I AM afraid it is rather taken for granted by parents in general, as regards any behaviour they may adopt towards their offspring, that religion is always upon their own side. And yet there is a very noteworthy text about ‘provoking our children to wrath,’ which it is a mistake to ignore. Wise and reverend signors may well have learnt by experience to take trifling annoyances with equanimity; but the _amour propre_ of the young is a tender shoot, and very sensitive to rough handling.
The most sensitive plant of all is the lad with a turn for literature; and, as a rule, parents have the least patience with him. When the turn is not a mere taste, but a natural gift, this does not much matter; no true flame was ever put out by the breath of contempt: but when it halts midway the youth has a bad time of it. He shivers at every sneer, without the means of giving it the lie. ‘Like a dart it strikes to his liver,’ because his armour, unlike that of true genius, is not arrow-proof. He knows that he is not the fool that his folk take him for, but he has an uneasy consciousness that they are partly right; that his powers are not equal to his pretensions. This was the case with William Henry Erin.
He had a turn for literature, and, if an uncommon facility for writing indifferent verses is any proof of it, even for poetry; and he found nobody to admit it, not even Margaret. ‘It is very good, Willie, for a first attempt,’ was the fatal eulogium she once passed upon the most cherished of his poetical productions; and his father, as we have seen, made no scruple of ridiculing his literary efforts. If the boy’s predilection for such matters had interfered with his professional duties, it might have been excusable enough; but the conveyancers to whom William Henry was articled were quite satisfied with him. He was very careful and diligent, and though he had come to years of indiscretion, far from dissipated. If he loitered on his way to his employers’ chambers in the New Inn, it was to turn over the leaves of some old poem on a book-stall, rather than to gaze on the young woman who might be behind it. Still, not being perfection, it was natural that he should feel resentment at his father’s harshness, and at the slights to which his muse was exposed at his unsympathising hands. He had never had any one to sympathise with his poetical aspirations except his friend Reginald Talbot, a fellow-clerk of his own age, who was also devoted to the Muses; and Talbot’s praise had its drawbacks. First, he did not think it worth much; and secondly, it could not be obtained without reciprocity; and it went against William Henry’s conscience to praise Talbot’s poems.