My education was neglected,
yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study
day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which
I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction
had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets
whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also
became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation;
I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the
names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well
acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment.
But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my
thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I
can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this
great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I
accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea;
I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often
worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my
nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those
branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive
the greatest practical advantage.
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