At Westminster Southey obtained his first literary profits—the guerdon of the silver penny to which Cowper alludes in his _Table-Talk_. Southey’s penny—exchanged for current coin in the proportion of six to one by the mistress of the boarding-house—was always awarded for English composition. But his fame among his schoolfellows was not of an early or sudden growth. In the year of Southey’s entrance, some of the senior boys commenced a weekly paper called _The Trifler_. It imitates, with some skill, the periodical essay of the post-Johnsonian period: there is the wide-ranging discussion on the Influence of Liberty on Genius; there is the sprightly sketch of Amelia, a learned Lady; there is the moral diatribe on Deists, a Sect of Infidels most dangerous to Mankind; there are the letters from Numa and from Infelix; there is the Eastern apologue, beginning, “In the city of Bassora lived Zaydor, the son of Al-Zored.” Southey lost no time in sending to the editor his latest verses; a baby sister, Margaretta, had just died, and Southey expressed in elegy a grief which was real and keen. “The Elegy signed B. is received”—so Mr. Timothy Touchstone announced on the Saturday after the manuscript had been dropped into the penny post. The following Saturday—anxiously expected—brought no poem, but another announcement: “The Elegy by B. must undergo some Alterations; a Liberty I must request all my Correspondents to permit me to take.” “After this,” says Southey, “I looked for its appearance anxiously, but in vain.” Happily no one sought to discover B., or supposed that he was one with the curly-headed boy of the under-fourth.