Of his Eton life, from his entrance at the school, when twelve years old, we know practically nothing. From the absence of his name on the college lists, it may be inferred that he was an Oppidan. It is said that he gave "distinguished proofs of strong and peculiar parts"; and that he left the school with a good reputation as a classical scholar. And it is not surprising to learn that here, as he himself tells us, his vigorous energies made acquaintance with that 'birchen altar' at which most of the best blood in England has been disciplined. "And thou," he cries, "O Learning (for without thy Assistance nothing pure, nothing correct, can Genius produce) do thou guide my Pen. Thee, in thy favourite Fields, where the limpid gently rolling _Thames_ washes thy _Etonian_ banks, in early Youth I have worshipped. To thee at thy birchen Altar, with true _Spartan_ Devotion, I have sacrificed my Blood." [8] That the sacrifice was not made in vain appears from the reputation with which Fielding left Eton of being "uncommonly versed in the Greek authors and an early master of the Latin classics"; and also from the yet better evidence of his own pages. Long after these boyish days we find him, in the words of "The man of the Hill," thus eloquently acknowledging the debt of humanity, and doubtless his own, to those inestimable treasures bequeathed to the world by ancient Greece: "These Authors, though they instructed me in no Science by which Men may promise to themselves to acquire the least Riches, or worldly Power, taught me, however, the Art of despising the highest Acquisitions of both. They elevate the Mind, and steel and harden it against the capricious Invasions of Fortune. They not only instruct in the Knowledge of Wisdom, but confirm Men in her Habits, and demonstrate plainly, that this must be our Guide, if we propose ever to arrive at the greatest worldly Happiness; or to defend ourselves, with any tolerable Security, against the Misery which everywhere surrounds and invests us." [9] And that this was no mere figure of speech appears from that touching picture which Murphy has left us of the brilliant wit, the 'wild' Harry Fielding, when under the pressure of sickness and poverty, quietly reading the _De Consolations_ of Cicero. His Plato accompanied him on the last sad voyage to Lisbon; and his library, when catalogued for sale on behalf of his widow and children, contained over one hundred and forty volumes of the Greek and Latin classics.