He had not been long at this school till he wrote a
severe lampoon, of two hundred lines' length, on his master--so truly
was the "boy the father of the man"--for which demi-Dunciad he was
severely flogged. His father, offended at this, removed him to a London
school, kept by a Mr Deane. This man taught the poet nothing; but his
residence in London gave him the opportunity of attending the theatres.
With these he was so captivated, that he wrote a kind of play, which was
acted by his schoolfellows, consisting of speeches from Ogilby's
"Iliad," tacked together with verses of his own. He became acquainted
with Dryden's works, and went to Wills's coffee-house to see him. He
says, "Virgilium tantum vidi." Such transient meetings of literary orbs
are among the most interesting passages in biography. Thus met Galileo
with Milton, Milton with Dryden, Dryden with Pope, and Burns with Scott.
Carruthers strikingly remarks, "Considering the perils and uncertainties
of a literary life--its precarious rewards, feverish anxieties,
mortifications, and disappointments, joined to the tyranny of the
Tonsons and Lintots, and the malice and envy of dunces, all of which
Dryden had long and bitterly experienced--the aged poet could hardly
have looked at the delicate and deformed boy, whose preternatural
acuteness and sensibility were seen in his dark eyes, without a feeling
approaching to grief, had he known that he was to fight a battle like
that under which he was himself then sinking, even though the Temple of
Fame should at length open to receive him.
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