cation, he was never sent to any public school; and in this respect, is one, amongst many other remarkable instances in the present time, of men who have risen into eminence under the disadvantage of an irregular and desultory education.
From the age of nine or ten, until the time of his admission at Cambridge, with the exception of a short period which he spent at the academy at Warrington, he remained always under private tuition, and was sometimes a solitary pupil in his tutor's house. It must be allowed, however, that his instructors were men of no common minds; for besides his father, whose watchful care never deserted him, one of them was Richard Graves, and another, Gilbert Wakefield—the first, the author of the Spiritual Quixote, a gentleman of considerable learning and humour; the last, a person very prominent in his day, in several departments of literature—a scholar, a politician, and a divine; a classical correspondent also of Charles Fox; but wild, restless, and paradoxical in many of his opinions, a prompt and hardy disputant, and, unhappily for himself, deeply engaged in several of those violent controversies, to which the French Revolution had given birth.
It is difficult to believe that a youth like Robert Malthus, naturally sensitive and intelligent, could be brought in frequent contact with men of such qualities and attainments without deriving great advantages, and incurring some danger. From the last, however, his natural good sense, and his early habits of observation, happily protected him. He was not born, indeed, as he himself said of his father, readily to mould his own character and opinions upon those of the first person under whose influence he might be accidentally thrown. On the contrary, he began very early to judge for himself, even in matters relating to his education, and in this respect as
