We know at once that he must
have stroked the fallow greyhound that was outrun on "Cotsall"; that he
must--and perhaps once or twice at least too often--have played truant
(some readers, boys past or present, might wish for association's sake it
could actually have been Datchet-wards) from under the shadow of good Sir
Hugh's probably not over formidable though "threatening twigs of birch,"
at all risks of being "preeches" on his return, in fulfilment of the
direful menace held out to that young namesake of his over whose
innocence Mrs. Quickly was so creditably vigilant. On the other hand, no
student of Jonson will need to be reminded how closely and precociously
familiar the big stalwart Westminster boy, Camden's favoured and grateful
pupil, must have made himself with the rankest haunts and most unsavoury
recesses of that ribald waterside and Smithfield life which he lived to
reproduce on the stage with a sometimes insufferable fidelity to details
from which Hogarth might have shrunk. Even his unrivalled proficiency in
classic learning can hardly have been the fruit of greater or more
willing diligence in school hours than he must have lavished on other
than scholastic studies in the streets.
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