Nearly four years have elapsed since I began this series of reminiscences, & I have only written twelve letters, which bring me only into the twelfth year of my age. Alas this is not the only case in which I feel that the remaining portion of my life, were it even to be protracted longer than there is reason to expect upon the most favourable calculation of chances, must be too short for the undertakings which I have dreamt of compleating. It is however the case in which I can with least inconvenience quicken my speed, & frail as by humiliating experience I know my own resolutions to be I will nevertheless endeavour to send off a letter from this time time forth at the beginning <end> of every month. Matter for one more will be afforded before I take leave of poor old William Williams;

& that part of it which has no relation to myself will not be the least worth relation.

It was a good feature in his character that he had a number of poor retainers, who used to drop in at school hours, & seldom went away empty-handed. There was one poor fellow familiarly called D^r Jones

who always set the school in a roar of laughter. What his real history was I know not; the story was that some mischievous boys had played upon him the dreadfully dangerous prank of giving him a dose of cantharides,

& that he had lost his wits in consequence. I am not aware that it could have produced this effect, tho it might easily have cost him his life. Crazy however he was, or rather half crazed: & it was such a merry craziness, that it would have been wishing him ill to wish him otherwise. The bliss of ignorance is merely negative; there was a positive happiness in his insanity; it was like a perpetual drunkenness, kept a sustained just at that degree of pleasurable excitement, which in the sense of present enjoyment is equally regardless of the future & of the past. He fancied himself a poet, because he could produce upon demand a rhyme in the sorriest doggerel, & the most celebrated improvisatore

was never half so vain of his talent as this queer creature whose little figure of some five feet two I can perfectly call to mind, with his suit of rusty black, his more rusty wig, & his old cocked hat. Whenever he entered the school room he was greeted with a shout of welcome, all business was suspended, & if he was called upon from all sides to give us a rhyme, & when the masters countenance offered any encouragement, he was intreated also to ask for half a holyday, which at the price of some rhymes <doggerel> was sometimes obtained. You will readily believe that he was a popular poet.

D^r Jones was a doggrelist of the lowest kind. One other such I once met with, when I was young enough to be infinitely <heartily> amusedent with an exhibition which farcical as it was, would now make me mournful. He was a poor engraver by name Coyte,

very harmless <simple>, very industrious, very poor & completely crazed with vanity because he could compose off-hand upon any subject such rhymes as the Bellmans

used to be. Bedford’s father used to relieve him sometimes; I saw him on one of his visits to Brixton, when he was between 40 & 50 years of age; & his countenance & manner would <might> have supplied Wilkie with a subject.

M^r Bedford (- there never lived a kinder-hearted man,) loved merriment, & played him off, – in which Grosvenor & Horace joined & I was not backward. We gave him subjects upon which he presently wrote three or four miserable couplets: & no creature was ever more elated with glory <triumph> than he was at the hyperbolical commendations which he received, & this mingled with the genuine humility which the sense of his condition occasioned, produced a truly comic mixture in his feelings & gesticulations. What with pleasure inspiration & exertion, <& warm weather, for it was in the dog days>, he perspired, like <as profusely, tho I dare say not as fragrantly, as> an Elephant in love; & literally overflowed at eyes & mouth, frothing & weeping with delight <in his a salivation of happiness>. I think this poor fellow published A Cockneys Rambles in the Country, some 12 or 14 years ago,

for such a book I saw advertised by Joseph William Coyte, & I sent for it at the time, – but it was too obscure to be found.

These are examples of the very lowest <humblest & meanest) rhymesters, who nevertheless felt themselves raised above their companions, because they could rhyme. I have been acquainted with poets of <in> every intermediate degree between D^r Jones & Wordsworth, & their conceit has almost uniformly been precisely in an inverse proportion to their capacity. When this conceit acts upon low & vulgar ignorance it produces direct craziness as in the instances <of> which I have been speaking. In the lower ranks of middle life I have seen it, without amounting to insanity, assume a form of such extravagant vanity, that the examples which have occurred within my own kno observation would be deemed incredible if brought forward in a farce. Of these in due time. I will There is another more curious manifestation of the same folly which I do not remember ever to have seen noticed but which is well worthy of critical observation, because it shows in its full extent & <therefore in puris naturalibus>

a fault which is found in by much the greater part of modern poetry, – the use of words which have no signification when they are used, – <or which if they mean any thing, mean nonsense, – > the substitution of sound for sense. The writers to whom I refer I could show you passage after passage in contemporary writers, – the most popular which when critically, that is to say fairly & <strictly but> justly examined, are as absolutely nonsensical as the description of a moonlight night in Popes Homer

– Pope himself thought <intended> that <for> a fine description, & did not perceive that it was as absurd as his own song by a Person of Quality.

Now there have been writers who have possessed the talentxx of stringing together couplet after couplet in sonorous verse, without any connection, & without any meaning – or any like thing like a meaning, – & yet they have had all the enjoyment of writing poetry, supposed that this was poetry & published it as such. I know a man who has done this, & who made me a present of his poem: & yet he is very far from a fool, – on the contrary a lively pleasant companion, & of talents which in conversation are considerably above par.

The most perfect specimen I ever saw of such verses was a poem called the Shepherds Farewell,

printed in quarto some five & thirty years ago. Coleridge once had an imperfect copy of it, – I forget the authors name,

but when I was first at Lisbon I found out that he was a schoolmaster, & that poor Paul Berthon

had been one of his pupils. Men of very inferior powers may imitate the manner of good writers with great success as – for example the two Smiths

<have done:> but I do not believe that any imitative talent could produce genuine nonsense verses like those of the Shepherds Farewell: the intention of writing nonsensically would appear, & show the meaning of the writer, – th pure involuntary unconscious nonsense is inimitable by any effort of sense.

Such writers as these if they were cross examined would be found to believe in something like <imagine that they wrote under the influence of poetical> inspiration, & were Taylor the Pagan

to set about heathenizing a poet one of them <I am persuaded that> he would not find it difficult to made him believe in the Muses.

In fact when this sort of conceit sets to work, the man is fairly beside-himself; an innate, self-produced feeling not unlike that of inebriety possesses him, – he abandons himself to it, & while the fit lasts is as mad as a March hare. The madness is not permanent, because such inspiration, according to received opinion, only comes on when the rhymester is at work <engaged> in his vocation. But woe to <the case is very different with> him who has the gift of uttering prose with the same facility & the same contempt of reason; for he in good earnest sets up for an inspired messenger, – he has received a call, & there are not only sects but Societies in this country ready to <accredit him, &> take him into employ, & send him out with a roving commission thro towns & villages – to dis infect others with xxxxxx <the most infectious of all forms of> madness, disturb the peace of families, & prepare the way for another religious attempt to overthrow the Established Church, – another struggle which will shake these kingdoms to their center.

D^r Jones has led me into a long digression, upon which I should not have entered if I had foreseen that it would have extended so far. Another of Williamss visitors & an equally popular one was a glorious fellow, Pullen

by name, who during the age of buckskin

made a fortune as a breeches-maker in Thomas Street. If I could paint a portrait from memory you should have his likeness. Alas that I can only give it in words, & <that> that perfect figure should at this hour be preserved only in my recollections! Sic transit gloria mundi!

His countenance expressed all that can be expressed by human features of thorough-bred vulgarity, pride of purse, prosperity, good living, coarse humour, & coarse <boisterous> good nature. He wore a white tye wig; his eyes were of the hue & lustre of boiled <scalded> gooseberries: <or oysters in sauce> his complection was the deepest extract of the grape; it had grown on the banks of the Douro, he owed it to the Methuen treaty;

my Uncle no doubt had seen it growing in his rides from Porto, & Heaven knows how many pipes

must have been filtered thro the <Pullenian> system, before that fine permanent purple could have been fixed in his cheeks. He appeared always in buckskins of his own making, & in boots; he would laugh at his own jests with a voice like Stentor supposing Stentor

to have been hoarse, – & then he would clap old Williams on the back with a hand like a shoulder of mutton <you may imagine how great a man we thought him.> They had probably been boon companions in their youth, & his visits seldom failed to make the old man lay aside the schoolmaster. He was an excellent hand at demanding half-a-holyday, & when he had succeeded always required three cheers for his success, in which he joined with all his might & main. If I were a believer in the Romish Purgatory I should make no doubt that every visit which he made to that school room, was carried to the account of his good works. Some such set off he needed, – for he behaved with strange <brutal> unfeelingness to his son

who had offended him, & <who> I believe would have starved had it not been for the charity of John Morgans mother,

an singular <eccentric> but thoroughly good woman, – & one of those people whom I shall rejoice to meet in the next world. This I heard from her thirteen or fourteen <several> years after later <afterwards>. At this time Pullen was a widower, about between fifty & sixty, – a hale, strong bodied man, upon whom his wine merchant might reckon for a considerable annuity for many years. He had purchased some lands adjacent to the Leppincott property, near Bristol,

in the pleasantest part of that fine neighbourhood. Sir Henry L.

was elected member for the city at that election in which Burke

was turned out. He died soon afterwards, – his son was a mere child,

& Pullen, the glorious Pullen, in the plenitude of his pride, & no doubt in a new pair of buckskins, called one day on the widow,

introduced himself as the owner of the adjacent estate, & upon that score without any farther ceremony he offered himself proposed a union of bene marriage, <as an arrangement of mutual fitness>. Lady Leppincott of course rung the bell, & ordered her servants to turn him out of doors the house. This is a story which would be deemed too extravagant in a novel, & yet you would believe it without the slightest hesitation if you had ever seen the incomparable Breeches Maker.

These are comic recollections, the next is <are> of a different kind. Williams had two young kinswomen (I think they were his neices) by name Desmoulins, who kept a school in Kings Mead Square at Bath,

– pretty, interesting women, struggling with ill fortune. His writing master Gadd,

married the younger, – & I heard several years after that he had been villain enough to debauch the other, – in what farther misery & guilt the tragedy ended I never chanced to learn. M^rs Esten

the actress, whom you must remember, was connected with these sisters, & was at that time preparing to make her first appearance on the stage, – at the Bristol theatre. The part she had chosen was Letitia Hardy in the Belles Stratagem,

& in that part she had to dance a minuet-de-la-Cour,

to perfect herself in which, & perhaps for the sake of accustoming herself to figure away before an audience, she came to the <our> school two on two or three dancing days & took a lessons there, – a circumstance too remarkable to be forgotten in a schoolboys life. Walker the Dancing Master

was not a little proud of his pupil. That poor man for was for three years the plague of my life, – & I was the plague of his. In some unhappy mood he had prevailed on my mother to let me learn to dance, persuading himself as well as her that I should do credit to his teaching. It must have been for my sins that he formed this opinion: in evil hour for himself & for me was it formed; he would have had less trouble in teaching a bear, & far better success. I do not remember that I set out with any dislike, or contempt of dancing; but in the unconquerable incapacity which I it was soon evident that I possessed, produced both; & the more he laboured to make me correct an incorrigible awkwardness, the more awkwardly of course I performed. I verily believe the fiddle stick was applied as much to my head as to the fiddle strings <when I was called out>; – but the rascal had a xxx <worse> way than that of punishing me, he would take my hands in his & lead me down a dance, & then the villain would apply his thumb nail against the flat surface of mine, in the middle, & press it till he left the mark there, this species of torture I suppose to have been his own invention, & so intolerable it was, that at last whenever he had recourse to it, I kicked his shins. Luckily for me he got into a scrape by beating a boy unmercifully at another school, so that he was afraid of <to> carrying on this sort of contest, & giving up at last all hope of ever making me a votary of the graces, or of the dancing Muse,

he contented himself with shaking his head & turning up his eyes in hopelessness whenever he noticed my performance. I had always Tom Madge

for my partner – a poor fellow long since dead whom I remember with much kindness; – he was as active as a squirrel, but every limb seemed to be out of joint when he began to dance; – we were <always placed as> the last couple & went thro our work with the dogged determination of never dancing more when we should once be delivered from the dancing master which resolution I have piously kept even unto this day.

Williams who read well himself, & prided himself upon it was one day very much offended with my reading, & asked me scornfully who taught me to read. I answered – my Aunt. Then said he, give my compliments to your Aunt, & tell her that my old horse who has been dead these twenty years could have taught you as well. I delivered the message faithfully to her great indignation. It was never forgotten, or forgiven, & probably accelerated the very proper resolution of removing me. My Uncle made known his intention of sending <placing> me at Westminster, his connection with Christ Church naturally led him to prefer this to any other school, hoping that I should get into College, & so be elected off to a studentship.

But as I was in poor health, & moreover had been very ill taught, it was thought advisable that I should be placed for twelvemonths under a clergyman competent to prepare me for a public school.

A time was remembered when there were wars of school against school, & a great battle which had taken place in the adjoining park, between Williams’s boys, & Foot’s my first Masters.

At both schools I heard of this, & the victory was claimed by both, – for it was an old affair, a matter of tradition (not having been noticed by <in> history) long before my generation, or any who were then in the school, – but remembered as an event second only in importance, if second, to the war of Troy.