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RICHARD EARL GROSVENOR,

VISCOUNT BELGRAVE, BARON GROSVENOR,

THIS

TRANSLATION OF JUVENAL

IS INSCRIBED,

AS

AN HUMBLE, BUT SINCERE TESTIMONY,

OF THE

GRATITUDE AND RESPECT OF

THE TRANSLATOR.

May 1st, 1802.

INTRODUCTION.

I AM about to enter on a very uninteresting subject; but all my friends tell me that it is necessary to account for the long delay of the following Work; and I can only do it by adverting to the circumstances of my life. Will this be accepted as an apology?

I know but little of my family, and that little is not very precise. My great-grandfather, (the most remote of it, that I ever recollect to have heard mentioned,) possessed considerable property at Halsworthy, a parish in the neighbourhood of Ashburton; but whether acquired or inherited, I never thought of asking, and do not know.*

He was probably a native of Devonshire, for there he spent the last years of his life; spent them too, in some sort of consideration, for Mr. T. (a very respectable surgeon of Ashburton,) loved to repeat to me, when I first grew into notice, that he had frequently hunted with his hounds.

I have, however, some faint notion of hearing my mother say, that he, or his father, had been a China merchant in London. By China merchant, I always understood, and so perhaps did she, a dealer in China-ware.

My grandfather was on ill terms with him: I believe, not without sufficient reason, for he was extravagant and dissipated. My father never mentioned his name, but my mother would sometimes tell me that he had ruined the family. That he spent much, I know; but I am inclined to think that his undutiful conduct occasioned my greatgrandfather to bequeath a part of his property from him. My father, I fear, revenged in some measure the cause of my great-grandfather. He was, as I have heard say, my mother a very wild young man, who could be kept to nothing." He was sent to the

"a

grammarand

school at Exeter; from which he made his escape, entered on board a man of war. He was soon reclaimed from this situation by my grandfather, and left his school a second time, to wander in some vagabond society.* He was now probably given up, for he was, on his return from this notable adventure, reduced to article himself to a plumber and glazier, with whom he luckily staid long enough to learn the business. I suppose his father was now dead, for he became possessed of two small estates, married my mother,† (the daughter of a carpenter at Ashburton,) and thought himself rich enough to set up for himself; which he did with some credit, at South Molton. Why he chose to fix there, I never inquired; but I learned from my mother, that after a resi

He had gone with Bamfylde Moore Carew, then an old man.

Her maiden name was Elizabeth Cain. My father's christian name was Edward.

dence of four or five years he was again thoughtless enough to engage in a dangerous frolic, which drove him once more to sea. This was an attempt to excite a riot in a Methodist chapel; for which his companions were prosecuted, and he fled, as I have mentioned.

My father was a good seaman, and was soon made second in command in the Lyon, a large armed transport in the service of government: while my mother (then with child of me) returned to her native place, Ashburton, where I was born, in April, 1757.

The resources of my mother were very scanty. They arose from the rent of three or four small fields, which yet remained unsold. With these, however, she did what she could for me; and as soon as I was old enough to be trusted out of her sight, sent me to a school-mistress of the name of Parret, from whom I learned in due time to read. I cannot boast much of my acquisitions at this school; they consisted merely of the contents of the "Child's Spelling Book :" but from my mother, who had stored up the literature of a country town, which, about half a century ago, amounted to little more than what was disseminated by itinerant ballad-singers, or rather, readers, I had acquired much curious knowledge of Catskin, and the Golden Bull, and the Bloody Gardener, and many other histories equally instructive and amusing.

My father returned from sea in 1764. He had been at the siege of the Havannah; and though he received

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