appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr. Skinner's nature. Some such boys,
alas! there will be in every school; upon them Dr. Skinner's hand was very
properly a heavy one. His hand was against them, and theirs against him during
the whole time of the connection between them. They not only disliked him, but
they hated all that he more especially embodied, and throughout their lives
disliked all that reminded them of him. Such boys however were in a minority,
the spirit of the place being decidedly Skinnerian.
    I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great man. It was
during the Christmas holidays and I had come down to Roughborough for a few days
to see Alethæa Pontifex (who was then living there) on business. It was very
gracious of him to take notice of me, for if I was a light of literature at all
it was of the very lightest kind.
    It was true that in the intervals of business I had written a good deal, but
my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and for those theatres that
devoted themselves to extravaganza and burlesque. I had written many pieces of
this description, full of puns and comic songs, and they had had a fair success,
but my best piece had been a treatment of English history during the Reformation
period, in the course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Henry
the Eighth, Catherine of Aragon, and Oliver Cromwell (in his youth better known
as the Malleus Monachorum) and had made them dance a break-down. I had also
dramatised Pilgrim's Progress for a Christmas Pantomime, and made an important
scene of Vanity Fair, with Mr. Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy and
Hopeful as the principal characters. The orchestra played music taken from
Handel's best known works, but the time was a good deal altered, and altogether
they were not exactly as Handel left them. Mr. Greatheart was very stout and had
a red nose; he wore a capacious waistcoat and a shirt with a huge frill down the
middle of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give him; he
wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his mouth
which was continually going out.
    Christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it was said that the dress
which the stage manager had originally proposed for her had been considered
inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the case. With all
these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural