CHAPTER I.
It has long been my intention to write my own history, and I am determined to begin it to-day; for half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.
When I was a young man, I used to be told that this was my only fault; I believed it, and my vanity or laziness persuaded me that this fault was but small, and that I should easily cure myself of it in time.
That time, however, has not yet arrived, and at my advanced age I must give up all thoughts of amendment, hoping, however, that sincere repentance may stand instead of reformation.
My father was an eminent London bookseller: he happened to be looking over a new biographical dictionary on the day when I was brought into the world; and at the moment when my birth was announced to him, he had his finger upon the name Basil; he read aloud—“Basil, canonized bishop of Caesarea, a theological, controversial, and moral writer.”
“My boy,” continued my father, “shall be named after this great man, and I hope and believe that I shall live to see him either a celebrated theological, controversial, and moral author, or a bishop. I am not so sanguine as to expect that he should be both these good things.”
I was christened Basil according to my father’s wishes, and his hopes of my future celebrity and fortune were confirmed, during my childhood, by instances of wit and memory, which were not perhaps greater than what could have been found in my little contemporaries, but which appeared to the vanity of parental fondness extraordinary, if not supernatural. My father declared that it would be a sin not to give me a learned education, and he went even beyond his means to procure for me all the advantages of the best modes of instruction. I was stimulated, even when a boy, by the idea that I should become a great man, and my masters had for some time reason to be satisfied; but what they called the quickness of my parts continually retarded my progress. The facility with which I learned my lessons encouraged me to put off learning them till the last moment; and this habit of procrastinating, which was begun in presumption, ended in disgrace.
When I was sent to a public school, I found among my companions so many temptations to idleness, that notwithstanding the quickness of my parts, I was generally flogged twice a week. As I grew older, my reason might perhaps have taught me to correct myself, but my vanity was excited to persist in idleness by certain imprudent sayings or whisperings of my father.