are my grandsire's. A
very fair judge of French poetry, and himself a good Norman poet, Mr.
John Sullivan of Jersey writes and tells me that the songs are
excellent, and that he remembers them to have been popularly sung when
he was a boy.

About the matter of hereditary bias itself, we know that as with animals
so with men, "fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;" this so far as bodies
are concerned; but surely spirits are more individual, as innumerable
instances prove, where children do not take after their parents. If,
however, I may mention my own small experience of this matter, literary
talent, or at all events authorship, _is_ hereditary, especially in
these days of that general epidemic, the "cacoethes scribendi."

* * * * *

I wrote this paper following originally for an American publication; and
as I cannot improve upon it, and it has never been printed in England, I
produce it here in its integrity.

A true and genuine record of what English schools of the highest class
were more than sixty-five years ago cannot fail to have much to interest
the present generation on both sides of the Atlantic; if only because we
may now indulge in the self-complacency of being everyway wiser, better,
and happier than our recent forebears. And in setting myself to write
these early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at times
necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and
asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude of plain
truth-telling), I desire to say nothing against or for either the dead
or the living beyond their just deserts, and I protest against any
charge of unreasonable want of charity as to my whilom "schools and
schoolmasters." It is true that sometimes I loved them not, neither can
I in general respect their memory; but the causes of such a feeling on
my part shall be made manifest anon, and I am sure that modern parents
and guardians will rejoice that much of my childhood's hard experience
has not been altogether that of their own boys.

I was sent to school much too soon, at the early age of seven, having
previously had for my home tutor a well-remembered day-teacher in
"little Latin and less Greek" of the name of Swallow, whom I thought a
wit and a poet in those days because one morning he produced as an
epitaph on himself the following effusion:

"Beneath this stone a Swallow lies,
No one laughs and no one cries;
Wher