Matthew Feilde,
also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see
below.

Page 21, line 18. _"Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter
Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but _The Voyages and
Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle_, 1736, has had its day. It was a
blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece
of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to
Stothard, Vol. IV. _The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy_ I have not seen.
Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a
Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs
of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a
Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.

Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's
play.

Page 23, line 17 from foot. _Squinting W----_. Not identifiable.

Page 23, line 7 from foot. _Coleridge, in his literary life_.
Coleridge speaks in the _Biographia Literaria_ of having had the
"inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a
very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to
attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his
own classical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism.
Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:--

In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years
of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor,
or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense
might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer
words. _Lute, harp_ and _lyre, Muse, Muses_ and _inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus_ and _Hippocrene_, were all an abomination to
him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp?
Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's
daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I
suppose!"

Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even
now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain
interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."

In _Table Talk_ Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The
discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was
ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I
remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was cry