CHAPTER VII
THE POET
You have heard the opinions of the "Society" as to Sam Semple. You have also witnessed the humiliation and the basting of that young man. Let me tell you more about him before we go on to relate the progress of the conspiracy of which he was the inventor and the spring.
He was the son of one John Semple who was employed at the customhouse. The boy could look forward, like most of us, to a life of service. He might go to sea, and so become in due course, prentice, mate, and skipper; or he might be sent on board as supercargo; or he might enter the countinghouse of a merchant and keep the books; or he might follow his father and become a servant of the customhouse.
He was two years older than myself and therefore, so much above me at school. Of all the boys (which alone indicates something contemptible in his nature) he was the most disliked, not by one or two, but by the whole school; not only by the industrious and the well-behaved, but also by the lazy and the vicious.
There is always in every school, one boy at least, who is the general object of dislike: he makes no friends: his society is shunned: he may be feared, but he is hated. There are, I dare say, many causes for unpopularity: one boy is perhaps a bully who delights to ill-treat the younger and the weaker; one is a braggart: one plays games unfairly: one is apt to offend that nice sense of honour and loyalty which is cultivated by schoolboys: another is treacherous to his comrades; he tells tales, backbites and makes mischief: perhaps he belongs to an inferior station and has bad manners: perhaps he takes mean advantages: perhaps he is a coward who will not fight: perhaps he cannot do the things which boys respect.
Sam Semple was disliked for many of these reasons. He was known to be a telltale; he was commonly reported to convey things overheard to the usher, by means of which that officer was enabled to discover many little plots and plans and so bring their authors to pain and confusion. He was certainly a coward who would never fight it out, but after a grand pretence and flourish would run away at the first blow. But if he would not fight he would bear malice and would take mean revenges; he was a most notorious liar, insomuch that no one would believe any statement made by him, if it could be proved to be connected with his own advantage; he could not play any games and affected to despise the good old sports of cocking, baiting the bear, drawing the badger, playing at cricket, hockey, wrestling, racing, and the other things that make boys skilful, courageous and hardy. He was, in a word, a poor soft, cowardly creature, more like a girl—and an inferior kind of girl—than an honest lad.
He was much addicted to reading: he would, by choice, sit in a corner reading any book that he could get more willingly than run, jump, row, or race. When we had holidays he would go away by himself, sometimes on the walls, if it were summer, or in some sheltered nook, if it were winter, contented to be left alone with his printed page. He borrowed books from my father who encouraged him in reading, while he admonished him on account of his faults, and from the vicar, who lent him books, while he warned him against the reports of his character which were noised abroad. Now—I know not how—the boy became secretly inflamed with the ambition of becoming a poet. How he fell into this pitfall, which ended in his ruin, I know not. Certainly it was not from any boys in the school, or from any friend in the town, because there are no books of poetry in Lynn, save those which belong to the parson and the schoolmaster. However, he did conceive the ambition of becoming a poet—secretly, at first, because he was naturally ashamed of being such a fool, but it came out. He read poetry from choice, and rather than anything else. Once, I remember, he was flogged for taking a volume of miscellany poems into church instead of the Book of Common Prayer. The boys were astonished at the crime, because certainly one would much rather read the Book of Common Prayer, in which one knows what to expect, than a book of foolish rhymes.
I myself was the first to find out his ambition. It was in this way. Coming out of school one day I picked up a paper which was blown about the square. It was covered with writing. I read some of it, wondering what it might mean. There was a good deal and not a word of sense from beginning to end: the writing was all scored out and corrected over and over again. Thus, not to waste your time over this nonsense, it ran something like this:
When the refulgent rays of Sol began prevail
early Day Morn