Adventures among Books | Page 6

the Fairy Queen came out of Eildon Hill and haunted
Carterhaugh; at Newark Tower we saw "the embattled portal arch" -
"Whose ponderous grate and massy bar Had oft rolled back the tide of
war," -

just as, at Foulshiels, on Yarrow, we beheld the very roofless cottage
whence Mungo Park went forth to trace the waters of the Niger, and at
Oakwood the tower of the Wizard Michael Scott.
Probably the first novel I ever read was read at Elgin, and the story was
"Jane Eyre." This tale was a creepy one for a boy of nine, 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