My grandmother’s jointure from her first husband was 200l. a year, which was probably equivalent to thrice that sum in these days. The Tylers had from their father 600l. each. Miss Tyler lived with her Uncle Bradford, of whom and of her I shall speak hereafter. I must now speak of the Hills. My uncle (it is so habitual to me to speak and write of him, and of him only by that name, κατ΄ έξοχήν,, that I will not constrain myself to use any farther designation)—my uncle, and his brother Joseph, and Edward Tyler went by day to a school in the village kept by one of the strangest fellows that ever wore a cassock, or took up the trade of tuition. His name was Collins, he was clever and profligate, and eked out his ways and means by authorship; scribbling for inclination, and publishing for gain. One of his works I recollect among my uncle’s books in Miss Tyler’s possession; its title is “Hell’s Gates open;” but not having looked into it since I was a mere boy, I only know that it is satirical, as the name may seem to import. I sent for another of his publications some years ago from a catalogue, not as any thing of value, but because he had been my uncle’s first schoolmaster, and I knew who and what he was; it is to be wished that every person who knew me would think that a good reason for buying my works: I should be very much obliged to them.—It is a little book in the unusual form of a foolscap quarto, and because it contains one fact which is really curious as matter of history, I give its title* at the bottom of the page. This publication is in no respect creditable to its author, and, on the score of decency, highly discreditable to him. But the fact, which is well worth the two shillings I gave for the book (though but a halfpenny fact), is, that, as late as the end of George the Second’s reign, or the beginning of

* Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; consisting of Essays, Abstracts, Original Poems, Letters, Tales, Translations, Panegyricks, Epigrams, and Epitaphs. “Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura; Quæ legis hic aliter non fit, abite, liber.”—Martial. “Things good, things bad, things middling when you look, You’ll find to constitute, my friends, this book.” By Emanuel Collins, A. B., late of Wadham College, Oxford. Bristol: printed by E. Farley, in Small Street. 1762.

The popular saint of the democratic cantons in Switzerland, St. Nicolas de Huë (to whom I paid my respects in his own church at Saxeln), remembered his own birth, knew his mother and the midwife as soon as he was born, and never forgot the way by which he was taken to be christened, nor the faces of the persons who were present at that ceremony. But he was an extraordinary child, who, though he neither danced nor sung nor preached before he was born (all which certain other saints are said to have done), had revelations in that state, and saw the light of Heaven before he came into the light of day. It has pleased the metaphysico-critico-politico-patriotico-phoolo-philosopher Jeremy Bentham to designate me, in one of his opaque works, by the appellation of St. Southey, for which I humbly thank his Jeremy Benthamship, and have in part requited him. It would be very convenient if I had the same claim to this honour, on the score of miraculous memory, as the aforesaid Nicolas—but the twilight of my recollections does not begin till the third year of my age.*

However, though I did not, like him, know the midwife at the time when she had most to do with me, I knew her afterwards, for she brought all my brothers and sisters into the world. She was the wife of a superannuated Baptist preacher, who, as was formerly common for Baptist preachers to do, kept a shop, dealing in medicines and quackery among other things. Preachers of this grade have now nearly, or entirely disappeared; and even the Methodists will not allow their ministers to engage in any kind of trade. I mention this family, therefore, as belonging to a class which is now extinct. They were stiff Oliverians in their politics. The husband was always at his studies, which probably lay in old puritanical divinity; he was chiefly supported by his wife’s professional labours, and I well remember hearing him spoken of as a miserable morose tyrant. The only son of this poor woman lost his life by a singularly dismal accident, when he was grown up and doing well in

* My feelings were very acute; they used to amuse themselves by making me cry at sad songs and dismal stories. I remember “Death and the Lady,” “Billy Pringle’s Pig,” “The children sliding on the ice all on a summer’s day,” and Witherington fighting on his stumps at Chevy Chase. This was at two years old, when my recollection begins,—prior identity, I have none;—they tell me I used to beg them not to proceed. I know not whether our feelings are blunted or rendered more acute by action; in either case these pranks are wrong with children. I cannot now hear a melancholy tale in silence, but I have learnt to whistle.—Letter to G. C. Bedford, Esq., Sept. 30, 1796.

The Bath and Bristol theatres were then, and for many years afterwards, what in trade language is called one concern. The performers were stationed half the year in one city, half in the other. When they played on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at Bristol, they went to Bath on the Saturday, in two immense coaches, each as big as a caravan of wild beasts, and returned after the play. When the nights of performance at Bath were Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, they played at Bristol on the Monday. Mondays and Saturdays were the fashionable nights. On Thursdays and Fridays they always played to thin, and very frequently to losing houses. The population of London is too large for a folly like this to show itself there.

Miss Tyler, through her intimacy with Miss ——, had the command of orders for free admission. She was exceedingly fond of theatrical representations, and there was no subject of which I heard so much from my earliest childhood. It even brought upon me once a most severe reprehension for innocently applying to the church a phrase which, I then learnt to my cost, belonged only to the playhouse, and saying one Sunday, on our return from morning service, that it had been a very full house. When I was taken to the theatre for the first time, I can perfectly well remember my surprise at not finding the pit literally a deep hole, into which I had often puzzled myself to think how or why any persons could possibly go. You may judge by this how very young I must have been. I recollect nothing more of the first visit, except that the play was the Fathers, a comedy of Fielding’s, which was acted not more than one season, and the farce was Coxheath Camp. This recollection, however, by the help of that useful book the Biographia Dramatica, fixes the date to 1778, when I was four years old.

A half sheet of reminiscences, written one-and-twenty years ago at Lisbon, has recalled to my recollection this and a few other circumstances, which might otherwise, perhaps, have been quite obliterated. Yet it surprises me to perceive how many things come to mind which had been for years and years forgotten! It is said that when earth is flung to the surface in digging a well, plants will spring up which are not found in the surrounding country, seeds having quickened in light and air, which had lain buried during unknown ages:—no unapt illustration for the way in which forgotten things are thus brought up from the bottom of one’s memory.

I was introduced to the theatre before it was possible for me to comprehend the nature of the drama, so as to derive any pleasure from it, except as a mere show. What was going on upon the stage, as far as I understood it, appeared real to me; and I have been told that one night, when the Critic was represented, and I heard that Sir Walter Raleigh’s head was to be cut off, I hid mine in Miss Mary Delamere’s lap, and could not be persuaded to look up, till I was assured the dreaded scene was over. It was not long before I acquired a keen relish for the stage; but at this time my greatest pleasure was a walk in the fields; and the pleasure was heightened beyond measure if we crossed the river in the ferry boat at Walcot, or at the South Parade; short as the passage was, I have not yet forgotten the delight which it used to give me. There were three points beyond all others which I was desirous of reaching, the sham castle on Claverton Hill, a summer-house on Beechen Cliffs, and the grave of a young man, whom a practised gambler, by name (I think) Count Rice, had killed in a duel. The two former objects were neither of them two miles distant; but they were up hill, and my aunt regarded it as an impossibility to walk so far. I did not reach them, therefore, till I was old enough to be in some degree master of my own movements. The tomb of the unfortunate duellist was at Bath Weston, and we got there once, which was an extraordinary exertion; but the usual extent of our walks into the country (which were very rare) was to a cottage in an orchard about half way to that village. It was always a great joy to me when I was sent for home, though my father’s house was in one of the busiest streets in a crowded city; I had more liberty then, and was under no capricious restrictions, and I had more walks into the fields, though still too few. My mother sometimes, and sometimes my aunt Mary, would walk with me to Kingsdown, to Brandon Hill, Clifton, or that bank of the river which is called the Sea-Banks, and we often went to my grandmother’s, where I liked best to be, because I had there a thorough enjoyment of the country.

Miss Tyler, whose ascendency over my mother was always that of an imperious elder sister, would not suffer me to be breeched till I was six years old, though I was tall of my age. I had a fantastic costume of nankeen for highdays and holydays, trimmed with green fringe; it was called a vest and tunic, or a jam, When at last I changed my dress, it was for coat, waistcoat, and breeches of foresters’ green; at that time there was no intermediate form of apparel in use. I was then sent as a day scholar to a school on the top of St. Michael’s or Mile Hill, which was then esteemed the best in Bristol, kept by Mr. Foot*, a dissenting minister of that community who are called General Baptists, in contradistinction to the Particular or Calvinistic Baptists. Like most of his denomination, he had passed into a sort of low Arianism, if indeed he were not a Socinian. With this, however, I had no concern, nor did my parents regard it. To a child, indeed, it could be of no consequence; but a youth might easily and imperceptibly have acquired from it an injurious bias, if his good conduct and disposition had made him a favourite with him. He was an old man, and if the school had ever been a good one, it had woefully deteriorated. I was one of the least boys there, I believe the very least, and certainly both as willing and as apt to learn as any teacher could have desired; yet it was the only school where I was ever treated with severity. Lessons in the grammar, which I did not comprehend, and yet could have learned well enough by rote under gentle discipline and a good-natured teacher, were frightened out of my head, and then I was shut up during playtime in a closet at the top of the stairs, where there was just light enough through some bars to see my lesson by. Once he caned me cruelly,—the only time that any master ever laid his hand upon me,—and I am sure he deserved a beating much more than I did. There was a great deal of tyranny in the school, from the worst of which I was exempted, because I went home in the evening; but I stood in great fear of the big boys, and saw much more of the evil side of

* He published some letters to Bishop Hoadley. This I learn from Gregonne’s Sectes Religieuses.

I remember poor Flower with compassion, and not without respect, as a man who, under more auspicious circumstances, might have passed his life happily for himself, and perhaps honourably as well as usefully for his country. His attainments and talents were, I have no doubt, very considerable in their kind; and I am sure that his temper and disposition were naturally good. I never saw so little punishment in any school. There was but one flogging during my stay there; it was for running away, which was considered the heaviest of all offences. The exhibition was then made as serious as possible; the instrument was a scourge of packthread instead of a rod. But though punishments in private schools were at that time, I believe, always much more severe than in public ones, I do not remember that this was remarkable for severity. We stood in awe and respect of him rather than fear. If there was nothing conciliating or indulgent about him, there was no rigour or ill-nature; but his manner was what you might expect to find in one who was habitually thoughtful, and who, when not engaged in abstruse studies, had reason enough for unhappiness, because of his domestic circumstances. His school was declining. He was about fifty years of age; and having lost his first wife, had married one of his maids, who took to drinking; the house, therefore, was in disorder; the servants were allowed to take their own course, and the boys were sadly neglected. In every thing which relates to personal cleanliness, they were left to the care of themselves. I had a profusion of curly hair: just before the holydays, it was thought proper to examine into the state of its population, which was found to be prodigiously great; my head, therefore, was plastered with soap, and in that condition I was sent home, with such sores in consequence of long neglect, that my mother wept at seeing them.

Our morning ablutions, to the entire saving of all materials, were performed in a little stream which ran through the barton, and in its ordinary state was hardly more than ankle deep. We had porridge for breakfast in winter, bread and milk in summer. My taste was better than my appetite; the green leeks in this uncleanly broth gave me a dislike to that plant, which I retain to this day (St. David forgive me!), and if it were swimming with fat, as it usually was, I could better fast till the hour of dinner than do violence to my stomach by forcing down the greasy and offensive mixture. The bread and milk reminds me of an anecdote connected with the fashion of those days. Because I was indulged with sugar in my bread and milk at home, when I went to school I was provided with a store carefully secured in paper. I had a cocked hat for Sundays; during the rest of the week it lay in my box upon the top of my clothes, and when the paper of brown sugar was reduced in bulk, I deposited it in the cock of the hat. As you may suppose, my fingers found their way there whenever I went to the box, and the box was sometimes opened for that purpose; thus the sugar was by little and little strewn over the hat. It was in a sweet clammy condition the first time I was sent for from school by my Aunt Tyler, to visit her at Bath; and as the cocked hat was then in the last and lowest stage of its fashion, mine was dismissed to be rounded by the hatter, and I never wore one again till I was at Madrid, where round hats were prohibited.

One day in the week we had bread and cheese for dinner; or, when baking day came round, a hot cake, with cheese or a small portion of butter at our choice. This, to my liking, was the best dinner in the week. Some of the boys would split their cake, lay the cheese in thin layers between the halves, and then place it under a screw-press, so as to compress it into one mass. This rule of going without meat one day in the week was then, I believe, general in the country schools, and is still practised in many, retained perhaps, for motives of frugality, from Catholic times; and yet, so stupid is popular obstinacy, fish, even where it is most plentiful, is never used. One of the servants had the privilege of selling gingerbread and such things. We had bread and cheese for supper, and were permitted to raise salads for this meal, in little portions of ground, into which what had been in better times the flower-border of the great pleasure-garden was divided: these portions were our property, and transferable by sale. We raised mustard and cress, radishes and lettuce. When autumn came, we had no lack of apples, for it is a country of orchards. The brook which has already been mentioned, passed through one immediately before it entered the barton where our ablutions were performed; the trees on one side grew on a steepish declivity, and in stormy weather we constructed dams across the stream to stop the apples which were brought down. Our master had an extensive orchard of his own, and employed the boys to gather in the fruit: there was, of course, free license to eat on that day, and a moderate share of pocketings would have been tolerated; but whether original sin was particularly excited by that particular fruit or not, so it was that a subtraction was made enormous enough to make inquiry unavoidable; the boxes were searched in consequence, and the whole plunder was thus recovered. The boys were employed also to squall at the bannets, that is, being interpreted, to throw at his walnuts when it was time to bring them down; there were four or five fine trees on the hill-side above the brook. I was too little to bear a part in this, which required considerable strength; but for many days afterwards, I had the gleaning among the leaves and broken twigs with which the ground was covered; and the fragrance of those leaves, in their incipient decay, is one of those odours which I can recall at will, and which, when-ever it occurs, brings with it the vivid remembrance of past times.

One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the shell which remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion to the number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account being kept. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted, so much so indeed, that two of this description would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts. The victor had the number of its opponents added to its own; thus when one conqueror of fifty conquered another which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an hundred and one. Yet even in this, reputation was sometimes obtained upon false pretences. I found a boy one day, who had fallen in with a great number of young snails, so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent, and he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at his work. He was a good-natured boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a sense of humanity, ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent till it struck him as a point of honour, or of conscience, and then he resolutely said, no! that would not do, for he could not then fairly say he had conquered them. There is a surprising difference of strength in these shells, and that not depending upon the size or species; I mean, whether yellow, brown, or striped. It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the point, or top (I do not know what better term to use): the strong ones were usually clear and glossy there, and white if the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind. The top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of this description would triumph for weeks or months. I remember that one of the greatest heroes bore evident marks of having once been conquered. It had been thrown away in some lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature repaired it for him, and the wall was thus made stronger than it had been before the breach, by an arch of new masonry below. But in general I should think the resisting power of the shell depended upon the geometrical nicety of its form.

One of the big boys one day brought down a kite with an arrow, from the play-ground: this I think a more extraordinary feat than Apollo’s killing Python, though a Belvidere Jack Steel (this was the archer’s name) would not make quite so heroic a statue. We had a boy there who wore midshipman’s uniform, and whose pay must have more than maintained him at school; his father was a purser, and such things were not uncommon in those days. While I was at this school, the corporation of Bristol invited Rodney from Bath to a public dinner, after his great victory; and we, to do him honour in our way, were all marched down to the Globe at Newton, by the road side, that we might see him pass, and give him three cheers. They were heartily given, and were returned with great good humour from the carriage window. Another circumstance has made me remember the day well. Looking about for conquerors in Newton churchyard before we returned to school, I saw a slow-worm get into the ground under a tombstone; and in consequence, when I met no long time afterwards with the ancient opinion that the spinal marrow of a human body generates a serpent, this fact induced me long to believe it without hesitation, upon the supposed testimony of my own eyes. Though I had a full share of discomfort at Corston, I recollect nothing there so painful as that of being kept up every night till a certain hour, when I was dying with sleepiness. Sometimes I stole away to bed; but it was not easy to do this, and I found that it was not desirable, because the other boys played tricks upon me when they came. But I dreaded nothing so much as Sunday evening in winter: we were then assembled in the hall, to hear the master read a sermon, or a portion of Stackhouse’s History of the Bible. Here I sat at the end of a long form, in sight but not within feeling of the fire, my feet cold, my eyelids heavy as lead, and yet not daring to close them, kept awake by fear alone, in total inaction, and under the operation of a lecture more soporific than the strongest sleeping dose. Heaven help the wits of those good people who think that children are to be edified by having sermons read to them!

The year which I passed at Corston had been a mournful one for my mother. She lost my sweet little sister Louisa during that time; and being after a while persuaded to accompany Miss Tyler to London, where she had never before been, they were recalled by the tidings of my grandmother’s sudden death. Miss Tyler had found it expedient to break up her establishment at Bath, and pass some time in visiting among her friends. She now took up her abode at Bedminster, till family affairs should be settled, and till she could determine where and how to fix herself. Thither also I was sent, while my father was looking out for another school at which to place me.

I have so many vivid feelings connected with this house at Bedminster, that if it had not been in a vile neighbourhood, I believe my heart would have been set upon purchasing it, and fixing my abode there where the happiest days of my childhood were spent. My grandfather built it (about the year 1740, I suppose), and had made it what was then thought a thoroughly commodious and good house for one in his rank of life. It stood in a lane, some two or three hundred yards from the great western road. You ascended by several semicircular steps into what was called the fore court, but was in fact a flower-garden, with a broad pavement from the gate to the porch. That porch was in great part lined, as well as covered, with white jessamine; and many a time have I sat there with my poor sisters, threading the fallen blossoms upon grass stalks. It opened into a little hall, paved with diamond-shaped flags. On the right hand was the parlour, which had a brown or black boarded floor, covered with a Lisbon mat, and a handsome timepiece over the fireplace; on the left was the best kitchen, in which the family lived. The best kitchen is an apartment that belongs to other days, and is now no longer to be seen, except in houses which, having remained unaltered for the last half century, are inhabited by persons a degree lower in society than their former possessors. The one which I am now calling to mind after an interval of more than forty years, was a cheerful room, with an air of such country comfort about it, that my little heart was always gladdened when I entered it during my grandmother’s life. It had a stone floor, which I believe was the chief distinction between a best kitchen and a parlour. The furniture consisted of a clock, a large oval oak table with two flaps (over which two or three fowling-pieces had their place), a round tea-table of cherry wood, Windsor chairs of the same, and two large armed ones of that easy make (of all makes it is the easiest), in one of which my grandmother always sat. On one side of the fireplace the china was displayed in a buffet—that is, a cupboard with glass doors; on the other were closets for articles less ornamental, but more in use. The room was wainscotted and ornamented with some old maps, and with a long looking-glass over the chimney-piece, and a tall one between the windows, both in white frames. The windows opened into the fore-court, and were as cheerful and fragrant in the season of flowers as roses and jessamine, which grew luxuriantly without, could make them. There was a passage between this apartment and the kitchen, long enough to admit of a large airy pantry, and a Larder on the left hand, the windows of both opening into the barton, as did those of the kitchen; on the right was a door into the back court. There was a rack in the kitchen well furnished with bacon, and a mistletoe bush always suspended from the middle of the ceiling.

The green room, which was my uncle Edward’s, was over the parlour. Over the hall was a smaller apartment, which had been my grandfather’s office, and still contained his desk and his pigeon-holes: I remember it well, and the large-patterned, dark, flock paper, with its faded ground. The yellow room, over the best kitchen, was the visitor’s chamber; and this my mother occupied whenever she slept there. There was no way to my grandmother’s, the blue room over the kitchen, but through this and an intervening passage, where, on the left, was a storeroom. The blue room had a thorough light, one window looking into the barton, the other into the back court. The squire slept in the garret; his room was on one side, the servants’ on the other: and there was a large open space between, at the top of the stairs, used for lumber and stores.

A door from the hall, opposite to the entrance, opened upon the cellar stairs, to which there was another door from the back court. This was a square, having the house on two sides, the washhouse and brewhouse on the third, and walled on the fourth. A vine covered one side of the house here, and grew round my grandmother’s window, out of which I have often reached the grapes. Here also was the pigeon-house, and the pump, under which the fatal dipping* was performed. The yard or barton was of considerable size; the entrance to it was from the lane, through large folding-gates, with a horse-chest-

* See page 28.

I was now placed as a day-boarder at a school in that part of Bristol called the Fort, on the hill above St. Michael’s Church. William Williams, the master, was, as his name denotes, a Welshman. I find him satirized, or to use a more accurate word, slandered, in the Miscellanies of my uncle’s old master Emanuel Collins, as an impudent pretender. This he certainly was not; for he pretended to very little, and what he professed to teach he taught well. The Latin he left wholly to an usher, Bevan by name, who was curate of the parish. The writing, cyphering, and merchant’s accounts he superintended himself, though there was a writing-master who made and mended the pens, ruled the copy-books, and examined the slates. Williams was an author of the very humblest class; he had composed a spelling-book solely for the consumption of his own school: it was never published and had not even a titlepage. For love of this spelling-book he exercised the boys in it so much, that the thumbing and dog-leaving turned to good account. But he was, I verily believe, conscientiously earnest in making them perfect in the Catechism; the examination in this was always dreaded as the most formidable duty of the school,—such was the accuracy which he exacted, and the severity of his manner on that occasion. The slightest inattention was treated as a crime.

My grandmother died in 1782, and either in the latter end of that year, or the ensuing January, I was placed at poor old Williams’s, whom, as that expression indicates, I remember with feelings of good will. I had commenced poet before this, at how early an age I cannot call to mind; but I very well recollect that my first composition, both in manner and sentiment, might have been deemed a very hopeful imitation of the Bellman’s verses. The discovery, however, that I could write rhymes gave me great pleasure, which was in no slight degree heightened when I perceived that my mother was not only pleased with what I had produced, but proud of it. Miss Tyler had intended, as far as she was concerned, to give me a systematic education, and for this purpose (as she afterwards told me) purchased a translation of Rousseau’s Emilius. That system being happily even more impracticable than Mr. Edgeworth’s, I was lucky enough to escape from any experiment of this kind, and there good fortune provided for me better than any method could have done. Nothing could be more propitious for me, considering my, aptitudes and tendency of mind, than Miss Tyler’s predilection, I might almost call it passion, for the theatre. Owing to this, Shakespere was in my hands as soon as I could read; and it was long before I had any other knowledge of the history of England than what I gathered from his plays. Indeed, when first I read the plain matter of fact, the difference which appeared then puzzled and did not please me; and for some time I preferred Shakespere’s authority to the historian’s.

It is curious that “Titus Andronicus” was at first my favourite play; partly, I suppose, because there was nothing in the characters above my comprehension; but the chief reason must have been that tales of horror make a deep impression upon children, as they do upon the vulgar, for whom, as their ballads prove, no tragedy can be too bloody—they excite astonishment rather than pity. I went through Beaumont and Fletcher also, before I was eight years old; circumstances enable me to recollect the time accurately. Beaumont and Fletcher were great theatrical names, and therefore there was no scruple about letting me peruse their works. What harm, indeed, could they do me at that age? I read them merely for the interest which the stories afforded, and understood the worse parts as little as I did the better. But I acquired imperceptibly from such reading familiarity with the diction, and ear for the blank verse of our great masters. In general I gave myself no trouble with what I did not understand; the story was intelligible, and that was enough. But the knight of the Burning Pestle perplexed me terribly; burlesque of this kind is the last thing that a child can comprehend. It set me longing, however, for Palmerin of England, and that longing was never gratified till I read it in the original Portuguese. My favourite play upon the stage was “Cymbeline,” and next to that, “As you like it.” They are both romantic dramas; and no one had ever a more decided turn for music or for numbers, than I had for romance.

You will wonder that this education should not have made me a dramatic writer. I had seen more plays before I was seven years old than I have ever since I was twenty, and heard more conversation about the theatre than any other subject. Miss Tyler had given up her house at Walcot before I went to Corston; and when I visited her from school, she was herself a guest with Miss Palmer and her sister Mrs. Bartlett, whose property was vested in the Bath and Bristol theatres. Their house was in Galloway’s Buildings, from whence a covered passage led to the playhouse, and they very rarely missed a night’s performance. I was too old to be put to bed before the performance began, and it was better that I should be taken than left with the servants; therefore I was always of the party; and it is impossible to describe the thorough delight which I received from this habitual indulgence. No after enjoyment could equal or approach it; I was sensible of no defects either in the dramas or in the representation: better acting indeed could nowhere have been found; Mrs. Siddons was the heroine, Dimond and Murray would have done credit to any stage, and among the comic actors were Edwin and Blanchard—and Blisset, who, though never known to a London audience, was, of all comic actors whom I have ever seen, the most perfect. But I was happily insensible to that difference between good and bad acting which, in riper years, takes off so much from the pleasure of dramatic representation; every thing answered the height of my expectations and desires. And I saw it in perfect comfort, in a small theatre, from the front row of a box, not too far from the centre. The Bath theatre was said to be the most comfortable in England; and no expense was spared in the scenery and decorations.

My aunt, who hoarded every thing, except money, preserved the play-bills, and had a collection of them which Dr. Burney might have envied. As she rarely or never suffered me to be out of doors, lest I should dirt my clothes, these play-bills were one of the substitutes devised for my amusement instead of healthy and natural sports. I was encouraged to prick them with a pin, letter by letter: and for want of any thing better, became as fond of this employment as women sometimes are of netting or any ornamental work. I learnt to do it with great precision, pricking the larger types by their outline, so that when they were held up to the window they were bordered with spots of light. The object was to illuminate the whole bill in this manner. I have done it to hundreds; and yet I can well remember the sort of dissatisfied and damping feeling, which the sight of one of these bills would give me, a day or two after it had been finished and laid by. It was like an illumination when half the lamps are gone out. This amusement gave my writing-masters no little trouble; for, in spite of all their lessons, I held a pen as I had been used to hold the pin.

Miss Tyler was considered as an amateur and patroness of the stage. She was well acquainted with Henderson, but of him I have no recollection. He left Bath, I believe, just as my play-going days began. Edwin, I remember, gave me an ivory windmill, when I was about four years old; and there was no family with which she was more intimate than Dimond’s. She was thrown also into the company of dramatic writers at Mr. Palmer’s, who resided then about a mile from Bath, on the Upper Bristol Road, at a house called West Hall. Here she became acquainted with Coleman and Sheridan, and Cumberland and Holcroft: but I did not see any of them in those years; and the two former, indeed, never. Sophia Lee was Mrs. Palmer’s most intimate friend; she was then in high reputation for the first volume of the Recess, and for the Chapter of Accidents. You will not wonder, that hearing, as I continually did, of living authors, and seeing in what estimation they were held, I formed a great notion of the dignity attached to their profession. Perhaps in no other circle could this effect so surely have been produced as in a dramatic one, where ephemeral productions excite an intense interest while they last. Superior as I thought actors to all other men, it was not long before I perceived that authors were still a higher class.

Though I have not become a dramatist, my earliest dreams of authorship were, as might be anticipated, from such circumstances, of a dramatic form, and the notion which I had formed of dramatic composition was not inaccurate. “It is the easiest thing in the world to write a play!” said I to Miss Palmer, as we were in a carriage on Redcliffe Hill one day, returning from Bristol to Bedminster. “Is it, my dear?” was her reply. “Yes,” I continued, “for you know you have only to think what you would say if you were in the place of the characters, and to make them say it.” This brings to mind some unlucky illustrations which I made use of about the same time to the same lady, with the view of enforcing what I conceived to be good and considerate advice. Miss Palmer was on a visit to my aunt at Bedminster; they had fallen out, as they sometimes would do; these bickerings produced a fit of sullenness in the former, which was not shaken off for some days; and while it lasted, she usually sat with her apron over her face. I really thought she would injure her eyes by this, and told her so in great kindness; “for you know, Miss Palmer,” said I, “that every thing gets out of order if it is not used. A book, if it is not opened, will become damp and mouldy; and a key, if it is never turned in the lock, gets rusty.” Just then my aunt entered the room. “Lord, Miss Tyler!” said the offended lady, “what do you think this child has been saying? He has been comparing my eyes to a rusty key and a mouldy book.” The speech, however, was not without some good effect, for it restored good humour. Miss Palmer was an odd woman with a kind heart; one of those persons who are not respected so much as they deserve, because their dispositions are better than their understanding. She had a most generous and devoted attachment to Miss Tyler, which was not always requited as it ought to have been. The earliest dream which I can remember, related to her; it was singular enough to impress itself indelibly upon my memory. I thought I was sitting with her in her drawing-room (chairs, carpet, and everything are now visibly present to my mind’s eye) when the devil was introduced as a morning visitor. Such an appearance, for he was in his full costume of horns, black bat-wings, tail, and cloven feet, put me in ghostly and bodily fear; but she received him with perfect politeness, called him dear Mr. Devil, desired the servant to put him a chair, and expressed her delight at being favoured with a call.

There was much more promise implied in my notion of how a play ought to be written, than would have been found in any of my attempts. The first subject which I tried was the continence of Scipio, suggested by a print in a pocket-book. Battles were introduced in abundance; because the battle in Cymbeline was one of my favourite scenes; and because Congreve’s hero in the Mourning Bride, finds the writing of his father in prison, I made my prince of Numantia find pen, ink, and paper, that lie might write to his mistress. An act and a half of this nonsense exhausted my perseverance. Another story ran for a long time in my head, and I had planned the characters to suit the actors on the Bath stage. The fable was taken from a collection of tales, every circumstance of which has completely faded from my recollection, except that the scene of the story in question was laid in Italy, and the time, I think, about Justinian’s reign. The book must have been at least thirty or forty years old then, and I should recognise it if it ever fell in my way. While this dramatic passion continued, I wished my friends to partake it; and soon after I went to Williams’s school, persuaded one of my school-fellows to write a tragedy. Ballard was his name, the son of a surgeon at Portbury, a good-natured fellow, with a round face which I have not seen for seven or eight-and-thirty years, and yet fancy that I could recognise it now, and should be right glad to see it. He liked the suggestion, and agreed to it very readily, but he could not tell what to write about. I gave him a story. But then another difficulty was discovered; he could not devise names for the personages of the drama. I gave him a most heroic assortment of propria quiæ maribus et fœminis. He had now got his Dramatis Personæ, but he could not tell what to make them say, and then I gave up the business. I made the same attempt with another schoolfellow, and with no better success. It seemed to me very odd, that they should not be able to write plays as well as to do their lessons. It is needless to say that both these friends were of my own age; this is always the condition of school intimacies. The subject of the second experiment was a boy whose appearance prepossessed everybody. My mother was so taken with the gentleness of his manners, and the regularity and mildness of his features, that she was very desirous I should become intimate with him. He grew up to be a puppy, sported a tail when he was fifteen, and at five-and-twenty was an insignificant withered homunculus, with a white face shrivelled into an expression of effeminate peevishness. I have seen many instances wherein the promise of the boy has not been fulfilled by the man, but never so striking a case of blight as this.

The school was better than Flower’s, inasmuch as I had a Latin lesson every day, instead of thrice a week. But my lessons were solitary ones, so few boys were there in my station, and indeed in the station of life next above mine, who received a classical education in those days, compared with what is the case now. Writing and arithmetic, with at most a little French, were thought sufficient, at that time, for the sons of opulent Bristol merchants. I was in Phædrus when I went there; and preceded through Cornelius Nepos, Justin, and the Metamorphoses. One lesson in the morning was all. The rest of the time was given to what was deemed there of more importance. Writing was taught very differently at this school from what it was at Corston, and much less agreeably to my inclinations. We did copies of capital letters there, and were encouraged to aspire at the ornamental parts of penmanship. But Williams who wrote a slow strong hand himself, admirable of its kind, put me back to the rudiments at once, and kept me at strokes, pothooks and hangers, us, ns, and ms, and such words as pupil and tulip, Heaven knows how long, with absurd and wearisome perseverance. Writing was the only thing in which any pains were ever taken, or any method observed, to ground me thoroughly, and I was universally pronounced a most unpromising pupil. No instruction ever could teach me to hold the pen properly; of course, therefore, I could make none of those full free strokes which were deemed essential to good writing, and this drew upon me a great deal of unavailing reproof, though not severity, for old Williams liked me on the whole; and Mr. Foote was the only preceptor (except a dancing-master), who ever laid hands on me in anger. At home, too, my father and my uncle Thomas used to shake their heads at me, and pronounce that I should never write a decent hand. My cyphering-book, however, made some amends, in my master’s eyes. It was in this that his pains and the proficiency of his scholars were to be shewn. The books he used to sew himself, half a dozen sheets folded into the common quarto size; they were ruled with double red lines, and the lines which were required in the sums were also doubled ruled with red ink. When the book was filled, the pencil lines were carefully rubbed out; and Williams, tearing off the covers, deposited it in an envelope of fine cartridge paper, on which he had written, in his best hand, the boy’s name to whom it belonged. When there were enough of these to form a volume, they were consigned to a poor old man, the inhabitant of an almshouse, who obtained a few com-forts beyond what the establishment allowed him, by binding them. Now, though I wrote what is called a stiff cramp hand, there was a neatness and regularity about my books, which were peculiar to them. I had as quick a sense of symmetry as of metre. My lines were always drawn according to some standard of proportion, so that the page had an appearance of order, at first sight. I found the advantage of this when I came to be concerned with proof sheets. The method which I used in my cyphering-book, led me to teach the printers how to print verses of irregular length upon a regular principle: and Ballantyne told me I was the only person he ever met with, who knew how a page would look before it was set up. I may add that it was I who set the fashion for black letter in titlepages and half titles, and that this arose from my admiration of German-text at school.

I remained at this school between four and five years, which, if not profitably, were at least not unhappily spent. And here let me state the deliberate opinion upon the contested subject of public or private education, which I have formed from what I have experienced and heard and observed. A juster estimate of one’s self is acquired at school than can be formed in the course of domestic instruction, and what is of much more consequence, a better intuition into the characters of others than there is any chance of learning in after life. I have said that this is of more consequence than one’s self-estimate; because the error upon that score which domestic education tends to produce, is on the right side—that of diffidence and humility. These advantages a day-scholar obtains, and he avoids great part of the evils which are to be set against them. He cannot, indeed, wholly escape pollution; but he is far less exposed to it than if he were a boarder. He suffers nothing from tyranny, which is carried to excess in schools; nor has he much opportunity of acquiring or indulging malicious and tyrannical propensities himself. Above all, his religious habits, which it is almost impossible to retain at school, are safe. I would gladly send a son to a good school by day; but rather than board him at the best, I would, at whatever inconvenience, educate him myself. What I have said applies to public schools as well as private; of the advantages which the former possess I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.

My home, for the first two years while I went to Williams’s school, was at my father’s, except that during the holydays I was with Miss Tyler, either when she had lodgings at Bath, or was visiting Miss Palmer there. The first summer holydays I passed with her at Weymouth, whither she was invited to join her friend Mrs. Dolignon.

My memory strengthens as I proceed in this task of retrospection; and yet while some circumstances,—a look, a sound, a gesture, though utterly unimportant, recur to me more vividly than the transactions of yesterday, others, which I would fain call to mind, are irrevocably gone. I have sometimes fancied, when dreaming upon what may be our future state, that in the next world we may recover a perfect recollection of all that has occurred to us in this, and in the prior stages of progressive existence, through which it is not improbable that our living principle has ascended. And yet the best and happiest of us must have something or other, altâ mente repostum, for which a draught of Lethe would be desired.

The pleasantest of my school years were those which I past at Williams’s, especially after I took up my abode at Terril Street, for I then went home to dinner, and found much more satisfaction there in my own pursuits from twelve o’clock till two, than in his contracted play-ground. What I learnt there, indeed, was worth little; it was just such a knowledge of Latin as a boy of quick parts and not without diligence will acquire under bad teaching. When I had gone through the Metamorphoses, Williams declared his intention of taking me from the usher and instructing me in Virgil himself, no other of his pupils having proceeded so far. But the old man, I suppose, discovered that the little classical knowledge which he ever possessed had passed away as irrevocably as his youth, and I continued under the usher’s care, who kept me in the Eclogues so long, that I was heartily sick of them, and I believe have never looked in them from that time. Over and over again did that fellow make me read them; probably because he thought the book was to be gone through in order, and was afraid to expose himself in the Georgics. No attempt was made to ground me in prosody; and as this defect in my education was never remedied (for when I went to Westminster I was too forward in other things to be placed low enough in the school for regular training in this), I am at this day as liable to make a false quantity as any Scotchman. I was fond of arithmetic, and have no doubt that, at that time, I should have proceeded with pleasure through its higher branches, and might have been led on to mathematics, of which my mind afterwards became impatient, if not actually incapable.

Sometimes, when Williams was in good humour, he suspended the usual business of the school and exercised the boys in some uncommon manner. For example, he would bid them all take their slates, and write as he should dictate. This was to try their spelling, and I remember he once began with this sentence: “As I walked out to take the air, I met a man with red hair, who was heir to a good estate, and was carrying a hare in his hand.” Another time he called upon all of a certain standing to write a letter, each upon any subject that he pleased. You will perhaps wonder to hear that no task ever perplexed me so woefully as this. I had never in my life written a letter, except a formal one at Corston before the holydays, every word of which was of the master’s dictation, and which used to begin “Honoured Parents.” Some of the boys produced compositions of this stamp; others, who were a little older and more ambitious, wrote in a tradesman-like style, soliciting orders, or acknowledging them, or sending in an account. For my part I actually cried for perplexity and vexation. Had I been a blockhead this would have provoked Williams; but he always looked upon me with a favourable eye, and, expressing surprise rather than anger, he endeavoured both to encourage and shame me to the attempt. To work I fell at last, and presently presented him with a description of Stonehenge, in the form of a letter, which completely filled the slate. I had laid hands not long before upon the Salisbury Guide, and Stonehenge had appeared to me one of the greatest wonders in the world. The old man was exceedingly surprised, and not less delighted, and I well remember how much his astonishment surprised me, and how much I was gratified by his praise. I was not conscious of having done anything odd or extraordinary, but the boys made me so; and to the sort of envy which it excited among them, I was indebted for a wholesome mortification. One morning, upon entering the school a few minutes before the master made his appearance, some half-dozen of them beset me, and demanded whether I, with all my learning, could tell what the letters i.e, stood for. The question was proposed in the taunting tone of expected triumph, which I should well have liked to disappoint. But when I answered that I supposed it was for John the Evangelist, the unlucky guess taught me never again to be ashamed of acknowledging myself ignorant of what I really did not know. It was an useful lesson, especially as I was fortunate enough to perceive, early in life, that there were very many subjects of which I must of necessity be so.

Of all my schoolmasters Williams is the one whom I remember with the kindliest feelings. His Welsh blood was too easily roused; and his spirit was soured by the great decline of his school. His numbers in its best days had been from seventy to an hundred; now they did not reach forty, when the times were dearer by all the difference which the American War had occasioned, and his terms could not be raised in proportion to the increased price of everything, because schools had multiplied. When his ill circumstances pressed upon him, he gave way, perhaps more readily, to impulses of anger; because anger, like drunkenness, suspends the sense of care, and an irascible emotion is felt as a relief from painful thoughts. His old wig, like a bank of morning clouds in the east, used to indicate a stormy day. At better times both the wig and the countenance would have beseemed a higher station; and his anger was the more frightful, because at those better times there was an expression of good humour and animation in his features which was singularly pleasing, and I believe denoted his genuine character. He would strike with a ruler sometimes when his patience was greatly provoked by that incorrigible stupidity, which of all things perhaps puts patience to the severest trial. There was a hulking fellow (a Creole with Negro features and a shade of African colour in him), who possessed this stupidity in the highest degree; and Williams, after flogging him one day, made him pay a halfpenny for the use of the rod, because he required it so much oftener than any other boy in the school. Whether G—— was most sensible of the mulct or the mockery, I know not, but he felt it as the severest part of the punishment. This was certainly a tyrannical act; but it was the only one of which I ever saw Williams guilty.

There were a good many Creoles at this school, as indeed at all the Bristol schools. Cassava bread was among the things which were frequently sent over to them by their parents, so that I well knew the taste of Mandioc long before I heard its name. These Creoles were neither better nor worse than so many other boys in any respect. Indeed, though they had a stronger national cast of countenance, they were, I think, less marked by any national features of mind or disposition than the Welsh, certainly much less than the Irish. One of them (evidently by his name of French extraction) was however the most thoroughly fiendish human being that I have ever known. There is an image in Kehama drawn from my recollection of the devilish malignity which used sometimes to glow in his dark eyes; though I could not there give the likeness in its whole force, for his countenance used to darken with the blackness of his passion. Happily for the slaves on the family estate, he, though a second brother, was wealthy enough to settle in England; and an anecdote which I heard of him when he was about thirty years of age, will show that I have not spoken of his character too strongly. When he was shooting one day, his dog committed some fault. He would have shot him for this upon the spot, if his companion had not turned the gun aside, and, as he supposed, succeeded in appeasing him: but when the sport was over, to the horror of that companion (who related the story to me), he took up a large stone and knocked out the dog’s brains. I have mentioned this wretch, who might otherwise have better been forgotten, for a charitable reason; because I verily believe that his wickedness was truly an original, innate, constitutional sin, and just as much a family disease as gout or scrofula. I think so, because he had a nephew who was placed as a pupil with King, the surgeon at Clifton, and in whom at first sight I recognised a physiognomy which I hope can belong to no other breed. His nephew answered in all respects to the relationship, and to the character which nature had written in every lineament of his face. He ran a short career of knavery, profligacy, and crimes, which led him into a prison, and there he died by his own hand.

Another of my then schoolfellows, who was also a Creole, came to a like fate, but from very different circumstances. He was the natural son of a wealthy planter by a woman of colour; and went through the school with the character of an inoffensive, gentlemanly, quiet boy, who never quarrelled with anybody, nor ever did an ill-natured thing. When he became a young man, he was liberally supplied with money, and launched into expenses which such means tended to create and seemed to justify. The supplies suddenly ceased, I am not certain whether by an experiment of rigour, or owing to his father’s dying without providing for him in his will; the latter I think was the case. Poor H——, however, was arrested for debt, and put an end to his hopeless prospects in prison, by suicide.

Colonel Hugh Baillie, who made himself conspicuous some few months ago, by very properly resenting the unjust expulsion of his son from Christ Church (an act of the late dean’s miserable misgovernment), was one of my contemporaries at this school. My old Latin master, Duplanier, kept a French academy next door; and by an arrangement between the two masters, his boys came three mornings in the week to write and cypher with us. Among these intermitting schoolfellows was poor John Morgan, with whom Coleridge lived for several years; Gee, whom I have already mentioned; and a certain H—— O——, with whom I had an adventure in after-life, well worthy of preservation.

This youth was about three years older than I: of course, I had no acquaintance with him; nor did I ever exchange a word with him, unless it were when the whole school were engaged in playing prison-base, in which he took the lead as the πόδας ώκύς of his side. His father was a merchant, concerned among other things in the Irish linen trade: my father had some dealings with him; and in his misfortunes found him, what I believe is not a common character, an unfeeling creditor. They were a proud family; and a few years after my father’s failure, failed themselves, and, as the phrase is, went to the dogs. This H—— O—— was bred to be an attorney, but wanted either brains or business to succeed in his calling—I dare say both. I had forgotten his person: and should never have thought of him again (except when the game of prison-base was brought to my mind), if, in the year 1798, I had not been surprised by hearing one day at Cottle’s shop, that he had been there twice or thrice to inquire for me, and had left a message requesting that, if I came into Bristol that day (it was during the year of my abode at Westbury), I would call on him at an attorney’s office, at a certain hour. Accordingly, thither I went, rung at the bell, inquired for Mr. O——, gave my name, and was ushered into a private room. Nothing could be more gracious than his recognition of a person, whom he must have past twenty times in the street during the last three months: “we had been schoolfellows at such a place, at such a time,” &c. &c., all which I knew very well, but how we came to be acquaintances now was what I had to learn; and to explain this cost him a good deal of humming and hawing, plentifully intermixed with that figure of speech which the Irish call blarney, and which is a much more usual as well as useful figure than any of those, with the hard names of which poor boys used to be tormented in the Latin grammar. From the use which he made of this figure he appeared to know that I was an author of some notoriety, and that one of my books was called Joan of Arc. The compliments which he laid on, were intermingled with expressions of great regret for the deficiencies of his own education: he learnt a little Latin, a little French, but there it had stopt; in short, I knew what must be the extent of his acquirements—“for you and I, Mr. Southey, you know, were schoolfellows.” At last it came out that, from a consciousness of these deficiencies, he had been led to think that a glossary of the English language was a work very much wanted, and that no one could be more competent to supply such a desideratum, than the gentleman whom he had the honour of addressing. I was as little able to guess what his deficiencies had to do with a glossary as you can be; and not feeling any curiosity to get at a blockhead’s meaning, endeavoured to put an end to the interview, by declaring at once my utter inability to execute such a work, for the very sufficient reason that I was wholly ignorant of several languages, the thorough knowledge of which was indispensable in such researches. This produced more blarney, and an explanation that my answer did not exactly apply to what his proposal intended. What he meant was this,—there were a great many elegant words, which persons like himself, whose education had been neglected, would often like to use in conversation (he said this feelingly, it had often been his own case, he felt it, indeed, every day of his life); they would be glad to use these words if they only knew their meaning; and what he wanted was a glossary or dictionary of such words, a little book which might be carried in the pocket. It would certainly command an extensive sale: I could make the book; he had a large acquaintance, and could procure subscribers for it; and we might make a thriving partnership concern in this literary undertaking. Before he arrived at this point, the scene had become far too comical to leave any room in my feelings for anger. I kept my countenance (which has often been put to much harder trials than my temper, and is moreover a much more difficult thing to keep), declined his proposal decidedly but civilly, took my leave in perfect good humour, and hastened back to Cottle’s, to relieve myself by telling him the adventure.

Nearly four years have elapsed since I began this series of reminiscences, and I have only written twelve letters, which bring me only into the twelfth year of my age. Alas! this is not the only case in which I feel that the remaining portion of my life, were it even to be protracted longer than there is reason to expect upon the most favourable calculation of chances, must be too short for the undertakings which I have sometimes dreamt of completing. It is, however, the case in which I can with least inconvenience quicken my speed; and frail as by humiliating experience I know my own resolutions to be, I will nevertheless endeavour to send off a letter from this time forth, at the end of every month. Matter for one more will be afforded before I take leave of poor old William Williams; and that part of it which has no connection with myself, will not be the least worth relation.

It was a good feature in his character that he had a number of poor retainers, who used to drop in at school hours, and seldom went away empty handed. There was one poor fellow, familiarly called Dr. Jones, who always set the school in a roar of laughter. What his real history was I know not; the story was, that some mischievous boys had practised upon him the dreadfully dangerous prank of giving him a dose of cantharides, and that he had lost his wits in consequence. I am not aware that it could have produced this effect, though it might very probably have cost him his life. Crazy, however, he was, or rather half-crazed, and it was such a merry craziness that it would have been wishing him ill to have wished him otherwise. The bliss of ignorance is merely negative; there was a positive happiness in his insanity; it was like a perpetual drunkenness, sustained just at that degree of pleasurable excitement, which, in the sense of present enjoyment, is equally re-gardless of the future and of the past. He fancied himself a poet, because he could produce, upon demand, a rhyme in the sorryest doggrel; and the most celebrated improvisatore was never half so vain of his talent as this queer creature, whose little figure of some five feet two I can perfectly call to mind, with his suit of rusty black, his more rusty wig, and his old cocked hat. Whenever he entered the schoolroom, he was greeted with a shout of welcome; all business was suspended; he was called upon from all sides to give us a rhyme; and when the master’s countenance offered any encouragement, he was entreated also to ask for half a holyday, which, at the price of some doggrel, was sometimes obtained. You will readily believe he was a popular poet.

The talent of composing imitative verses has become so common in our days, that it will require some evidence to make the next generation believe what sort of verses were received as poetry fifty years ago, when any thing in rhyme passed current. The magazines, however, contain proof of this; the very best of them abounding in such trash as would be rejected now by the provincial newspapers. Whether the progress of society, which so greatly favours the growth and development of imitative talent, is equally favourable to the true poetical spirit, is a question which I may be led to consider hereafter. But as I had the good fortune to grow up in an age when poets, according to the old opinion, were born and not made, and as at the time to which this part of my reminiscences relates, the bent of my nature had decidedly shown itself, I may here make some observations upon the grounds and consequences of that opinion.

In the earliest ages certain it is, that they who possessed that gift of speech which enabled them to clothe ready thoughts in measured or elevated diction, were held to be inspired. False oracles were uttered in verse, and true prophecies delivered in poetry. There was, therefore, some reason for the opinion. A belief akin to it, and not improbably derived from it, prevails, even now, among the ignorant; and was much more prevalent in my childhood, when very few of the lower classes could write or read, and when in the classes above them, those who really were ignorant, knew that they were so. Slight of hand passed for magic in the dark ages, slight of tongue for inspiration; and the ignorant, when they were no longer thus to be deluded, still looked upon both as something extraordinary and wonderful. Especially the power of arranging words in a manner altogether different from the common manner of speech, and of disposing syllables so as to produce a harmony which is felt by the dullest ear (a power which has now become an easy, and therefore is every day becoming more and more a common acquirement), appeared to them what it originally was in all poets, and always will be in those who are truly such; and even now, though there are none who regard its possessor with superstitious reverence, there are many who look upon him as one who, in the constitution of his mind, is different from themselves. As no madman ever pretended to a religious call, without finding some open-eared listeners ready to believe in him and become his disciples; so, perhaps, no one ever composed verses with facility, who had not some to admire and applaud him in his own little circle. This was the case even with so poor a creature as Dr. Jones. And to the intoxication of conceit, which the honest admiration of the ignorant has produced in half-crazed rhymers like him, it is owing that some marvellous productions have found their way to the press. Dr. Jones, by whom I have been led into this digression, was a doggrelist of the very lowest kind. One other such I once met with, when I was young enough to be heartily amused at an exhibition which, farcical as it was, would now make me mournful. He was a poor engraver, by name Coyte; very simple, very industrious, very poor, and completely crazed with vanity, because he could compose off-hand, upon any subject, such rhymes as the bellman’s used to be. Bedford’s father used occasionally to relieve him, for he was married and could earn but a miserable livelihood for his family. I saw him on one of his visits to Brixton, in the year 1793, when he was between forty and fifty years of age. His countenance and manner might have supplied Wilkie with a worthy subject. Mr. Bedford (there never lived a kinder-hearted man) loved merriment, and played him off, in which Grosvenor and Horace joined, and I was not backward. We gave him subjects upon which he presently wrote three or four sorry couplets. No creature was ever more elated with triumph than he was at the hyperbolical commendations which he received; and this, mingled with the genuine humility which the sense of his condition occasioned, produced a truly comic mixture in his feelings and gesticulations. What with pleasure, inspiration, exertion, and warm weather (for it was in the dog-days), he perspired as profusely, though I dare say not as fragrantly, as an elephant in love; and literally overflowed at eyes and mouth, frothing and weeping in a salivation of happiness. I think this poor creature published “A Cockney’s Rambles in the Country,” some twelve or fourteen years ago, for such a pamphlet I saw advertised, by Joseph William Coyte; and I sent for it at the time, but it was too obscure to be found.

These are examples of the very humblest and meanest rhymesters, who nevertheless felt themselves raised above their companions, because they could rhyme. I have been acquainted with poets in every intermediate degree between Jones and Wordsworth; and their conceit has almost uniformly been precisely in an inverse proportion to their capacity. When this conceit acts upon low and vulgar ignorance, it produces direct craziness, as in the instances of which I have been speaking. In the lower ranks of middle life I have seen it, without amounting to insanity, assume a form of such extravagant vanity that the examples which have occurred within my own observation, would be deemed incredible if brought forward in a farce.—Of these in due time. There is another more curious manifestation of the same folly, which I do not remember ever to have seen noticed; but which is well worthy of critical observation, because it shows in its full extent, and therefore in puris naturalibus, a fault which is found in by much the greater part of modern poetry—the use of words which have no signification where they are used, or which, if they mean any thing, mean nonsense—the substitution of sound for sense. I could show you passage after passage in contemporary writers—the most popular writers, and some of them the most popular passages in their works, which when critically, that is to say, strictly but justly, examined, are as absolutely nonsensical as the description of a moonlight night in Pope’s Homer. Pope himself intended that for a fine description, and did not perceive that it was as absurd as his own “Song by a Person of Quality.” Now, there have been writers who have possessed the talent of stringing together couplet after couplet in sonorous verse, without any connection, and without any meaning, or any thing like a meaning; and yet they have had all the enjoyment of writing poetry, have supposed that this actually was poetry, and published it as such. I know a man who has done this, who made me a present of his poem; yet he is very far from being a fool; on the contrary, he is a lively pleasant companion, and his talents in conversation are considerably above par. The most perfect specimen I ever saw of such verses was a poem called “The Shepherd’s Farewell,” printed in quarto, some five-and-thirty years ago. Coleridge once had an imperfect copy of it. I forget the author’s name; but when I was first at Lisbon, I found out that he was a schoolmaster, and that poor Paul Berthon had been one of his pupils. Men of very inferior power may imitate the manner of good writers with great success; as, for example, the two Smiths have done; but I do not believe that any imitative talent could produce genuine nonsense verses, like those of “The Shepherd’s Farewell.” The intention of writing nonsensically would appear, and betray the purport of the writer. Pure, involuntary, unconscious nonsense is inimitable by any effort of sense.

Such writers as these, if they were cross-examined, would be found to imagine that they composed under the real influence of poetical inspiration; and were Taylor the pagan to set about heathenizing one of them, I am persuaded that he would not find it difficult to make him believe in the Muses. In fact, when this soul of conceit is in action, the man is fairly beside himself. An innate self-produced inebriety possesses him; he abandons himself to it, and while the fit lasts is as mad as a March hare. The madness is not permanent; because such inspiration, according to received opinion, only comes on when the rhymester is engaged in his vocation. And well it is when it shows itself in rhyme; for the case is very different with him who has the gift of uttering prose with the same fluency, and the same contempt of reason. He in good earnest sets up for an inspired messenger; he has received a call; and there are not only sects, but societies, in this country ready to accredit him, and take him into employ, and send him forth with a roving commission, through towns and villages, to infect others with the most infectious of all forms of madness, disturb the peace of families, and prepare the way for another attempt to over-throw the Established Church—another struggle, which will shake these kingdoms to their centre.

Dr. Jones has led me into a long digression, upon which I should not have entered if I had foreseen that it would have extended so far. Another of Williams’s visitors, and an equally popular one, was a glorious fellow, Pullen by name, who during the age of buckskin made a fortune as a breeches-maker, in Thomas Street. If I could paint a portrait from memory, you should have his likeness. Alas, that I can only give it in words! and that that perfect figure should at this hour be preserved only in my recollections! Sic transit gloria mundi! His countenance expressed all that could be expressed by human features, of thorough-bred vulgarity, prosperity, pride of purse, good living, coarse humour, and boisterous good nature. He wore a white tie-wig. His eyes were of the hue and lustre of scalded gooseberries, or oysters in sauce. His complexion was the deepest extract of the grape; he owed it to the Methuen treaty; my uncle, no doubt, had seen it growing in his rides from Porto; and Heaven knows how many pipes must have been filtered through the Pullenian system, before that fine permanent purple could have been fixed in his cheeks. He appeared always in buckskins of his own making, and in boots. He would laugh at his own jests with a voice like Stentor, supposing Stentor to have been hoarse; and then he would clap old Williams on the back with a hand like a shoulder of mutton for breadth and weight. You may imagine how great a man we thought him. They had probably been boon com-panions in their youth, and his visits seldom failed to make the old man lay aside the schoolmaster. He was an excellent hand at demanding half a holyday; and when he succeeded, always demanded three cheers for his success, in which he joined with all his might and main. If I were a believer in the Romish purgatory, I should make no doubt that every visit that he made to that schoolroom, was carried to the account of his good works. Some such set off he needed; for he behaved with brutal want of feeling to a son who had offended him, and who, I believe, would have perished for want, if it had not been for the charity of John Morgan’s mother; an eccentric but thoroughly good woman, and one of those people whom I shall rejoice to meet in the next world. This I learnt from her several years afterwards. At this time Pullen was a widower between fifty and sixty; a hale strong-bodied man, upon whom his wine-merchant might reckon for a considerable annuity, during many years to come. He had purchased some lands adjacent to the Leppincott property near Bristol, in the pleasantest part of that fine neighbourhood. Sir Henry Leppincott was elected member for the city, at that election in which Burke was turned out. He died soon afterwards; his son was a mere child; and Pullen, the glorious Pullen, in the plenitude of his pride, and no doubt in a new pair of buckskins, called on the widow; introduced himself as the owner of the adjacent estate; and upon that score, without farther ceremony, proposed marriage as an arrangement of mutual fitness. Lady Leppincott, of course, rang the bell, and ordered the servants to turn him out of the house. This is a story which would be deemed too extravagant in a novel; and yet you would believe it without the slightest hesitation, if you had ever seen the incomparable breeches-maker.

Mrs. Estan the actress, whom you must remember, was at that time preparing to make her first appearance on the stage, at the Bristol Theatre. The part she had chosen was Letitia Hardy in “The Belle’s Stratagem,” and in that part she had to dance a minuet de le cour, to perfect herself in which, and perhaps for the sake of accustoming herself to figure away before an audience, she came to our school on two or three dancing-days, and took lessons there,—a circumstance too remarkable to be forgotten in a schoolboy’s life. Walters, the dancing-master, was not a little proud of his pupil. That poor man was, for three years the plague of my life, and I was the plague of his. In some unhappy mood he prevailed on my mother to let me learn to dance, persuading himself as well as her, that I should do credit to his teaching. It must have been for my sins that he formed this opinion: in an evil hour for himself and for me was it formed; he would have had much less trouble in teaching a bear, and far better success. I do not remember that I set out with any dislike or contempt of dancing; but the unconquerable incapacity which it was soon evident that I possessed, produced both, and the more he laboured to correct an incorrigible awkwardness, the more awkwardly of course I performed. I verily believe the fiddlestick was applied as much to my head as to the fiddle-strings, when I was called out. But the rascal had a worse way than that of punishing me. He would take my hands in his, and lead me down a dance; and then the villain would apply his thumb-nail against the flat-surface of mine, in the middle, and press it till he left the mark there; this species of torture I suppose to have been his own invention, and so intolerable it was that at last, whenever he had recourse to it, I kicked his shins. Luckily for me he got into a scrape by beating a boy unmercifully at another school, so that he was afraid to carry on this sort of contest; and giving up at last all hope of ever making me a votary of the graces or of the dancing Muse, he contented himself with shaking his head and turning up his eyes in hopelessness, whenever he noticed my performance. I had always Tom Madge for my partner; a poor fellow long since dead, whom I remember with much kindness. He was as active as a squirrel, but every limb seemed to be out of joint when he began to dance. We were always placed as the last couple, and went through the work with the dogged determination of never dancing more when we should once be delivered from the dancing-master—a resolution which I have piously kept, even unto this day.

Williams, who read well himself and prided himself upon it, was one day very much offended with my reading, and asked me scornfully who taught me to read. I answered my aunt. “Then,” said he “give my compliments to your aunt; and tell her that my old horse, that has been dead these twenty years, could have taught you as well.” I delivered the message faithfully, to her great indignation. It was never forgotten or forgiven, and perhaps it accelerated the very proper resolution of removing me. My uncle made known his intention of placing me at Westminster. His connection with Christ Church naturally led him to prefer that to any other school, in the hope that I should get into college, and so be elected off to a studentship. But as I was in feeble health, and, moreover, had been hitherto very ill taught, it was deemed advisable that I should be placed for twelve months under a clergyman competent to prepare me for a public school.

Before I take leave of Williams, two or three memoranda upon the slip of paper before me, must be scored off. There was a washing-tub in the playground, with a long towel on a reel beside it; this tub was filled every morning for the boarders to perform their ablutions, all in the same water, and whoever wished to wash hands or face in the course of the day, had no other. I was the only boy who had any repugnance to dip his hands in this pig-trough. There was a large cask near, which received the rain-water; but there was no getting at the water, for the top was covered, and to have taken out the spiggot would have been a punishable offence. I, however, made a little hollow under the spiggot, to receive the drippings, just deep enough to wet the hands, and there I used to wash my hands with clean water when they required it. But I do not remember that any one ever followed my example. I had acquired the sense of cleanliness and the love of it, and they had not.

In a former letter I have mentioned Mrs. S——, who had been Miss Tyler’s school-mistress. My aunt kept up an acquaintance with her as long as she lived, and after her death with her two daughters, who lived together in a house on Redclift Parade, the pleasantest situation in Bristol if there had been even a tolerable approach to it. One of these sisters was unmarried; the other a widow with one son, who was just of my age: Jem Thomas was his name. Mr. Lewis, the clergyman under whom I was placed at the end of 1786 or the beginning of 1787, lodged and boarded with these sisters. He had been usher at the grammar school; and, having engaged to educate this boy, was willing to take a few more pupils, from the hours of ten till two. When I went to him, he had two others, C—— and R——, both my seniors by three or four years. The former I used to call Caliban: he might have played that character without a mask, that is, supposing he could have learnt the part; for the resemblance held good in mind as well as in appearance, his disposition being somewhat between pig and baboon. The latter was a favourite with Lewis; his father had formerly practised in Bristol as a surgeon, but had now succeeded to an estate of some value. He was little and mannish, somewhat vain of superficial talents, and with a spice of conceit both in his manners and in his dress; but there was no harm in him. He took an honorary Master’s degree at the Duke of Portland’s installation in 1793, which was the only time I ever saw him after we ceased to be fellow-pupils. He married about that time, and died young.

Caliban had a sister whom I shall not libel when I call her Sycorax. A Bristol tradesman, a great friend of S. T. C.’s, married her for her money; and the only thing I ever heard of Caliban in after-life was a story which reached me of her everywhere proclaiming that her brother was a very superior man to Mr. Coleridge, and had confuted him one evening seven-and-twenty times in one argument. The word which Coleridge uses as a listener when he is expected to throw in something, with or without meaning, to show that he is listening, is, or used to be, as I well remember—undoubtedly. The foolish woman had understood this expletive in its literal meaning, and kept account with her fingers that he pronounced it seven-and-twenty times, while enduring the utterance of an animal in comparison with whom a centaur would deserve to be called human, and a satyr rational.

Jem Thomas was a common-place lad, with a fine handsome person, but by no means a good physiognomy, and I cannot remember the time when I was not a physiognomist. He was educated for a surgeon, and ruined by having at his disposal, as soon as he came of age, something between two and three thousand pounds, which his grandmother unwisely left to him at once, instead of leaving it to his mother for her life. This he presently squandered; went out professionally to the East Indies, and died there. So much for my three companions, among whom it was not possible that I could find a friend. There came a fourth, a few weeks only before I withdrew; he was a well-minded boy, and has made a very respectable man. Harris was his name: he married Betsy Petrie, who was one of my fellow-travellers in Portugal.

I profited by this year’s tuition less than I should have done at a good school. It is not easy to remedy the ill effects of bad teaching; and the farther the pupil has advanced in it, the greater must be the difficulty of bringing him into a better way. Lewis, too, had been accustomed to the mechanical movements of a large school, and was at a loss how to proceed with a boy who stood alone. I began Greek under him, made nonsense-verses, read the Electa ex Ovidio et Tibullo and Horace’s Odes, advanced a little in writing Latin, and composed English themes.

C’est le premier pas qui coute. I was in as great tribulation when I had the first theme to write, as when Williams required me to produce a letter. The text of course had been given me; but how to begin, what to say, or how to say it, I knew not. No one who had witnessed my perplexity upon this occasion would have supposed how much was afterwards to be spun from these poor brains. My aunt, at last in compassion, wrote the theme for me. Lewis questioned me if it was my own, and I told him the truth. He then encouraged me sensibly enough; put me in the way of composing the common-places of which themes are manufactured (indeed he caused me to transcribe some rules for themes, making a regular receipt as for a pudding); and he had no reason afterwards to complain of any want of aptitude in his scholar, for when I had learnt that it was not more difficult to write in prose than in verse, the ink dribbled as daintily from my pen as ever it did from John Bunyan’s. One of these exercises I still remember sufficiently well to know that it was too much like poetry, and that the fault was of a hopeful kind, consisting less in inflated language than in poetical imagery and sentiment. But this was not pointed out as a fault, and luckily I was left to myself; otherwise, like a good horse, I might have been spoilt by being broken in too soon.

Few boys were ever less qualified for the discipline of a public school than I was, when it was determined to place me at Westminster; for if my school education had been ill-conducted, the life which I led with Miss Tyler tended in every respect still more to un-fit me for the new scenes, the new world almost it might be called, on which I was about to enter.

When my aunt settled at Bristol, she brought with her a proud contempt for Bristol society. In fact, she had scarcely any acquaintance there, and seldom saw any company, except when some of her Bath friends came to Clifton for the summer; or when the players took up their abode in the city, for then Mr. Dimond used to visit her. He was a most gentlemanly and respectable man, as well as a good actor. Great is the delight which I have had in seeing him perform, and hardly less was that which I have felt in listening to his conversation. The days when he dined with us were almost our only gala days. At such times, and when she went out, Miss Tyler’s appearance and manners were those of a woman who had been bred in the best society and was equal to it; but if any stranger or visitor had caught her in her ordinary apparel, she would have been as much confused as Diana when Actæon came upon her bathing-place, and almost with as much reason, for she was always in a bed-gown and in rags. Most people, I suspect, have a weakness for old shoes; ease and comfort and one’s own fireside are connected with them; in fact, we never feel any regard for shoes till they attain to the privileges of age, and then they become almost as much a part of the wearer as his corns. This sort of feeling my aunt extended to old clothes of every kind; the older and the raggeder they grew, the more unwilling she was to cast them off. But she was scrupulously clean in them; indeed, the principle upon which her whole household economy was directed was that of keeping the house clean, and taking more precautions against dust than would have been needful against the plague in an infected city. She laboured under a perpetual dusto-phobia, and a comical disease it was; but whether I have been most amused~or annoyed by it, it would be difficult to say. I had, however, in its consequences an early lesson how fearfully the mind may be enslaved by indulging its own peculiarities and whimsies, innocent as they may appear at first.

The discomfort which Miss Tyler’s passion for cleanliness produced to herself, as well as to her little household, was truly curious: to herself, indeed, it was a perpetual torment; to the two servants a perpetual vexation, and so it would have been to me if nature had not blest me with an innate hilarity of spirit which nothing but real affliction can overcome. That the better rooms might be kept clean, she took possession of the kitchen, sending the servants to one which was underground; and in this little, dark, confined place, with a rough stone floor, and a skylight (for it must not be supposed that it was a best kitchen, which was always, as it was intended to be, a comfortable sitting-room; this was more like a scullery), we always took our meals, and generally lived. The best room was never opened but for company; except now and then on a fine day to be aired and dusted, if dust could be detected there. In the other parlour, I was allowed sometimes to read, and she wrote her letters, for she had many correspondents; and we sat there sometimes in summer, when a fire was not needed, for fire produced ashes, and ashes occasioned dust, and dust, visible or invisible, was the plague of her life. I have seen her order the teakettle to be emptied and refilled, because some one had passed across the hearth while it was on the fire preparing for her breakfast. She had indulged these humours till she had formed for herself notions of uncleanness almost as irrational and inconvenient as those of the Hindoos. She had a cup once buried for six weeks, to purify it from the lips of one whom she accounted unclean; all who were not her favourites were included in that class. A chair in which an unclean person had sat was put out in the garden to be aired; and I never saw her more annoyed than on one occasion when a man, who called upon business, seated himself in her own chair: how the cushion was ever again to be rendered fit for her use, she knew not! On such occasions, her fine features assumed a character either fierce or tragic; her expressions were vehement even to irreverence; and her gesticulations those of the deepest and wildest distress,—hands and eyes uplifted, as if she was in hopeless misery, or in a paroxysm of mental anguish.

As there are none who like to be upon ill terms with themselves, most people find out some device whereby they may be reconciled to their own faults; and in this propensity it is that much of the irreligion in the world, and much of its false philosophy, have originated. My aunt used frequently to say that all good-natured people were fools. Hers was a violent temper, rather than an ill one; there was a great deal of kindness in it, though it was under no restraint. She was at once tyrannical and indulgent to her servants, and they usually remained a long while in her service, partly I believe from fear, and partly from liking: from liking, because she sent them often to the play (which is probably to persons in that condition, as it is to children, the most delightful of all amusements), and because she conversed with them much more than is usual for any one in her rank of life. Her habits were so peculiar, that the servants became in a certain degree her confidants; she therefore was afraid to change them and they even, when they wished to leave her, were afraid to express the wish, knowing that she would regard it as a grievous offence, and dreading the storm of anger which it would bring down. Two servants in my remembrance left her for the sake of marrying; and, although they had both lived with her many years, she never forgave either, nor ever spoke of them without some expression of bitterness. I believe no daughter was ever more afraid of disclosing a clandestine marriage to a severe parent, than both these women were of making their intention known to their mistress, such was the ascendancy that she possessed over them. She had reconciled herself to the indulgence of her ungoverned anger, by supposing that a bad temper was naturally connected with a good understanding and a commanding mind.

Besides her servants, there were two persons over whom she had acquired the most absolute control. Miss Palmer was the one: a more complete example cannot be imagined of that magic which a strong mind exercises over a weak one. The influence which she possessed over my mother was equally unbounded and more continual, but otherwise to be explained: it was the ascendancy of a determined and violent spirit over a gentle and yielding one. There was a difference of twelve years between their ages, and the authority which Miss Tyler had first exerted as an elder sister she never relaxed. My mother was one of those few persons (for a few such there are) who think too humbly of themselves. Her only fault (I verily believe she had no other), was that of yielding submissively to this imperious sister, to the sacrifice of her own inclination and judgment and sense of what was right. She had grown up in awe and admiration of her, as one who moved in a superior rank, and who, with the advantage of a fine form and beautiful person, possessed that also of a superior and cultivated understanding: withal, she loved her with a true sisterly affection which nothing could diminish, clearly as she saw her faults, and severely as at last she suffered by them. But never did I know one person so entirely subjected by another, and never have I regretted anything more deeply than that subjection, which most certainly in its consequences shortened her life. If my mother had not been disfigured by the smallpox, the two sisters would have strikingly resembled each other, except in complexion, my mother being remarkably fair. The expression, however, of the two countenances, was as opposite as the features were alike, and the difference in disposition was not less marked. Take her for all in all, I do not believe that any human being ever brought into the world, and carried through it, a larger portion of original goodness than my dear mother. Every one who knew her loved her, for she seemed made to be happy herself, and to make every one happy within her little sphere. Her understanding was as good as her heart: it is from her I have inherited that alertness of mind, and quickness of apprehension, without which it would have been impossible for me to have undertaken half of what I have performed. God never blessed a human creature with a more cheerful disposition, a more generous spirit, a sweeter temper, or a tenderer heart. I remember that when first I understood what death was, and began to think of it, the most fearful thought it induced was that of losing my mother; it seemed to me more than I could bear, and I used to hope that I might die before her. Nature is merciful to us. We learn gradually that we are to die,—a knowledge which, if it came suddenly upon us in riper age, would be more than the mind could endure. We are gradually prepared for our departure by seeing the objects of our earliest and deepest affections go before us; and even if no keener afflictions are dispensed to wean us from this world, and remove our tenderest thoughts and dearest hopes to another, mere age brings with it a weariness of life, and death becomes to the old as natural and desirable as sleep to a tired child.

My father’s house being within ten minutes’ walk of Terril Street (or rather run, for I usually galloped along the bye-ways), few days passed on which I did not look in there. Miss Tyler never entered the door, because there was an enmity between her and Thomas Southey. She had given just occasion to it. They hated each other cordially now, and took no pains to conceal it. My visits at home, therefore, were short, and I was seldom allowed to dine or pass the evening there. My brother Tom was at school; the difference of age between us made us at that time not very suitable companions when we were together. There was not a single boy of my own age, or near it, in any of the few families with whom either my mother or aunt were acquainted; and my only friend and companion was my aunt’s servant boy, Shadrach Weeks, her maid’s brother. Shad, as we called him, was just my own age, and had been taken into her service soon after she settled in Bristol. He was a good-natured, active, handy lad, and became very much attached to me, and I to him. At this hour, if he be living, and were to meet me, I am sure he would greet me with a hearty shake by the hand; and, be it where it might, I should return the salutation. We used to work together in the garden, play trap in the fields, make kites and fly them, try our hands at carpentry, and, which was the greatest of all indulgences, go into the country to bring home primrose, violet, and cowslip roots; and sometimes to St. Vincent’s Rocks, or rather the heights about a mile and a half farther down the river, to search for the bee and fly orchis. Some book had taught me that these rare flowers were to be found there; and I sought for them year after year with such persevering industry, for the unworthy purpose of keeping them in pots at home, (where they uniformly pined and died,) that I am afraid botanists who came after me may have looked for them there in vain. Perhaps I have never had a keener enjoyment of natural scenery than when roaming about the rocks and woods on the side of the won with Shad and our poor spaniel Phillis. Indeed, there are few scenes in the island finer of their kind; and no other where merchant vessels of the largest size may be seen sailing between such rocks and woods—the shores being upon a scale of sufficient magnitude to supply all that the picturesque requires, and not upon so large a one as to make the ships appear comparatively insignificant.

Had it not been for this companion, there would have been nothing to counteract the effeminating and debilitating tendency of the habits to which my aunt’s peculiarities subjected me. Pricking playbills had been the pastime which she encouraged as long as I could be prevailed on to pursue it; and afterwards she encouraged me to cut paper into fantastic patterns. But I learnt a better use of my hands in Shad’s company; and we became such proficients in carpentry, that, before I went to Westminster, we set about the enterprise of making and fitting up a theatre for puppets. This was an arduous and elaborate work, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, as our design extended with our progress. At this time, little more had been done than to finish the body of the theatre, where there were pit, boxes, and gallery, and an ornamented ceiling, which, when it was put on, made the whole look on the outside like a box of unaccountable form. The spec-tator was to look through a glass behind the gallery, which was intended to have been a magnifier, till, to our great disappointment, we were assured at the optician’s that no single magnifier could produce any effect at the distance which this was required to act. The scenery and stage contrivances I shall speak of in due time; for this was an undertaking which called forth all our ingenuity, and continued for several years to occupy me during the holydays.

Before I went to Westminster, my brother Henry had been taken into Miss Tyler’s household, when he was about five years old. In 1787 a daughter was born, and christened Margaretta. I remember her as well as it is possible to remember an infant; that is, without any fixed and discriminating remembrance. She was a beautiful creature, and I was old enough to feel the greatest solicitude for her recovery, when I set off for London early in the spring of 1788. A thoughtless nursemaid had taken her out one day to the most exposed situation within reach, what is called the Sea Banks, and kept her there unusually long while a severe east wind was blowing. From that hour she drooped; cough and consumption came on. I left her miserably and hopelessly ill, and never saw her more. This was the first death that I had ever apprehended and dreaded, and it affected me deeply.

The Christmas before my entrance at Westminster, I remember seeing in the newspapers the names of those boys who acted in the Westminster Play that year (1787). For one who knew nothing of the school, nor of any person in it, it was something to be acquainted with three or four boys, even by name; and I pleased myself with thinking that they were soon to be my friends. This was a vain fancy in both senses of the word: by their being selected to perform in the Play, I supposed they were studious and clever boys, with whom I should of course become familiar; and I had no notion of the inequality which station produces at a public school. It is such that, when I came to Westminster, I never exchanged a word with any of these persons. Oliphant, Twistleton, and Carey, were three of them. Carey was a marked favourite with Vincent, and afterwards with Cyril Jackson at Christ Church; he is now Bishop of Exeter, having been head master of the school where, at the time of which I am now writing, he was one of the monitors. It is said that he is indebted to Cyril Jackson for his promotion to the bench, the dean requesting a bishopric for him, or rather earnestly recommending him for one, when he refused it for himself. Twistleton was remarkable for a handsome person, on which he prided himself, and for wearing his long hair loose and powdered in school, but tied and drest when he went out; for in those days hobble-de-hoys used to let their hair grow, cultivating it for a tail, which was then the costume of manhood. The Westminster Play gave him a taste for private theatricals: immediately after leaving school he married a girl with whom he had figured away in such scenes; she became an actress afterwards in public of some pretensions, and much notoriety, as being the wife of an honourable and a clergyman. For a while Twistleton figured in London as a popular preacher, which too frequently is but another kind of acting; he then went out to India, and died there lately as archdeacon in Ceylon, where he had latterly taken a very useful and becoming part in promoting the efforts which are made in that island for educating and converting the natives. Oliphant was the more remarkable person of the three, and would probably have risen to celebrity, had he lived. He was from Liverpool, the son, I believe, of a tradesman, one of the queerest fellows in appearance that I ever remember to have seen; and so short-sighted, that we had stories of his walking into a grave in the cloisters, and running his head through a lamp-lighter’s ladder in the street. The boys in the sixth form speak in public, once a week in rotation, three king’s scholars and three town boys: generally this is got through as a disagreeable task; but now and then an ambitious fellow mouths instead of mumbling it; and I remember Twistleton and Oliphant reciting the scene between Brutus and Cassius with good effect, and with voices that filled the school. After leaving Cambridge Oliphant tried his fortune as an author, and published a novel which I never saw; but it had some such title as “Memoirs of a Wild Goose Philosopher.” He died soon afterwards.

His first efforts in authorship were, however, made as a periodical essayist, before he left school. The Microcosm, which the Etonians had recently published, excited a spirit of emulation at Westminster; and soon after I went there, some of the senior king’s scholars, of whom Oliphant was at the head, commenced a weekly paper called the Trifler. As the master’s authority in our age of lax discipline could not prevent this, Smith contented himself, in his good-natured easy way, with signifying his disapprobation, by giving as a text for a theme, on the Monday after the first number appeared, these words scribimus indocti doctique. There were two or three felicitous papers in the Microcosm which made a reputation for the book; indeed Eton has never produced men of more genius than those who contributed to it. The Trifler may in general have been upon a par with it, that is to say, neither of them could contain anything better in serious composition than good school boy’s exercises: but it had no lucky hits of a lighter kind, and when forty numbers had been published, more to the contentment of the writers than of any body else, the volume was closed and was forgotten. The only disgraceful circumstance attending it, was that a caricature was put forth representing Justice as weighing the Microcosm against the Trifler, and the former with its authors, and the king as a make-weight on their side, was made to kick the beam. This was designed and etched by James Hook, then a junior king’s scholar, and now the very Reverend Dean of Worcester. I do not suppose it was sold in the print-shops, but the boys were expected to subscribe for it at a shilling each.

My first attempt to appear in print was in the aforesaid Trifler. I composed an elegy upon my poor little sister’s death, which took place just at that time. The verses were written with all sincerity of feeling, for I was very deeply affected: but that they were very bad I have no doubt; indeed I recollect enough of them to know it. However, I sent them by the penny post, signing them with the letter B; and in the next number this notice was taken of the communication: “B’s Elegy must undergo some alterations, a liberty all our correspondents must allow us to take.” After this I looked for its appearance anxiously, but in vain; for no farther mention was made of it, because no alteration could have rendered it fit for appearance, even among the compositions of elder schoolboys. Oliphant and his colleagues never knew from whence it came; I was far too much below them to be suspected, and indeed, at that time, I was known out of my remove for nothing but my curly head.

Curly heads are not common, I doubt whether they can be reckoned at three per cent, upon the population of this country; but luckily for me, the present Sir Charles Burrell (old Burrell as we then called him, a very good-natured man) had one as well as myself. The space between Palace Yard and St. Margaret’s Churchyard was at that time covered with houses. You must remember them, but I knew all the lanes and passages there; intricate enough they were, and afforded excellent cover, just in the most dangerous part, on the border, when we were going out of bounds, or returning home from such an expedition. The improvements which have laid all open there, have done no service to the Westminster boys, and have deprived me of some of the pleasantest jogging-places for memory that London used to contain. In one of these passages was the door of a little school-master, whose academy was announced by a board upon the front of a house, close to St. Margaret’s Churchyard. Some of the day boys in my remove took it into their heads, in the pride of Westminster, to annoy this academician, by beating up his quarters, and one day I joined in the party. The sport was to see him sally with a cane in his hand, and to witness the admiration of his own subjects at our audacity. He complained at last, as he had good cause, to Vincent; but no suspicion fell or could fall upon the real parties; for so it was, that the three or four ring-leaders in these regular rows were in every respect some of the best boys in the school, and the very last to whom any such pranks would have been imputed. The only indication he could give, was that one of the culprits was a curly-headed fellow. One evening, a little to my amusement, and not a little to my consternation, I heard old Burrell say that Vincent had just sent for him, and taxed him with making a row at a school-master’s in St. Margaret’s Churchyard; and would hardly believe the protestations of innocence, which he reiterated with an oath when he told the story, and which I very well knew to be sincere. It was his curly head, he said, that brought him into suspicion. I kept my own counsel, and did not go near the academy again.

At a public school you know something of every boy in your own boarding-house, and in your own form; you are better acquainted with those in your own remove (which at Westminster, means half a form); and your intimacies are such as choice may make from these chances of juxta-position. All who are above you you know by sight and by character, if they have any: to have none indicates an easy temper, inclined rather to good than evil. Of those who are below you, unless they are in the same house, you are acquainted with very few, even by name. The number, however, of those with whom you are more or less brought in contact, is such, that after-life seldom or never affords another opportunity of knowing so many persons so well, and forming so fair an estimate of human nature. Is that estimate a favourable one? and what says my own experience? Of the three hundred boys who were my contemporaries during four years (about fifty, perhaps, being changed annually) there were very few upon whose countenance Nature had set her best testimonials. I can call to mind only one wherein the moral and intellectual expression were in perfect accord of excellence, and had full effect given them by the features which they illuminated. Those who bore the stamp of reprobation, if I may venture to use a term which is to be abhorred, were certainly more in number, but not numerous. The great majority were of a kind to be whatever circumstances might make them; clay in the potter’s hand, more or less fine; and as it is fitting that such subjects should be conformed to the world’s fashion and the world’s uses, a public school was best for them. But where there is a tendency to low pursuits and low vices, such schools are fatal. They are nurseries also for tyranny and brutality. Yet, on the other hand, good is to be acquired there, which can be attained in no other course of education.

Of my own contemporaries there, a fair proportion have filled that place and maintained that character in the world, which might have been expected from the indications of their boyhood. Some have manifested talents which were completely latent at that time; and others who put forth a fair blossom have produced no fruit. But generally speaking, in most instances where I have had opportunity of observing, the man has been what the boy promised, or, as we should say in Cumberland, offered to be.

Our boarding house was under the tyranny of W. F——. He was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in plain truth, a great brute; as great a one as ever went upon two legs. But there are two sorts of human brutes—those who partake of wolf-nature or of pig-nature, and F—— was of the better breed, if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He would have made a good prize-fighter, a good buccaneer, or, in the days of Coeur de Lion or of my Cid, a good knight, to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty good will. Every body feared and hated him; and yet it was universally felt that he saved the house from the tyranny of a greater beast than himself. This was a fellow by name B——, who was mean and malicious, which F—— was not: I do not know what became of him, his name has not appeared in the Tyburn Calendar, which was the only place to look for it, and if he has been hanged, it must have been under an alias, an observation which is frequently made when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows. He and F—— were of an age and standing, the giants of the house, but F—— was the braver, and did us the good office of keeping him in order. They hated each other cordially, and the evening before we were rid of “Butcher B——”, F—— gave the whole house the great satisfaction of giving him a good thrashing.