“I had hardships,” says Cowper, “of various kinds to conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home.  But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteen years of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper.  I choose to conceal a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually to persecute me.  It will be sufficient to say that his savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than to his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by any other part of his dress.  May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in glory!” Cowper charges himself, it may be in the exaggerated style of a self-accusing saint, with having become at school an adept in the art of lying.  Southey says this must be a mistake, since at English public schools boys do not learn to lie.  But the mistake is on Southey’s part; bullying, such as this child endured, while it makes the strong boys tyrants, makes the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defend themselves by deceit, the fist of the weak.  The recollection of this boarding school mainly it was that at a later day inspired the plea for a home education in Tirocinium.

  Then why resign into a stranger’s hand
  A task as much within your own command,
  That God and nature, and your interest too,
  Seem with one voice to delegate to you? 
  Why hire a lodging in a house unknown
  For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own? 
  This second weaning, needless as it is,
  How does it lacerate both your heart and his
  The indented stick that loses day by day
  Notch after notch, till all are smooth’d away,
  Bears witness long ere his dismission come,
  With what intense desire he wants his home. 
  But though the joys he hopes beneath your roof
  Bid fair enough to answer in the proof,
  Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are,
  A disappointment waits him even there: 
  Arrived, he feels an unexpected change,
  He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange. 
  No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease,
  His favourite stand between his father’s knees,
  But seeks the corner of some distant seat,
  And eyes the door, and watches a retreat,
  And, least familiar where he should be most,
  Feels all his happiest privileges lost. 
  Alas, poor boy!—­the natural effect
  Of love by absence chill’d into respect.