"A covered passage led to the play-house, and they very rarely missed a night's performance. I was too old to be put to bed before the performance began, and it was better that I should be taken than left with the servants; therefore I was always of the party; and it is impossible to describe the thorough delight which I received from this habitual indulgence. No after-enjoyment could equal or approach it; I was sensible of no defects either in the dramas or in the representation; better acting, indeed, could nowhere have been found: Mrs Siddons was the heroine; Dimond and Murray would have done credit to any stage; and among the comic actors were Edwin and Blanchard--and Blisset, who, though never known to a London audience, was, of all comic actors whom I have seen, the most perfect. But I was happily insensible to that difference between good and bad acting, which in riper years takes off so much from the pleasure of dramatic representation; everything answered the height of my expectations and desires. And I saw it in perfect comfort, in a small theatre, from the front row of a box, not too far from the centre. The Bath theatre was said to be the most comfortable in England; and no expense was spared in the scenery and decorations."--(Vol. i. p. 71.) Frequenting the theatre soon introduced him to far other literature than Mr Newbury's publications. Shakespere was in his hands, he says, as soon as he could read. He went through Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old. What hosts of plays beside he may have devoured, it was probably beyond his power to recall. And he early began to imitate what he read. In one passage he leaves us to gather that his first attempts at _poetry_ were so early, that they went beyond the time of memory. Miss Tyler had all along intended to give her _protegé_ a systematic education, and for this purpose she had purchased a translation of Rousseau's _Emilius_. The systematic education, however, was never commenced. In 1782 he was placed--for what reason we are not told--as a day-boarder in a school at Bristol. He then necessarily resided with his father. Two years after, Miss Tyler herself removed to Bristol, and again received her nephew. But in this interval of two years, the holidays were always spent with his aunt, wherever she might be. It was in these holidays that his real education was carried on.