without
discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned
him, why he had altered his declamation? He declared he had made no
alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from
it one letter. I believed him; and from a knowledge of his temperament
am convinced, that, fully impressed with the sense and substance of
the subject, he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more
striking than what his pen had expressed."

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