Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/852

 838 V, BENCH AND BAR my life than plain method, prudence, temperance & steady persevering diligence. My diligence was more remarkable for being steady & uniform, than for the degree of it, which never was excessive, so as to impair my health or eyes, or prevent all kinds of innocent & lively recreation. I would now venture to state briefly but very frankly & at your special desire, somewhat of the course & progress of my studious life. I know you cannot but smile at times at my simplicity, but I commit myself to your indulgence & honor. I was educated at Yale College & graduated in 1T81. I stood as well as any in my class, but the test of scholarship at that day was contemptible. I was only a very inferior classical scholar, & we were not required, & to this day I have never looked into a Greek book but the New Testament. My favorite studies were Geography, History, Poetry, bellesletter, &c. When the College was broken up & dis- persed in July 1779 by the British, I retired to a country village & finding Blackstone's com. I read the 4th volume, parts of the work struck my taste, & the work inspired me at the age of 16 with awe, and I fondly determined to be a lawyer. In November 1781 I was placed by my father with Mr. (now called Judge) Benson, who was then attorney general at Poughkeepsie on the banks of the Hudson, & in my native County of Dutchess. There I entered on law, ^ was the most modest, steady, industrious student that such a place ever saw. I read the following winter Grotius 4' Puffendorf in huge folios, & made copious extracts. My fellow students who were more gay and gallant, thought me very odd and dull in my taste, but out of five of them four died in middle life drunkards. I was free from all dissipa- tion, and chaste as pure virgin snow. I had never danced, or played cards, or sported with a gun, or drank anything but water. In 1782 I read Smollets history of England, & procured at a farmers house where I boarded, Rapins His- tory (a huge folio) and read it through; and I found dur- ing the course of the last summer among my papers, my M. S. abridgment on Rapins dissertation on the laws and customs of the Anglo Saxons. I abridged Hales history of the com- mon law, and the old books of practice, and read parts of