The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, 'Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat ?' He replied, 'No, I won't.' 'Then,' said I, 'here goes;' and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat, for which no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished.

But possibly, from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I had become perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise.
[17] See Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part III.

Sonnet xxii.

'On Catechising.' Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, then and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked.

For example, I read all Fielding's works, _Don Quixote, Gil Blas,_ and any part of Swift that I liked; _Gulliver's Travels,_ and the _Tale of the Tub,_ being both much to my taste.