, a man of very considerable literary abilities, but more famous
, a man of very considerable
literary abilities, but more famous as a political adventurer,
was the son of John Home, a poulterer in Newport-market,
and was born in Newport street in June 1736. He was
educated both at Westminster and Eton schools, and after
remaining at these seminaries about five or six years, was
sent to St. John’s college, Cambridge, in 1755, which he
quitted in 1758, after taking his bachelor’s degree. Little
seems to be known of his conduct or proficiency in his
studies, but his future works showed that the latter could
not have been neglected; nor have we much accurate information as to his proceedings when he left college, dates,
evidently wrong, being assigned by all who have professed
to give any account of him. We can only, therefore, say
generally that he was for some time an usher at Mr. Jennings’s school at Blackheath, that he took deacon’s orders
at the request of his father, who had probably given him a
learned education with that view, and that he first served a
curacy in Kent. His own choice is said to have been the
law, for which he was well qualified, but he was unable to
resist the importunities of his family, and therefore entered
into the church, for which he undoubtedly was the most
unfit man that ever disgraced the profession. This was a
radical error in his outset, and eventually the cause of
much of the obloquy which attended his life. It is, as a
very acute writer has observed, very necessary to keep
steadily in view, in order to form a correct and candid
estimate of his character, “that he was from beginning to
end, a man labouring under great, perpetual, irremoveable civil disabilities.
” It was a real misfortune to a man
of an enterprizing disposition, and one regardless, as
Home Tooke was, of the means by which such a disposition
may be indulged, to become a member of an order, in
which propriety and duty enjoin a sparing and partial interference with the concerns of the world, and in which,
if propriety and duty are found too feeble restraints, the
law interposes with a strong arm, to curb profane activity
and unprofessional exertions.