f learning and science.

I imagine my father's reason for sending me to so few classes in the
College was a desire that I should apply myself particularly to my
legal studies. He had not determined whether I should fill the
situation of an Advocate or a Writer; but judiciously considering the
technical knowledge of the latter to be useful at least, if not
essential, to a barrister, he resolved I should serve the ordinary
apprenticeship of five years to his own profession. I accordingly
entered into indentures with my father about 1785-86, and entered upon
the dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances.

I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle apprentice--far
less, as the reader might reasonably have expected,

"A clerk foredoom'd my father's soul to cross."

The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the confinement
{p.037} I altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt the
rational pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to him. I was
ambitious also; and among my companions in labor, the only way to
gratify ambition was to labor hard and well. Other circumstances
reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The allowance for
copy-money furnished a little fund for the _menus plaisirs_ of the
circulating library and the theatre; and this was no trifling
incentive to labor. When actually at the oar, no man could pull it
harder than I, and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with
no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of attendance on
the office were lightened by the power of choosing my own books, and
reading them in my own way, which often consisted in beginning at the
middle or the end of a volume. A deceased friend, who was a
fellow-apprentice with me, used often to express his surprise that,
after such a hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew as much of the book as
he had been able to acquire from reading it in the usual manner. My
desk usually contained a store of most miscellaneous volumes,
especially works of fiction of every kind, which were my supreme
delight. I might except novels, unless those of the better and higher
class; for though I read many of them, yet it was with more selection
than might have been expected. The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe
I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of
Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale. But all that was
adventurous and romantic I devoured wit