The Abbe de Gauvon was a younger son, and designed by his family for
a bishopric, for which reason his studies had been pursued further
than is usual with people of quality. He had been sent to the
university of Sienna, where he had resided some years, and from whence
he had brought a good portion of cruscantism, designing to be that
at Turin which the Abbe de Dangeau was formerly at Paris. Being
disgusted with theology, he gave in to the belles-lettres, which is
very frequent in Italy with those who have entered the career of
prelacy. He had studied the poets, and wrote tolerable Latin and
Italian verses; in a word, his taste was calculated to form mine,
and give some order to that chaos of insignificant trash with which my
brain was encumbered; but whether my prating had misled him, or that
he could not support the trouble of teaching the elementary parts of
Latin, he put me at first too high; and I had scarcely translated a
few fables of Phoedrus before he put me into Virgil, where I could
hardly understand anything. It will be seen hereafter that I was
destined frequently to learn Latin, but never to attain it. I
labored with assiduity, and the abbe bestowed his attention with a
degree of kindness, the remembrance of which, even at this time,
both interests and softens me. I passed the greater part of the
morning with him as much for my own instruction as his service; not
that he ever permitted me to perform any menial office, but to copy,
or write form his dictating; and my employment of secretary was more
useful than that of scholar, and by this means I not only learned
the Italian in its utmost purity, but also acquired a taste for
literature, and some discernment of composition, which could not
have been at La Tribu's, and which was useful to me when I
afterwards wrote alone.
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