My grandmother’s jointure from her first husband was 200l. a year, which was probably equivalent to thrice that sum in these days. The Tylers had from their father 600l. each. Miss Tyler lived with her Uncle Bradford, of whom and of her I shall speak hereafter. I must now speak of the Hills. My uncle (it is so habitual to me to speak and write of him, and of him only by that name, κατ΄ έξοχήν,, that I will not constrain myself to use any farther designation)—my uncle, and his brother Joseph, and Edward Tyler went by day to a school in the village

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kept by one of the strangest fellows that ever wore a cassock, or took up the trade of tuition. His name was Collins, he was clever and profligate, and eked out his ways and means by authorship; scribbling for inclination, and publishing for gain. One of his works I recollect among my uncle’s books in Miss Tyler’s possession; its title is “Hell’s Gates open;” but not having looked into it since I was a mere boy, I only know that it is satirical, as the name may seem to import. I sent for another of his publications some years ago from a catalogue, not as any thing of value, but because he had been my uncle’s first schoolmaster, and I knew who and what he was; it is to be wished that every person who knew me would think that a good reason for buying my works: I should be very much obliged to them.—It is a little book in the unusual form of a foolscap quarto, and because it contains one fact which is really curious as matter of history, I give its title* at the bottom of the page. This publication is in no respect creditable to its author, and, on the score of decency, highly discreditable to him. But the fact, which is well worth the two shillings I gave for the book (though but a halfpenny fact), is, that, as late as the end of George the Second’s reign, or the beginning of

* Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; consisting of Essays, Abstracts, Original Poems, Letters, Tales, Translations, Panegyricks, Epigrams, and Epitaphs. “Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura; Quæ legis hic aliter non fit, abite, liber.”—Martial. “Things good, things bad, things middling when you look, You’ll find to constitute, my friends, this book.” By Emanuel Collins, A. B., late of Wadham College, Oxford. Bristol: printed by E. Farley, in Small Street. 1762.

OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.

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George the Third’s, there were persons in Bristol, who, from political scruples of conscience, refused to take King William’s halfpence, and these persons were so numerous that the magistrates thought it necessary to interfere, because of the inconvenience which they occasioned in the common dealings of trade and of the markets. William’s copper money was then in common currency, and indeed I myself remember it, having, between the years 1786 and 1790, laid by some half dozen of his halfpence with the single or double head, among the foreign pieces and others of rare occurrence which came within my reach.

Devoid as his Miscellanies are of any merit. Parson Collins, as he was called (not in honour of the cloth), had some humour. In repairing the public road, the labourers came so near his garden wall, that they injured the foundations, and down it fell. He complained to the waywardens, and demanded reparation, which they would have evaded if they could, telling him it was but an old wall, and in a state of decay. “Gentlemen,” he replied, “old as the wall was it served my purpose. But, however, I have not the smallest objection to your putting up a second-hand one in its place.” This anecdote I heard full five-and-thirty years ago from one of my school-masters, who had been a rival of Collins, and was satirized by him in the Miscellanies. His school failed him, not because he was deficient in learning, of which he seems to have had a full share for his station, but because of his gross and scandalous misconduct. He afterwards kept something so like an alehouse, that he got into a scrape with his superiors.

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I perceive that I should make an excellent correspondent for Mr. Urban, and begin to suspect that I have mistaken my talent, and been writing histories and poems when I ought to have been following the rich veins of gossip and garrulity. All this, however, is not foreign to my purpose. For I wish not only to begin ab ovo, but to describe every thing relating to the nest. And he who paints a bird’s-nest ought not to represent it nakedly per se, but in situ, in its place, and with as many of its natural accompaniments as the canvas will admit. It is not manners and fashions alone that change and are perpetually changing with us. The very constitution of society is unstable; it may, and in all probability will, undergo as great alterations, in the course of the next two or three centuries, as it has undergone in the last. The transitions are likely to be more violent, and far more rapid. At no very distant time, these letters, if they escape the earthquake and the volcano, may derive no small part of their interest and value from the faithful sketches which they contain of a stage of society which has already passed away, and of a state of things which shall then have ceased to exist.