Telemachus was an unending delight to him: in old age he had a vivid recollection of the feelings with which he read that tale, especially the description of the election by competition to the throne of Crete. 'At Browning Hill everybody and everything had a charm even the old rusty sword in the granary which we used to brandish against the rats was an historical and sacred sword, for one of my ancestors had used it at Oxford against the parliamentary forces.' At six or seven he began to learn French. To the end of his life he retained recollections of the pleasant days passed far away from the city. Bowring, 'that he mentioned to me that he learned the Latin grammar and the Greek alphabet on his father's knee.' Even as a child he was fond of books, and at the age of five he was known as 'the philosopher.' There is a story that when in petticoats he was found seated at a reading-desk a lighted candle on each side, absorbed in the study of a folio copy of Rapin's 'History of England.' Much of his youth was spent with his two grandmothers at Browning Hill near Reading, and at a country house at Barking. In his fourth year he had begun to study Latin. Young Bentham was remarkably precocious, and his father delighted to show off his acquirements. He was fond in a dilettante fashion of literature, and proud of owning Milton's house, chiefly, perhaps, because a friend happened to own Cowley's. He believed that 'pushing was the one thing needful' in life, and he much regretted that his clever son would not act on this maxim. He was, according to one description of him, 'authoritative, restless, aspiring, and shabby' (Empson in Edinburgh Review).
A grand uncle on the mother's side, named Woodward, was the publisher of Tindal's 'Christianity as old as the Creation.' Bentham's father had no large practice, but he made a considerable fortune by the purchase and sale of land. His mother, Alicia Grove, was the daughter of a shopkeeper at Andover. His great grandfather was a prosperous pawnbroker in the city of London, and there his grandfather and father practised as attorneys.
BENTHAM, JEREMY (1748–1882), writer on jurisprudence, was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, on 15 Feb.
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