In October, 1787, he left
school for St. John's College, Cambridge. He was already, we are told, a
fair Latin scholar, and had made some progress in mathematics. The
earliest books we hear of his reading were Don Quixote, Gil Blas,
Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of a Tub; but at school he had also
become familiar with the works of some English poets, particularly
Goldsmith and Gray, of whose poems he had learned many by heart. What is
more to the purpose, he had become, without knowing it, a lover of Nature
in all her moods, and the same mental necessities of a solitary life
which compel men to an interest in the transitory phenomena of scenery,
had made him also studious of the movements of his own mind, and the
mutual interaction and dependence of the external and internal universe.
Doubtless his early orphanage was not without its effect in confirming a
character naturally impatient of control, and his mind, left to itself,
clothed itself with an indigenous growth, which grew fairly and freely,
unstinted by the shadow of exotic plantations. It has become a truism,
that remarkable persons have remarkable mothers; but perhaps this is
chiefly true of such as have made themselves distinguished by their
industry, and by the assiduous cultivation of faculties in themselves of
only an average quality.
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