he was christened the same day. After the usual domestic education,
which from the character of his father may be reasonably supposed to
have given him strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the
care of Mr. Naish at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor at
Salisbury.

Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for
literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is
injuriously diminished: I would therefore trace him through the
whole process of his education. In 1683, in the beginning of his
twelfth year, his father, being made Dean of Lichfield, naturally
carried his family to his new residence, and, I believe, placed him
for some time, probably not long, under Mr. Shaw, then master of the
school at Lichfield, father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this
interval his biographers have given no account, and I know it only
from a story of a BARRING-OUT, told me, when I was a boy, by Andrew
Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr. Pigot, his uncle.

The practice of BARRING-OUT was a savage licence, practised in many
schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the
periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of
liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took
possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade
their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose
that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if
tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or
surprise the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was
BARRED OUT at Lichfield; and the whole operation, as he said, was
planned and conducted by Addison.