little dramatic effusion of his,
under the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the
chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick,
but the town did not give it their sanction.--B. used to say of it, in
a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was _too classical for
representation_.]

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall ineffectual
from his hand--when droll squinting W---- having been caught putting
the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had
clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity
averred, that _he did not know that the thing had been forewarned_.
This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the _oral_ or
_declaratory_ struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard
it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was
unavoidable.

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. Coleridge,
in his literary life, has pronounced a more intelligible and ample
encomium on them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts not to
compare him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot
dismiss him better than with the pious ejaculation of C.--when he
heard that his old master was on his death-bed--"Poor J. B.!--may all
his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub
boys, all head and wings, with no _bottoms_ to reproach his sublunary
infirmities."

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred.--First Grecian of my
time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since
Co-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. T----e.[11]
What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those
who remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors!--You never
met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, which was
quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the
other. Generally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for
each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in
advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other was not
long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also.
Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in
yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the _Cicero
De Amicitia_, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young
heart even then was burning to anticipate!--Co-Grecian with S. was
Th----,