children are so prodigal. He could not bear the
idea of sending me to school; accordingly he took a tutor for me,--a
simple-hearted, gentle, kind man, who possessed a vast store of
learning rather curious than useful. He was a tolerable, and at least an
enthusiastic antiquarian, a more than tolerable poetaster; and he had a
prodigious budget full of old ballads and songs, which he loved
better to teach and I to learn, than all the 'Latin, Greek, geography,
astronomy, and the use of the globes,' which my poor father had so
sedulously bargained for."

"Accordingly, I became exceedingly well-informed in all the 'precious
conceits' and 'golden garlands' of our British ancients, and continued
exceedingly ignorant of everything else, save and except a few of
the most fashionable novels of the day, and the contents of six lying
volumes of voyages and travels, which flattered both my appetite for the
wonderful and my love of the adventurous. My studies, such as they were,
were not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes my
childhood had acquired: on the contrary, the old poets, with their
luxurious description of the 'green wood' and the forest life; the
fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of the wanderings
of some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious travellers, with their wild
fables, so dear to the imagination of every boy, only fomented within
me a strong though secret regret at my change of life, and a restless
disgust to the tame home and bounded roamings to which I was condemned.
When I was about seventeen, my father sold his property (which he had
become possessed of in right of my mother), and transferred the purchase
money to the security of the Funds. Shortly afterwards he died; the bulk
of his fortune became mine; the remainder was settled upon a sister,
many years older than myself, whom, in consequence of her marriage and
residence in a remote part of Wales, I had never yet seen."

"Now, then, I was perfectly free and unfettered; my guardian lived in
Scotland, and left me entirely to the guidance of my tutor, who was both
too simple and too indolent to resist my inclinations. I went to London,
became acquainted with a set of most royal scamps, frequented the
theatres and the taverns, the various resorts which constitute the
gayeties of a blood just above the middle class, and was one of the
noisiest and wildest 'blades' that ever heard the 'chimes by midnight'
and the magistrate's