ted the bad consequences of his negligence, and
he died painfully before he was old. Barnes wrote elegant Latin verse, a
classical English style, and might assuredly have made himself a name in
wit and literature, had he cared much for any thing beyond his glass of
wine and his Fielding.

What pleasant days have I not passed with him, and other schoolfellows,
bathing in the New River, and boating on the Thames. He and I began to
learn Italian together; and any body not within the pale of the
enthusiastic, might have thought us mad, as we went shouting the
beginning of Metastasio's ode to Venus, as loud as we could bawl, over
the Hornsey-fields.

LEIGH HUNT DROWNING.

At Oxford, my love of boating had nearly cost me my life. I had already
had a bit of a taste of drowning in the river Thames, in consequence of
running a boat too hastily on shore; but it was nothing to what I
experienced on this occasion. The schoolfellow whom I was visiting was
the friend whose family lived in Spring Gardens. We had gone out in a
little decked skiff, and not expecting disasters in the gentle Isis, I
had fastened the sail-line, of which I had the direction, in order that
I might read a volume which I had with me, of Mr. Cumberland's novel
called "Henry." My friend was at the helm. The wind grew a little
strong, and we had just got into Iffley Reach, when I heard him exclaim,
"Hunt, we are over!" The next moment I was under the water, gulping it,
and giving myself up for lost. The boat had a small opening in the
middle of the deck, under which I had thrust my feet; this circumstance
had carried me over with the boat, and the worst of it was, I found I
had got the sail-line round my neck. My friend, who sat on the deck
itself, had been swept off, and got comfortably to shore, which was at a
little distance.

My bodily sensations were not so painful as I should have fancied they
would have been. My mental reflections were very different, though one
of them, by a singular meeting of extremes, was of a comic nature. I
thought that I should never see the sky again, that I had parted with
all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which
said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the
sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me
both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next
minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which ther