Nor is it genius only that thus rebels against the discipline of the schools.  Even the tamer quality of Taste, which it is the professed object of classical studies to cultivate, is sometimes found to turn restive under the pedantic manege to which it is subjected.  It was not till released from the duty of reading Virgil as a task, that Gray could feel himself capable of enjoying the beauties of that poet; and Lord Byron was, to the last, unable to vanquish a similar prepossession, with which the same sort of school association had inoculated him, against Horace.

                  —­“Though Time hath taught
      My mind to meditate what then it learn’d,
      Yet such the fix’d inveteracy wrought
      By the impatience of my early thought,
      That, with the freshness wearing out before
      My mind could relish what it might have sought,
      If free to choose, I cannot now restore
    Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

“Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse.”

    CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV

To the list of eminent poets, who have thus left on record their dislike and disapproval of the English system of education, are to be added, the distinguished names of Cowley, Addison, and Cowper; while, among the cases which, like those of Milton and Dryden, practically demonstrate the sort of inverse ratio that may exist between college honours and genius, must not be forgotten those of Swift, Goldsmith, and Churchill, to every one of whom some mark of incompetency was affixed by the respective universities, whose annals they adorn.  When, in addition, too, to this rather ample catalogue of poets, whom the universities have sent forth either disloyal or dishonoured, we come to number over such names as those of Shakspeare and of Pope, followed by Gay, Thomson, Burns, Chatterton, &c., all of whom have attained their respective stations of eminence, without instruction or sanction from any college whatever, it forms altogether, it must be owned, a large portion of the poetical world, that must be subducted from the sphere of that nursing influence which the universities are supposed to exercise over the genius of the country.

The following letters, written at this time, contain some particulars which will not be found uninteresting.

LETTER 22.

TO MR. HENRY DRURY.

“Dorant’s Hotel, Jan. 13. 1808.

“My dear Sir,

“Though the stupidity of my servants, or the porter of the house, in not showing you up stairs (where I should have joined you directly), prevented me the pleasure of seeing you yesterday, I hoped to meet you at some public place in the evening.  However, my stars decreed otherwise, as they generally do, when I have any favour to request of them.  I think you would have been surprised at my figure, for, since our last meeting, I am reduced four stone in weight.  I then weighed fourteen stone seven pound, and now only ten stone and a half.  I have disposed of my superfluities by means of hard exercise and abstinence.