younger than her happy reign.” He is said, also, when very young, to have stolen away from his playfellows in order to investigate the cause of a singular echo in St. James’s Fields, which attracted his attention.
Until the age of thirteen he remained under the tuition of his accomplished mother, aided by a private tutor only; under their care he attained the elements of the classics, that education preliminary to the studies of the University.
At thirteen he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his father had been educated.
Here he studied diligently the great models of antiquity, mathematics, and philosophy, worshipped, however, but indevoutly at the shrine of Aristotle, whom, according to Rawley, his chaplain and biographer, he already derided “for the unfruitfulness of the way,—being only strong for disputation, but barren of the production of works for the life of man.”
He remained three years at this seat of learning, without, however, taking a degree at his departure.