“In one of your late papers I was much amused by a report of the proceedings of a ‘Morning at Bow Street,’ during which the behaviour of the Harrow boys was brought to the notice of that worthy magistrate, Sir R. Birnie. To suppose that these young gentlemen are accustomed to parade the streets with sticks charged with lead, searching for snobs with heads to correspond, and carrying pistols loaded with the same metal in their pockets to confer the coup-de-grâce upon these unfortunates, would be to believe, what
‘Nec pueri credant, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.’
Excuse Latin, the English proverb is somewhat coarse.
“I recollect the operative artisan Jones: he succeeded an excellent farrier, who emigrated with Sir Bellingham Graham, one of our worthies. Unless Jones had in the first instance made himself obnoxious to the boys, which from W. L.’s account is more than possible, they would not have interfered with him. The whole account I know to be sadly exaggerated; you are, perhaps, an advocate for the publicity of these reports, so should I be, were they not for the most part so outrageously surchargés. The ‘Gentlemen of the Press’ think truth needs the aid of foreign ornament, for in this particular instance neither pistols nor sticks, loaded or unloaded, were seen, or afterwards discovered to have been in the possession of the boys, but were gratuitously conferred upon them by the reporters.
“Shall such fellows as these be allowed to bespatter an institution which reckons Sir William Jones, Lord Byron, Parr, and others ‘dear to memory and to fame,’ among her mighty dead—and Lord Teignmouth, the Marquis of Hastings, Messrs. Peel, Barry Cornwall, and myself, among her mighty living[24]?
“You will, I know, excuse me. I am by nature modest, even as an American, but having been hitherto particular as to my society, if I am to be damned to everlasting fame, it must be in good company!
“We are so few and far between in this country, that we cannot form a corps to show our esprit, yet even in this wilderness will I upraise my solitary voice in praise of Harrow-on-the-Hill.—Floreat in æternum!—Hoping that I have said enough ‘to Harrow up your soul,’
“I am, your’s,
“One of the Old School.”