tion; and some
instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley,
an original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led from one
book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental history.
Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all that could be learned in
English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks; and the same
ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot, and to
construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such vague and
multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, or to act;
and the only principle that darted a ray of light into the indigested
chaos, was an early and rational application to the order of time and
place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the
picture of ancient geography: from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of
chronology: the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher
and Prideaux, distinguished the connection of events, and engraved the
multitude of names and dates in a clear and indelible series. But in the
discussion of the first ages I overleaped the bounds of modesty and use.
In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger
and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom study in
the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of
reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation. I arrived at
Oxford with a stock of erudition, that might have puzzled a doctor, and
a degree of ignorance, of which a school-boy would have been ashamed.

At the conclusion of this first period of my life, I am tempted to enter
a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness of our
boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the world.
That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted; and
were my poor aunt still alive, she would bear testimony to the early and
constant uniformity of my sentiments. It will indeed be replied, that I
am not a competent judge; that pleasure is incompatible with pain; that
joy is excluded from sickness; and that the felicity of a schoolboy
consists in the perpetual motion of thoughtless and playful agility, in
which I was never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, could
never be enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or
Westminster,

"Who foremost may delight to cleave,
With pliant arm, the glassy wave,
Or urge the f