As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where his father, the Hon. Sydney Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English child to be inoculated for the small-pox.  Probably, too, it was his boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.

His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy was sent as a pupil to Westminster.  It was not long before he rebelled against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he threw down his Euclid and Caesar and vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed him.  Every street, court, and alley was searched in vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for his recovery were equally futile.  Not a trace of the runaway was to be found anywhere.

One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying fish.  “That is the voice of young Montagu,” he exclaimed, and promptly despatched his servant to bring the boy to him.  The fish-seller innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head, and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.

For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.  It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked to his master’s shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents and to school.  Thus ignominiously ended Edward’s first adventure, the precursor of a hundred others.

He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he vanished again—­this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and consideration.  Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the peasants.  One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the prodigal was induced to return to his father’s roof.

For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his parents; but once more “hope told a flattering tale.”  For the third time he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life.  This time his father’s patience was quite exhausted.  He refused to trouble any more about his prodigal son, declaring that “he had made his bed and must lie on it.”