Early Life
Born in Dublin, he was the only son of Dr Philip Francis (c. 1708-1773), a man of some literary celebrity in his time, known by his translations of Horace, Aeschines and Demosthenes. He received the rudiments of an excellent education at a free school in Dublin, and afterwards spent a year or two (1751–1752) under his father's roof at Skeyton Rectory, Norfolk, and elsewhere, and for a short time he had Edward Gibbon as a fellow-pupil. In March 1753, he entered St Paul's school, London, where he remained for three and a half years, becoming a proficient classical scholar.
In 1756, immediately on his leaving school, he was appointed to a junior clerkship in the secretary of state's office by Henry Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), with whose family Dr Francis was at that time on intimate terms; and this post he retained under the succeeding administration. In 1758 he was employed as secretary to General Bligh in the expedition against Cherbourg; and in the same capacity he accompanied the Earl of Kinnoull on his special embassy to the court of Portugal in 1760.
Read more about this topic: Philip Francis (politician)
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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