My home for the first two years while I was at Williams’s,

was at my Fathers, 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 past with her at Weymouth, whither she was invited to join her friend M^rs Dolignon.

This Lady whom I remember with the utmost reverence & affection, was a widow with two children, Louisa

who was about four years elder than me, & John

who was just my age. Her maiden was name was Delamare, she & her husband

being both of Refugee race,

– an extraction of which I should be far more proud than if my name was to be found in the roll of Battle Abbey.

I have heard how her husband in some delirium died by his own hand, – & this perhaps had b may have broken her spirits, & given a subdued & somewhat pensive manner to one who was naturally the gentlest, meekest, kindest of human beings. I shall often have to speak of her in these letters. She had seen me at Bath in my earliest childhood. I had the good fortune then to obtain a place in her affections – & that place I retained – even when she thought it necessary to estrange me from her family.

& this he designs as characteristic of a ‘soul discontented with capacity.’

When I went on deck in the Coruña packet the first morning,

& for the first time found myself out of sight of land, the first feeling was certainly one of disappointment as well as surprize, at seeing myself in the centre of so small a circle. But the impression which the sea made upon me when I first saw it at Weymouth was very different, – probably because not having like Charoba thought of its immensity, it filled me with wonder <I was at once made sensible of it>. The sea seen from the shore is still to me the most impressive of all objects, – except the starry heavens: & If I could live over any hours of my boyhood again, it should be those which I <then> spent upon the beach at Weymouth. One delightful day we past at Portland, & another at Abbotsbury, where one of the few herneries in this kingdom was then existing, as perhaps it may still be.

There was another at Penshurst,

& I have never seen a third. I wondered at nothing so much as the Chesil Bank which connects Portland, like the Firm-Island <of Amadis>

with the mainland, the pebbles <shingles> of which it is formed gx gradually diminishing in size from one end to the other, till it became a sand bank. The spot which I recollect with most distinctness is the church yard of an old church

<in the Island>, which from its neglected state, & its situation near the cliffs, & above all perhaps because so many shipwrecked bodies were interred there, impressed me deeply & durably.

The first book which I ever possessed beyond the size of M^r Newburys gilt regiment

was soon afterwards given me by M^rs Dolignon. It was Hooles Translation of Tasso’s Jerusalem.

She had heard me speak of it with a delight & interest above my years. My curiosity to read the poem had been strongly excited by the stories of Olindo & Sophronia,

& in the Enchanted Forest as versified by M^rs Rowe.

I had read these in the volume of her letters, & despaired at the time of ever reading more of the poem till I should be a man from a whimsical notion that as the subject related to Jerusalem the original must be in Hebrew. No one in my fathers house could set me right upon this point, but going one day with my mother into a shop one xxxx <side> of which was filled up with a circulating library containing not more than 3 or 400 volumes almost all of which were novels, I there laid my hand upon Hooles version a little before my visit to Weymouth. The copy which M^rs Dolignon sent me is now in my sight, upon the shelf, & in excellent preservation considering that when a schoolboy I perused it so often, that I had no small portion of it by heart. Forty years have tarnished the gilding upon its back, but they have not effaced my remembrance of the joy with which I received it, & the delight which I found in its repeated perusal.

During the years that I resided in Wine Street I was upon a short allowance of books. My father read nothing except Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal.

A small glass-cupboard over the desk in the back parlour held his wine glasses & – all his library. It consisted of the Spectator;

three or four volumes of the Oxford Magazine,

one of the Freeholders,

& one of the Town & Country,

– these he had taken in during the Wilkes-&-Liberty Epidemic.

My brother Tom & I spoilt them by pri colouring, that is to say, bedaubing the prints: but I owe to them some knowledge of the political wit, warfare & scandal of those days, & from one of them that excellent poem of “the Old Batchelor” was cut out which I reprinted in the Annual Anthology.

The other books were Pomfrets Poems;

<the death of Abel,>

Aaron Hills translation of Merope, the Jealous Wife & Edgar & Emmeline

in one volume; Julius Caesar, the Toy Shop, All for Love, & a pamphlett upon the Quack Doctors of George 2^ds days in another:

the Vestal virgins, the Duke of Lerma & the Indian Queen

in a third. To these my mother had added the Guardian,

& the happy copy of M^rs Rowes Letters which introduced me to Torquato Tasso.

The holydays made amends for this penury, & Bulls Circulating Library

was then to me what the Bodleian would be now. Hoole in his notes frequently referred to the Orlando Furioso.

I saw some volumes thus lettered on Bulls counter, & my heart leaped for joy. They proved to be the original: – but the shopman poor Cruett

(a most obliging man he was) immediately put the translation into my hand, & I do not think any accession of fortune could now give me so much delight as I then derived from that vile version of Hooles.

There in the notes I first saw saw the name of Spenser, & some stanzas of the Faery Queen.

Accordingly when I returned the last volume, I asked if they had that book in the library. My friend Cruett replied that they had, but it was written in old English & I should not be able to understand it. This did not appear to me so much a matter of course as he supposed it, & I therefore requested that he would let me look at it. It was the quarto edition in three volumes,

with large prints folded in the middle, equally worthless (like all the prints of that age) in design & execution. There was nothing in the language to impede me, for the ear set me right where the uncouth spelling might have misled the eye, & the few words which are really obsolete were sufficiently explained by the context. No young lady of the present generation falls to a new novel of Sir W Scotts with keener relish, than I did that morning to the Faery Queen. If I had then been asked why it gave me so much more pleasure than even Ariosto had done I could not have answered the question. I now know that <it was> very much by the magic of its verse: – the contrast between the flat couplets of a rhymester like Hoole, & the fullest & finest of all stanzas

written by one who was perfect master of his art. But this was not all. Ariosto too often plays with his subject. Spenser is always in earnest. The delicious landscapes which he luxuriates in describing brought every thing before my eyes. I could fancy such scenes as his lakes & forests <gardens> & fountains presented; & I felt tho I did not understand the truth & purity of his feelings, & that love of the beautiful & the good which pervades his poetry. When Miss Tyler had lived about among her friends as long as it was convenient for them to entertain her, & longer in lodgings than was convenient for herself, she began to think of enquiring <looking out> for a house at Bristol: & owing to an odd accident I was the means of finding one which precisely suited her. M^rs Wraxall,

the widow of a lawyer, had heard I know not how that I was a promising boy greatly addicted to books, & she sent to my mother requesting that I might drink tea with her one evening. The old Lady was mad as a march-hare, but after a religious fashion. Her <behaviour to me> was very kind to me, but as soon as tea was over, she bade me kneel down, & down she knelt herself, & prayed for me by the hour, to my aweful astonishment. When this was over she gave me a little book called Early Piety,

& a coarse edition of Paradise Lost:

& she said she was going to leave Bristol. It struck me immediately that the house which she was about to quit would was such a one as my Aunt wanted. I said so, & M^rs Wraxall immediately answered tell her that if she likes it she shall have the remainder of my lease. The matter was settled in a few days, for it was an advantageous offer. The house would have been cheap at twenty pounds a year at that time, & there was an unexpired lease of five years upon it at only eleven. This old Lady was mother to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall

who had been bred up & perhaps born in that habituation. The owner was poor John Morgans father.

M^r Wraxall x many years before had taken it upon <at> a low rent upon a repairing lease, & had expended a great deal of money upon it, at a time when it was a suburban residence. The situation had been greatly worsened, a row of pelting houses having been built just above but it was still on the skirts of the city & out of reach of its noise.

It stood in the avenue leading from Maudlin Lane to Horfield Lane. When the plan of Bristol for Barretts wretched history of that city

was engraved, the buildings ended with Maudlin Lane, & all above was fields & gardens. The plan is dated 1780, but must certainly have been engraved at least 10 years earlier for it marks S^t Leonards Church which was pulled down in the beginning of 1771.

In the plan the avenue is marked <there> by the name of Red Coat Lane, – running up between fields & with a hedge at each side. It was now however known by the name of Terril Street. There were at the bottom, when the plan was taken four or five houses on the left hand, – built like the commencement of a street. Where these ended the ascent, which was steep began, & some houses followed which tho contiguous, stood each in its little garden, some forty or fifty feet <30 30 yards> back from the street. There were five of these, & the situation was such that they must have in good estimation before some speculator instead of building a sixth erected a cross row of five or six inferior dwellings, – above which these there was only a steep paved avenue between high walls, inaccessible for horses because there were some flights of steps. The view was to a very large garden opposite, – one of those which supplied the market with fruit & other vegetables.

The house upon which Miss Tyler now entered was small, but chearful. Sir Nathaniel would perhaps remember it with disdain, but to his father it had evidently been an object of pride & pleasure. As is usual in suburban gardens he had made the most of the ground. Tho no wider than the front of the house there was a walk paved with lozenge shaped stones from the gate, & two side gravel walks: the side beds were allotted to currants & gooseberry bushes, the others beds to were flower beds, & there were two large apple trees, & two smaller ones. In front of the house the pavement extended, under which was an immense cistern for rain water; so large as to be absurd, xxx it actually seemed fitter for a fort, than for a small private family. The kitchen was underground. On one side the gate was a summer house, with a sort of cellar & another cistern below it: on the other a Commodité ornée,

corresponding with it in size & structure, except that it had not a bow window projecting over the street.

As soon as my aunt was settled here she sent for her brother William,

who since his mothers death had been boarded at a substantial shopkeepers in the little village of Worle, on the channel about 20 miles from Bristol. I look back upon his inoffensive & monotonous course of life with a compassion which then I was not capable of feeling. For one or two years he walked into the heart of the city – every Wednesday & Saturday to be shaved, & to purchase his own tobacco <he also went to the theatre sometimes & enjoyed it highly>: on no other occasion did he ever leave the house; & as inaction, aided no doubt by the inordinate use of tobacco & the quantity of small beer with which he swilled his inside brought on a premature old age, even this exercise was left off. As soon as he rose & had taken his first pint of beer, which was his only breakfast, to the summerhouse he went, & took his station in the bow window, as regularly as a sentinel in a watch box. There it was his whole & sole employment to look at the few people who past, & <to> watch the neighbours, with all thos whose concerns at last he became perfectly intimate by what he could there oversee & overhear. <He had a nickname for every one of them> In the evenings my Aunt & I generally played at five card loo with him,

– at which he took an intense interest; & if in the middle of the day when I came home to dinner he could get me to play at marbles with him in the summer house, he was xxxxxx <delighted>. The great events points to which he looked on <in the week> were the two mornings when Joseph

came to shave him, for this poor journeyman barber felt a sort of compassionate regard for him, & he had an insatiable appetite for such news as the barber could communicate. And Thus his days past with <in> wearisome uniformity he had no other amusement, – unless in listening to hear a comedy read; – in himself he had not <in himself> a single resource for whiling away the time, & thus being utterly without an object for the present or the future, his thoughts were perpetually recurring to the past. His affections were strong & lasting, indeed at his mothers funeral

his emotions were such as to affect all who were present. That grief he felt to the day of his death. I have seen tears in his eyes also when he spoke of my sisters,

both having died just at that age when he had most delight in fondling them, & they were most willing to be fondled. Whether it might have been possible to have awakened him to devotional feelings may be doubted; however <but> he believed, & trusted, simply & implicitly, & more, assuredly would not be required from one to whom so little had been given.

He lived about four years after this removal. His brother Edward

died a year before him, of pulmonary consumption. This event affected him deeply, he attended the funeral, described the condition of the coffins in the family vault,

in a manner which I well remember, & said that his turn would be next. One day on my return from school at the dinner hour, going into the summer house, <I found him sitting in the middle of the room, & looking wildly:> he hxxx told me he had been very ill, that he had had a seizure in the head, such as he had never felt before, & that he was sure something very serious ailed him. I gave the alarm, but it past over, neither he himself nor any person in the house knew what such a seizure indicated, & no apprehension of danger was entertained. The next morning he rose as usual, walked downstairs into the kitchen, & as he was buttoning the knees of xx his breeches, exclaimed Lord have mercy upon me! & fell from the chair. His nose was bleeding when he was taken up; immediate assistance was procured, but he was dead before it arrived. The stroke was mercifully sudden, but it had been preceded by a long <& gradual) diminution of vital strength, & I have never known any other case in which when there were so few external appearance of disease or decay, the individual was so aware that his dissolution was approaching.

I often regret that my memory should have retained so few of the traditional tales & proverbial expressions which I heard from him, more certainly than from all other persons in the course of my life. Some of them have been lately recalled to my recollection by Grimms Collection.

What little his mind had <was capable of> receiving it had retained tenaciously, & of these things it had a rich store. His death involved Miss Tyler in a vexatious litigation with her only surviving brother of the whole blood.

My poor Uncle William for a year or two before frequently pr wrote his name – (which was all he could write,) by way of practising before he <was to> signed a will, which it was intended he should make to prevent this claim upon his little property. This necessary business was put off till it was too late. All that he had was in his sisters hands: morally it ought upon his demise to have been hers, & actually she was unable to pay the half which John Tyler demanded. A suit was instituted against her, which was terminated by his death. His latter years had been the only unreproachable part of his life. A kinsman <(father of that D^r Lamb who proscribed meat & drink)>

had recovered his half pay for him from the Jews, & upon that pittance he lived, inhabiting a small cottage in the village of Dilwyn, within a hundred yards of that Mansion house which would but but for his own improvidence & prodigality he would have inherited.

Upon his death Miss Tyler became the sole survivor of the family her paternal race.