ABSTRACT
At the age of seventeen I was placed in the university of Cambridge, at Mr. Randolph’s expence, and with his most earnest injunctions to omit no opportunity of completing my scholastic labours. My mind was naturally studious, and sometimes serious, to a degree that gave me the appearance of a cynic. The retirement, in which I had grown from infancy to manhood, nursed the thoughtful propensities of my nature, and tinctured it with a melancholy, which can never be eradicated.
