of my ambition; for this I laboured, to this point I looked, and all my world was centered in my college. Every scene brought to my mind the pleasing recollection of times past, and filled it with the animating hope of times to come as my college duties and attendances were occupations that I took pleasure in, punctuality and obedience did not put me to the trouble of an effort, for when to be employed is our amusement, there is no self-denial in not being idle. If I had then had a tutor, who would have systematized and arranged my stu dies, it would have been happy for me; but I had no such director, and with my books before me, (poets, historians and philosophers) sate down as it were to a cana dubia, with an eager, rather than a discriminating, appetite; I am now speaking of my course of reading from my admission to my commencing Soph, when I was called off to my academical studies. In that period my stock of books was but slender, till Doctor Richard Bentley had the goodness to give me a valuable parcel of my grandfather's books and papers, containing his correspondence with many of the foreign literati upon points of criticism, some

letters from Sir Isaac Newton, a pretty large body of notes for an edition of Lucan's Pharsalia, which I gave to my uncle Bentley, and were published under his inspection by Dodsley at Mr. Walpole's press, with sundry other manuscripts, and a considerable number of Greek and Latin books, mostly collated by him and their margins filled with alterations and corrections in his own hand, neatly and legibly written in a very small character. The possession of these books was most gratifying and acceptable to me; some few of them were extremely rare, and in the history I have given in The Observers of the Greek Writers, more particularly of the Comic Poets now lost, I have availed myself of them, and I am vain enough to believe no such collection of the scattered extracts, anecdotes and remains of those dramatists is any where else to be found. The donor of these books was the nephew of my grandfather, and inherited by will the whole of his library, which at his death was sold by auction in Leicestershire, where he resided in his latter years on his rectory of Nailstone: he was himself no inconsiderable collector, and it is much to be regretted that his executors took

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this method of disposing of his books, by which they became dispersed in small lots amongst many country purchasers, who probably did not know their value. He was an accurate collater, and for his judgment in editions much resorted to by Doctor Mead, with whom he lived in great intimacy. During the time that he resided in college, for he was one of the senior fellows of Trinity, he gave me every possible proof, not only in this instance of his donation, but in many others, of his favor and protection.

At the same time Doctor Richard Walker, the friend of my grandfather, and vice-master of the college,' never failed to distinguish me by every kindness in his power. He frequent

ly invited me to his rooms, which I had so often visited as a child, and which had the further merit with me as having been the resi dence of Sir Isaac Newton, every relick of whose studies and experiments were respectfully preserved to the minutest particular, and pointed out to me by the good old vice-master with the most circumstantial precision. He had many little anecdotes of my grandfather, which to me at least were interesting, and an

old servant Deborah, whom he made a kind of companion, and who was much in request for the many entertaining circumstances she could narrate of Sir Isaac Newton, when she waited upon him as his bedmaker, and also of Doctor Bentley, with whom she lived for se veral years after Sir Isaac left college, and at the death of my grandfather was passed over to Doctor Walker, in whose service she died.

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My mind in these happy days was so tranquil, and my time passed in so uniform a tenor of study and retirement, that though it is a period pleasing to me to reflect upon, yet it furnishes little that is worthy to be recorded, I believe I hardly ever employed myself upon English composition, except on the event of the Prince of Wales's death, when, amongst others I sent in my contribution of elegiac verses to the university volume, and very in, different ones they were. To my Latin de clamations I paid my best attention, for these were recited publicly in the chapel after evening prayers on Saturdays, when it was open to all, who chose to resort thither, and we were generally flattered by pretty full audiences. ol The year of trial now commenced, for which,

through the neglect of my tutors, I was, as an academical student, totally unprepared. Determined to use every effort in my power for redeeming my lost time, I began a course of study so apportioned as to allow myself but six hours sleep, to which I strictly adhered, living almost entirely upon milk, and using the cold bath very frequently. As I was then only seventeen years old, and of a frame by no means robust, many of my friends remonstrated against the severity of this regimen, and recommended more moderation, but the encouragement I met in the rapidity of my progress through all. the dry and elementary parts of my studies determined me to persist with ardour, and made me deaf to their advice. In the several branches of the mechanics, hydrostatics, optics and astronomy I consulted the best treatises, and made myself master of them; I worked all my propositions, formed all my minutes, and even my thoughts, in Latin, whereby I acquired a facility of expounding, solving and arguing in that language, in which I may presume to say I had advantages, which some of the best of my contemporaries in our public disputations were but too sensible of, for so