He had commenced poet, as we have said, at an earlier age than he can call to mind, so that his first rhymes are utterly lost in the oblivion of childhood. He can only remember that this discovery that he could rhyme gave him great pleasure, and that his mother seemed equally gratified, and still more proud of the achievement. When in the habit of reading and witnessing so many plays, he of course wrote dramas. His first subject was "The Continence of Scipio!" Now that Tasso and Ariosto were his great delight, he commenced the epic or the metrical romance. He would graft a story upon the _Orlando Furioso_. _Arcadia_ should be the scene and give the title to the poem. There he would bring the Moors, and there should his hero Astolfo, riding on a Hippogriff, &c. &c. This must have been, he says, when he was between nine and ten, for some verses of it were written on the covers of his _Phædrus_. They were in the heroic couplet. It is curious to notice that, although writing heroic couplets on the covers of his _Phædrus_, his first task in prose composition was accomplished with extreme difficulty. The master, Mr Williams, would sometimes tell the boys to write a letter upon any subject that they pleased. Nothing had ever perplexed our young poet so much as this task. He actually cried for perplexity and vexation. At last he set to work. A _Salisbury Guide_ had fallen in his way; he wrote a long description of Stonehenge, and his master was not less surprised than delighted with it. He himself was unconscious of having done anything extraordinary, till the envy of his schoolfellows made him aware that he had surpassed them all. On coming to school next morning, some half-dozen of them beset him, and demanded "whether he, with all his learning, could tell what the letters _i. e._ stood for? You have written a description of Stonehenge, now tell us what _i. e._ stands for." Southey dashed at an answer, "John the Evangelist, I suppose." They shouted with triumph. In after years, when Southey had written _Don Roderick_, there were many pedants disposed to ask him what _i. e._ stands for. But now his maternal uncle, the Reverend Herbert Hill, always his kind friend and benefactor, determines to send the intelligent lad to Westminster school, and then to the University of Oxford. By way of preparation, he is removed from Mr Williams' academy, and placed under the care and tuition of a clergyman. We have not traced him through the various schools he attended--it would be waste of time; we have seen what was the real process of his education. Here, also, according to his own account, the progress of his mind was very little connected with the formal tuition he received.