g to
the Duke of Sussex's statement to Sir George Airy--by a formal pardon
handed to him personally by George III. on his presentation in 1782.[8]
At the age of nineteen, then, his military service having lasted four
years, he came to England to seek his fortune. Of the life of struggle
and privation which ensued little is known beyond the circumstances that
in 1760 he was engaged in training the regimental band of the Durham
Militia, and that in 1765 he was appointed organist at Halifax. In the
following year he removed to Bath as oboist in Linley's orchestra, and
in October 1767 was promoted to the post of organist in the Octagon
Chapel. The tide of prosperity now began to flow for him. The most
brilliant and modish society in England was at that time to be met at
Bath, and the young Hanoverian quickly found himself a favourite and the
fashion in it. Engagements multiplied upon him. He became director of
the public concerts; he conducted oratorios, engaged singers, organised
rehearsals, composed anthems, chants, choral services, besides
undertaking private tuitions, at times amounting to thirty-five or even
thirty-eight lessons a week. He in fact personified the musical activity
of a place then eminently and energetically musical.

But these multifarious avocations did not take up the whole of his
thoughts. His education, notwithstanding the poverty of his family, had
not been neglected, and he had always greedily assimilated every kind of
knowledge that came in his way. Now that he was a busy and a prosperous
man, it might have been expected that he would run on in the deep
professional groove laid down for him. On the contrary, his passion for
learning seemed to increase with the diminution of the time available
for its gratification. He studied Italian, Greek, mathematics;
Maclaurin's Fluxions served to "unbend his mind"; Smith's Harmonics and
Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy were the nightly companions of his
pillow. What he read stimulated without satisfying his intellect. He
desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small
telescope, and through it caught a preliminary glimpse of the rich and
varied fields in which for so many years he was to expatiate.
Henceforward the purpose of his life was fixed: it was to obtain "a
knowledge of the construction of the heavens";[9] and this sublime
ambition he cherished to the end.

A more powerful instrument was the first desideratum; and here his
mechan