The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

ACADEMICK STUDIES OF MR. PITT.

Extract from his Life, by the Bishop of Winchester.

Although Mr. Pitt was little more than fourteen years of age, when he went to reside at the University, and had laboured under the disadvantage of frequent ill health, the knowledge, which he then possessed, was very considerable, and in particular, his proficiency in the learned languages was probably greater than ever was acquired by any other person in such early youth. In Latin authors he seldom met with difficulty; and it was no uncommon thing for him to read into English six or seven pages of Thucydides, which he had not previously seen, without more than two or three mistakes, and sometimes without even one. He had such an exactness in discriminating the sense of words, and so peculiar a penetration in seizing at once the meaning of the writer, that as was justly observed by Mr. Wilson, he never seemed to learn, but only to recollect. Whenever he did err in rendering a sentence it was owing to the want of a correct knowledge of grammar, without which, no language can be perfectly understood. This defect, too common in a private education, it was my immediate endeavour to supply; and he was not only soon master of all the ordinary rules of grammar, but taking great pleasure in the philosophical disquisitions of critics and commentators, he became deeply versed in the niceties of construction and peculiarities of idiom, both in the Latin and Greek languages. He had also read the first six books of Euclid's Elements, Plane Trigonometry, the elementary parts of Algebra, and the two quarto volumes of Rutherford's Natural Philosophy, a work in some degree of repute while Mr. Wilson was a student at Cambridge, but afterwards laid aside. Nor was it in learning only, that Mr. Pitt was so much superior to persons of his age. Though a boy in years and appearance, his manners were formed, and his behaviour manly. He mixed in conversation with unaffected vivacity, and delivered his sentiments with perfect ease, equally free from shyness and flippancy, and always with strict attention to propriety and decorum. Lord Chatham, who could not but be aware of the powers of his son's mind and understanding, had encouraged him to talk without reserve on every subject which frequently afforded opportunity for conveying useful information and just notions of persons and things. When his Lordship's health would permit, he never suffered a day to pass without giving instruction of some sort to his children; and seldom without reading a chapter of the Bible with them. He must indeed be considered as having contributed largely to that fund of knowledge, and to those other advantages, with which Mr. Pitt entered upon his academical life. The effects of a very serious illness, with which Mr. Pitt was attacked soon after he went to the University in 1773, occasioned him to reside but little at Cambridge in the first three years. This illness, which confined him nearly two months, and at last reduced him to so weak a state, that, after he was convalescent, he was four days travelling to London, seems to have been a crisis in his constitution. By great attention to diet, to exercise and to early hours, he gradually gained strength, without any relapse, or material check; and his health became progressively confirmed. At the age of eighteen he was a healthy man, and he continued so for many years. The preservation of Mr. Pitt's life, in its early part, may be considered as owing, under Providence, to his own care and the affectionate watchfulness of his friends: and the premature decline of his health, long before he reached the ordinary age of man, may as justly be ascribed to the anxiety and fatigue and unremitted attention to the duties of his public station. It was originally intended, that Mr. Pitt should take the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the regular way, and be a candidate for academical honours; but his inability to keep the necessary terms, in consequence of the illness which has been noticed, caused this intention to be abandoned; and in the spring of 1776, he was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts, to which his birth gave him a right, and which is usually conferred upon young men of a certain rank, after about two years residence in the University, without any public examination or the performance of any public exercise, and of course without the power of giving public proof of their talents or attainments. While Mr. Pitt was under-graduate; he never omitted attending chapel, morning and evening, or dining in the public hall, except when prevented by indisposition. Nor did he pass a single evening out of the college walls. Indeed, most of his time was spent with me; and exclusively of the satisfaction I had in superintending the education of a young man of his uncommon abilities and thirst for improvement, his sweetness of temper and vivacity of disposition endeared him to me in a degree, which I should in vain attempt to express. Towards the latter end of the year 1776, Mr. Pitt began to mix with other young men of his own age and station of life, then resident in Cambridge; and no one was ever more admired and beloved by his acquaintance and friends. He was always the most lively person in company, abounding in playful wit and quick repartee; but never known to excite pain, or to give just ground of offence. Even those, who, from difference in political sentiments, or from any other cause, were not disposed to do him more than justice, could not but allow, that as a Companion, he was unrivalled. Though his society was universally sought, and from the age of seventeen or eighteen he constantly passed his evenings in Company, he steadily avoided every species of irregularity, and he continued to pursue his studies with ardent zeal and unremitted diligence during his whole residence in the University, which was protracted to the unusual length of nearly seven years, but with considerable intervals of absence. In the course of this time, I never knew him spend an idle day, nor did he ever fail to attend me at the appointed hour. At this early period, there was the same firmness of principle, and rectitude of conduct, which marked his character in the more advanced stages of life. It was my general rule to read with Mr. Pitt classics and mathematics; occasionally intermixing other branches of learning: He proceeded with a rapidity which can scarcely be conceived; and his memory was retentive in a degree of which I have known but few examples, although it had not been strengthened by the practice of repetition, so properly in use at public schools, but often omitted in private education. A tutor is generally satisfied, if he can give his pupil some knowledge of the author, by selecting for his perusal certain parts of his works; but there was scarcely a Latin or a Greek Classical writer of eminence, the whole of whose works Mr. Pitt and I did not read together. He was a nice observer of their different styles, and alive to all their various and characteristic excellencies: The quickness of his comprehension did not prevent close and minute application. When alone, he dwelt for hours upon striking passages of an orator or historian, in noticing their turn of expression, in marking their manner of arranging a narrative, or explaining the avowed or secret motives of action. A few pages sometimes occupied a whole morning. It was a favourite employment with him, to compare opposite speeches upon the same subject; and to examine how each speaker managed his own side of the question, and obviated or answered the reasoning of his opponent. This in my properly be called study, peculiarly useful to the future lawyer or statesman. The authors whom he preferred for this purpose were Livy, Thucydides, and Sallust. Upon these occasions, his observations were not unfrequently committed to paper, and furnished a topic for conversation with me at our next meeting. He was also in the habit of copying any eloquent sentence; or any beautiful or forcible expression, which occurred in his reading. The poets of Greece and Rome had their full share of attention; and he unquestionably derived from them that advantage as well as amusement, which they are eminently calculated to confer. So anxious was he to be acquainted with every Greek poet; that he read with me, at his own request, the obscure and in general uninteresting work of Lycophron, and with an ease at first sight, which, if I had not witnessed it, I should have thought beyond the compass of human intellect. He was not fond of composition, not having been accustomed to it when a boy; nor did he attain that degree of writing Latin or Greek; which is often acquired by young men educated at our public schools: It ought, perhaps, to be mentioned, that Mr. Pitt did not construe classical authors in the ordinary way, but read several sentences of the original, and then gave the translation of them; and the almost intuitive quickness, with which he instantly saw the meaning of the most difficult passage of the most difficult writers, made an impression upon my mind, which no time can efface: He possessed, indeed, this faculty in so extraordinary a degree and his diligent application to Greek literature had rendered his knowledge of that language so correct and extensive, that I am persuaded, if a play of Menander or Aeschylus, or an ode of Pindar, had been suddenly found; he would have understood it as soon as any professed scholar. There unquestionably have been persons who had far greater skill in verbal criticism, and in the laws of metre; but it may, I believe, be said with the strictest truth, that no one ever read the Greek language; even after devoting his whole life to the study of it, with greater facility than Mr. Pitt did at the age of twenty-one. He was not less successful in mathematics and natural philosophy; displaying the same acuteness and readiness in acquiring knowledge, with an unexampled skill in applying it to the solution of problems. He was master of every thing usually known by young men who obtain the highest academical honours, and felt a great desire to fathom still farther the depths of pure mathematics; and had I thought it right to indulge this inclination, would have made a wonderful progress in that abstruse science. When the connexion of tutor and pupil was about to cease between us., he expressed a hope, that he should find leisure and opportunity to read Newton's Principia again with me after some summer circuit; and in the late periods of his life, he frequently declared that no portion of his time had been more usefully employed than that which had been devoted to these studies-not merely from the new ideas and actual knowledge which he had thus acquired, but also on account of the improvement which his mind and understanding had received from the habit of close attention and patient investigation. In truth, this is the just and appropriate praise of mathematical pursuits, that they not only convey much important information, but give a strength and accuracy to the intellectual and reasoning powers, which best qualify young men, both for the duties of the liberal profession, and
for the business of the higher departments of active life.

There was scarcely any book in the wide circuit of Mr. Pitt's reading, from which he derived greater advantage and satisfaction, than from Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, of which he formed a complete and correct analysis. He was a great admirer of this truly excellent work, while he reprobated the author's notions on the origin of civil government, as unfounded and of dangerous tendency. He indicated no inclination, and he certainly had no encouragement from me, to carry his metaphysical studies any further. He gave great attention to the publick lectures in civil law, a subject which he considered as connected with his intended profession: and in the lectures upon experimental philosophy, he had a pleasure in seeing theoretical rules exemplified and confirmed.

Amidst these severer studies, the lighter species of literature were by no means omitted; and I ought in particular to mention his intimate acquaintance with the historical and political writers of his own country, and his excellent taste for the beauties of the English poets. Middleton's Life of Cicero, and the political and historical works of Lord Bolingbroke, were favourite books with Mr. Pitt in point of style, as were also the works of Hume and Robertson. He was not an admirer of Johnson's style, and still less of Gibbon's.

He read Barrow's Sermons, at the desire of Lord Chatham, who thought them admirably calculated to furnish the copia verborum. To whatever branch of knowledge he applied, or whatever subject he discussed, the superiority of his abilities, and the clearness and comprehensiveness of his mind, were equally manifest. These eminent qualities were in no degree tarnished by pride or self-conceit, which are too often found in young men of distinguished talents. He was gentle and unassuming; and the natural cheerfulness of his temper, and unaffected urbanity of his manners, recommended him to every age and station. Upon any topick which might arise in conversation, the openness of his character led him to express his opinion with a manly decision; but at the same time he always listened with a due regard and respectful attention to the sentiments of others; and such were the candour and mildness of his disposition, that when talking unreservedly with me, he never spoke with harshness or resentment even of those from whom he had received injurious treatment.