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Winchester, I contented myself with instructing others to do what I could not do myself, and have reason to think I made several very pretty speakers. This may seem conceited enough-the practice of the world bears me out. The celebrated" Master Betty" was taught by Gaigh, who, besides his stammer, had an extraordinary nasal intonation. I once heard Bannister take him off in his tuition- My na-na-name i-is N-NNor-val on the Gra-Grampian hillsMy fa-a-a-ther fed his fl-fl-flocks." I said I was not a speaker myself. You know, Eusebius, my voice is even now none of the strongest, nor is it significant-that is, it has no peculiar tone, but falls in with and is lost in the general voice; so that, in asking a lady or gentleman opposite to take a glass of wine with me, I am so often inaudible that I frequently give up the attempt rather than attract observation, from which my foolish innate modesty ever shrinks. That bashful modesty is hereditary-I have it from my father and it has sadly been in my way; but as to voice, a distressing instance of the weakness of my voice is still fresh in my memory, and still in remembrance makes me feel uncomfortably, though it happened many years ago. I had rode a distance of some miles to breakfast with a friend with whose family I was unacquainted, but, led by a similarity of pursuits, I purposed to visit him for a few hours. The breakfast passed off without my noticing any thing particular in any of his family, and very soon afterwards we were engaged in our pursuit, which in fact was some experiment in painting. This engaged us so long that he made me stay to dine with them, not telling me he had any company, and for such full-dress display I was but little prepared. I was, therefore, com pletely taken in, when, entering the dining-room just as all were taking their seats, I found a regular dinner party all around me, all strangers. In this predicament, not to look like a dumb fool, I addressed myself to my friend's sister, whom I had met at breakfast in the morning, with this wise remark," What a fine day we have had!" when, to my horror, with an eager and curious look, she put her hand behind her ear, thrusting it forward to hear; upon which, with my usual weak and unfortunate voice, I

repeated this dreadfully common remark. The poor deaf lady turned the other ear. Again" I observed that it is a very fine day, ma'am !”—and now the whole table was directed to us two. She, thinking I had something important to communicate, half-raised herself from her seat, and leaned forward across the table. Again I tried

"I only observed, ma'am, that it is a very fine day." Still not heard, I was distressed beyond measure-all eyes were upon me. Never shall I forget her searching eyes of eager curiosity to be gratified, and to be disappointed at the expense of silly me! Giving up all hopes of gaining the desired information from me, she turned to the gentleman who sat by her, and who had stentorian lungs, and in a voice rendered more harsh by disappointment and deafness, said, "What does that gentleman say?"

"He says, ma'am," replied he, with malicious loudness, and a grin for which I could have killed him, "that it is a very fine day!"

"Oh!" quoth my friend's sister; and not another word did I ever attempt to exchange with her, and never will; and from that day I have a nervous dislike to the company of deaf people. But the time I am now speaking of, that is when I was at Winchester, and about to be the principal actor in a most moving spectacle, I was a real sufferer from that natural weakness of voice. The master I was then under, was afterwards head master. I liked the man as well as a boy of my age could like a master, but he liked not me. He had an antipathy to a weak voice; it irritated him, and an irritated master is no joke to a boy. He was rather singular-I will therefore endeavour to describe him. He was a pale-faced, intelligent, and well-looking man, of rather a commanding height, and slouchy, slovenly manner, with a delightful enthusiasm, occasionally breaking through the visible languor of teaching dull boys, whenever any passage of beauty or interest excited him-then would he stride backwards and forwards the length of his walk across the lower end of the school-room, with a loose fling in his walk, breaking the back of the book, grasped, not held, energetically, and, with a peculiar curl of his mouth resembling a snarl, almost nasally mouthing out the passage.

It was

generally believed that he was a man of considerable genius, kept under by habitual indolence; not that he was an inattentive, or, commonly speaking, indolent master-he took great pains with the boys, and made many ripe scholars. At the time I speak of him he was second master. As head master, where his taste and genius came into fairer play, he shone, and won himself a high name, and the love and respect of many, that now through him shine as "lights" in literature and in life. I have seen him in his loose fling of a walk sail up the schoolroom to take his seat, having on two bands, one at the back of his neck, the other in front, probably the former yesterday's, which had worked its way round and been forgotten. When not walking, and pleased, he used to rub his leg, across one keee, and snort out Virgil or Horace, the snort terminating in a sort of purr, while he waved his head to and fro with delight. Having described the man, let me now show how I suffered from his antipathy to a weak voice. You must know, Eusebius, that it was of the utmost importance to boys to keep their places, as their position was numbered every day. For instance, suppose the class to consist of twenty-five, the head of the class numbered twentyfive, the second boy twenty-four, and so down; and at the end of the halfyear the numbers were added up, and those which had most were advanced to another class. Now, suppose No. 25, or the head boy, to be "put on," as it was termed; if he made a mistake, the next boy to him was called on to rectify it; if he could, he took the other's place--if he could not, it went down till some fortunate boy could make the correction: he then became the head boy of the class. So, if a boy in the middle of the class, or lower down, committed an error, the question went down till answered; those who answered it took the places of those who did not-if none answered to the bottom of the class, the question then went to the top of the class, and so on; and who answered it then became head of the class, and had, if he kept his place for the day, the highest mark. Thus, in the studious and clever boys, there was very considerable emulation, though it need not be observed, there were always a sufficient number of drones

who did not participate. Now, to me it was a constant vexation, that with every wish to keep a good position in my class, I never could for any length of time succeed, not from lack of industry or scholarship, such as was then necessary, but from the unfortunate circumstance of having a weak voice. It was an inconceivable injury to me; for, when "put on," and reading at my best, and, as I thought, loud, the master almost always used to cry out, "Speak louder." I thought I did so the command was repeated. I did my best-then, rather irritated, he used to say, "Lose three places." On I went, as I thought very loud; so thought not he-" Lose three more places," then " Lose nine," then, with considerable irritation and a spiteful look, "Go to the bottom;" and thus, for no fault of scholarship or industry, I lost the fruits of both. This certainly made me in time very indifferent to the matter-whether I learned industriously or was idle, it was pretty much the same thing. Now, then, to return to my subject. You see I was not likely to be very conspicuous as an orator, upon the occasions of public speaking; at one of which happened the incident which it was my purpose to tell you when I put pen to paper; but as in my last, so in this, there is much wandering. We shall come to it at last, and then you will wonder I did not tell it at first, forgetting that you have had all the advantage of the interest of the curiosity by the delay, and perhaps you will assert that there is less interest in the incident itself. A traveller has often more interesting amusement in the course of his journey than in the object of it; and you now, Eusebius, are an inside passenger in the coach Boyhood, driven by Memory, and at the mercy of old Garrulity; you would infallibly therefore go to sleep, and it is as much as I can do as it is to keep you awake, if I did not just gently keep alive expectation. When I ascended to scholastic rank, though no speaker in public myself, I had the vanity to think I could teach others, and took great pains to set up a number of little orators, and fre quently have laughed heartily at the awkward squad of eloquence. It is in truth whimsical enough to see a little urchin, taken from his peg-top, give himself all the airs of Alexander.

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I will say this to the credit of the scholars-few would have been inclined to kick them for any affectation. In general, the parts were quite underdone. I did not, however, often try very high flights, nor too pathetic— sometimes venturing upon the humorous. My favourite piece for instruction, excepting some Latin which I do not speak of, was Cowper's Selkirk on his desolate Island; and often the little insensitive brutes did offend me, cantering so amblingly round the island

"From the centre all round to the sea; and I may very fairly quote another line of that beautiful poem, descriptive of their style

"Their tameness was shocking to me."
Others were much more ambitious.
Heroes, and heroines too, were orally
enacted, from the utmost fury to the
most diminutive pathetic. There were
two especial favourites, and perhaps
they are so still at most schools,
"Alexander's Feast" and Collins's
"Ode on the Passions." Justice must
be done to the school, however—the
numerous burlesques upon these sel-
dom reached a public exhibition. It
was amusement enough to a senior
boy to seat himself with the dignity of
a teacher, and with a little boy before
him, say, like another Hamlet, "Speak
that speech, I pray you." "Alex-
ander's Feast" was the aim of high
ambition. Admit a few words, Euse-
bius, on that celebrated ode, and the
other odes on St Cecilia's day. From
my very boyhood I disliked the
"Feast." I thought it not much to
the credit of music, that it should turn
so great a hero into such a brute.
Whether it be from that early preju-
dice I know not; but I cannot read it
now without seeing it, or rather feel-
ing it, to be a splendid burlesque-a
travestie of the heroics. It is the very
clown turned harlequin, that

"With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,

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And seems to shake the spheres." That" seems is vile; but we soon have a little more than "seems, madam! nay, not seems!"-and here, had the Society for the Suppression of Vice existed, they would have prosecuted "glorious John".

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NO. CCXCIV. VOL. XLVII.

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"His numbers raised a shade from hell, Hers lift the soul to heaven."

The antithetical" mortal and angel" are not exchanged for the better in "soul and shade." A boy in spouting Pope's, thinking perhaps that Pope, according to his nature, meant to be satirical, altered the or into and, turning at once the pathetic into wit,

and it might have been personally applied by some of the audience"Restore, restore Eurydice to life, Oh, take the husband and return the wife." I dare say this arose from the vulgar take the husband-and then, " return the wife" is but a huckstering expression. There is a passage in this "St Cecilia's Day" of Pope, perhaps the best in it, that is after all borrowed, as it seems to me, from Dryden's first Ode it sinks into insignificance in the comon the subject; and, though good now, parison. Will you, Eusebius, think it no imitation at all? I do. The kindred trees standing around, show the picture to be an imitation, as well as the whole style.

"High on the stern the Thracian raised
his strain,

While Argos saw her kindred trees
Descend from Pelion to the main ;
Transported demigods stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound,

Inflamed with glory's charms:
Each chief his seven-fold shield display'd,
And half unsheath'd the shining blade;
And seas and rocks and skies rebound-
To arms to arms! to arms!"
2 H

I am sure you don't like "transported demigods "-it too forcibly makes the Argo a convict-ship-smells of Botany Bay; nor "inflamed with glory's charms.' One really seems to see the arrival of those patriots, recently convicted of Russellism, at their place of destination. But here Pope cast a shadow before him he knew nothing of. The lines and the picture are vigorous and vivid. Ten thousand times more magnificent is the wondrous passage in Dryden's first Ode. I had rather be the author of these few lines than the whole " Celebrated Ode," Alexander's Feast:

Begging the Doctor's pardon, will you not agree with me that this is rather too strong of the conceit? It is almost a pun, and certainly suggests one, for the diapason does but Imsignify the organization of man. mediately follows the sublime passage quoted, and it is remarkable for its striking force of repetition of rhyme that the music may be all perfect, in which respect the Doctor thinks the first stanza deficient. Hear what further the Doctor says of this ode: "The conclusion is likewise striking, but it includes an image so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I

"What passion cannot Music raise and could wish the antithesis of Music

quell!

When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,

And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a god they thought there could
not dwell

Within the hollow of that shell,

That spoke so sweetly and so well. What passion cannot Music raise and

quell!"

The instant worship, and prostration before the supposed divinity, raises the subject, Music, as high as it is possible to raise it. As a whole, indeed, that first ode is very fine. Is it not strange that Johnson, who speaks of it in such high terms, does not notice this, the most beautiful and most poetical passage in the whole ode? Hear what the Doctor says. He is speaking of Dryden :

"In his first ode for Cecilia's Day, which is lost in the splendour of the second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word diapason is too technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another.

'From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

The universal frame began; When Nature underneath a heap

Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head;

The tuneful voice was heard from high,

-Arise ye more than dead!

Then cold and heat, and moist and dry,

In order to their stations leap,

And Musie's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

untuning had found some other place.

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the blest above:

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So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.'
However grand this may be, it is no-
thing to the great original from which
it borrows, and deteriorates the gran-
deur by the last line, which is both a
conceit and a meanness, particularly
of expression, as inadequate to the
idea, false as it is.

When multitudes are waiting at the
Poetry, if not music, has led me astray.
great gates for admission to hear the
college orators, shall I act showman-
When they did assemble on that parti-
with "walk in, gentlemen and ladies?”
cular occasion, I assure you, Eusebius,
to any sight.
I should have made but a sorry usher
You know what a fag
is, with only half his work over: such
was I then; for I had not been a year
in college, and, but that I was in fact
imprisoned, I had a fag-like, vagabond
look. I am quite certain that I was
so stupid and senseless, that the finest
acting in the world would not have
drawn me into pathetics. I did not
Abradates," some beautiful lines, the
care a pin's head for " Panthea and
and performing too, geniuses of the
composition of one of the promising,
school; and yet, when the heroine
slew herself over the dead body of her
husband, how did the handkerchiefs
fly out-what tears were shed!-and

Through all the compass of the notes that, Eusebius, was all my doing-
"all my thunder," as old Dennis used
to say.
We are a little too much in

it ran,

The diapason closing full in man.'

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66

advance the company are not yet seated. I wish you had known the great school-room; perhaps you have seen it, picture of rods and all Quæque ipse miserrima vidi,” and I may add" et quorum pars magna fui. Imagine the large space well filled-y -you may see a procession, if you will but shut your outward eyes and open your inner, of wardens, and doctors, and masters, and gentlemen, and ladies, all in their best, making their way between rows of admiring youths, boys, and urchins, to the right as you enter the school, and finally seating themselves on the raised seats of several tiers occupying the end of the room. It is a goodly sight; and there they are waiting to hear the speeches spoken. Of the actors, the vain and ambitious are impatient to begin; the modest, for observe it is summer, and very hot in a crowded room, are suffering under additional perspiration. On their proper seats of dignity sit the wardens, supported a trifle below on either side by the informator, or head master, and second master. At the wardens' elbow you might see little morocco cases; these are the prize medals, which I always used to think of as Peter Pindar spoke of princesses' lips-such as

"I never kiss'd, and never shall."

Now, I dare say you are impatient, and asking, as many others then did, when are the speeches to begin? and there is this difference between you and those enquirers, for you want more to know the end than the beginning. But I must not forget myself; for I assure you I intend yet to be a principal actor. Where was I then ?what doing? Nothing at all; but looking on as well as the pushing crowding boys would let me. Yet here I must crave your permission to have another slight digression; and, believe me, it is necessary to the conelusion, or I would not keep you longer. in suspense. I said I was at this time a fag; that is, from my position and standing in the school I was bound to do the bidding of any and all the eighteen seniors. This system is so well understood, that I need not enter into any particulars respecting it. But those were happy times even for the most worked fags. Our dinner hour was six o'clock. We had access to a well-stored cellar of excellent

beer; and enjoyed the singular luxury of drinking it out of silver cups. We had also leather jacks or nipperkins, which were filled every evening, and taken to our chambers, our sleeping apartments, and studying apartments, and banqueting rooms for here we used to banquet every night after chapel-for which purpose each boy took from the buttery his portion of bread and cheese. And thus after chapel, we all, high and low in the school, big and little, spent a social hour of real enjoyment; and, if it was winter, by the side of an excellent fire. Thus the seventy boys were distributed in seven chambers, so that each chamber had its little social party. Each was a little distinct family, and a tie not unlike that of a family good-will was acknowledged and felt. In former days, one of these chambers was consecrated to the rod, and there remain still perhaps some portion of the representation of the insignia of office. This was the seventh chamber. There is an anecdote handed down of Queen Elizabeth visiting the college, and being taken to this chamber by a boy whom she selected as her cicerone. They say that her Majesty, viewing the picture of the rod, asked the boy how often he had been flogged, to which question he readily replied from Virgil

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Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem."

We did not always confine ourselves to a bread-and-cheese supper, but occasionally made some important additions. I say occasionally-for we had little need, in a general way, of any thing beyond our allowance, which was ample. We fared well. Excellent mutton. It is not true that there was nothing but mutton. There was boiled beef for luncheon; but it was not eaten; and was regularly taken away for the prisoners in the jail. There was only one thing regarding our eating which was atrocious. We had no plates!-and for knives and forks, he who was not self-provided was not provided with any. For plates we had wooden trenchers; which, besides that they warped in all shapes, were with difficulty, or it would be better to say, not at all kept clean. They were daily scraped. possibly sometimes washed. But the rats and mice used them as well as ourselves, and indeed

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