So great was her solicitude for the improvement of her son, that she declined the pressing instances of the Countess of Macclesfield to reside under her roof, lest she should be hindered from attending exclusively to that which was now become her main concern. To the many inquiries which the early vivacity of the boy prompted him to put to her, the invariable answer she returned was, _read and you will know_. This assurance, added to the other means of instruction, from which her fondness, or more probably her discernment, induced her to exclude every species of severity, were so efficacious that in his fourth year he was able to read at sight any book in his own language. Two accidents occurred to hinder this rapid advancement from proceeding. Once he narrowly escaped being consumed by flames from having fallen into the fire, while endeavouring to scrape down some soot from the chimney of a room in which he had been left alone; and was rescued only in consequence of the alarm given to the servants by his shrieks. At another time, his eye was nearly put out by one of the hooks of his dress, as he was struggling under the hands of the domestic who was putting on his clothes. From the effects of this injury his sight never completely recovered. In his fifth year he received a strong impression from reading the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse. The man must have a cold imagination who would deny that this casual influence might have first disclosed not only the lofty and ardent spirit, but even that insatiable love of learning, by which he was afterwards distinguished above all his contemporaries. Amidst the general proscription of reading adapted to excite wonder, that germ of knowledge, in the minds of our children, it is lucky that the Bible is still left them. At the end of his seventh year he was placed under the tuition of Dr. Thackeray, the master of Harrow school; but had not been there two years before a fracture of his thigh bone, that happened in a scramble among his play-fellows, occasioned another suspension of his studies. During the twelvemonth which he now passed at home with his mother, he became so conversant with several writers in his own language, especially Dryden and Pope, that he set himself about making imitations of them. On his return to Harrow, no allowance was made for the inevitable consequences of this interruption; he was replaced in the class with those boys whose classical learning had been progressive while his was stationary, or rather retrograde, and unmerited chastisement was inflicted on him for his inferiority to those with whom he had wanted the means of maintaining an equality. Impelled either by fear, by shame, or by emulation, he laboured hard in private to repair his losses: of his own accord recurred to the rudiments of the grammar; and was so diligent that he speedily outstripped all his juvenile competitors.