Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/318

312 his family to his new residence, and, I believe, placed him for some time, probably not long, under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Litchfield, father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biographers have given no account; and I know it only from a story of a barring-out, told me, when I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr. Pigot his uncle.

The practice of barring-out was a savage licence, practised in many schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a school-boy, was barred-out at Litchfield, and the whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison. Rh