"
In 1813 William Airy lost his appointment of Collector of Excise and
was in consequence very much straitened in his circumstances. But
there was no relaxation in the education of his children, and at the
beginning of 1814 George Biddell was sent to the endowed Grammar
School at Colchester, then kept by the Rev. E. Crosse, and remained
there till the summer of 1819, when he went to College. The
Autobiography proceeds as follows:
"I became here a respectable scholar in Latin and Greek, to the extent
of accurate translation, and composition of prose Latin: in regard to
Latin verses I was I think more defective than most scholars who take
the same pains, but I am not much ashamed of this, for I entirely
despise the system of instruction in verse composition.
"My father on some occasion had to go to London and brought back for
me a pair of 12-inch globes. They were invaluable to me. The first
stars which I learnt from the celestial globe were alpha Lyrae, alpha
Aquilae, alpha Cygni: and to this time I involuntarily regard these
stars as the birth-stars of my astronomical knowledge. Having
somewhere seen a description of a Gunter's quadrant, I perceived that
I could construct one by means of the globe: my father procured for me
a board of the proper shape with paper pasted on it, and on this I
traced the lines of the quadrant.
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