Page:Adventures of Roderick Random.pdf/5

 made most people think he had made away with himself in a fit of despair. How I understood the particulars of my birth, will appear in the course of these memoirs.

I was much beloved by the tenants, and wanted nothing their indigent circumstances could afford; but their favours was a weak resource against the jealousy of my cousins, who conceived an implacable hatred against me, and had so effectually blockaded my grandfather, that I scarcely saw him. I was sent to school, in a village hard by, of which he had been dictator; but as he neither paid for my board, nor supplied me with clothes, or other necessaries, my condition was very ragged and contemptible; and the schoolmaster, who, through fear of my grandfather, taught me gratis, gave himself no concern about the progress I made under his instructions. I soon became a good proficlentproficient [sic] in the Latin tongue; and as soon as I could write some, pestered my grandfather with letters to such a degree, that he sent for my master, and chid him severely for bestowing such pains on my education, telling him, that if I ever should be brought to the gallows for forgery, which he had taught me to commit, my blood should lie on his head. The pedant assured his honour, that the boy's abilities was more owing to his genius than to any instruction he received; that if he would empower him to disable his fingers, Rh