in accordance with the cruel custom of the time, sent to a large
boarding school. The change from home to a boarding school is bad
enough now; it was much worse in those days.

"I had hardships," says Cowper, "of various kinds to conflict with,
which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I
had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my
being singled out from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteen
years of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the
cruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular recital of the
many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually
to persecute me. It will be sufficient to say that his savage
treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that
I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than to
his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by any
other part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in
glory!" Cowper charges himself, it may be in the exaggerated style of
a self-accusing saint, with having become at school an adept in the art
of lying. Southey says this must be a mistake, since at English public
schools boys do not learn to lie. But the mistake is on Southey's
part; bullying, such as this child endured, while it makes the strong
boys tyrants, makes the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defend
themselves by deceit, the fist of the weak. The recollection of this
boarding school mainly it was that at a later day inspired the plea for
a home education in _Tirocinium_.

Then why resign into a stranger's hand
A task as much within your own command,
That God and nature, and your interest too,
Seem with one voice to delegate to you?