of all my tutors,
was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me
(and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great
indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who
was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and,
finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great
school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his
situation by ---- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built
scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college)
coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in
my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite master; and,
besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and
meagerness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be,
and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or power
of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not
with myself only, for the two boys who jointly with myself composed
the first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not
more elegant scholars.... I who had a small patrimonial property, the
income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be
sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the
subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more
reasonable, and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived
at a distance; two of the other three resigned all their authority
into the hands of the fourth, and this fourth, with whom I had to
negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and
intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of
letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope
for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian:
unconditional submission was what he demanded, and I prepared myself,
therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty
steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, after which
day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered among
schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of
high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and
had latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she
would "lend" me five guineas. For upward of a week no answer came, and
I was beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands
a double let