Adventures among Books | Page 6

and Rochester was a mystery, St. John a bore. But the lonely little girl in her despair, when something came into the room, and her days of starvation at school, and the terrible first Mrs. Rochester, were not to be forgotten. They abide in one's recollection with a Red Indian's ghost, who carried a rusty ruined gun, and whose acquaintance was made at the same time.
I fancy I was rather an industrious little boy, and that I had minded my lessons, and satisfied my teachers--I know I was reading Pinnock's "History of Rome" for pleasure--till "the wicked day of destiny" came, and I felt a "call," and underwent a process which may be described as the opposite of "conversion." The "call" came from Dickens. "Pickwick" was brought into the house. From that hour it was all over, for five or six years, with anything like industry and lesson-books. I read "Pickwick" in convulsions of mirth. I dropped Pinnock's "Rome" for good. I neglected everything printed in Latin, in fact everything that one was understood to prepare for one's classes in the school whither I was now sent, in Edinburgh. For there, living a rather lonely small boy in the house of an aged relation, I found the Waverley Novels. The rest is transport. A conscientious tutor dragged me through the Latin grammar, and a constitutional dislike to being beaten on the hands with a leather strap urged me to acquire a certain amount of elementary erudition. But, for a year, I was a young hermit, living with Scott in the "Waverleys" and the "Border Minstrelsy," with Pope, and Prior, and a translation of Ariosto, with Lever and Dickens, David Copperfield and Charles O'Malley, Longfellow and Mayne Reid, Dumas, and in brief, with every kind of light literature that I could lay my hands upon. Carlyle did not escape me; I vividly remember the helpless rage with which I read of the Flight to Varennes. In his work on French novelists, Mr. Saintsbury speaks of a disagreeable little boy, in a French romance, who found Scott assommant, stunningly stupid. This was a very odious little boy, it seems (I have not read his adventures), and he came, as he deserved, to a bad end. Other and better boys, I learn, find Scott "slow." Extraordinary boys! Perhaps "Ivanhoe" was first favourite of yore; you cannot beat Front de Boeuf, the assault on his castle, the tournament. No other tournament need apply. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, greatly daring, has attempted to enter the lists, but he is a mere Ralph the Hospitaller. Next, I think, in order of delight, came "Quentin Durward," especially the hero of the scar, whose name Thackeray could not remember, Quentin's uncle. Then "The Black Dwarf," and Dugald, our dear Rittmeister. I could not read "Rob Roy" then, nor later; nay, not till I was forty. Now Di Vernon is the lady for me; the queen of fiction, the peerless, the brave, the tender, and true.
The wisdom of the authorities decided that I was to read no more novels, but, as an observer remarked, "I don't see what is the use of preventing the boy from reading novels, for he's just reading 'Don Juan' instead." This was so manifestly no improvement, that the ban on novels was tacitly withdrawn, or was permitted to become a dead letter. They were far more enjoyable than Byron. The worst that came of this was the suggestion of a young friend, whose life had been adventurous--indeed he had served in the Crimea with the Bashi Bazouks--that I should master the writings of Edgar Poe. I do not think that the "Black Cat," and the "Fall of the House of Usher," and the "Murders in the Rue Morgue," are very good reading for a boy who is not peculiarly intrepid. Many a bad hour they gave me, haunting me, especially, with a fear of being prematurely buried, and of waking up before breakfast to find myself in a coffin. Of all the books I devoured in that year, Poe is the only author whom I wish I had reserved for later consideration, and whom I cannot conscientiously recommend to children.
I had already enjoyed a sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in "Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he found reading "Vanity Fair" under the table, that he had better read something else. What harm can the story do to a child? He reads about Waterloo, about fat Jos, about little George and the pony, about little Rawdon and the rat-hunt, and is happy and unharmed.
Leaving my hermitage,