ecember."

The tumult alluded to is thus described: "A brief touch in memory of the
fiery zeal of Mr. Barebone, a reverend unlearned leather-seller, who
with Mr. Greene the felt-maker were both taken preaching or prating in a
conventicle amongst a hundred persons, on Sunday, the 19th of December
last, 1641."

One of the pleasantest memories of Fetter Lane is that which connects it
with the school-days of that delightful essay-writer, Charles Lamb. He
himself, in one of Hone's chatty books, has described the school, and
Bird, its master, in his own charming way.

[Illustration: ROASTING THE RUMPS IN FLEET STREET (FROM AN OLD PRINT)
(_see page 95_).]

Both Lamb and his sister, says Mr. Fitzgerald, in his Memoir of Lamb,
went to a school where Starkey had been usher about a year before they
came to it--a room that looked into "a discoloured, dingy garden, in the
passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. This was
close to Holborn. Queen Street, where Lamb lived when a boy, was in
Holborn." Bird is described as an "eminent writer" who taught
mathematics, which was no more than "cyphering." "Heaven knows what
languages were taught there. I am sure that neither my sister nor myself
brought any out of it but a little of our native English. It was, in
fact, a humble day-school." Bird and Cook, he says, were the masters.
Bird had "that peculiar mild tone--especially when he was inflicting
punishment--which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest
looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took
place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence
we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the
decorum and solemnity." He then describes the ferule--"that almost
obsolete weapon now." "To make him look more formidable--if a pedagogue
had need of these heightenings--Bird wore one of those flowered Indian
gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, the strange figures upon which
we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering." This is
in Lamb's most delightful vein. So, too, with other incidents of the
school, especially "our little leaden inkstands, not separately
subsisting, but sunk into the desks; and the agonising benches on which
we were all cramped together, and yet encouraged to attain a free hand,
unattainable in this position." Lamb recollected even his first
copy--"Art improves nature," and could look back with "pardon