elder Stephen was then living
at Lambeth, and the choice of a schoolmaster seems to show that his
opinions were of the free-thinking type. About 1767 the boy was sent to
a school near his mother's family at Poole. There at the early age of
ten he fell desperately in love with his schoolmaster's daughter, aged
fifteen, and was hurt by the levity with which his passion was treated.
At the same period he became a poet, composed hymns, and wrote an
epigram upon one of his father's creditors. He accompanied his father to
the King's Bench Prison, and there Christopher Smart and others petted
the lad, lent him books, and encouraged his literary aspirations. During
his father's later troubles he managed to keep up a subscription to a
circulating library and would read two volumes a day, chiefly plays and
novels, and, above all, the 'Grand Cyrus' and other old-fashioned
romances. His mother tried to direct him to such solid works as Rapin's
History, and he learnt her favourite Young's 'Night Thoughts' by heart.
He had no schooling after leaving Poole, until, about 1772, he was sent
to a day school on Kennington Green, kept by a cheesemonger who had
failed in business, and whose sole qualifications for teaching were a
clerical wig and a black coat. Here occurred events which profoundly
affected his career. A schoolfellow named Thomas Stent, son of a
stockbroker, became his warm friend. The parent Stents forbade the
intimacy with the son of a broken merchant. Young Stephen boldly called
upon Mrs. Stent to protest against the sentence. She took a lik