From that
time, Mr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from him, and treated
him with harshness, which the crime, in its utmost aggravation, could
scarcely deserve; and which, surely, he would have forborne, had he
considered how hardly the habitual influence of birth and fortune is
resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue,
are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a hen-roost,
by a desire of pleasing their superiours.
Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for,
under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by
selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he
was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an
opportunity of quarrelling with his failure; and when his diligence
had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore
this persecution awhile, and then left the school, and the hope of a
literary education, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood.
He was first placed with a collector of the excise. He used to
recount, with some pleasure, a journey or two which he rode with him
as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the
excisemen in grammatical disputations.
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