Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/297

242 the northern capital, had at this time matured his scheme for educating those under this privation, and it happened remarkably enough, our subject was his first pupil. From what is thought little better than a state of idiotism, he was brought to understand the language—to write letters conforming to orthography and grammar; and to speak so as to be understood in the family, and by his intimates. He could not, as has been related of some individuals, converse by observing the motion of the lips in the speaker, but otherwise his facility of apprehension was extraordinary; for if a person opposite wrote rapidly in the air with his finger, Mr. Charles could read such writing although reversed and evanescent, as the Author has frequently witnessed. Having early employed himself in sketching with the blacklead pencil, and painting being designated as his future profession, he was placed with a drawing master in London, named Burgess; under whom, his works of that period show his progress to have been rapid; insomuch that it was proposed, though rather prematurely, to take him to Italy, the common rendezvous of artists and connoisseurs from every country. All his bright prospects, however, were soon overclouded by a storm that burst with a calamitous pressure on the whole family. The failure of Fordyce, an eminent banker at Edinburgh in that day, drew after it the insolvency of many mercantile men, and among others, Mr. Sheriff's father: but who, being