Look at him, in his boyhood;--he is a tallow chandler's son, _rien que ça!_ living close by the Anchor brewery, in Southwark;--Mr. Child's brewery, whose daughter married with his clerk, Halsey; and then it was Halsey's brewery; and Halsey's only daughter married Lord Cobham; and from this pair, the brewery was bought by Halsey's manager and nephew, Ralph Thrale, on the death of whose son, Henry, it passed by purchase to his chief clerks, Barclay and Perkins. The brewery, now, is no more like what it was in Woodward's days than Drury Lane theatre is like the Curtain, the Fortune, or the Globe. As Woodward played beneath the Anchor gateway, there was probably little uneasiness in his mind at the idea of his helping and succeeding his sire in candle making; but when Woodward became a pupil at Merchant Tailors', I think it may have been otherwise. How young Woodward was ever sent thither, I cannot guess; but I conclude that his father, "the _tallow_ chandler," was not aware, that among the statutes of the institution there was one which said that, "in the schoole at noe time of the yere, they shall use tallow candle in noe wise, but wax candles onely." Perhaps old Woodward supplied them to order. I think if Woodward had never gone to Merchant Tailors', he never would have added lustre to the British stage. He was born about the last year of Queen Anne's reign,[123] and was in Lawrence Pountney when he was some ten years old. The quick lad became a very good classical scholar, and in after years, he used to astonish and gratify the society which he most loved, by the aptness and beauty of his quotations; not for effect, for Harry Woodward, look you, was as modest as he was clever.