“CommenÇons par le commencement.”

THE very earliest of one’s literary recollections must be the acquisition of the alphabet; and in the knowledge of the first rudiments I was placed on a par with the Learned Pig, by two maiden ladies that were called Hogsflesh. The circumstance would be scarcely worth mentioning, but that being a day boarder, and taking my dinner with the family, I became aware of a Baconian brother, who was never mentioned except by his Initial, and was probably the prototype of the sensitive “Mr. H.” in Lamb’s unfortunate farce. The school in question was situated in Token-house Yard, a convenient distance for a native of the Poultry, or Birchin-lane, I forget which, and in truth am not particularly anxious to be more certainly acquainted with my parish. It was a metropolitan one, however, which is recorded without the slightest repugnance: firstly, for that, practically, I had no choice in the matter; and secondly, because, theoretically, I would as lief have been a native of London as of Stoke Pogis or little Pedlington. If such local prejudices be of any worth, the balance ought to be in favour of the capital. The Dragon of Bow Church, or Gresham’s Grasshopper, is as good a terrestrial sign to be born under as the dunghill cock on a village steeple. Next to being a citizen of the world, it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world’s greatest city. To a lover of his kind, it should be a welcome dispensation that cast his nativity amidst the greatest congregation of the species; but a literary man should exult rather than otherwise that he first saw the light—or perhaps the fog—in the same metropolis as Milton, Gray, De Foe, Pope, Byron, Lamb, and other town-born authors, whose fame has nevertheless triumphed over the Bills of Mortality. In such a goodly company I cheerfully take up my livery; and especially as Cockneyism, properly so called, appears to be confined to no particular locality or station in life. Sir Walter Scott has given a splendid instance of it in an Orcadian, who prayed to the Lord to bless his own tiny ait, “not forgetting the neighbouring island of Great Britain:” and the most recent example of the style I have met with, was in the Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, being an account of sea perils and sufferings during a passage across the Irish Channel by “the First Gentleman in Europe.”

Having alluded to my first steps on the ladder of learning, it may not be amiss in this place to correct an assertion of my biographer in the Book of Gems, who states, that my education was finished at a certain suburban academy. In this ignorant world, where we proverbially live and learn, we may indeed leave off school, but our education only terminates with life itself. But even in a more limited sense, instead of my education being finished, my own impression is, that it never so much as progressed towards so desirable a consummation at any such establishment, although much invaluable time was spent at some of those institutions where young gentlemen are literally boarded, lodged, and done for. My very first essay was at one of those places, improperly called semi-naries, because they do not half teach anything; the principals being probably aware that the little boys are as often consigned to them to be “out of a mother’s way,” as for anything else. Accordingly, my memory presents but a very dim image of a pedagogical powdered head, amidst a more vivid group of females of a composite charter-part dry-nurse, part housemaid, and part governess,—with a matronly figure in the back ground, very like Mrs. S., allegorically representing, as Milton says, “our universal mother.” But there is no glimpse of Minerva. Of those pleasant associations with early school days, of which so much has been said and sung, there is little amongst my retrospections, excepting, perhaps, some sports which, like charity, might have been enjoyed at home, without the drawback of sundry strokes, neither apoplectic nor paralytic, periodical physic, and other unwelcome extras. I am not sure whether an invincible repugnance to early rising may not be attributable to our precocious wintry summonses, from a warm bed into a dim damp school-room, to play at filling our heads on an empty stomach; and perhaps I owe my decided sedentary habits to the disgust at our monotonous walks, or rather processions, or maybe to the sufferings of those longer excursions of big and little, where a pair of compasses had to pace as far and as fast as a pair of tongs. Nevertheless, I yet recall, with wonder, the occasional visits of grown-up ex-scholars to their old school, all in a flutter of gratitude and sensibility at recognising the spot where they had been caned, and horsed, and flogged, and fagged, and brimstone-and-treacled, and blackdosed and stickjawed, and kibed, and fined,—where they had caught the measles and the mumps, and been overtasked, and undertaught—and then, by way of climax, sentimentally offering a presentation snuff-box to their revered preceptor, with an inscription, ten to one, in dog Latin on the lid!

For my own part, were I to revisit such a haunt of my youth, it would give me the greatest pleasure, out of mere regard to the rising generation, to find Prospect House turned into a Floor Cloth Manufactory, and the playground converted to a bleachfield. The tabatiÈre is out of the question. In the way of learning, I carried off nothing in exchange for my knife and fork, and spoon, but a prize for Latin without knowing the Latin for prize, and a belief which I had afterwards to unbelieve again, that a block of marble could be cut in two with a razor.

To be classical, as Ducrow would say, the Athenians, the day before the Festival of Theseus, their Founder, gratefully sacrificed a ram, in memory of Corridas the schoolmaster, who had been his instructor: but in the present day, were such offerings in fashion, how frequently would the appropriate animal be a donkey, and especially too big a donkey to get over the Pons Asinorum!

From the preparatory school, I was transplanted in due time to what is called by courtesy, a finishing one, where I was immediately set to begin everything again at the beginning. As this was but a backward way of coming forward, there seemed little chance of my ever becoming what Mrs. Malaprop calls “a progeny of learning;” indeed my education was pursued very much after the plan laid down by that feminine authority. I had nothing to do with Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches; but I obtained a supercilious knowledge of accounts, with enough of geometry to make me acquainted with the contagious countries. Moreover, I became fluent enough in some unknown tongue to protect me from the French Mark; and I was sufficiently at home (during the vacations) in the quibbles of English grammar, to bore all my parents, relations, friends, and acquaintance, by a pedantical mending of their “cakeology.” Such was the sum total of my acquirements; being, probably, quite as much as I should have learned at a Charity School, with the exception of the parochial accomplishment of hallooing and singing of anthems.

I have entered into these personal details, though pertaining rather to illiterate than to literary reminiscences, partly because the important subject of Education has become of prominent interest, and partly to hint that a writer may often mean in earnest what he says in jest. One of my readers at least has given me credit for a serious purpose. A schoolmaster called, during the vacation, on the father of one of his pupils, and in answer to his announcement of the re-opening of his establishment, was informed that the young gentleman was not to return to the academy. The worthy parent declared that he had read the “Carnaby Correspondence” in the Comic Annual, and had made up his mind. “But, my dear Sir,” expostulated the pedagogue, “you cannot be serious; why the Comic Annual is nothing but a book full of jokes!” “Yes, yes,” returned the father, “but it has let me into a few of your tricks. I believe Mr. Hood. James is not coming again!”

And now, it may be reasonably asked, where I did learn anything if not at these establishments, which promise Universal Knowledge—extras included—and yet unaccountably produce so very few Admirable Crichtons?[4] It may plausibly be objected, that I did not duly avail myself of such overflowing opportunities to dabble, dip, duck in, and drink deeply of the Pierian spring, that I was an Idler, Lounger, Tatler, Rambler, Spectator, anything rather than a student. To which my reply must be, first, that the severest punishment ever inflicted on my shoulders was for a scholar-like offence, the being “fond of my book,” only it happened to be Robinson Crusoe; and secondly, that I did go ahead at another guess sort of academy, a reference to which will be little flattering to those Houses which claim Socrates, Aristotle, Alfred, and other Learnedissimi Worthii, as their Sponsors and Patron Saints. The school that really schooled me being comparatively of a very humble order—without sign—without prospectus—without ushers—without ample and commodious premises—in short, without pretension, and consequently, almost without custom.

The autumn of the year 1811, along with a most portentous comet, “with fear of change perplexing monarchs,” brought, alas! a melancholy revolution in my own position and prospects, by the untimely death of my father; and my elder brother shortly following him to the grave, my bereaved mother naturally drew the fragments of the family more closely around her, so that thenceforward her dearest care was to keep her “only son, myself, at home.” She did not, however, neglect my future interest, or persuade herself by any maternal vanity that a boy of twelve years old could have precociously finished his education; and accordingly the next spring found me at what might have been literally called a High School, in reference to its distance from the ground.

In a house, formerly a suburban seat of the unfortunate Earl of Essex—over a grocer’s shop—up two pair of stairs, there was a very select day-school, kept by a decayed Dominie, as he would have been called in his native land. In his better days, when my brother was his pupil, he had been master of one of those wholesale concerns in which so many ignorant men have made fortunes, by favour of high terms, low ushers, gullible parents, and victimised little boys. As our worthy Dominie, on the contrary, had failed to realise even a competence, it may be inferred, logically, that he had done better by his pupils than by himself; and my own experience certainly went to prove that he attended to the interests of his scholars, however he might have neglected his own. Indeed, he less resembled, even in externals, the modern worldly trading Schoolmaster, than the good, honest, earnest, olden Pedagogue—a pedant, perchance, but a learned one, with whom teaching was “a labour of love,” who had a proper sense of the dignity and importance of his calling, and was content to find a main portion of his reward in the honourable proficiency of his disciples. Small as was our College, its Principal maintained his state, and walked gowned and covered. His cap was of faded velvet, of black, or blue, or purple, or sad green, or as it seemed, of all together, with a nuance of brown. His robe, of crimson damask, lined with the national tartan. A quaint, carved, highbacked, elbowed article, looking like an ÉmigrÉ, from a set that had been at home in an aristocratical drawing-room, under the ancien rÉgime, was his Professional Chair, which with his desk was appropriately elevated on a dais, some inches above the common floor. From this moral and material eminence, he cast a vigilant yet kindly eye over some dozen of youngsters; for adversity, sharpened by habits of authority, had not soured him, or mingled a single tinge of bile with the peculiar red-streak complexion, so common to the healthier natives of the North. On one solitary occasion, within my memory, was he seriously yet characteristically discomposed, and that was by his own daughter, whom he accused of “forgetting all regard for common decorum;” because, forgetting that he was a Dominie as well as a Parent, she had heedlessly addressed him in public as “Father,” instead of “Papa.” The mere provoking contrariety of a dunce never stirred his spleen, but rather spurred his endeavour, in spite of the axiom, to make Nihil fit for anything. He loved teaching for teaching’s sake; his kill-horse happened to be his hobby: and doubtless, if he had met with a penniless boy on the road to learning, he would have given him a lift, like the charitable Waggoner to Dick Whittington—for love. I recall, therefore, with pleasure, the cheerful alacrity with which I used to step up to recite my lesson, constantly forewarned—for every true schoolmaster has his stock joke—not to “stand in my own light.” It was impossible not to take an interest in learning what he seemed so interested in teaching; and in a few months my education progressed infinitely farther than it had done in as many years under the listless superintendence of B. A., and L. L. D. and Assistants. I picked up some Latin, was a tolerable English Grammarian, and so good a French scholar, that I earned a few guineas—my first literary fee—by revising a new edition of “Paul et Virginie” for the press. Moreover, as an accountant, I could work a summum bonum—i.e. a good sum.

In the mean time,—so generally unfortunate is the courtship of that bashful undertoned wooer, Modest Merit, to that loud, brazen masculine, worldly heiress, Success—the school did not prosper. The number of scholars diminished rather that increased. At least no new boys came—but one fine morning, about nine o’clock, a great “she gal,” of fifteen or sixteen, but so remarkably well grown that she might have been “any of our mothers,” made her unexpected appearance with bag and books. The sensation that she excited is not to be described! The apparition of a Governess, with a Proclamation of a Gynecocracy could not have been more astounding! Of course SHE instantly formed a class; and had any form SHE might prefer to herself:—the most of us being just old enough to resent what was considered as an affront on the corduroy sex, and just young enough to be beneath any gallantry to the silken one. The truth was, sub rosa, that there was a plan for translating us, and turning the unsuccessful Boys’ School into a Ladies’ Academy; to be conducted by the Dominie’s eldest daughter—but it had been thought prudent to be well on with the new set before being off with the old. A brief period only had elapsed, when, lo! a leash of female school Fellows—three sisters, like the Degrees of Comparison personified, Big, Bigger, and Biggest—made their unwelcome appearance, and threatened to push us from our stools. They were greeted, accordingly, with all the annoyances that juvenile malice could suggest. It is amusing, yet humiliating, to remember the nuisances the sex endured at the hands of those who were thereafter to honour the shadow of its shoe-tie—to groan, moan, sigh, and sicken for its smiles—to become poetical, prosaical, nonsensical, lack-a-daisical, and perhaps even melodramatical for its sake. Numberless were the desk-quakes, the ink-spouts, the book-bolts, the pea-showers, and other unregistered phenomena, which likened the studies of those four unlucky maidens to the “Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties,”—so that it glads me to reflect, that I was in a very small minority against the persecution; having already begun to read poetry, and even to write something which was egregiously mistaken for something of the same nature. The final result of the struggle in the academic nest—whether the hen-cuckoos succeeded in ousting the cock-sparrows, or vice versa—is beyond my record; seeing that I was just then removed from the scene of contest, to be introduced into that Universal School where, as in the preparatory ones, we have very unequal shares in the flogging, the fagging, the task-work, and the pocket-money; but the same breaking-up to expect, and the same eternity of happy holidays to hope for in the Grand Recess.

In brief, a friend of the family having taken a fancy to me, proposed to initiate me in those profitable mercantile mysteries which enabled Sir Thomas Gresham to gild his grasshopper; and like another Frank Osbaldestone, I found myself planted on a counting-house stool, which nevertheless served occasionally for a Pegasus, on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee. In commercial matters, the only lesson imprinted on my memory is the rule that when a ship’s crew from Archangel, come to receive their L. S. D., you must lock up your P. Y. C.