At a very early age, Humphry was sent to the Grammar-school at Bury: he says, "I was too young to recollect much of those happy days, as they are always deemed by men, but of which children think differently, since the fear of the rod and the ferula, with the labour of the lesson and the task, are not less evils, while they last, than the fears of riper age, or the anxieties of manhood; perhaps the true difference between the life of a child and that of a man should be estimated by his power of enjoying pleasures, rather than in his experience of evils. The character of the future man may be traced in the boy; he may become a great man, or a rich man; but whether a happy man or not, will much depend upon the degree of natural cheerfulness with which Heaven has originally endowed him; since it is hardly in the power of Fate to confer much happiness on the man of gloomy disposition, nor lasting misery on one of cheerful temperament. The former will sigh upon a throne, while the latter may smile in a dungeon. Through the darkening medium of care, we see imaginary ills in the future, and even the brightness of the past is clouded: but care seldom clouds the views of childhood; which, forgetful of the past, and regardless of the future, enjoys the present moment; and much of the secret of happiness through life lies in the modification of this short sentence." From this school he was removed to the Grammar-school at Norwich, in which city his parents then resided;- and thus seven years passed in laying the foundation of classical knowledge; and he was rapidly rising to a high station amongst his schoolfellows, when, as he expresses it, "My father thought proper to put the stopper in my vial of classic literature; having determined to make me a rich, rather than a learned man. Perhaps wisely considering, that if Solomon himself had not been the richest, the world would scarcely give him credit for having been the wisest man." Large fortunes were at that time made by the exportation of the Norwich manufactures; and his father imagined, that, by sending him abroad, and directing his education in a new channel, he might, in time, rival those fortunate men who die possessed of £100,000. In the summer of 1764, therefore, his father and sister accompanied him from Harwich to Helvoetsluys, that the foundation of his future greatness might be laid by his learning Dutch in a school in Holland. This formed a new epoch in his early life, and he dwells upon its details with a minuteness and feeling which must be interesting to all who can enter into the situation of a boy about to be left in a foreign country, without the power of expressing himself in its language; and who was, for the first time, to be entirely separated from, the dearest objects of his love. The customs of a Dutch school, so unlike all he had ever met with in England, are also naturally portrayed; but it would extend our present Sketch too much were we to make extracts. The description of the scenery bordering the canals, as viewed from a trekschuit, or canal boat, we give, as having reference to the subject of the present volume.
