My memory strengthens as I proceed in this task of retrospection & yet while some circumstances – even to a look, a sound, a gesture, tho utterly unimportant recur to me more vividly that the transactions of yesterday, others which I would willingly recover call to mind are irrecoverably gone. I have sometimes fancied when dreaming upon what may be our future state, that in the next world we may recover a perfect recollection of all that has occurred to us in this, & in the prior stages of progressive existence, thro which it is not improbable that our living principle has ascended. And yet the best & happiest of us must have some thing or other altâ mente repostum

for which a draught of Lethe

would be desired.

The pleasantest of my school-years were those which I past at Williams’s,

especially after I took up my abode in Terril Street,

for I then dined at home, & found much more satisfaction there in my own pursuits than in his contracted play ground. What I learnt there indeed was worth little, – it was just such a knowledge of Latin as a boy of quick parts & not without diligence, will acquire under bad teaching. When I had gone thro the Metamorphoses,

Williams declared his intention of taking me from the usher

& instructing me in Virgil himself, – no other of his pupils having proceeded so far. But the old man I supposed discovered that this little classical learning which he had ever possessed had past away as irrecoverably as his youth, & I continued under the Ushers care, who kept me in the Eclogues

so long that I was heartily sick of them, & I believe have never looked in them from that time. No attempt was made to ground me in prosody, & as this deficiency in my education was never remedied (for when I went to Westminster I was too forward in other things to be placed low enough for the regular training), I am at this day as liable to make a false quantity

as any Scotchman. I was fond of arithmetic, & have no doubts that at that time I should have proceeded with pleasure thro its higher branches, & might have been led on to mathematics, of which my mind afterwards became impatient, if not totally incapable.

Sometimes when Williams was in good humour, he suspended the usual business of the school, & exercised the boys in some uncommon manner. For example, he would bid them all take their slates, & write as he dictated, – this was to try their spelling & I remember he once began with this sentence As I walked out to take the air, I met a man with red hair, who was heir to a good estate, & was carrying a hare in his hand. Another time he called upon all of a certain standing to write a letter, each upon what subject he pleased. You will perhaps wonder to hear that not no task had ever perplexed me so wofully as this. I had never in my life written a letter, except a formal one at Corston before every holydays, every word of which was of the masters dictation.

– Some of the boys produced compositions of this stamp, others who were a little older wrote in a tradesman like stile, soliciting orders, or acknowledging them. For my part I actually cried for perplexity & vexation. Had I been a blockhead this would have provoked Williams but he always looked upon me with a favourable eye, & expressing wonder rather than anger he endeavoured both to encourage & shame me to the attempt. To work I fell at last & presently presented him with – a description of Stonehenge in the form of a letter, which compleatly filled the slate. I had laid hands not long before upon the Salisbury Guide,

& Stonehenge had appeared to me one of the wonders of the world. The old man was exceedingly surprized, & not less delighted, & I well remember how much his astonishment surprized me, & how much I was gratified by his praise. I was not conscious of having done anything <odd or> extraordinary: but the boys made me so; & to the sort of envy which it excited among them I xxxx was indebted for a wholesome mortification. One morning upon entering the school a few minutes before the Master made his appearance some half dozen of them beset me, & demanded whether I with all my learning could tell what the letters i.e.

stood for. The question was proposed in the taunting tone of expected triumph, which I should well have liked to disappoint. But when I answered <that I supposed it was for> why John the Evangelist

I suppose – the unlucky guess taught me never again to be ashamed of confessing myself ignorant of what I really did not know: It was a useful lesson, especially as I was fortunate enough to perceive early in life that there were very many subjects of which I must of necessity be so.

Of all my schoolmasters Williams is the one whom I remember with the kindliest feelings. His Welsh blood was too easily roused, & his x spirit was soured by the great decline of his school. There had been a time when Its numbers <in its best days had been> were from seventy to a hundred, – now they did not reach forty, when the times were dearer by all the difference which the American War

had occasioned, & his price terms could not be raised in proportion to the increased price of every thing, because schools had multiplied. When his ill circumstances prest upon him, he gave way perhaps more readily to impulses of anger, because anger like drunkenness suspends the sense of care <& an irascible emotion is felt as a relief from uneasy painful thoughts>. His old wig, like a bank of morning clouds in the East, used to indicate a stormy day. At better times both the wig & the countenance would have beseemed a higher station, & his anger was the more frightful because at those better times there was an expression of good nature <humour> & animation in his features which was singularly pleasing, & I believe denoted his genuine character. He would strike with a ruler sometimes, when his patience was greatly provoked by that incorrigible stupidity which of all things tries perhaps puts patience to the severest trial. There was a hulking fellow – a Creole

with a shade of negro African colour in him who possessed that stupidity in the highest degree, & Williams after flogging him one day xxx made him pay a halfpenny for requiring the use of the rod <because he required it> so much oftener than any other boy in the school. Whether Gumbes

was most sensible of the mulct or the mockery I know not, but he felt it as the severest part of his punishment. A tyrannical act it certainly was, but the only one I ever knew him <Williams> guilty of.

There were a good many Creoles at this school, as indeed at all the Bristol schools. Acajou nuts & Cassava bread

was among the things which were frequently sent over to them by their parents, – so that I well knew the taste of mandioc long before I ever heard its name. These Creoles were neither better nor worse than so many other boys in any respect, indeed tho they had a stronger national cast of countenance they were I think less marked by any nationality of temper <features of mind> or disposition than the Welsh, certainly much less than the Irish. Some of One of them, evidently by his name of French extraction

was however the most thoroughly fiendish human being that I have ever known. There is an image in Kehama drawn from my recollection of the devilish malignity which used sometimes to xx glow in his dark eyes,

– tho I could not there give the likeness in its whole force for his countenance used to darken with the blackness of his passions. Happily for the slaves on the family estate he, tho a second brother was wealthy enough to settle in England, & an anecdote which I heard of him when he was about thirty years of age well shows that I have not spoken of his character too strongly. When he was shooting one day his dog made a fault; he would have shot him for this upon the spot, if his companion had not turned the gun aside, & as he supposed succeeded in appeasing him. But xx when their sport was over, to the horror of that companion (who related the story to me) he suddenly took up a large stone & knocked out the dogs brains. I have mentioned this wretch, who might otherwise have better been forgotten, for a charitable reason: because I verily believe that his wickedness was truly an original, innate, constitutional sin, & just as much a family disease, as gout or scrofula. I think so because he had a nephew

who was placed as a pupil with King the surgeon at Clifton, & <in> whom at first sight I recognized a physiognomy which I hope can belong to no other breed. This nephew answered in all respects to the <relationship, & to the> character which Nature had written in every lineament of his face: – he ran a short career of knavery, profligacy & crimes, which led him into a prison, & there he died by his own hand.

Another of my then schoolfellows, who was also a Creole came to the same <a like> fate, but from xx very different circumstances. He was the natural son of a wealthy planter by a woman of colour, & went thro school with the character of an inoffensive gentlemanly boy, who never quarrelled with any body, not ever did an ill natured thing. When he became a young man, he was liberally supplied with money, & launched into expences which such means tended to create, & seemed to justify. The supplies however suddenly ceased. I am not certain whether xx by an experiment of rigour on the fathers part, or owing to his fathers dying without providing for him in his will: – the latter I think was the case; poor Herbert

however was arrested for debt, & put an end to his hopeless prospects in prison by suicide.

Colonel Hugh Baillie

who made himself conspicuous some few months ago by very properly resenting the unjust expulsion of his son from Christ Church by the late Dean

was one of my contemporaries at this school. My old Latin master Duplanier

kept a French academy next door, & by an arrangement between the two Masters, his boys came three mornings in the week to write & cipher with us. Among these intermittent schoolfellows, were poor John Morgan who housed Coleridge for several years, – Gee

whom I have already mentioned, & a certain Harry Overend,

with whom I had an adventure in after life far too curious to be forgotten. This youth was about three years older than me; of course I had no acquaintance with him, nor did I ever exchange a word with him unless it were when the whole school were engaged in playing at prisonbase,

– in which he took the lead as the ποδας ωκυς

of his side. His father

was a merchant, concerned among other things in the Irish linen trade; my father had some dealings with him, & in his misfortune found him, what I believe is not a common character, – an unfeeling creditor. They were a proud family, & xxxxx a few years after my fathers failure, failed themselves, & went x as the phrase is went to the dogs. This Harry Overend was bred to be an Attorney, but wanted either brains or business to succeed in his profession, – I daresay both. I had forgotten his person, & should never have thought of him again except when the game of prisonbase was brought to my mind, if in the year 1798 I had not been surprized by hearing one day xx at Cottles shop, that he had been there twice or thrice to enquire for me, & had left a message requesting that if I came into Bristol that day, I would call on him at an Attorneys office at a certain hour. Accordingly thither I went, rang at the bell, enquired for Mr Overend, gave my name, & was ushered into a private room. Nothing could be more gracious than his recognition of a person whom he must have past twenty times in the street during the last three months – we had been schoolfellows at such a place, at such a time – &c all which I knew very well, but how we came to be acquaintances now was what I had to learn, & to explain this cost him a good deal of humming & hawing, plentifully intermixed with that figure of speech which the Irish call blarney, – & which is a much more <usual as well as> useful figure than any of those with the hard names of which poor boys used to be tormented in the Latin Grammar. From the use which he made of this figure he appeared to know that I was an author of some notoriety, & that one of my books was called Joan of Arc

– the compliments which he laid me <on> were intermingled with great expressions of <great> regret for the deficiencies of his own education, he had learnt a little Latin – a little French, -but then it had stopt, – in short I knew <what must be> the extent of his teaching <acquirements), for you & I M^r Southey you know were schoolfellows,” – & at length it appeared <came out> that from a consciousness of these deficiencies he had been led to think that a Glossary of the English language was a thing work very much wanted, & that no person <one> could be more competent to supply such a desideratum than the gentleman whom he had the honour of addressing. I was as little able to guess what his deficiencies had to do with any such x a Glossary as you can be; & not feeling any curiosity to get at a blockheads meaning endeavoured to put an end to the scene by declaring at once my utter inability to execute such a work, for the very sufficient reason that I was wholly ignorant of several languages the thorough knowledge <of which> was indispensable in such researches. This produced more blarney, & an explanation that such a work as I seemed to my answer did not exactly apply to what his proposal intended. What he meant was this, there were a great many elegant words, which persons, like himself, – whose education had been neglected, – would often be glad to use in conversation, – (he spoke he said this feelingly, – it had often been his own case,) – they would be glad to use them, if they only knew their meaning: & what he wanted was a Glossary or Dictionary of such words, – a little book, which might be carried in the pocket; it would certainly command a large sale: I could make the book; – he had a large acquaintance, & could procure subscribers for it, – & we might make a thriving partnership concern in this literary undertaking. Before he arrived at this point, the scene had become far too comical to leave any room in my feelings for anger. I kept my countenance – (which has often been put to much harder trials than my temper, & is moreover a much more difficult thing to keep,) – declined his proposal decidedly but civilly, took my leave in perfect <good> humour, & hastened back to Cottle’s to relieve myself by telling him the adventure.