"As to my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has
been tolerably extensive in the historical; so that few nations exist,
or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree
acquainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon. Of the classics, I know
about as much as most schoolboys after a discipline of thirteen years;
of the law of the land as much as enables me to keep 'within the
statute'--to use the poacher's vocabulary. I did study the 'Spirit of
Laws' and the Law of Nations; but when I saw the latter violated every
month, I gave up my attempts at so useless an accomplishment;--of
geography, I have seen more land on maps than I should wish to
traverse on foot;--of mathematics, enough to give me the headache
without clearing the part affected;--of philosophy, astronomy, and
metaphysics, more than I can comprehend;[85] and of common sense so
little, that I mean to leave a Byronian prize at each of our 'Almae
Matres' for the first discovery,--though I rather fear that of the
longitude will precede it.
"I once thought myself a philosopher, and talked nonsense with great
decorum: I defied pain, and preached up equanimity. For some time this
did very well, for no one was in _pain_ for me but my friends, and none
lost their patience but my hearers. At last, a fall from my horse
convinced me bodily suffering was an evil; and the worst of an argument
overset my maxims and my temper at the same moment: so I quitted Zeno
for Aristippus, and conceive that pleasure constitutes the {~GREEK SMALL
LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}.
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