giving me that love of books, and that decided determination to literature, as the one thing desirable, which manifested itself from my childhood, and which no circumstance in after-life ever slackened or abated.” Southey's first school was in the village of Corston, nine miles from Bristol: it is described in one of his earliest poems extant (the Retrospect), written after he had visited the house in 1793. It had been the mansion of some decayed family, and had its walled-gardens, summer-houses, gate-pillars, a large orchard, and fine old walnut-trees; the garden was the playground; and Southey recollected of the interior a black oaken staircase from the hall, and the school-room hung with faded tapestry, behind which the boys kept their hoards of crabs. The master was a remarkable man, but an unfit tutor: his whole delight was mathematics and astronomy, and he had constructed an orrery so large that it filled a room. Southey speaks of his ornamental penmanship*—such as flourishing an angel, a serpent, a fish, or a pen, and even historical pictures; and grand spelling-matches of puzzling words hunted from the dictionary. Here Southey read Cordery and Erasmus, and got into Phædrus. Before the boy was seven years old, he had been at the theatre more frequently than he afterward went from the age of twenty till his death. The conversations to which he listened were invariably of actors, of authors, and of the triumphs of both; the familiar books of the household were tragedies and the "acting drama." Shakspeare was in his hands as soon as he could read: and it was long before he had any other knowledge of the history of England than what he gathered from Shakspeare's plays. "Indeed," he says, "when I first read the plain matter of fact, the difference which appeared then puzzled and did not please me; and for some time I preferred Shakspeare's authority to the historians.” Titus Andronicus was at first Southey's favorite play. He went through Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old, reading them merely for the interest which the stories afforded him, but acquiring imperceptibly familiarity with the diction, and ear for the blank verse of our great masters. At the same tender age, the resolution was first formed to excel in the profession which the child heard extolled for its dignity from morning till night. At first the actors of plays were *Southey wrote a stiff, cramp hand, but remarkably neat and regular. He states that he set the fashion for black-letter in title-pages and half-titles, from his admiration of German-text at school. One of the earliest holiday letters which he wrote was a description of Stonehenge, from the Salisbury Guide, which surprised and delighted his master, and gained Southey great praise. esteemed beyond all other men; these in their turn gave place to writers of plays, whom, almost as soon as he could hold a pen, the boy himself began to emulate. He was not quite nine when he set to work upon a tragedy, the subject being the continence of Scipio. In 1782 he went as a day-boarder to a school in Bristol, learning from his master, as invariably proved the case with him, much less than he contrived to teach himself. Before he had reached his twelfth year he had read with the keenest relish Hoole's translations of Jerusalem Liberated and the Orlando Furioso, and had been entranced with the Faerie Queen of Spenser. At thirteen, Southey was not only master of Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser, but well acquainted also, through translations, with Homer and Ovid. He was familiar with ancient history, and his acquaintance with the light literature of the day was bounded only by the supply. A more industrious infancy was never known; but it was surpassed by the ceaseless energy of youth, which, in its turn, was superseded by the unfaltering and unequaled labor of the man. In his twelfth and thirteenth years he wrote three heroic epistles in rhyme; made some translations from Ovid, Virgil, and Horace; composed a satirical description of English manners, as delivered by Omai, the Tahitian, to his countrymen; and next began the story of the Trojan War in a dramatic form. Southey was removed to Westminster School early in 1788, and had for his tutor Botch Hayes, so named from the manner in which he mended his pupils' verses; here Southey first appeared in print, in a weekly paper called the Trifler, in imitation of the Microcosm at Eton. He next set on foot the Flagellant, in which appeared a sarcastic attack upon corporal punishment, which so roused the wrath of Dr. Vincent, the head-master, that Southey acknowledged himself the writer and apologized, but he was compelled to leave the school. He returned to his aunt at Bristol. He next went to matriculate at Oxford; his name had been put down at Christchurch, but the Dean (Cyril Jackson) having heard of the Flagellant, refused to admit Southey. He, however, entered at Balliol College, where he went to reside in January, 1793;* one of his college friends declares that he was a perfect heluo librorum then as well as throughout his life; among his writings there is abundant evidence that he had drunk deeply both of the Greek and Latin * He soon attacked the law against wearing boots at Balliol; and he refused to have his hair dressed and powdered by the college barber, which was customary with fresh men. poets; and his letters at this time indicate a mind imbued with heathen philosophy and Grecian republicanism. He rose at five o'clock in the morning to study; yet he used to say that he learned two things only at Oxford-to row and to swim. He loved the place: in one of his delightful letters, he says: When I walk over these streets, what various recollections throng upon me! what scenes fancy delineates from the hour when Albert first marked it as the seat of learning! Bacon's study is demolished, so I shall never have the honor of being killed by its fall; before my window Latimer and Ridley were burnt, and there is not even a stone to mark the place where a monument should be erected to religious liberty. No attempt was made to ground Southey in prosody; and, as this defect in his education was never remedied (when he went to Westminster he was too forward in other things to be placed low enough in the school for regular training in this), Southey remained to the last as liable to make a false quantity as any Scotchman. In his nineteenth year Southey completed his Joan of Arc. Next year Mr. Coleridge came to Oxford, and was introduced to Southey, who describes him as "of most uncommon merit, of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart." The two friends next planned the emigration scheme of “Pantisoc" which was soon given up. racy, Southey left Oxford in the spring of 1795, and as a means of support, with Coleridge, gave public lectures, which were well attended. The poem of Joan of Arc was next printed and published by Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, which may be considered as the commencement of Southey's long and arduous career as an author; for it has been well observed that "no artisan in the workshop, no peasant in the field, no handicraftsman at his board, ever went so young to his apprenticeship, or wrought so unremittingly through life for a bare livelihood, as Robert Southey." CHARLES LAMB AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. This amiable poet and essayist, whose writings, serious and humorous, alike point to some healthy and benevolent moral, was born in the Inner Temple, in 1775. At the age of seven, he was received into the school of Christ's Hospital, and there remained till he had entered his fifteenth year. "Small of stature, delicate of frame, and constitutionally nervous and timid," * With this wild scheme of "Pantisocracy," Miss Tyler was so offended that she would never again see him. The expenses of his education, both at school and college, were defrayed by his uncle, the Rev Herbert Hill, at that time a chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, to whom he so gratefully addresses his dedication to his Colloquies : "O friend! O more than father! whom I found No gratitude can speak the debt I owe." says his biographer, Judge Talfourd, "he would seem unfitted to encounter the discipline of a school formed to restrain some hundreds of lads in the heart of the metropolis, or to fight his way among them. But the sweetness of his disposition won him favor from all; and although the antique peculiarities of the school tinged his opening imagination, they did not sadden his childhood." "Lamb," says his school-fellow Le Grice, was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his school-fellows and his master on account of his infirmity of speech. His countenance was mild; his complexion clear brown, with an expression which might lead you to think he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not each of the same color: one was hazel, the other had specks of grey in the iris, mingled as we see red spots in the blood-stone. His step was plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure." He was unfitted for joining in any boisterous sport: while others were all fire and play, he stole along with all the selfconcentration of a young monk. He passed from cloister to cloister from the school to the Temple; and here in the gardens, on the terrace, or at the fountain, was his home and recreation. Here he had access to the library of Mr. Salt, one of the Benchers; and thus, to use Lamb's own words, he was "tumbled in a spacious closet of good old English reading, where he browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage." When Lamb quitted school, he was "in Greek, but not Deputy Grecian." He had read Virgil, Sallust, Terence, selec tions from Lucian's Dialogues, and Xenophon; and evinced considerable skill in the niceties of Latin composition, both in prose and verse. But the impediment in his speech proved an insuperable obstacle to his striving for an exhibition, which was given under the condition of entering the church, for which he was unfitted by nature: to this apparently hard lot he submitted with cheerfulness. Toward the close of 1789, he quitted Christ's Hospital: thenceforth his employment lay in the SouthSea House, and in the accountant's office of the East India Company. Lamb has left us many charming pictures of his school-days and school-fellows, which must have been as delightful to him as the accounts of them are to the reader. In his "Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years Ago," he says: * The letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life. By Thomas Noon Talfourd, one of his Executors. Vol. i. 1837. "We had plenty of exercise after school hours; and, for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier than in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar 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 on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper-Master, but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the department of which I had the good fortune to 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 accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, 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 cane with no great good will-holding it like a dancer.' We had classics of our own, without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,' that passed current amongst us-Peter Wilkins-the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boylethe Fortunate Blue Coat Boy-and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations, making little sun-dials of paper, or wielding those ingenious parenthesis 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 French and English,' and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time-mixing the useful with the agreeable—as would have made the souls of Rosseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. "Matthew Field had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five years of their education; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introductory fables of Phædrus. How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we presented to 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 neat 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 the discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous forces: his storms came near, but never touched us; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without something of terror alloying their gratitude: the remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself 'a Playing holiday.' "Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ilulantes, 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 these periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex-or at the tristis severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence-thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle.-He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school when he made his morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet 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?' * * * # Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate. Co-Grecian with S. was Th, who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. ThTh 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."† * Cowley. † A paper of interest akin to Lamb's "Recollections," was communicated by a quondam Blue, Mr. Peter Cunningham, F.S A., to the Illustrated London News for December 19, 1857. This genial and clever piece of picture-writing is entitled "Christ's Hospital and Christmas Eve." |