Progress of my studies: My predilection in favour of theology: The decay of the rector: His testament, death, and funeral
Three additional years passed away under the auspices of my grandfather, during which he pursued his law-suits and I my studies; though with very different success; he lost the dearest thing on earth to him, his money; and I gained the dearest thing on earth to me, knowledge. Among other superfluous appendages, superfluous to him for he made but little use of it, he had a good library. Not of his own collecting; he enjoyed it by descent. This was my daily resort. Its treasures were inexhaustible, and my desire of information could not be satiated. I spent many happy hours in it, and it is still remembered by me with that sweet pleasure which its contents were so well calculated to impart.
I had another accidental advantage. The usher of the school got preferment, and his successor happened to be well read, both in the dead and living languages. This person, whose name was Wilmot, was not only a good scholar and an amiable man but an excellent poet. He had an affection for me, and I almost worshipped him. He was assiduous to teach me every thing he knew; and fortunately I was no less apt and eager to learn. Having already made a tolerable proficiency in the learned languages, the richness of the French in authors made me labour to acquire it with avidity. The Italian poets were equally inviting; so that, by his aid, I mastered the idioms and attained the spirit of both those languages. The dialects of the Teutonic were likewise familiar to him, and I made some progress in the German; being desirous from his recommendation to read, among others, the works of Lessing, Klopstock, Goethe, and Schiller. The acquirement of knowledge is an essential and therefore a pure pleasure; and my time, though laboriously spent, glided swiftly and happily away.
With respect to amusement, the violin became my favourite. My now dearest friend, the usher, among his other attainments was a musician: my affection for him had made him intimate at the parsonage-house, and his aid greatly promoted our musical parties.
Finding knowledge thus delightful, my zeal to promulgate it was great. I had as I imagined so much to communicate, that I panted for an opportunity to address myself to multitudes. At that time I knew no place so well calculated for this purpose as the pulpit; and my inclination to be a preacher was tolerably conformable to the views of the rector. Not but he had his doubts. Few men are satisfied with their own profession; and though he had great veneration for church authority, which he held to be infinitely superior from its very nature to civil government, yet his propensity to dabble in the law had practically and theoretically taught him some of the advantages of its professors. In rank it was true that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the second man in the kingdom, and in the rector's opinion ought to have been indisputably the first. In days of yore, who so potent? But obsolete titles are not equal to actual possessions. The Lord High Chancellor, in this degenerate age, enjoys much more political power. Neither does it in general die with him, like that of the Archbishop. He seldom fails to bequeath an earldom, or a barony at least, to his heir.
On these subjects I had frequent lectures from my grandfather, who perceiving the enterprise of my temper and the progress of my studies, began to entertain hopes that from his loins some future noble family might descend: that is, provided I would follow the advice which he so well knew how to bestow. In support of his argument, he would give me the history of the origin of various Barons, Viscounts, and Earls, which he could trace to some of the lowest departments of the law.
Thus, though he was convinced that the sacerdotal character claimed unlimited authority by right divine, yet, from the perverse and degenerate nature of man, it was most lamentably sinking into decay; while that of the law was rising on its ruins. Had he been a man of the world instead of the rector of a village, he would have heard of another profession, superior to them both for the attainment of what he most coveted, power, rank, and wealth; and would have known that the lawyer only soars to the possession of these supposed blessings by learning a new trade; that is, by making himself a politician.
The effect his maxims produced on me was a conviction that divinity and law were two super-excellent things. But my mind from many circumstances had acquired a moral turn; and, as I at that time supposed morality and religion to be the same, the current of my inclinations was strong in favour of divinity. Whoever imagines the youthful mind cannot easily acquire such moral propensities has never observed it, except when habit and example have already taught it to be perverse. I speak from experience, and well know how much the accounts I had read of Aristides, Epaminondas, Regulus, Cato, and innumerable other great characters among the ancients inflamed my imagination, and gave me a rooted love of virtue; so that even the vulgarly supposed dry precepts of Seneca and Epictetus were perused by me with delight; and with an emulous determination to put them in practice.
My morality however was far from pure: it was such a mixture of truth and error as was communicated to me by conversation, books, and the incidents of life. From the glow of poetry I learnt many noble precepts; but from the same source I derived the pernicious supposition that to conquer countries and exterminate men are the acts of heroes. Further instances would be superfluous: I mean only to remark that, while I was gaining numerous truths, I was likewise confirming myself in various prejudices; many of which it has been the labour of years aided by the lessons of accident to eradicate; and many more no doubt still remain undetected.
And now the period approached when I was to adventure forth into that world of which I had experienced something, had heard so much, and with which I was so impatient to become still better acquainted. The weight of age began to press upon the rector and he had an apoplectic fit, at which he was very seriously alarmed. He then thought it high time to put his temporal affairs into the best order that his own folly would admit; for, in consequence of his lawsuits, they were so much in the hands and power of his friend, the lawyer, that notwithstanding the plausibility and professions of the latter, he trembled when he came to reflect how much they were involved. His former parsimony had led him to hope he should leave great wealth behind him; but, when he came to consult his friend concerning his will, he had the mortification to find how much it had been diminished by his litigious avarice.