Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHARLES JAMES FOX Charles James Fox (1749-1806) inherited the blood and even the favor of the Stuarts of England, and was also a lineal descendant of Henry IV of France. His father, Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was a man of dissolute habits, who was determined that his son should be surrounded with every luxury that money could procure, and yet whose sole ambition was to make of him a great debater and a powerful statesman. Accordingly he did all in his power to contribute to that end, and superintended with great care the lad's early training. Under competent instructors young Charles early formed a taste for study, and devoted himself to the classics, to modern languages, and to other branches of a liberal training. He spent four years at Eton, where he distinguished himself both for scholarship and dissipation. Later, at Oxford, he devoted himself to the severest mental discipline and yet did not cease his vicious habits. His favorite studies were the classics, history, and eloquence. Classical literature was one of his chief recreations. He read Demosthenes' speeches as readily as the speeches made'in Parliament. Homer, Euripides, Virgil, andShakespeare were his favorite poets, and he found in Euripides an argumentative style much to his taste. Fox says himself that " the study of good authors, and especially poets, ought never to be intermitted by any man who is to speak or write for the public, or indeed who has any occasion to tax his imagination, whether it be for argument, for illustration, for ornament, for sentiment, or for any other purpose." After leaving Oxford he spent much time in travel on the continent, where his already excellent knowledge of the modern languages became minute and profound, and at the same time he attained a considerable knowledg...