Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge | Page 4

not,

especially biographies. I spent all my spare time in the school library; one only valuable
thing have I derived from that--a capacity for taking in the sense of a page at a glance,
and having a verbal memory of a skimmed book for an hour or two superior to any one
that I ever met."
Then there came an ebb, and he read nothing, but loafed all day, and tried to talk. He had
a notion he said, that he could argue Socratically; and he was always trying to introduce
metaphors into his conversation. But his remarks in a much later letter to a friend on
childish reading are so pertinent that I introduce them here.
"Never take a book away from a child unless it is positively vicious; that they should
learn how to read a book and read it quickly is the great point; that they should get a habit
of reading, and feel a void without it, is what should be cultivated. Never mind if it is
trash now; their tastes will insensibly alter. I like a boy to cram himself with novels; a day
will come when he is sick of them, and rejects them for the study of facts. What we want
to give a child is 'bookmindedness,' as some one calls it. They will read a good deal that
is bad, of course; but innocence is as slippery as a duck's back; a boy really fond of
reading is generally pure-minded enough. When you see a robust, active, out-of-door boy
deeply engrossed in a book, then you may suspect it if you like, and ask him what he has
got; it will probably have an animal bearing."
Friendships more or less ardent, butterfly-hunting, school games, constant visits to the
cathedral for service, to which he was always keenly devoted, uneventful holidays, filled
up most of his school life. His letters at this date are very ordinary; his early precocity
seemed, rather to the delight of his parents, to have vanished. He was not a prig, though
rather exclusive; not ungenial, though retiring. "A dreadful boy," he writes of himself,
"who is as mum as a mouse with his elders, and then makes his school friends roar with
laughter in the passage: dumb at home, a chatterbox at school."
"I had no religion at that time," he writes, "with the exception of six months, when I got
interested in it by forming a friendship with an attractive ritualistic curate; but my
confirmation made no impression on me, and I think I had no moral feelings that I could
distinguish. I had no inherent hatred of wrong, or love for right; but I was fastidious, and
that kept me from being riotous, and undemonstrative, which made me pure."
CHAPTER II
Arthur went up to the University, Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1870; he did not
distinguish himself there, or acquire more than he had done at Winchester: "The one
thing I learnt at Winchester that has been useful to me since, was how to tie up old letters:
my house-master taught me how to do that--it was about all he was fit for. The thing I
learnt at Cambridge was to smoke: my cousin Fred taught me that, and he was hardly fit
for that."
As it was at Cambridge that I first met him, I will give a short description of him as far as
I can remember.

He was a tall, lounging fellow, rather clumsy in his movements, but with a kind of
stateliness about him; he looked, and was, old for his years. He was a little short-sighted
and wore glasses; without them his brow had that puzzled, slightly bothered look often
seen in weak-sighted people. His face was not unattractive, though rather heavy; his hair
was dark and curly--he let it grow somewhat long from indolence--and he had a drooping
moustache. He was one of the men who, without the slightest idea of doing so, always
managed to create rather an impression. As he lounged along the street with his hands in
his pockets, generally alone, people used to turn and look at him. If he had taken a line of
any kind he would have been known everywhere--but he did nothing.
The occasion on which I met him first was in the rooms of a common friend; there was a
small gathering of men. He was sitting in a low chair, smoking intently. It was the one
occupation he loved; he hardly said anything, though the conversation was very animated;
silence was his latest phase; but as it was his first term, and he was not very well
acquainted with the party, it appeared natural; not that being surrounded by dukes and
bishops would have made the slightest difference to him if he