Until 1786
he lived with his grandfather, who taught him the rudiments of English
and Latin, and superintended his studies at the school of Walker Murray;
and when in that year the judge was on his death-bed, he sent for his
old friend Mr. Wythe, and committed his grandson, then in his twelfth
year, to his care; and with Mr. Wythe young Tazewell lived until that
gentleman removed to Richmond, when he resided with Bishop Madison
during his college course. The love which the child bore to his
affectionate grandfather has been commemorated by a single fact. When
Littleton came home from school and learned the old gentleman was dead,
he was inconsolable, and finding that, in the painful anxieties of such
a time, he was comparatively overlooked, he left the house, and went out
into Col. Bassett's woods, where he had well-nigh perished. When he was
missed, search was made for him, and he was found and brought home, but
not until the funeral was over.
The following extract of a letter, addressed by Mr. Tazewell, in 1839
to William F. Wickham, Esq., the son and executor of the celebrated John
Wickham of Richmond, and written on the death of that eminent lawyer,
presents a sketch of his own early youth, not the less attractive as it
embraces an interesting period of the youth of Mr.
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