into the garden under pretence of a lecture on botany; sending
him from his books to run round the grounds, or play at cooking
in the kitchen; giving him Bible lessons which invariably ended
in a theological argument, and following him with her advice and
sympathy through his multifarious literary enterprises. ["The
next time," (my uncle once said to us,) "that I saw Hannah More
was in 1807. The old ladies begged my parents to leave me with
them for a week, and this visit was a great event in my life. In
parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of me. They taught
me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people from the
fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might have
been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his
father in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the
means of setting you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the
dear little poet has caught his share of bracing . . . . Tell Tom
I desire to know how 'Olaus' goes on. The sea, I suppose,
furnished him with some new images."

The broader and more genial aspect under which life showed itself
to the boy at Barley Wood has left its trace in a series of
childish squibs and parodies, which may still be read with an
interest that his Cambrian and Scandinavian rhapsodies fail to
inspire. The most ambitious of these lighter efforts is a
pasquinade occasioned by some local scandal, entitled "Childe
Hugh and the labourer, a pathetic ballad." The "Childe" of the
story was a neighbouring baronet, and the "Abbot" a neighbouring
rector, and the whole performance, intended, as it was, to mimic
the spirit of Percy's Reliques, irresistibly suggests a
reminiscence of John Gilpin. It is pleasant to know that to Mrs.
Hannah More was due the commencement of what eventually became