Miss Tyler had by this time deserted Bath and all its social and theatrical delights. On the death of her mother she had taken possession of the latter’s house at Bedminster; and it was deemed expedient to deliver Southey over to her tender mercies, while his father looked out from his linens and broadcloth for a proper school at which to place the clever youth. In this old-fashioned retreat, the successful biographer of the greatest of English admirals confesses to having spent some of the happiest days of his boyhood. Even at that early age his pleasure seems to have been in retirement, and his satisfaction in secluded labor; he had little relish for boyish games, and he found so much amusement in the garden among flowers and insects, that, had his taste in this branch of study been encouraged and taken advantage of, he might, perhaps, have figured as a distinguished naturalist. But that was not his destiny. His pen, wielded by a willing hand and directed by a suggestive brain, was his weapon; and before thirteen he had indulged his young ambition by compositions of various kinds, and his imagination by perusing and devouring the pages of Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser. Meantime, as early as assorted with his worthy father’s convenience, Southey was placed as a day-boarder at a school in his native city, where he appears to have been tolerably well taught. He had already, as has been intimated, aspiringly commenced composition in verse. Wordsworth dated his love of rhyme, and the tendency which colored his manhood, from his tenth year; but his future friend and eulogist seems to have received the “poetic impulse” at a much less mature time of life, and to have commenced gratifying his sensations and prepossessions by practicing the “art divine” at an age when he could hardly have learned to hold or handle his pen with any degree of facility. Owing to his aunt’s histrionic predilections, Shakspeare, as the prince of dramatists, had been put into his little hands almost as soon as he could read; and he went through the historical plays with rapture. It then occurred to him that there would, in all probability, be civil wars in his day, similar to those of which he read; and he conceived the ambitious desire of rivaling the valorous feats and lofty fame of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, the setter-up and puller-down of kings. So imbued did his mind and spirit become with this notion, that he began nightly to dream of tents, battle-fields, beating drums, clashing spears, and all the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.” Besides perusing with avidity the works of Shakspeare, he had read those of Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old; and his fancy, thus stimulated, glowed with romantic thoughts and charming visions. Moreover, he had already been present at numerous plays, and listened with awakened and lively curiosity to interminable conversations about their writers and actors, whom he regarded as the greatest of men.