Youth
They lived at Exbury near Beaulieu, at the edge of the New Forest. Here, at Exbury House, his father John's property, Mitford was born. He was educated at Cheam School, under the picturesque writer William Gilpin, but at the age of fifteen a severe illness led to his being removed, and after two years of idleness Mitford was sent, in July 1761, as a gentleman commoner to Queen's College, Oxford. In this year his father died, and left him the Exbury property and a considerable fortune. Mitford, therefore, being "very much his own master, was easily led to prefer amusement to study." He left Oxford (where the only sign of assiduity he had shown was to attend the lectures of Blackstone) without a degree, in 1763, and proceeded to the Middle Temple.
Read more about this topic: William Mitford
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer ... writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For youth is a frail thing, not unafraid.
Firstly inclined to take what it is told.
Firstly inclined to lean. Greedy to give
Faith tidy and total. To a total God.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)