nd sweet temper. To her, Clive was wont to say, he owed more than to
all his schools. But he could have seen but little of her in those
early days, for his home was always with the Bayleys, even after the
death of Mr. Bayley, and he was ever treated {10}there with kindness
and consideration. After one or two severe illnesses, which, it is
said, affected his constitution in after life, the young Robert,
still of tender years, was sent to Dr. Eaton's private school at
Lostocke in Cheshire: thence, at eleven, he was removed to Mr.
Burslem's at Market Drayton. With this gentleman he remained a few
years, and was then sent to have a brief experience of a public
school at Merchant Taylors'. Finally, he went to study at a private
school kept by Mr. Sterling in Hertfordshire. There he remained
until, in 1743, he was nominated to be a writer in the service of the
East India Company.

The chief characteristics of Robert Clive at his several schools had
been boldness and insubordination. He would not learn; he belonged to
a 'fighting caste'; he was the leader in all the broils and escapades
of schoolboy life; the terror of the masters; the spoiled darling of
his schoolmates. He learned, at all events, how to lead: for he was
daring even to recklessness; never lost his head; was calmest when
the danger was greatest; and displayed in a hundred ways his
predilection for a career of action.

It is not surprising, then, that he showed the strongest aversion to
devote himself to the study which would have qualified him to follow
his father's profession. A seat at an attorney's desk, and the
drudgery of an attorney's life, were to him as distasteful as they
proved to be, at a later period, to the eldest son of Isaac Disraeli.
He would have a career which promised action. If such were not open
to him {11}in his native land, he would seek for it in other parts of
the world. When, then, his father, who had some interest, and who had
but small belief in his eldest son, procured for him the appointment
of writer in the service of the East India Company, Robert Clive
accepted it with avidity.

Probably if he had had the smallest idea of the nature of the duties
which were associated with that office, he would have refused it with
scorn. He panted, I have said, for a life of action: he accepted a
career which was drudgery under a tropical sun, in its most
uninteresting form. The Company in whose service he entered was
simply a trading corpo