Education
The boy was sent to school at Bodmin, and his taste for drawing came under the notice of Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert of the Priory, Bodmin, and his wife, ‘a lady of great accomplishments,’ with whom he was soon established as a great favourite. Mrs. Gilbert had been a schoolfellow of Miss Home, and kept up a correspondence with her friend after her marriage to John Hunter, the celebrated physician. She recommended Clift as an apprentice to Hunter, stating that he was qualified by his quickness and by his natural taste for drawing, which was shown in his eagerness ‘to come into her kitchen in Cornwall and make drawings with chalk on the floor.’
Clift arrived in London on 14 February 1792, his own and Hunter's birthday, and as he at once gave satisfaction to Hunter, was apprenticed without the payment of a fee, on the understanding that he was ‘to write and make drawings, to dissect and take part in the charge of the museum’ which his master had formed at the back of his house in Leicester Square. While Hunter lived this system of labour proved satisfactory to both of them. The pupil waited on his master at his dissections or wrote from his dictation from early morning until late at night. Hunter died on 16 October 1793, but his death made no difference in Clift's attachment to his master's memory. So long as life lasted Clift used to call him a truly honest man, and to ridicule the slanders that envy endeavoured to fasten on his character.
Read more about this topic: William Clift
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.... It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)