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ing of these notes costs me; and what adds to the perplexity, is the multitude of little things to which almost incessantly my attention is demanded. Matters are come to this-if I do not at once get from many of my avocations, I shall soon be incapable of prosecuting any. I must hide my head in the country, or it will shortly be hidden in the grave."

This was a decision which, in regard to various philanthropic institutions in London, to which he had long given his gratuitous and effective aid, as well as to the feelings of a multitude who had greatly profited under his ministry, could only be unwelcome, except for the personal relief it would give to one so highly honored and esteemed, whose added years, it was well believed, would be fully consecrated to the same great objects which had commanded the days of the past.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STUDENT AND SCHOLAR.

HITHERTO Our narrative has turned mainly on those incidents of life, and traits of character, which relate to the subject of our memoir as a Christian minister; but a biography of Adam Clarke would be essentially defective, in which a respectful homage was not rendered to his memory as a scholar and a man of letters. Unhappily, the scanty limits of the present work will not allow of extensive disquisition on this topic, were the writer ever so well able to indulge in it. Necessity prescribes that our pages should teem with facts rather that fancies, and should treasure up materials which the thoughtful reader may make the subject of his own conclusions. For myself, I enter on this chapter with a mortifying sense of insufficiency. I am not going to affect the critic, or to sit in judgment on the intellect and learning of a man the lachet of whose shoes I should have been unworthy to unloose. On the other hand, I may be doing a pleasurable service to my readers by collecting and setting down such notices of his mental development as have been given, here and there, by Dr. Clarke himself, or by those who knew him intimately.

We are first led back to the village school in Ireland, where the child, under the indignant glance of his disappointed and anxious father, tried to learn, but could not. The circumstances under which this physical inability was overcome have been already detailed. His intellect seemed to undergo a sudden regeneration. The ability to learn was given him, as it were, in an instant of time. In his own words, "it was not acquired by slow degrees; there was no conquest over inaptitude and dullness by persevering and

gradual conflict; the power seemed generated in a moment, and in a moment there was a transition from darkness to light, from mental imbecility to intellectual vigor; and no means nor excitements were brought into operation but those mentioned in the narrative.* The reproaches of his schoolfellow were the spark which fell on the gunpowder and inflamed it instantly. The inflammable material was there before, but the spark was wanting. This would be a proper subject for the discussion of those who write on the philosophy of the human mind."

Dr. Clarke always considered this incident as having an important bearing on his destiny, and often mentioned it as "a singular providence which gave a strong characteristic coloring to his subsequent life." He says that it may not be unworthy the consideration of the instructors of youth, but may teach the masters of the rod and ferula that those are not the instruments of instruction, though proper enough for the correction of the obstinate and indolent; that motives to emulation, and the prevention of disgrace, may be in some cases more effectual than any punishment inflicted on the flesh. "Let not the reader imagine from this detail," says he, "that Adam Clarke found no difficulty afterward in the acquisition of knowledge. He ever found an initial difficulty to comprehend anything; and till he could comprehend in some measure the reason of a thing, he could not acquire the principle itself. In this respect there was a great difference between him and his brother; the latter apprehended a subject at first sight, and knew as much of it in a short time as ever he knew after; the former was slow in apprehension, and proceeded with great caution till he was sure of his principles; he then went forward with vigor, in pushing them to their utmost legitimate consequences."

These two brothers had for some time but an interrupted school tuition, from the demand which the garden and fields made upon their labor. "Before and after school hours was the only time their father could do anything in his little *See page 14, supra.

farm; the rest of the toil, except in those times when several hands must be employed to plant and sow and gather in the fruits of the earth, was performed by his two sons. This cramped their education, but-labor omnia vincit improbus; the two brothers went 'day about' to school, and he who had the advantage of the day's instruction remembered all he could, and imparted on his return to him who continued in the farm all the knowledge he had acquired in the day. Thus they were alternately instructors and scholars, and each taught and learned for the other. This was making the best of their circumstances; and such a plan is much more judicious than that which studies to make one son a scholar while the others are the drudges of the family, whereby jealousies and feuds are often generated." *

No doubt this alternation of rustic exercise with school seclusion had a good effect in strengthening the child's physical constitution, and in contributing to insure him a healthy mind in a healthy body. Good air and exercise have a wondrous influence in giving tone to the intellect, as in after life Adam Clarke found, when, a wandering itinerant, he read many a book and thought out many a sermon sub dio, on the high road, or in the wayside field. So in his school days, in summer time, his lessons were often conned in the open air. "The school," he tells us, 66 was situated in the skirt of a wood on a gently rising eminence, behind which a hill, thickly covered with bushes of different kinds and growth, rose to a considerable height. In front of this there was a great variety of prospect both of hill and dale, where, in their seasons, all the operations of husbandry might be distinctly seen. The boys who could be trusted were permitted in the fine weather to go into the wood to study their lessons." On this pleasant slope, with the auburn and purple moorlands spread out before him, the sunlit sea in the distance, and the smoke from the cottage chimneys here and there rising into the quiet sky, the boy would find that the pages of Virgil had a charm which made * Autobiography.

the task of construing, a labor of love.

"Quid faciat lætas segetes," etc., would have a commentary on the page of nature before him, as well as in the words of the annotator in the margin.

"What makes a plenteous harvest; when to turn

The fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn;

The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine;

And how to raise on elms the teeming vine;
The birth and genius of the frugal bee,

I sing, Mæcenas, and I sing to thee.' *

"In this most advantageous situation," to quote his own words, "Adam read the Eclogues and Georgies of Virgil, where he had almost every scene described in those poems, exhibited in real life before his eyes. If ever he enjoyed real intellectual happiness, it was in that place and in that line of study. These living scenes were often finer comments on the Roman poet than all the labored notes and illustrations of the Delphin editors and the Variorum critics."

The glimpses which his school books gave into the bygone times of Greek and Roman history, awoke in his mind a strong desire to become more fully acquainted with them; and, among other methods which his scanty means allowed him, he procured "an old copy of Littleton's Dictionary, and made himself master of all the proper names, so that there was neither person nor place in the classic world of which he could not give an account. This made him of great consideration among his schoolfellows, and most of them in all the forms generally applied to him for information.”

His love of reading had already become intense and unconquerable. "To gratify this passion, he would undergo any privations. The pence that he and his brother got, they carefully saved for the purchase of some book. . . . Theirs was but a little library, but to them right precious." He gives a list of some of the books; where, with Jack the

* Georgica, i.

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