I had
studied the most celebrated orations of Cicero, and translated a
great deal of Homer. Terence, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal, I
had read over and over again." He also studied geography, natural
history, and natural philosophy, and obtained a considerable
acquaintance with general knowledge. At sixteen he was articled to
a clerk in Chancery; worked hard; was admitted to the bar; and his
industry and perseverance ensured success. He became Solicitor-
General under the Fox administration in 1806, and steadily worked
his way to the highest celebrity in his profession. Yet he was
always haunted by a painful and almost oppressive sense of his own
disqualifications, and never ceased labouring to remedy them. His
autobiography is a lesson of instructive facts, worth volumes of
sentiment, and well deserves a careful perusal.
Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to cite the case of his young
friend John Leyden as one of the most remarkable illustrations of
the power of perseverance which he had ever known. The son of a
shepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, he was
almost entirely self educated. Like many Scotch shepherds' sons--
like Hogg, who taught himself to write by copying the letters of a
printed book as he lay watching his flock on the hill-side--like
Cairns, who from tending sheep on the Lammermoors, raised himself
by dint of application and industry to the professor's chair which
he now so worthily holds--like Murray, Ferguson, and many more,
Leyden was early inspired by a thirst for knowledge.
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