his return that, a variety of new scenes having
effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with
the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time;
and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with
tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing
itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for
dramatic poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call
them either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of
talents than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other
individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents, did not
blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature
efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided everything
like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have
withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstance of
these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own
family.

"In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W.
Carmalt, at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After
leaving this school he went abroad again for some months; and in
October, 1822, became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an
Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the
summer of 1827. He was now become a good though not perhaps a
first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of
time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but far more his
increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the
strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other
faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into
play, will sufficiently account for what might seem a
comparative deficiency in classical learning. It can only,
however, be reckoned one, comparatively to his other
attainments, and to his remarkable facility in mastering the
modern languages. The Editor has thought it not improper to
print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as written
before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and
other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above
the level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should
have selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and
with whose language, he was then but very slightly acquainted,
but who was afte