Personal Recollections | Page 4

enemy was secretly constructing within me, to
mislead, by wild, unholy fiction, such as should come within the range
of its, influence. To God be all the glory that I am not now pandering
with this pen to the most grovelling or the most impious of man's
perverted feelings.
But above all other tastes, all other cravings, one passion reigned
supreme, and that acme of enjoyment to me was music. This also was
met by indulgence as unlimited as its cravings; for not only did my
father possess one of the finest voices in the world, and the very highest
degree of scientific knowledge, taste, and skill in the management of it,
but our house was seldom without an inmate in the person of his most
intimate friend and brother clergyman, a son of the celebrated
composer Mr. Linley, who was as highly gifted in instrumental as my

father was in vocal music. The rich tones of his old harpsichord seem at
this moment to fill my ear and swell my heart; while my father's deep,
clear, mellow voice breaks in, with some noble recitative or elaborate
air of Handel, Haydn, and the rest of a school that may be superseded,
but never, never can be equalled by modern composers. Or the
harpsichord was relinquished to another hand, and the breath of our
friend came forth through the reed of his hautboy in strains of such
overpowering melody, that I have hid my face on my mother's lap to
weep the feelings that absolutely wrung my little heart with excess of
enjoyment. This was not a snare; or, if it might have been made one,
the Lord broke it in time, by taking away my hearing. I would not that
it had been otherwise, for while a vain imagination was fostered by the
habit I have before adverted to, this taste for music and its high
gratification most certainly elevated the mind. I do firmly believe that it
is a gift from God to man, to be prized, cherished, cultivated. I believe
that the man whose bosom yields no response to the concord of sweet
sounds, falls short of the standard to which man should aspire as an
intellectual being; and though Satan does fearfully pervert this solace of
the mind to most vile purposes, still I heartily agree with Martin Luther,
that, in the abstract, "the devil hates music."
Before I had completed my sixth year, I came under the rod of
discipline which was to fall so long and so perseveringly upon me ere I
should "hear the rod and who had appointed it." Enthusiastic in every
thing, and already passionately fond of reading, I had eagerly accepted
the offer of a dear uncle, a young physician, to teach me French. I loved
him, for he was gentle and kind, and very fond of me; and it was a great
happiness to trip through the long winding street that separated us, to
turn down by the old Bridewell, so celebrated as an architectural
curiosity, being built of dark flint stones, exquisitely chiselled into the
form of bricks, and which even then I could greatly admire, and to take
my seat on my young uncle's knee, in the large hall of his house, where
stood a very large and deep-toned organ, some sublime strain from
which was to reward my diligence, if I repeated accurately the lesson
he had appointed. Thus between love for my uncle, delight in his organ,
and a natural inclination to acquire learning, I was stimulated to
extraordinary efforts, and met the demand on my energies in a very
unsafe way. I placed my French book under my pillow every night, and

starting from repose at the earliest break of dawn, strained my sleepy
eyes over the page, until, very suddenly, I became totally blind.
This was a grievous blow to my tender parents: the eclipse was so
complete that I could not tell whether it was midnight or midnoon, so
far as perception of light was concerned, and the case seemed hopeless.
It was, however, among the "all things" that God causes to work
together for good, while Satan eagerly seeks to use them for evil. It
checked my inordinate desire for mere acquirements, which I believe to
be a bad tendency, particularly in a female, while it threw me more
upon my own resources, such as they were, and gave me a keen relish
for the highly intellectual conversation that always prevailed in our
home. My father delighted in the society of literary men; and he was
himself of a turn so argumentative, so overflowing with rich
conversation, so decided in his political views, so alive to passing
events, so devotedly and so proudly the Englishman, that with such
associates as he gathered about him