Although Mrs. Denman was still quite young, and her husband in the full vigour of mature manhood, they seem to have regarded the birth of another child as an event scarcely to have been anticipated.1

From the first the infant, as might have been expected, was the object of the most anxious and devoted solicitude and affection. Before completing his third year he had almost perished in a fire, which utterly destroyed the house in Queen Street, and he was only rescued from the flames by the calm intrepidity of his father, who saved the child's life at the imminent risk of his own. Immediately after this providential escape Dr. Denman established himself in Old Burlington Street, where he thenceforth continued to reside during the most active portion of his distinguished professional

career.

The parents had not long recovered from the shock of this appalling danger, when, fearing that the child, who had now become more than ever the pet and plaything of the family, might be spoiled by excessive indulgence, they, in the exercise of an almost Spartan self-control, sent the little creature away from home, when only about three-and-a-half years old, to be brought up by the well-known Mrs. Barbauld, who then kept a school for young children at Palgrave, near Diss in Norfolk.2

1 'The birth of this child,' writes Dr. Denman in his 'Autobiography,' 'was an inexpressible blessing, as I had given up the hopes of having any more children, my daughters at that time being more than seven years old.' Mrs. Denman was only thirty-two and the Doctor forty-six when their son was born.

2 The school was at this time fashionable and highly patronised: Miss

The principal motive to this act of self-sacrifice, and the struggle it cost the mother, were expressed by her in a few artless and homely lines, written in answer to a friend who had enquired, with some natural wonder, how she could possibly have consented to separate herself so early from so beloved a child.

Love only could the thought suggest,
Love tore the darling from our breast:
So much our child we prize,

Patient our pleasure we resign.
That he in future years may shine
And be both good and wise.1

There was something prophetic, as it turned out, in the aspiration. The lady to whom the mother entrusted her little treasure executed her task admirably, drawing out all the child's natural powers, especially those of memory and elocution. He seems to have been a forward little child. In June 1783, when in his fifth year, Mrs. Barbauld encloses to his mother 'a little piece of verse which, with great applause, he spoke at our play.' The dear boy,' she reports, has already begun Latin; he has an excellent memory, and delights in learning.' In August of the same year she writes, he is going on with his Latin, and reading English books of amusement.' He was an engaging little fellow, affectionate and generous: 'I do not know a sweeter child,' writes Mrs. Barbauld, and she duly

Aikin, in her 'Life of Mrs. Barbauld' (published in 1825), gives a long list of the children of the nobility whose early years were spent at Palgrave. Among Denman's little companions there was Sir William Gell, of antiquarian celebrity.

1 Mrs. Denman was fond of expressing herself in verse, an accomplishment in which she had a fair amount of proficiency.

records, for his fond mother's gratification, his generosity in sharing his cakes and his other home presents among his little schoolmates.

There can be no doubt that the three or four years spent with Mrs. Barbauld were exceedingly well spent ; the fearless advocate and upright judge of the future owed much, beyond a question, to the simple homely training in truthfulness, honour, and self-denial which he received at Palgrave; while, as regards acquirements, Lord Denman always attributed to the judicious care of his first instructress much of the retentiveness of his memory, of his fondness for literature, and of the force and clearness of his elocution.1

Mrs. Denman was herself always most assiduous in the moral and intellectual training of her son. Her own tastes were strongly literary, and she knew how to make literature attractive to the young. Many of her verses were very creditable productions, and a MS. essay of hers, on the advantages of robbing orchards,' which formed one of the delights of her children, has a great deal of the grave humour and clear telling style of Miss Edgeworth. Like many other clever people of the generation immediately preceding the French Revolution, she had a somewhat exaggerated belief in the efficacy of strict moral and intellectual training and constant self-introspection. A copy still exists of forty-six rules carefully drawn up in her own

1 Lord Denman always spoke in the most affectionate terms of Mrs. Barbauld. On the publication of Miss Aikin's memoir in 1825 he expressed his gratification that so much had been done to preserve the of ' 'my dear old instructress.'

memory

handwriting for the regulation of her own conduct in all the minutiae of daily life; the precise extent to which she was to permit herself to indulge in dinner parties and morning visits, in cards and in theatricals; the exact mode and form in which she was to demean herself as a wife, a mother, and the mistress of an establishment. A school of thought then fashionable had infected the reading world with notions of human perfectibility as the result of careful training, which, with so many other illusions of that sanguine time, have passed away, under the disenchanting influence of a sad and terrible experience, till the pendulum, it may be, has swung too far in the opposite direction, and we are now as much too lax as we were formerly too strict. Dr. Denman and his wife both held firmly to the belief that it was in their power, by constant and careful supervision, to make their son, as the Doctor expresses it in a letter hereafter to be quoted, one of the wisest and best men that ever lived;' and the degree of success that attended their strenuous endeavours may no doubt in some measure seem to justify the system they pursued.1

The boy grew up deeply attached to both his parents: his love and dutiful regard for his mother more especially seemed throughout life to grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength.

His second daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Hodgson, in some notes kindly supplied by her for the purposes

of

1 Lord Denman himself always deprecated an over-anxious watchfulness in the training of children, and was never fussy or fidgetty with his

own.

this memoir, relates as an instance of this pious regard, a promise which he made to this beloved parent in his early boyhood, to read daily a chapter in the Bible, and which he never failed inviolably to observe throughout all the busiest periods of his after life.

'No one,' adds Mrs. Hodgson, ever had a more intimate knowledge of the Bible, or ever acted more thoroughly on Christian principles, in all the relations of life, than my dear father, though his horror of hypocrisy and cant made him very reserved in speaking of such subjects: one of his favourite texts was "Overcome evil with good.'

"1

Dr. Denman's attachment to the child was not inferior to the mother's. He was never tired of devising schemes for his mental or physical improvement, and was never happier than when he could take the little fellow with him on his occasional professional excursions into the country.

The following passages are from a chance-preserved letter written by the Doctor to his wife while on one of these excursions when the child was in his eighth year.

Oxford: October 13, 1787.

My dear Love,-I am sitting by a good fire in the bedroom, and Thomas is in bed, though not yet asleep; and we both think that it would not be disagreeable to you to hear something of our transactions during the day.

We arrived at Southall at the time mentioned in our first

This was the text he chose for the first sermon preached by his youngest son, the Hon. and Rev. Louis Denman, who entirely confirms his sister's statement as to the deep and unaffected piety of their father.