Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, While yet in Britain, honour had applause) Each parent sprang,--What fortune pray?--their own, And better got than Bestia's from the throne. Born to no pride, inheriting no strife, Nor marrying discord in a noble wife; Stranger to civil and religious rage, The good man walked innoxious thro' his age: No courts he saw; no suits would ever try; Nor dar'd an oath, nor hazarded a lye: Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolmen's subtle art, No language, but the language of the heart: By nature honest, by experience wise, Healthy by temp'rance, and by exercise; His life though long, to sickness past unknown, His death was instant and without a groan. The education of our great author was attended with circumstances very singular; and some of them extremely unfavourable; but the amazing force of his genius fully compensated the want of any advantage in his earliest instruction. He owed the knowledge of his letters to an aunt; and having learned very early to read, took great delight in it, and taught himself to write by copying after printed books, the characters of which he could imitate to great perfection. He began to compose verses, farther back than he could well remember; and at eight years of age, when he was put under one Taverner a priest, who taught him the rudiments of the Latin and Greek tongues at the same time, he met with Ogilby's Homer, which gave him great delight; and this was encreased by Sandys's Ovid: The raptures which these authors, even in the disguise of such translations, then yielded him, were so strong, that he spoke of them with pleasure ever after. From Mr. Taverner's tuition he was sent to a private school at Twiford, near Winchester, where he continued about a year, and was then removed to another near Hyde Park Corner; but was so unfortunate as to lose under his two last masters, what he had acquired under the first.