Little is known regarding the childhood of Owen ; and no records whatever have descended to tell us of the mother to Avliom was com- mitted the training of his most susceptible years, and who was to be ' Asfy's Memoir, p. ii. Anonymous Memoir, p. v. ^ Ibid.
HIS STUDENT-LIFE. "XXIIl
the Monnica to tliis future Augustine. There is reason to think that he received the elements of a common education from the good vicar himself, under the domestic roof at Stadham ; while, after a few years of home education, he was transferred to a private academy at Oxford, where he entered on his classical studies under the superintendence of Edward Sylvester, a tutor of eminence, several of whose pupils rose to the highest distinction, and even won for themselves at no distant date an undying fame. A comparison of dates makes it unlikely that the two were playmates; but it is interesting to notice, that the same quiet institution, in the parish of All-Saints, which now received within its walls the futui:p great theologian of the Puritans, was also the place in which was initiated into the Greek and Roman tongues the immortal Chilling^vorth,— of whose gfeat work, " The Religion of Protestants," it is not too much to say, that it is suffi- cient to shed honour, not on a university merely, but on an age.^ One fact will suffice to show the energy with which the young pupil applied himself to his studies, as well as the unusually early develop- ment of his faculties, that, at the age of twelve, he was found to have outgrown the instructions of Sylvester and to be ripe for the univer- sity. He was, accordingly, entered a student at Queen's College at this age, which, in the case of most youths, would have been most in- judiciously premature, and, even at this period, must have seemed strangely early; for, in looking into the lives of some of the most eminent of his contemporaries, we meet with no instance of similar precocity. Bishop Hall, for example, enrolled himself at Cambridge at fifteen,^ while his great Puritan contemporary, John Howe, did not enter Oxford until he had reached the riper age of seventeen.*.
Few men of great eminence appear to have occupied Ihe chairs of the university at this period ; but Owen was fortunate enough to have his studies in mathematics and philosophy superintended by a tutor of solid attainments and subsequent high distinction, — Thomas Barlow, then a fellow of Queen's College, afterwards its provost, and Avho, in course of time, was elevated to the see of Lincoln.^ The boy-student devoted himself to the various branches of learning mtli an intensity that would have unhinged most minds, and broken m pieces any
' Wood's Athenaj Oxonienses, p. 97. Orme, p. 7.
^ Hamilton's Memoir of Bishop Hall, p. viii.
^ Urwick's Life of Howe, p. vi.
* We have additional authority for many of the above facts in one of the larger epitaphs on Owen by his friend the Rev. T. Gilbert of Oxford; some lines of which we subjoin:—
" Literis natus, Uteris innutritus, totusque deditus ; Donee aniniata plane evasit biljliotheca : Authoribus classicis, qua Grsecis, qua Latinis, Sub Edv. Sylvestro, scholiB privat;e Oxonii moderatore Operain navavit satis felicem : Feliciorem adhuc studiis philosophicis, Magno sub Barlovio, coll. regiualis, id ttuipus, socio."
XXIV LIFE OF DR OWEN.
bodily constitution except the most robust. For several years of his university curriculum he allowed himself only four hours of the night for sleep, though he had the wisdom so far to counteract the injurious influence of sedentary habits and excessive mental toil, by having re- course to bodily recreation in some of its most robust and even violent forms. Leaping, throwing the bar, bell-ringing, and similar amuse- ments, occasionally allured him from his books ; and it may perhaps surprise some, who conceive of the men of that age as unsocial and unfriendly to all the lighter graces and accomplishments, to learn that Owen received lessons in music from Dr Thomas Wilson, a celebrated performer on the flute, and the favourite preceptor in the same ele- gant and delightful art of Charles I. It may perhaps have been from grateful recollections of these youthful and fascinating exercises, in which the student had been accustomed to unbend from too pro- tracted and severe studies, that Owen at a future period, when ele- vated to the vice-chancellorship of Oxford, appointed his early tutor professor of music in the university.^
Still, the hours which are taken from needful rest are not redeemed, but borrowed, and must be paid back with double interest in future life ; and Owen, when he began to feel his iron frame required to pay the penalty of his youthful enthusiasm, was accustomed to declare that he would willingly part with all the learning he had accumulated by such means, if he might but recover the health which he had lost in the gaining of it. And he was wont to confess with a far profounder sorrow, not unmixed with shame, that no holy oil at this time fed his midnight lamp ; but that the gi'eat motive which had home him up, during those days and nights of consuming toil, was an ambition to rise to distinction and power in the church. We can well believe that the severity of this self-condemnation would, by a judge more tender than himself, have so far been mitigated by the knowledge of another motive, which must have had considerable in- fluence upon his mind, arising from the fact that his father had been unable to render him any adequate pecuniary assistance, and that he had hitherto been indebted for his support to the liberality of an uncle in Wales. But still, when more amiable motives have been allowed their full force, a mere earthly ambition must be acknow- ledged to have been the main-spring of all his past efforts; and we cannot doubt that, when he returned to the university at a future period, these condemnatory reminiscences arose strongly in his mind, and that, like Philip Henry in similar circumstances, while thanking God that his course had been unstained by vices, he could insert in his book, " A tear dropped over my university sins."^