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IN Mr. Lambs "Works," published a year or two since, I find a magnifit eulogy on my old school*, such as it was, or noears to him to have beeween the 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing at Christs was nearly corresponding with his; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has trived t together whatever be said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument most ingeniously.[Footnote] "Recolles Of Christs Hospital"
I remember L. at school; and well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distin which was deo us. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the Iemple explain how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a m, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf -- our crug moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, smag of the pitched leathern jack it oured from. Our Mondays milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of "extra-ordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesdays mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant -- (we had three banyan to four meat days in the week) was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of gio make it go down the mlibly) or the fragrant amon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth -- our sty mutts on Fridays -- and rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, ouesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion -- he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskiiknown to our palates), cooked iernal kit (a great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite); and the tending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing; sympathy for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, stro of the passions!) predominant, breaking dowony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a troubling over-sciousness.
I oor friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could re upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forotice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, sooired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough; and, oer ahey all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) e back, with its church, and trees, and faces! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upo e in Wiltshire!
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressio by the recolle of those friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day-leaves, when, by some strange arra, we were turned out, for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing.excursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he -- for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-pastimes -- How merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and strip uhe first warmth of the sun; and wanton lik?e young da the streams; getting us appetites for noon, which those of us that were pennyless (our sty m crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying -- while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings -- the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them -- How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoig, half-relut, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had expired!
It was worse in the days of wio go prowling about the streets objectless -- shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little y, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the Lions iower -- to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. L.s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any plaint which he had to make was sure of being atteo. This was uood at Christs, and was an effectual s to him against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-siing to call to recolle. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter nights -- and this not once, but night after night -- in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking after we were goo bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the you children of us slept, answerable for an offehey her dared to it, nor had the power to hinder. -- The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow; and, uhe cruelest penalties, forbad the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the days sports.
There was one H--, who, I learned, in after days, was seen expiating some maturer offen the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fang that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered -- at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits, some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument ing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red hot iron; and nearly starved forty of us, with exag tributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the ivance of the nurses daughter (a young flame of his) he had trived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the ward, as they called our dormitories. This game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat -- happier than Caligulas minion, could he have kept his own sel -- but, foolisher, alas! than any of his species in the fables -- waxing fat, and kig, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortuo the world below; and, laying out his simple throat, blew such a rams horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set cealment any lo defiahe t was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield; but I never uood that the patron underwent any sure on the occasion. This was iewardship of L.s admired Perry.
Uhe same facile administration, L. have fotten the punity with which the nurses used to carry aenly, in open platters, for their own tables, o of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners? These things were daily practised in that magnifit apartment, which L. (grown oisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, and others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little solatory to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido)
To feed our mind with idle portraiture.
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled; as it down to some superstition. But these unorsels are never grateful to young palates (children are universally fat-haters) and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goul, and held in equal detestation. -- suffered uhe imputation.
---- `Twas said
He ate strange flesh.
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, you may credit me) and, in an especial mahese disreputable morsels, which he would vey away, aly stow itle that stood at his bed-side. None saw whee them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had beeo carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full of something. This then must be the accursed thing. jecture was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None spake to him. No one would lay with him. He was exunicated; put out of the pale of the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that ive punishment, which is mrievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by two of his school-felloere determio get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as there exist spes of in cery-lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism with open door, and a on staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which ened by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspi was now ripened into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They had him ioils. Accusation was formally preferred, aribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a little after my time), with that patient sagacity which tempered all his duct, determio iigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentehe result was, that the supposed mendits, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of -- , an ho couple e to decay, -- whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from mendicy; and that this young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this while been only feeding the old birds! -- The governors on this ocuch to their honour, voted a present relief to the family of ---, and presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read upon RASH JUDGMENT, on the occasion of publicly delivering the medal to --, I believe, would not be lost upon his auditory. -- I had left school then, but I well remember -- . He was a tall, shambling youth with a cast in his eye, not at all c藏书网alculated to ciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a bakers basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done by the old folks.
I odriac lad; and the sight of a boy iers, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was ly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven; and had only read of such things in books, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had run away. This was the punishment for the first offence. -- As a novice I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a bla -- a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted -- with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but the porter whht him his bread and water -- who might not speak to him ; -- or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was almost wele because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude: and here he was shut up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition io his time of life, might subject him to.* This was the penalty for the sed offence. -- Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what became of him in the degree?
[Footnote] * One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accly, at length vihe governors of the impolicy of this part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. -- This fancy of dungeons for children rout of Howards brain; for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could willingly spit on his statue.
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire -- all trace of his late "watchet weeds" carefully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale an frighted features, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought into the hall (L.s favourite state-room), where awaited him the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was theh to share no more; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion; and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in these extremities visible. These were governors; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always aced to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate (so at least we uood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gase, aer Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The sc was, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor apahe criminal quite round the hall. We were generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting -- circumstao make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the baotty and livid. After sc, he was made over, in his Sao, to his friends, if he had any (but only such pates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhahe effect of the se, had his station allotted to him oside of the hall gate.
These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil the general mirth of the unity. lenty of exercise and recreation after school hours; and, for myself, I must fess, that I was never happier, than ihe Upper and the Lrammar Schools were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the inhabitants owo sides of the Pyrehe Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the apartment, of which I had the good fortuo be a member. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an acce, rammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years iing through the verbs depo, and awo in fetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not lear, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod and in truth he wielded the e with no great good will -- holding it "like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peaor perhaps set any great sideration upon the value of juveime. He came among us, now and then, but often staid away whole days from us; and when he came, it made no differeo us -- he had his private room to retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being beholden to "i Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among us -- Peter Wilkins -- the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle -- the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy -- and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for meic or stific operations; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military over that laudable game "Frend English," and a huher such devices to pass away t<bdi>.99ｌib.</bdi>he time -- mixing the useful with the agreeable -- as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us.
Matthew Field beloo that class of modest divines who affeix in equal proportion the gentleman, the scholar, and the Christian; but, I know not how, the first ingredient is generally found to he the predominating dose in the position. He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some episcopal levee when he should have been attending upon us. He had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five first years of their education; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introductory fables of Phaedrus. How things were suffered to go on thus, I ot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a delica interfering in a provi strictly his own. I have not been without my suspis, that he was not altogether displeased at trast we preseo his end of the school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more recile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came near, but ouched us; trary to Gideons miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry. His boys turned out bbr>.</abbr>the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils ot speak of him without something of terror allaying their gratitude; the remembrance of Field es back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and i idleness, and Elysiaions, and life itself a "playing holiday."
[Footnote] * Cowley.
Though suffitly removed from the jurisdi of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said)<bdi>藏书网</bdi> to uand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as sel pipes. He would laugh, ay, aily, but then it must be at Flaccuss quibble about Rex -- or at the tristis severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence -- this, which at their first broag could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. -- He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of differing omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured, u, angry , denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his m appearan his passy, or passionate wig. No et expounded surer. -- J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a "Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me? " -- Nothing was more on than to see him make a head-lory into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, "Ods my life, Sirrah," (his favourite adjuration) "I have a great mind to whip you," then, with as sudden a retrag impulse, fling bato his lair -- and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally fotten the text) drive headlong out again, pieg out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devils Litany with the expletory yell -- "and I WILL, too." -- In his gentler moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time; a paragraph, and a lash between; whi those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the patient with a veion for the diffuser graces of rhetoric.
[Footnote] * In this and every thing B. was the antipodes of his co-adjutor. While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fan the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, uhe name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet fotten by the iclers of that sort of literature. It ted by Garrick, but the town did not give it their san. -- B. used to say of it, in a way of half-pliment, hail-irony, that it was too classical for representation
Once, and but ohe uplifted rod was known to fall iual from his hand -- when droll squinting W -- having been caught putting the inside of the masters desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not desig, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been forewarhis exquisite irreition of any law a to the oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was unavoidable.
L. has give to B.s great merits as an instructor. Ce, in his literary life, has pronounced a more intelligible and ample en ohe author of the try Spectator doubts not to pare him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we ot dismiss him better than with the pious ejaculation of C. -- when he heard that his old master was on his death-bed -- " Poor J.B. ! -- may all his faults be fiven; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."
Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. -- First Gre of my time was La Pepys Stevens, ki of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and inseparable panion) with Dr. T-----e. What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors! -- You never met the one by the street without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the enerally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their profession and when, in advanced age, one found it veo retire, the other was not long in disc that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which, at thirteen helped it to turhe Cicero De Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship which the you even then was burning to anticipate! Co-Gre with S. was Th----- , who has since executed with ability various diplomatis at the Northern courts. Th----- was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. -- Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta) a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critid is author (besides the try Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. -- M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) suffitly justifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hht not be exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic dios with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. o M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the Abinal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems; a pale, studious Gre. -- Then followed poor S-----, ill-fated M----- of these the Muse is silent.
Finding some of Edwards race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.
e bato memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery n before thee -- the dark pillar not yet turned -- Samuel Taylor Ce -- Logi, Metaphysi, Bard -- How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportioween the speed the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reg Homer in his Greek, or Pindar -- while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the ats of the inspired charity-boy ! -- Mahe "wit-bats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller,) between him and C. V. Le G-----," which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man of war; Master Ce, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quiess of his wit and iion."
Nor shalt thou, their peer, be quickly fotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy ition of some poigna of theirs; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine owinct are those smiles, with that beautiful tenance, with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, insed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly verted by thy angel-look, exged the half-formed terrible "bl--," fentler greeting -- "bless thy handsome face!"
folloho ought to be now alive, and the friends of Elia -- the junior Le G------ and F----- ; who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of -- ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning -- exged their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca : -- Le G----- , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F----- dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old Roma about him.
Fine, fraed Fr-- , the present master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T-----, mildest of Missionaries -- and both my good friends still -- close the catalogue of Gres in my time.
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