WINCHESTER. 15 



attention. It must have been very early 

 in my life when I was placed in a small 

 village school at Sutton Veyney, about 

 three miles from Warminster, in Wiltshire ; 

 and I could not have stayed there long, as 

 I have but an indistinct recollection of it, 

 except upon one occasion a visit of my 

 father to the school, when my master, with 

 his hand upon my head, addressing him, 

 said, " This will make a sprask boy, sir ! " 



I did not then know what this provincial- 

 ism was intended to convey, any more than I 

 did the cause of my removal ; but soon after 

 I found myself at a large school at Twyford, 

 near Winchester, the same village in which 

 Alexander Pope first received the rudiments 

 of those classical acquirements that enabled 

 him to astonish the world with the produc- 

 tions of his immortal pen. 



I cannot define the period of my sojourn at 

 this romantic little village, with the silver 

 Itchen washing its flowery meads, upon 

 whose banks we frequently met the Winches- 



