Nothing is known of the early life of young Gambold, except, that he was greatly benefited by his father’s instructions; and, at the early age of fifteen, went to the University of Oxford, where he entered as servitor in Christ Church College, and soon became eminent for his diligent devotion to reading and study. He was naturally of a vivacious and active spirit; and, besides his attention to his collegiate exercises, employed himself in an extensive perusal of the most approved dramatists and poets in the English language.[121] Two years after he went to Oxford, his father died; and this event, together with the exhortations and counsels he received from the dying minister in his last moments, so affected him, that he at once abandoned poetry and plays, lost his liveliness of disposition, sunk into a state of melancholy, and made the salvation of his soul the chief business of life. Painful experience was the inspirer of a short poem of his, afterwards published in his collected works:— “In nature’s ebbs, which lay the soul in chains, Beneath weak nerves and ill-sufficing veins, Who can support bare being, unendow’d With gust voluptuous, or reflection proud? No more bright images the brain commands,— No great design the glowing heart expands,— No longer shines the animated face,— Motion and speech forget their conscious grace. How can the brave, the witty, and the gay Survive, when mirth, wit, courage die away? None but the Christian’s all-comprising power Subdues each chance, and lives through every hour: Watchful, he suffers all, and feels within All smart proportion’d to some root of sin; He strikes each error with his Maker’s rod, And, by self-knowledge, penetrates to God.” Gambold entered Christ Church College in the same year that Charles Wesley did, the latter being more than two years older than the former. John Wesley also was a member of the same college, and twelve months before, on September 19, 1725, had been ordained a deacon. In 1729, the society of Oxford Methodists was formed by Charles Wesley; and, a year afterwards, Gambold, still only in his teens, became one of them. He shall narrate his own story, written when Wesley was in Georgia. The account is long; but, containing as it does a full description of the rise and peculiarities of the “Holy Club,” and a faithful delineation of the character and influence of their confessed “curator,” it is too important to be omitted. Gambold writes:—