or encouragements, to learn without Book the common rules of Grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation.  That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which I confess, I wonder at my self) may appear by the latter end of an Ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other Verses.  The Beginning of it is Boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much ashamed.

9.

  This only grant me, that my means may lye
  Too low for Envy, for Contempt too high. 
    Some Honor I would have
  Not from great deeds, but good alone. 
  The unknown are better than ill known. 
    Rumour can ope’ the Grave,
  Acquaintance I would have, but when ’t depends
  Not on the number, but the choice of Friends.

10.

  Books should, not business, entertain the Light,
  And sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night. 
    My House a Cottage, more
  Then Palace, and should fitting be
  For all my Use, no Luxury. 
    My Garden painted o’re
  With Natures hand, not Arts; and pleasures yeild,
  Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

11.

  Thus would I double my Lifes fading space,
  For he that runs it well, twice runs his race. 
    And in this true delight,
  These unbought sports, this happy State,
  I would not fear nor wish my fate,
    But boldly say each night,
  To morrow let my Sun his beams display,
  Or in clouds hide them; I have liv’d to Day.

You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the Poets (for the Conclusion is taken out of Horace;) and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stampt first, or rather engraved these Characters in me:  They were like Letters cut into the Bark of a young Tree, which with the Tree still grow proportionably.  But, how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question:  I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such Chimes of Verse, as have never since left ringing there:  For I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my Mothers Parlour (I know not by what accident, for she her self never in her life read any Book but of Devotion) but there was wont to lie Spencers Works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the Stories of the Knights, and Giants, and Monsters, and brave Houses, which I found every where there:  (Though my understanding had little to do with all this) and by degrees with the tinckling of the Rhyme and Dance of the Numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a Poet as immediately [1] as a Child is made an Eunuch.  With these affections of mind,