Of course, in a house kept with so much neatness as Miss Tyler's, _no other boy_ was likely to be admitted; no other specimen of that race whose shoes no quantity of mats or matting could have rendered clean, or afforded sufficient protection against; and who might have even placed his corduroys on the lady's own chair--an offence which, we are assured, would have excited the highest indignation. Young Southey, therefore, had few playmates. _Shad_, a handy lad, kept for all manner of garden or out-of-door work, was his chief companion. He might well say that "few boys were ever less qualified for the discipline of a public school." He had, however, an elastic and buoyant spirit, which, notwithstanding this unsuitable preparation for such a scene, enabled him to meet the trials and the turmoil of Westminster school. It was on the 1st April 1788 that he entered there. A rough apprenticeship to life it seems to have been. One boy holds our epic poet out of window by the leg, to the manifest peril of his skull. Another appoints him, "by the law of fist," to write all his Latin exercises, with the special injunction that they shall be always "bad enough" to pass muster as the composition of the bully and the dunce. We suppose all this has been reformed since Southey's time, and that the following picture is curious only as a record of the past. In this "interior" the Westminster scholars look very much like a buccaneer's crew:-- "Our boarding-house was under the tyranny of W. F----. He was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in plain truth, a great brute--as great a one as ever went upon two legs. But there are two sorts of human brutes; those who partake of wolf nature, or of pig nature; and F---- was of the better breed, if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He would have made a good prize fighter, a good buccaneer, or, in the days of Coeur de Lion, or of my Cid, a good knight, to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty good will. Everybody feared and hated him; and yet it was universally felt that he saved the house from the tyranny of a greater beast than himself. This was a fellow by name B----, who was mean and malicious, which F---- was not: I do not know what became of him; his name has not appeared in the _Tyburn Calendar_, which was the only place to look for it; and if he has been hanged, it must have been under an _alias_--an observation which is frequently made, when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows. He and F---- were of an age and standing, the giants of the house; but F---- was the braver, and did us the good office of keeping him in order. They hated each other cordially, and the evening before we were rid of 'Butcher B----,' F---- gave the whole house the great satisfaction of giving him a good thrashing."--(Vol. i. p. 150.)