Growing, at length, weary of being confined to a book which he could
almost entirely repeat, he deviated, by stealth, into other studies,
and, as his translation of Benjamin is a sufficient evidence, he read
a multitude of writers, of various kinds. _In his twelfth year he
applied more particularly to the study of the fathers_, and
councils of the six first centuries, and began to make a regular
collection of their canons. He read every author in the original,
having discovered so much negligence or ignorance in most
translations, that he paid no regard to their authority.
Thus he continued his studies, neither drawn aside by pleasures nor
discouraged by difficulties. The greatest obstacle to his improvement
was want of books, with which his narrow fortune could not liberally
supply him; so that he was obliged to borrow the greatest part of
those which his studies required, and to return them when he had read
them, without being able to consult them occasionally, or to recur to
them when his memory should fail him.
It is observable, that neither his diligence, unintermitted as it was,
nor his want of books, a want of which he was, in the highest degree,
sensible, ever produced in him that asperity, which a long and recluse
life, without any circumstance of disquiet, frequently creates.
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