The infancy of Edward was so sickly that his friends did not think fit to teach him his alphabet till he was seven years old. He would have us believe, however, that he was wise though not early schooled; for when an infant he understood what was said by others, yet he forebore to speak, lest he should utter something that was imperfect or impertinent. When he began to talk, one of the first enquiries he made was how he had come into the world. He told his nurse, keeper, and others, that he found himself here indeed, but from what cause or beginning, or by what means, he could not imagine. The nurse stared, and other people wondered at this precocious wisdom; and when he reflected upon the matter in after life he was happy in the thought, that as he found himself in possession of this life, without knowing any thing of the pangs and throes his mother suffered, when doubtless they no less afflicted him than her, so he hoped that his soul would pass to a better life than this, without being sensible of the anguish his body would feel in death.[128] He won the acquaintance of the learned languages, and other branches of juvenile literature, with great ease; and when at the age of twelve he was sent to Oxford, he tells us that he disputed at his first coming in logic, and made in Greek the exercises required in his college oftener than in Latin. He married at the age of fifteen, and then applied himself more vigorously than ever to study, particularly the continental languages: but to fence and to ride the great horse were his principal ambition, for such were the exercises in which the chivalry of his time were educated,--and he aspired to fame in every pursuit. From the same feeling of vanity that urged him to publish his deistical dogmas, he complacently says of himself that no man understood the use of his weapon better than himself, or had more dexterously availed himself thereof on all occasions.[129]