poetry by the perusal of "Ogilby's Homer" and "Sandys' Ovid."
Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys
he declared, in his notes to the "Iliad," that English poetry owed
much of its beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely
attempted original composition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was
considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford, near
Winchester, and again to another school about Hyde Park Corner, from
which he used sometimes to stroll to the play-hones, and was so
delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play
from "Ogilby's Iliad," with some verses of his own intermixed, which
he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his
master's gardener, who personated Ajax.

At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost
part of what Taverner had taught him, and on his master at Twyford
he had already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those
masters he translated more than a fourth part of the
"Metamorphoses." If he kept the same proportion in his other
exercises, it cannot be thought that his loss was great. He tells
of himself, in his poems, that "he lisped in numbers;" and used to
say that he could not remember the time when he began to make
verses. In the style of fiction, it might have been said of him, as
of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle "the bees swarmed about
his mouth."

About the time of the Revolution his father, who was undoubtedly
disappointed by the sudden blast of Popish prosperity, quitted his
trade, and retired to Binfield, in Windsor Forest, with about twenty