The Poetical Works of William Cowper (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853. Excerpt: ... was pursued more serious than in the case of Cowper. Possessed of a mind that shrunk from severity with a morbid sensitiveness, and endowed with faculties that required the most gentle culture to bring them to maturity, he was at once exposed to the discipline of a public school; and, as usual, was placed at the mercy of a stripling, who had purchased the right to be a tyrant by having first been a slave. "I was," he says, "singled out.from all the other boys, by a lad about fifteen years of age, as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper, who, by his savage treatment of me, impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind that I well remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and that I knew him by his shoe-buckles better than any other part of his dress." The boy's cruelty being at length discovered, he was expelled from the school, and Cowper was removed from it at the same time., Whatever may be said of the advantages of a public school, no reasonable person will assert that the same system of education is desirable in every case, without reference to the constitution, or capacity of the child; for the absurdity of such an argument would only be exceeded by pretending that a delicate exotic, if exposed to the wintry winds of our northern climate, will flourish with the same vigour as under its native sky. Vol. I. 2 On quitting school he was placed under the care of an eminent surgeon and oculist for a complaint in his eyes, where he remained about twelve months, and was then sent to Westminster. He was at that time nine years of age, and even at this early period he was attacked with a depression of spirits, to which he became more or less the victim during the remainder of his life. In 174...