Meeting to hear Mr. Waldegrave preach. Mr. W. as I afterwards knew, was an ignorant, noisy, ranting preacher; he bawled loud, thumped the cushion, and sometimes cried. He was, however, a kind man, and of course he was a favourite of mine. It belongs perhaps to a later time, but I well recollect he repeatedly used the phrase, "But as the 'Postle Paul say " (say is Suffolk grammar). And after all I could carry away a thought now and then from him. To return to my mother's instructions; I recollect a practice of hers, which had the best effect on my mind. She never would permit me (like all children, a glutton) to empty the dish at table if there was anything particularly nice, such as pudding or pie. "Henry, don't take any more; do you not suppose the maids like to have some?" A respect and attention to servants and inferiors was a constant lesson, and if I have any kindness and humanity in my ordinary feelings I ascribe it all to her, and very much to this particular lesson. CHAP. I. 1782. Mother. School. Of my schooling at Mr. Lease's I have little or Mr. Lease's nothing to say. I was an ordinary boy and do not recollect acquiring any distinction at school. The sons of Mr. Lease I knew and the children of some other Dissenters who went there; but some others of my acquaintance went to the Grammar School. This set them above the rest of us, and I believe I should have wanted to go to the Grammar School too, but I had heard that Mr. Lawrence was a flogging master, and I was therefore glad to escape going there. It was either in 1782 or 1783, the Annual Register CHAP. I. 1782. School of the year will say which, that there was a very hard winter throughout the country. To raise a fund for the poor of the town, the Grammar School boys were induced to act plays at the theatre. I have a distinct recollection of some of the boy actors; the principal play was Venice Preserved. There is nothing worth noticing in the acting of the tragedy, but it is a significant circumstance, and one that belongs to the state of moral and religious feeling in the country between sixty and seventy years ago,* that the farce acted with Venice Preserved was Foote's Minor, the performers being school-boys! It would seem impossible, but it becomes less surprising when one recollects that the hatred of the clergy was still active against the Methodists, that Dr. Squintum (Whitfield) was vigorously satirized, and that the religious classes were the object of derision to all the genteel part of the community, especially to the clergy. I only wonder that I was allowed to be present, but probably the Dissenters, certainly my parents, knew nothing about such plays. How much I understood of the farce I cannot now tell. Perhaps little clearly. But children are content with confused and obscure perceptions of a pleasurable character. When very young indeed my mother delighted me by singing a ballad which must be in some of the popular collections. It was about the rich young lady who lived "in the famous town of Reading," and fell in love with a poor lawyer. She challenges This was written in 1845. School Days. him and he is forced to fight or marry her in a mask. He consults a friend who answers "If she's rich you are to blame, If she's poor you are the same." Of course it ends happily. I used to delight in this story. Children's moral feelings are not more delicate than those of the people or their poets. I recollect too the coming out of John Gilpin, and rather think I had a sixpence given me for learning it by heart. I was My mother's sister married a Dissenting minister, Mr. Fenner, who kept a boarding-school at Devizes. accordingly sent to his school, where I remained three years. The time passed pleasantly enough, but I have often regretted that my educational advantages were not greater at this period of my life. Among the places in the neighbourhood where I spent some happy days was a gentleman's seat called Blacklands. At that time it was occupied by an old gentleman named Maundrel, one of whose sons was at the same school with me. The old gentleman was burly and bluff, very kind and generous, but passionate; once or twice. he did not scruple to box the ears of his young visitors. Not far from the house was a horse cut out of the chalk hill. I believe it exists still. Maundrel set us boys-there were some seven or eight of us -to weed it, and very good workmen we were. He used also to make us carry logs of wood for the fires upstairs, telling us that we must work for our living. But he fed us well. II CHAP. I. 1786. Mr. Fenner's School at Devizes. 12 CHAP. I. 1788. School Days. During my school life I obtained among my schoolfellows the reputation of being a good talker, and was put forward as a speaker on public matters in school, such as a combination against a head-boy. And I was also noted as an inventor of tales, which I used to relate to the boys in bed; but this faculty did not grow with me, and has utterly died away. I had no distinction in any branch of school-exercise but one, and this was French. I did not like learning it at first, and wrote to my mother to beg that I might be relieved from the task; but she wisely took no notice of my letter. Before I left school I liked French above everything, and was quite able to read with pleasure the French classics, as they are called. I did not once go home during the three years of my school life at Devizes, but in the summer of the second year my mother came to see me. The sensation which I most distinctly recollect is that of seeing her at the Turnpike-gate of the Green. I thought her altered, or rather for a moment did not know her, and that pained me; but she gradually became to me what she had been. Though Mr. Fenner was a minister I received no religious instruction at his school. What I fancied to be religion was of my own procuring. I had fallen in with De Foe's Family Instructor, and I became at once in imagination a religious teacher. I had an opportunity of trying my power, for during one of my last holidays I was left with a few Irish boys when Mr. and Mrs. Fenner went a journey. I was the older and placed in authority over the other boys, School Days. and I was not a little pleased with myself for my attend prayers. But I scorned reading a prayer; I estimation. 13 CHAP. I. 1789. In the summer of 1789 I returned home with Mr. Mr. Crabb's Fenner and my aunt. My uncle Crabb had a few years before accepted the office of pastor at the Wattisfield Meeting, and as he intended to open a school there, I went to him for the next half-year. Our numbers were so few that we were subject to little of the ordinary restraint of school. It was while here that I had a letter from my brother Thomas directed to "Mr. Robinson, Attorney at Law." I had to ask Mr. Crabb to explain to me the nature of an attorney's profession, which had been chosen for me without my knowledge. So entirely have I lost all recollection of the few months spent at Wattisfield that I cannot call to mind. anything I studied or read. I only recollect having a sentiment of respect and regard towards Mr. Crabb. I recollect too that it was while I was with Mr. Crabb that the French Revolution broke out, that every one rejoiced in it as an event of great promise, and that Popery and absolute government were both to be destroyed. Though I had no proper political knowledge, yet I had strong party feelings. In my childhood I had always heard the Church spoken of as an unjust institution, and thought Dissenters a persecuted body. School at field. The French |