Merchant Taylors' School founded in 1561--Its limited scope and
stationary condition during two centuries and a half--The writer's
recollections of it from 1842 to 1850--William Dugard and his
troubles.
I. I cannot enter very well, in a general view of the subject, into the
history of all the civic foundations which rose up one by one subsequently
to St. Paul's, such as the City of London School, the Mercers' and the
Skinners', beyond the incidental notices which I have taken occasion to
introduce of such institutions, as well as of the system of public grammar
schools endowed by Edward VI. But I may be allowed to speak of one with
which I enjoyed personal associations between the years 1842 and 1850, and
to mention that in the third chapter of his _Autobiography_ Leigh Hunt
sheds some interesting light on the condition of Christ's Hospital when
Lamb, Coleridge, and himself were there in the last years of the last
century.
Christ's Hospital has produced some very eminent men, but whether by
virtue of its system or in spite of it, I hardly venture to say. The
biographer of the author of _Elia_ tells us what books his distinguished
friend read at school; how little he learned, Lamb himself seems to
suggest in that paper on "The Old and the New Schoolmaster."