The change from home to a boarding school is bad
enough now; it was much worse in those days.
"I had hardships," says Cowper, "of various kinds to conflict with,
which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I
had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my
being singled out from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteen
years of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the
cruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular recital of the
many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually
to persecute me. It will be sufficient to say that his savage
treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that
I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than to
his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by any
other part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in
glory!" Cowper charges himself, it may be in the exaggerated style of
a self-accusing saint, with having become at school an adept in the art
of lying.
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