Nothing in the retrospect of life strikes me as more astonishing than the rapid mental growth that must have taken place between the date of my father's death and its second or third anniversary. When my father died I was simply a child, though rather a precocious one, as the journal in Wales testifies; but between two and three years after that event the child had become a boy, with a keen taste for literature, which, if it had been taken advantage of by his teachers, ought to have made his education a more complete success than it ever became.
The misfortune was that the classics were not taught as literature at all, but as exercises in grammar and prosody. They were dissected by teachers who were simply lecturers on the science of language, and who had not large views even about that. Our whole attention being directed to the technicalities of the pedagogue, we did not perceive that the classic authors had produced poems which, as literature, were not inferior to those of our best English poets. So it happened that those of us who had literary tastes were content to satisfy them in reading English authors, and left them, as it were, at the door of the classroom. I worked courageously enough at the Latin books which were set before me, but never found the slightest enjoyment in them; indeed, it was only much later, and through the medium of French and Italian, that I gained some partial access to the literary beauty of Latin. As for Greek, I began it vigorously at Doncaster, but I did not get beyond the rudiments during my stay there.
Early attempts in English verse.--Advantages of life at Doncaster.--A school incident.--Fagging.--Story of a dog.--Robbery.--My schoolfellow, Henry Alexander.--His remarkable influence.--Other schoolfellows. --Story of a boat.--A swimming adventure.--Our walks and battles.
The love of literature was naturally followed by some early attempts at versification in English, which is generally looked upon as a silly waste of time in a boy, though if he writes Latin verses, which we were taught to do, he is thought to be seriously occupied. Prom the age of eleven to that of twenty-one I wrote English verses very frequently, and am now very glad I did so, being quite convinced that it was a most profitable exercise in the language. My early verses were invariably echoes of my dearly beloved Sir Walter Scott, a master whom it is not very difficult to imitate so far as mere versification is concerned. One little incident about this early verse-making is worth mentioning in this place. I was staying for a few days with a school-fellow at a house near Doncaster, when I dreamed a new ballad about a shipwreck, and on awaking wrote it down at once. The thing would not be worth quoting, if it were possible to remember it; but it was correct enough in rhymes and metre.