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ted the bad consequences of his negligence, and he died painfully before he was old. Barnes wrote elegant Latin verse, a classical English style, and might assuredly have made himself a name in wit and literature, had he cared much for any thing beyond his glass of wine and his Fielding. What pleasant days have I not passed with him, and other schoolfellows, bathing in the New River, and boating on the Thames. He and I began to learn Italian together; and any body not within the pale of the enthusiastic, might have thought us mad, as we went shouting the beginning of Metastasio's ode to Venus, as loud as we could bawl, over the Hornsey-fields. LEIGH HUNT DROWNING. At Oxford, my love of boating had nearly cost me my life. I had already had a bit of a taste of drowning in the river Thames, in consequence of running a boat too hastily on shore; but it was nothing to what I experienced on this occasion. The schoolfellow whom I was visiting was the friend whose family lived in Spring Gardens. We had gone out in a little decked skiff, and not expecting disasters in the gentle Isis, I had fastened the sail-line, of which I had the direction, in order that I might read a volume which I had with me, of Mr. Cumberland's novel called "Henry." My friend was at the helm. The wind grew a little strong, and we had just got into Iffley Reach, when I heard him exclaim, "Hunt, we are over!" The next moment I was under the water, gulping it, and giving myself up for lost. The boat had a small opening in the middle of the deck, under which I had thrust my feet; this circumstance had carried me over with the boat, and the worst of it was, I found I had got the sail-line round my neck. My friend, who sat on the deck itself, had been swept off, and got comfortably to shore, which was at a little distance. My bodily sensations were not so painful as I should have fancied they would have been. My mental reflections were very different, though one of them, by a singular meeting of extremes, was of a comic nature. I thought that I should never see the sky again, that I had parted with all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which ther
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