In such scenery then, and with such occupations, did the boy spend his time, until it became necessary to send him to a higher school than Cockermouth afforded. He was accordingly dispatched to Hawkshead Grammar School, near the lake of Esthwaite, where he was not crammed with overmuch learning. He speaks of these larger school days with enthusiasm, in his “Prelude;”--not, however, because the little Latin and mathematics which he learned were so tasteful to his mind; but because his leisure hours and holidays were rendered sweeter by the restraints of the school, and gave a greater zest to his field-sports, and the secular books which he loved. He mentions his amusements--such as birds’ nesting, in the warm moist mornings of Spring,--springing woodcocks, in the brown and mellow days of Autumn,--bathing in the Derwent, that “tempting playmate” of his, into which, even when five years old, he would plunge again and again, “making one long bathing of a Summer’s day,”--rowing, on sunny half-holidays with his boisterous schoolmates, on the great “plain of Windermere,”--or skating, by day and night, upon the frozen bosom of Esthwaite. His beloved books, too, at this time, find a record in his verse. They are Fielding--that mighty creator, so full of the “_play-impulse_,” like an old god who makes worlds, and amuses himself with the story of their various fortunes; Cervantes, who laughed Christendom out of its chivalry, because chivalry was dead as an institution, and had become laughable; Le Sage, with his Shaksperian knowledge of life, and his inimitable artistic power; and Swift, with his sharp wit, learning, and satire, glittering amid continents of mud. “Gulliver’s Travels,” and the “Tale of a Tub,” were the things which stuck to him fastest, however, of all the works of these writers.