Title: Lorna Doone, A Romance of Exmoor

Author: R. D. Blackmore

CHAPTER I

ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION

If anybody cares to read a simple tale told simply, I, John Ridd, of the

parish of Oare, in the county of Somerset, yeoman and churchwarden, have

seen and had a share in some doings of this neighborhood, which I will

try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory. And they who

light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write for the

clearing of our parish from ill fame and calumny, but also a thing which

will, I trow, appear too often in it, to wit--that I am nothing more

than a plain unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a

gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own

tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William

Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In

short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.

My father being of good substance, at least as we reckon in Exmoor, and

seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the

best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided

(or rather the cultured part thereof), he John Ridd, the elder,

churchwarden, and overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well

able to write his name, sent me his only son to be schooled at Tiverton,

in the county of Devon. For the chief boast of that ancient town (next

to its woollen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the

west of England, founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by

Master Peter Blundell, of that same place, clothier.

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