On quitting Shrewsbury to return to his parents at Chester, the ardour of young Burney for improvement was such as to absorb his whole being; and his fear lest a moment of daylight should be profitless, led him to bespeak a labouring boy, who rose with the sun, to awaken him regularly with its dawn. Yet, as he durst not pursue his education at the expense of the repose of his family, he hit upon the ingenious device of tying one end of a ball of pack-thread round his great toe, and then letting the ball drop, with the other end just within the boy’s reach, from an aperture in the old-fashioned casement of his bed-chamber window.
This was no contrivance to dally with his diligence; he could not choose but rise.
He was yet a mere youth, when, while thus unremittingly studious, he w............