In communicating to me these recollections of his illustrious pupil, Dr. Drury has added a circumstance which shows how strongly, even in all the pride of his fame, that awe with which he had once regarded the opinions of his old master still hung around the poet’s sensitive mind:—­

“After my retreat from Harrow, I received from him two very affectionate letters.  In my occasional visits subsequently to London, when he had fascinated the public with his productions, I demanded of him; why, as in duty bound, he had sent none to me?  ‘Because,’ said he, ’you are the only man I never wish to read them:’—­but, in a few moments, he added—­’What do you think of the Corsair?’”

I shall now lay before the reader such notices of his school-life as I find scattered through the various note-books he has left behind.  Coming, as they do, from his own pen, it is needless to add, that they afford the liveliest and best records of this period that can be furnished.

“Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a review.  But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much information from Reviews, because I was never seen reading, but always idle, and in mischief, or at play.  The truth is, that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never met with a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them.  But it is true; for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking them ‘What is a Review?’ To be sure, they were then less common.  In three years more, I was better acquainted with that same; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7.

“At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the extent and readiness of my general information; but in all other respects idle, capable of great sudden exertions, (such as thirty or forty Greek hexa-meters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God,) but of few continuous drudgeries.  My qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron, (our head master,) had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action.[27] I remember that my first declamation astonished him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal.  My first Harrow verses, (that is, English, as exercises,) a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of AEschylus, were received by him but coolly.  No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy.