. He therefore
prevailed upon his private secretary, a young man of taste and accomplishments,
to bestow an hour or two on Edward's education while at Brerewood Lodge, and
left his uncle answerable for his improvement in literature while an inmate at
the Hall.
    This was in some degree respectably provided for. Sir Everard's chaplain, an
Oxonian, who had lost his fellowship for declining to take the oaths at the
accession of George I., was not only an excellent classical scholar, but
reasonably skilled in science, and master of most modern languages. He was,
however, old and indulgent, and the recurring interregnum, during which Edward
was entirely freed from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxation of
authority, that the youth was permitted, in a great measure, to learn as he
pleased, what he pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of rule might have
been ruinous to a boy of slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the
acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the
command of a task-master; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth
whose animal spirits were more powerful than his imagination or his feelings,
and whom the irresistible influence of Alma would have engaged in field sports
from morning till night. But the character of Edward Waverley was remote from
either of these. His powers of apprehension were so uncommonly quick, as almost
to resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him,
as a sportsman would phrase it, from overrunning his game, that is, from
acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the
instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with brilliancy of
fancy and vivacity of talent, - that indolence, namely, of disposition, which
can only be stirred by some strong motive of gratification, and which renounces
study as soon as curiosity is gratified, the pleasure of conquering the first
difficulties exhausted, and the novelty of pursuit at an end. Edward would throw
himself with spirit upon any classical author of which his preceptor proposed
the perusal, make himself master of the style so far as to understand the story,
and if that pleased or interested him, he finished the volume. But it was in
vain to attempt fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philology, upon
the difference of idiom, the beauty of felicitous expression, or the artificial
combinations of syntax. »I can read and understand a Latin author,« said young
Edward, with the self-confidence and rash reasoning of fifteen, »and Scaliger or
Bentley could not
