Chapter V: Part 5

At last I offered to leave my poem with a bookseller to read it
and judge for himself. “Why, really, my dear Mr.—a—a—I forget
your name,” said he, cutting an eye at my rusty coat and shabby
gaiters, “really, sir, we are so pressed with business just now,
and have so many manuscripts on hand to read, that we have not
time to look at any new production, but if you can call again in
a week or two, or say the middle of next month, we may be able to
look over your writings and give you an answer. Don’t forget, the
month after next—good morning, sir—happy to see you any time you
are passing this way”—so saying he bowed me out in the civilest
way imaginable. In short, sir, instead of an eager competition to
secure my poem I could not even get it read! In the mean time I
was harassed by letters from my friends, wanting to know when the
work was to appear; who was to be my publisher; but above all
things warning me not to let it go too cheap.

There was but one alternative left. I determined to publish the
poem myself; and to have my triumph over the booksellers, when it
should become the fashion of the day. I accordingly published the
Pleasures of Melancholy and ruined myself. Excepting the copies
sent to the reviews, and to my friends in the country, not one, I
believe, ever left the bookseller’s warehouse. The printer’s bill
drained my purse, and the only notice that was taken of my work
was contained in the advertisements paid for by myself.

I could have borne all this, and have attributed it as usual to
the mismanagement of the publisher, or the want of taste in the
public: and could have made the usual appeal to posterity, but my
village friends would not let me rest in quiet. They were
picturing me to themselves feasting with the great, communing
with the literary, and in the high course of fortune and renown.
Every little while, some one came to me with a letter of
introduction from the village circle, recommending him to my
attentions, and requesting that I would make him known in
society; with a hint that an introduction to the house of a
celebrated literary nobleman would be extremely agreeable.

I determined, therefore, to change my lodgings, drop my
correspondence, and disappear altogether from the view of my
village admirers. Besides, I was anxious to make one more poetic
attempt. I was by no means disheartened by the failure of my
first. My poem was evidently too didactic. The public was wise
enough. It no longer read for instruction. “They want horrors, do
they?” said I, “I’faith, then they shall have enough of them.” So
I looked out for some quiet retired place, where I might be out
of reach of my friends, and have leisure to cook up some
delectable dish of poetical “hell-broth.”

I had some difficulty in finding a place to my mind, when chance
threw me in the way Of Canonbury Castle. It is an ancient brick
tower, hard by “merry Islington;” the remains of a hunting-seat
of Queen Elizabeth, where she took the pleasures of the country,
when the neighborhood was all woodland. What gave it particular
interest in my eyes, was the circumstance that it had been the
residence of a poet. It was here Goldsmith resided when he wrote
his Deserted Village. I was shown the very apartment. It was a
relique of the original style of the castle, with pannelled
wainscots and gothic windows. I was pleased with its air of
antiquity, and with its having been the residence of poor Goldy.

“Goldsmith was a pretty poet,” said I to myself, “a very pretty
poet; though rather of the old school. He did not think and feel
so strongly as is the fashion now-a-days; but had he lived in
these times of hot hearts and hot heads, he would have written
quite differently.”

In a few days I was quietly established in my new quarters; my
books all arranged, my writing desk placed by a window looking
out into the field; and I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe, when
he had finished his bower. For several days I enjoyed all the
novelty of change and the charms which grace a new lodgings
before one has found out their defects. I rambled about the
fields where I fancied Goldsmith had rambled. I explored merry
Islington; ate my solitary dinner at the Black Bull, which
according to tradition was a country seat of Sir Walter Raleigh,
and would sit and sip my wine and muse on old times in a quaint
old room, where many a council had been held.

All this did very well for a few days: I was stimulated by
novelty; inspired by the associations awakened in my mind by
these curious haunts, and began to think I felt the spirit of
composition stirring within me; but Sunday came, and with it the
whole city world, swarming about Canonbury Castle. I could not
open my window but I was stunned with shouts and noises from the
cricket ground. The late quiet road beneath my window was alive
with the tread of feet and clack of tongues; and to complete my
misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a “show
house!” the tower and its contents being shown to strangers at
sixpence a head.

There was a perpetual tramping up-stairs of citizens and their
families, to look about the country from the top of the tower,
and to take a peep at the city through the telescope, to try if
they could discern their own chimneys. And then, in the midst of
a vein of thought, or a moment of inspiration, I was interrupted,
and all my ideas put to flight, by my intolerable landlady’s
tapping at the door, and asking me, if I would “jist please to
let a lady and gentleman come in to take a look at Mr.
Goldsmith’s room.”

If you know anything what an author’s study is, and what an
author is himself, you must know that there was no standing this.
I put a positive interdict on my room’s being exhibited; but then
it was shown when I was absent, and my papers put in confusion;
and on returning home one day, I absolutely found a cursed
tradesman and his daughters gaping over my manuscripts; and my
landlady in a panic at my appearance. I tried to make out a
little longer by taking the key in my pocket, but it would not
do. I overheard mine hostess one day telling some of her
customers on the stairs that the room was occupied by an author,
who was always in a tantrum if interrupted; and I immediately
perceived, by a slight noise at the door, that they were peeping
at me through the key-hole. By the head of Apollo, but this was
quite too much! with all my eagerness for fame, and my ambition
of the stare of the million, I had no idea of being exhibited by
retail, at sixpence a head, and that through a key-hole. So I
bade adieu to Canonbury Castle, merry Islington, and the haunts
of poor Goldsmith, without having advanced a single line in my
labors.

My next quarters were at a small white-washed cottage, which
stands not far from Hempstead, just on the brow of a hill,
looking over Chalk farm, and Camden town, remarkable for the
rival houses of Mother Red Cap and Mother Black Cap; and so
across Cruckskull common to the distant city.

The cottage is in no wise remarkable in itself; but I regarded it
with reverence, for it had been the asylum of a persecuted
author. Hither poor Steele had retreated and lain perdue when
persecuted by creditors and bailiffs; those immemorial plagues of
authors and free-spirited gentlemen; and here he had written many
numbers of the Spectator. It was from hence, too, that he had
despatched those little notes to his lady, so full of affection
and whimsicality; in which the fond husband, the careless
gentleman, and the shifting spendthrift, were so oddly blended. I
thought, as I first eyed the window, of his apartment, that I
could sit within it and write volumes.

No such thing! It was haymaking season, and, as ill luck would
have it, immediately opposite the cottage was a little alehouse
with the sign of the load of hay. Whether it was there in
Steele’s time or not I cannot say; but it set all attempt at
conception or inspiration at defiance. It was the resort of all
the Irish haymakers who mow the broad fields in the neighborhood;
and of drovers and teamsters who travel that road. Here would
they gather in the endless summer twilight, or by the light of
the harvest moon, and sit round a table at the door; and tipple,
and laugh, and quarrel, and fight, and sing drowsy songs, and
dawdle away the hours until the deep solemn notes of St. Paul’s
clock would warn the varlets home.

In the day-time I was still less able to write. It was broad
summer. The haymakers were at work in the fields, and the perfume
of the new-mown hay brought with it the recollection of my native
fields. So instead of remaining in my room to write, I went
wandering about Primrose Hill and Hempstead Heights and
Shepherd’s Field, and all those Arcadian scenes so celebrated by
London bards. I cannot tell you how many delicious hours I have
passed lying on the cocks of new-mown hay, on the pleasant slopes
of some of those hills, inhaling the fragrance of the fields,
while the summer fly buzzed above me, or the grasshopper leaped
into my bosom, and how I have gazed with half-shut eye upon the
smoky mass of London, and listened to the distant sound of its
population, and pitied the poor sons of earth toiling in its
bowels, like Gnomes in “the dark gold mine.”

People may say what they please about Cockney pastorals; but
after all, there is a vast deal of rural beauty about the western
vicinity of London; and any one that has looked down upon the
valley of Westend, with its soft bosom of green pasturage, lying
open to the south, and dotted with cattle; the steeple of
Hempstead rising among rich groves on the brow of the hill, and
the learned height of Harrow in the distance; will confess that
never has he seen a more absolutely rural landscape in the
vicinity of a great metropolis.

Still, however, I found myself not a whit the better off for my
frequent change of lodgings; and I began to discover that in
literature, as in trade, the old proverb holds good, “a rolling
stone gathers no moss.”

The tranquil beauty of the country played the very vengeance with
me. I could not mount my fancy into the termagant vein. I could
not conceive, amidst the smiling landscape, a scene of blood and
murder; and the smug citizens in breeches and gaiters, put all
ideas of heroes and bandits out of my brain. I could think of
nothing but dulcet subjects. “The pleasures of spring”—“the
pleasures of solitude”—“the pleasures of tranquillity”—“the
pleasures of sentiment”—nothing but pleasures; and I had the
painful experience of “the pleasures of melancholy” too strongly
in my recollection to be beguiled by them.

Chance at length befriended me. I had frequently in my ramblings
loitered about Hempstead Hill; which is a kind of Parnassus of
the metropolis. At such times I occasionally took my dinner at
Jack Straw’s Castle. It is a country inn so named. The very spot
where that notorious rebel and his followers held their council
of war. It is a favorite resort of citizens when rurally
inclined, as it commands fine fresh air and a good view of the
city.

I sat one day in the public room of this inn, ruminating over a
beefsteak and a pint of port, when my imagination kindled up with
ancient and heroic images. I had long wanted a theme and a hero;
both suddenly broke upon my mind; I determined to write a poem on
the history of Jack Straw. I was so full of my subject that I was
fearful of being anticipated. I wondered that none of the poets
of the day, in their researches after ruffian heroes, had ever
thought of Jack Straw. I went to work pell-mell, blotted several
sheets of paper with choice floating thoughts, and battles, and
descriptions, to be ready at a moment’s warning. In a few days’
time I sketched out the skeleton of my poem, and nothing was
wanting but to give it flesh and blood. I used to take my
manuscript and stroll about Caen Wood, and read aloud; and would
dine at the castle, by way of keeping up the vein of thought.

I was taking a meal there, one day, at a rather late hour, in the
public room. There was no other company but one man, who sat
enjoying his pint of port at a window, and noticing the
passers-by. He was dressed in a green shooting coat. His
countenance was strongly marked. He had a hooked nose, a romantic
eye, excepting that it had something of a squint; and altogether,
as I thought, a poetical style of head. I was quite taken with
the man, for you must know I am a little of a physiognomist: I
set him down at once for either a poet or a philosopher.

As I like to make new acquaintances, considering every man a
volume of human nature, I soon fell into conversation with the
stranger, who, I was pleased to find, was by no means difficult
of access. After I had dined, I joined him at the window, and we
became so sociable that I proposed a bottle of wine together; to
which he most cheerfully assented.

I was too full of my poem to keep long quiet on the subject, and
began to talk about the origin of the tavern, and the history of
Jack Straw. I found my new acquaintance to be perfectly at home
on the topic, and to jump exactly with my humor in every respect.
I became elevated by the wine and the conversation. In the
fullness of an author’s feelings, I told him of my projected
poem, and repeated some passages; and he was in raptures. He was
evidently of a strong poetical turn.

“Sir,” said he, filling my glass at the same time, “our poets
don’t look at home. I don’t see why we need go out of old England
for robbers and rebels to write about. I like your Jack Straw,
sir. He’s a home-made hero. I like him, sir. I like him
exceedingly. He’s English to the back bone, damme. Give me honest
old England, after all; them’s my sentiments, sir!”

“I honor your sentiments,” cried I zealously. “They are exactly
my own. An English ruffian for poetry is as good a ruffian for
poetry as any in Italy or Germany, or the Archipelago; but it is
hard to make our poets think so.”

“More shame for them!” replied the man in green. “What a plague
would they have?” What have we to do with their Archipelagos of
Italy and Germany? Haven’t we heaths and commons and high-ways on
our own little island? Aye, and stout fellows to pad the hoof
over them too? Come, sir, my service to you—I agree with you
perfectly.”

“Poets in old times had right notions on this subject,” continued
I; “witness the fine old ballads about Robin Hood, Allen A’Dale,
and other staunch blades of yore.”

“Right, sir, right,” interrupted he. “Robin Hood! He was the lad
to cry stand! to a man, and never flinch.”

“Ah, sir,” said I, “they had famous bands of robbers in the good
old times. Those were glorious poetical days. The merry crew of
Sherwood Forest, who led such a roving picturesque life, ‘under
the greenwood tree.’ I have often wished to visit their haunts,
and tread the scenes of the exploits of Friar Tuck, and Clym of
the Clough, and Sir William of Coudeslie.”

“Nay, sir,” said the gentleman in green, “we have had several
very pretty gangs since their day. Those gallant dogs that kept
about the great heaths in the neighborhood of London; about
Bagshot, and Hounslow, and Black Heath, for instance—come, sir,
my service to you. You don’t drink.”

“I suppose,” said I, emptying my glass—“I suppose you have heard
of the famous Turpin, who was born in this very village of
Hempstead, and who used to lurk with his gang in Epping Forest,
about a hundred years since.”

“Have I?” cried he—“to be sure I have! A hearty old blade that;
sound as pitch. Old Turpentine!—as we used to call him. A famous
fine fellow, sir.”

“Well, sir,” continued I, “I have visited Waltham Abbey, and
Chinkford Church, merely from the stories I heard, when a boy, of
his exploits there, and I have searched Epping Forest for the
cavern where he used to conceal himself. You must know,” added I,
“that I am a sort of amateur of highwaymen. They were dashing,
daring fellows; the last apologies that we had for the knight
errants of yore. Ah, sir! the country has been sinking gradually
into tameness and commonplace. We are losing the old English
spirit. The bold knights of the post have all dwindled down into
lurking footpads and sneaking pick-pockets. There’s no such thing
as a dashing gentlemanlike robbery committed now-a-days on the
king’s highway. A man may roll from one end of England to the
other in a drowsy coach or jingling post-chaise without any other
adventure than that of being occasionally overturned, sleeping in
damp sheets, or having an ill-cooked dinner.

“We hear no more of public coaches being stopped and robbed by a
well-mounted gang of resolute fellows with pistols in their hands
and crapes over their faces. What a pretty poetical incident was
it for example in domestic life, for a family carriage, on its
way to a country seat, to be attacked about dusk; the old
gentleman eased of his purse and watch, the ladies of their
necklaces and ear-rings, by a politely-spoken highwayman on a
blood mare, who afterwards leaped the hedge and galloped across
the country, to the admiration of Miss Carolina the daughter, who
would write a long and romantic account of The adventure to her
friend Miss Juliana in town. Ah, sir! we meet with nothing of
such incidents now-a-days.”

“That, sir,”—said my companion, taking advantage of a pause, when
I stopped to recover breath and to take a glass of wine, which he
had just poured out—“that, sir, craving your pardon, is not owing
to any want of old English pluck. It is the effect of this cursed
system of banking. People do not travel with bags of gold as they
did formerly. They have post notes and drafts on bankers. To rob
a coach is like catching a crow; where you have nothing but
carrion flesh and feathers for your pains. But a coach in old
times, sir, was as rich as a Spanish galleon. It turned out the
yellow boys bravely; and a private carriage was a cool hundred or
two at least.”

I cannot express how much I was delighted with the sallies of my
new acquaintance. He told me that he often frequented the castle,
and would be glad to know more of me; and I promised myself many
a pleasant afternoon with him, when I should read him my poem, as
it proceeded, and benefit by his remarks; for it was evident he
had the true poetical feeling.

“Come, sir!” said he, pushing the bottle, “Damme, I like
you!—You’re a man after my own heart; I’m cursed slow in making
new acquaintances in general. One must stand on the reserve, you
know. But when I meet with a man of your kidney, damme my heart
jumps at once to him. Them’s my sentiments, sir. Come, sir,
here’s Jack Straw’s health! I presume one can drink it now-a-days
without treason!”

“With all my heart,” said I gayly, “and Dick Turpin’s into the
bargain!”

“Ah, sir,” said the man in green, “those are the kind of men for
poetry. The Newgate kalendar, sir! the Newgate kalendar is your
only reading! There’s the place to look for bold deeds and
dashing fellows.”

We were so much pleased with each other that we sat until a late
hour. I insisted on paying the bill, for both my purse and my
heart were full; and I agreed that he should pay the score at our
next meeting. As the coaches had all gone that run between
Hempstead and London he had to return on foot, He was so
delighted with the idea of my poem that he could talk of nothing
else. He made me repeat such passages as I could remember, and
though I did it in a very mangled manner, having a wretched
memory, yet he was in raptures.

Every now and then he would break out with some scrap which he
would Misquote most terribly, but would rub his hands and
exclaim, “By Jupiter, that’s fine! that’s noble! Damme, sir, if I
can conceive how you hit upon such ideas!”

I must confess I did not always relish his misquotations, which
sometimes made absolute nonsense of the passages; but what author
stands upon trifles when he is praised? Never had I spent a more
delightful evening. I did not perceive how the time flew. I could
not bear to separate, but continued walking on, arm in arm with
him past my lodgings, through Camden town, and across Crackscull
Common, talking the whole way about my poem.

When we were half-way across the common he interrupted me in the
midst of a quotation by telling me that this had been a famous
place for footpads, and was still occasionally infested by them;
and that a man had recently been shot there in attempting to
defend himself.

“The more fool he!” cried I. “A man is an idiot to risk life, or
even limb, to save a paltry purse of money. It’s quite a
different case from that of a duel, where one’s honor is
concerned. For my part,” added I, “I should never think of making
resistance against one of those desperadoes.”

“Say you so?” cried my friend in green, turning suddenly upon me,
and putting a pistol to my breast, “Why, then have at you, my
lad!—come, disburse! empty! unsack!”

In a word, I found that the muse had played me another of her
tricks, and had betrayed me into the hands of a footpad. There
was no time to parley; he made me turn my pockets inside out; and
hearing the sound of distant footsteps, he made one fell swoop
upon purse, watch, and all, gave me a thwack over my unlucky pate
that laid me sprawling on the ground; and scampered away with his
booty.

I saw no more of my friend in green until a year or two
afterwards; when I caught a sight of his poetical countenance
among a crew of scapegraces, heavily ironed, who were on the way
for transportation. He recognized me at once, tipped me an
impudent wink, and asked me how I came on with the history of
Jack Straw’s castle.

The catastrophe at Crackscull Common put an end to my summer’s
campaign. I was cured of my poetical enthusiasm for rebels,
robbers, and highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my subject,
and what was worse, I was lightened of my purse, in which was
almost every farthing I had in the world. So I abandoned Sir
Richard Steele’s cottage in despair, and crept into less
celebrated, though no less poetical and airy lodgings in a garret
in town.

I see you are growing weary, so I will not detain you with any
more of my luckless attempts to get astride of Pegasus. Still I
could not consent to give up the trial and abandon those dreams
of renown in which I had indulged. How should I ever be able to
look the literary circle of my native village in the face, if I
were so completely to falsify their predictions. For some time
longer, therefore, I continued to write for fame, and of course
was the most miserable dog in existence, besides being in
continual risk of starvation.

I have many a time strolled sorrowfully along, with a sad heart
and an empty stomach, about five o’clock, and looked wistfully
down the areas in the west end of the town; and seen through the
kitchen windows the fires gleaming, and the joints of meat
turning on the spits and dripping with gravy; and the cook maids
beating up puddings, or trussing turkeys, and have felt for the
moment that if I could but have the run of one of those kitchens,
Apollo and the muses might have the hungry heights of Parnassus
for me. Oh, sir! talk of meditations among the tombs—they are
nothing so melancholy as the meditations of a poor devil without
penny in pouch, along a line of kitchen windows towards
dinner-time.

At length, when almost reduced to famine and despair, the idea
all at once entered my head, that perhaps I was not so clever a
fellow as the village and myself had supposed. It was the
salvation of me. The moment the idea popped into my brain, it
brought conviction and comfort with it. I awoke as from a dream.
I gave up immortal fame to those who could live on air; took to
writing for mere bread, and have ever since led a very tolerable
life of it. There is no man of letters so much at his ease, sir,
as he that has no character to gain or lose. I had to train
myself to it a little, however, and to clip my wings short at
first, or they would have carried me up into poetry in spite of
myself. So I determined to begin by the opposite extreme, and
abandoning the higher regions of the craft, I came plump down to
the lowest, and turned creeper.

“Creeper,” interrupted I, “and pray what is that?” Oh, sir! I see
you are ignorant of the language of the craft; a creeper is one
who furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs at so much a line,
one that goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends the
Bow-street office; the courts of justice and every other den of
mischief and iniquity. We are paid at the rate of a penny a line,
and as we can sell the same paragraph to almost every paper, we
sometimes pick up a very decent day’s work. Now and then the muse
is unkind, or the day uncommonly quiet, and then we rather
starve; and sometimes the unconscionable editors will clip our
paragraphs when they are a little too rhetorical, and snip off
twopence or threepence at a go. I have many a time had my pot of
porter snipped off of my dinner in this way; and have had to dine
with dry lips. However, I cannot complain. I rose gradually in
the lower ranks of the craft, and am now, I think, in the most
comfortable region of literature.

“And pray,” said I, “what may you be at present!” “At present,”
said he, “I am a regular job writer, and turn my hand to
anything. I work up the writings of others at so much a sheet;
turn off translations; write second-rate articles to fill up
reviews and magazines; compile travels and voyages, and furnish
theatrical criticisms for the newspapers. All this authorship,
you perceive, is anonymous; it gives no reputation, except among
the trade, where I am considered an author of all work, and am
always sure of employ. That’s the only reputation I want. I sleep
soundly, without dread of duns or critics, and leave immortal
fame to those that choose to fret and fight about it. Take my
word for it, the only happy author in this world is he who is
below the care of reputation.”

The preceding anecdotes of Buckthorne’s early schoolmate, and a
variety of peculiarities which I had remarked in himself, gave me
a strong curiosity to know something of his own history. There
was a dash of careless good humor about him that pleased me
exceedingly, and at times a whimsical tinge of melancholy ran
through his humor that gave it an additional relish. He had
evidently been a little chilled and buffeted by fortune, without
being soured thereby, as some fruits become mellower and sweeter,
from having been bruised or frost-bitten. He smiled when I
expressed my desire. “I have no great story,” said he, “to
relate. A mere tissue of errors and follies. But, such as it is,
you shall have one epoch of it, by which you may judge of the
rest.” And so, without any farther prelude, he gave me the
following anecdotes of his early adventures.

BUCKTHORNE, OR THE YOUNG MAN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I was born to very little property, but to great expectations;
which is perhaps one of the most unlucky fortunes that a man can
be born to. My father was a country gentleman, the last of a very
ancient and honorable, but decayed family, and resided in an old
hunting lodge in Warwickshire. He was a keen sportsman and lived
to the extent of his moderate income, so that I had little to
expect from that quarter; but then I had a rich uncle by the
mother’s side, a penurious, accumulating curmudgeon, who it was
confidently expected would make me his heir; because he was an
old bachelor; because I was named after him, and because he hated
all the world except myself.

He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a miser even in
misanthropy, and hoarded up a grudge as he did a guinea. Thus,
though my mother was an only sister, he had never forgiven her
marriage with my father, against whom he had a cold, still,
immovable pique, which had lain at the bottom of his heart, like
a stone in a well, ever since they had been school boys together.
My mother, however, considered me as the intermediate being that
was to bring every thing again into harmony, for she looked upon
me as a prodigy—God bless her. My heart overflows whenever I
recall her tenderness: she was the most excellent, the most
indulgent of mothers. I was her only child; it was a pity she had
no more, for she had fondness of heart enough to have spoiled a
dozen!

I was sent, at an early age, to a public school, sorely against
my mother’s wishes, but my father insisted that it was the only
way to make boys hardy. The school was kept by a conscientious
prig of the ancient system, who did his duty by the boys
intrusted to his care; that is to say, we were flogged soundly
when we did not get our lessons. We were put into classes and
thus flogged on in droves along the highways of knowledge, in the
same manner as cattle are driven to market, where those that are
heavy in gait or short in leg have to suffer for the superior
alertness or longer limbs of their companions.

For my part, I confess it with shame, I was an incorrigible
laggard. I have always had the poetical feeling, that is to say,
I have always been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond.
I used to get away from my books and school whenever I could, and
ramble about the fields. I was surrounded by seductions for such
a temperament. The school-house was an old-fashioned,
white-washed mansion of wood and plaister, standing on the skirts
of a beautiful village. Close by it was the venerable church with
a tall Gothic spire. Before it spread a lovely green valley, with
a little stream glistening along through willow groves; while a
line of blue hills that bounded the landscape gave rise to many a
summer day dream as to the fairy land that lay beyond.

In spite of all the scourgings I suffered at that school to make
me love my book, I cannot but look back upon the place with
fondness. Indeed, I considered this frequent flagellation as the
common lot of humanity, and the regular mode in which scholars
were made. My kind mother used to lament over my details of the
sore trials I underwent in the cause of learning; but my father
turned a deaf ear to her expostulations. He had been flogged
through school himself, and swore there was no other way of
making a man of parts; though, let me speak it with all due
reverence, my father was but an indifferent illustration of his
own theory, for he was considered a grievous blockhead.

My poetical temperament evinced itself at a very early period.
The Village church was attended every Sunday by a neighboring
squire—the lord of the manor, whose park stretched quite to the
village, and whose spacious country seat seemed to take the
church under its protection. Indeed, you would have thought the
church had been consecrated to him instead of to the Deity. The
parish clerk bowed low before him, and the vergers humbled
themselves into the dust in his presence. He always entered a
little late and with some stir, striking his cane emphatically on
the ground; swaying his hat in his hand, and looking loftily to
the right and left, as he walked slowly up the aisle, and the
parson, who always ate his Sunday dinner with him, never
commenced service until he appeared. He sat with his family in a
large pew gorgeously lined, humbling himself devoutly on velvet
cushions, and reading lessons of meekness and lowliness of spirit
out of splendid gold and morocco prayer-books. Whenever the
parson spoke of the difficulty of the rich man’s entering the
kingdom of heaven, the eyes of the congregation would turn
towards the “grand pew,” and I thought the squire seemed pleased
with the application.

The pomp of this pew and the aristocratical air of the family
struck My imagination wonderfully, and I fell desperately in love
with a little daughter of the squire’s about twelve years of age.
This freak of fancy made me more truant from my studies than
ever. I used to stroll about the squire’s park, and would lurk
near the house to catch glimpses of this little damsel at the
windows, or playing about the lawns, or walking out with her
governess.

I had not enterprise or impudence enough to venture from my
concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read
one or two of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as
some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in
pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early
awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even at this
moment, the thrilling of my boyish bosom, whenever by chance I
caught a glimpse of her white frock fluttering among the
shrubbery. I now began to read poetry. I carried about in my
bosom a volume of Waller, which I had purloined from my mother’s
library; and I applied to my little fair one all the compliments
lavished upon Sacharissa.

At length I danced with her at a school ball. I was so awkward a
booby, that I dared scarcely speak to her; I was filled with awe
and embarrassment in her presence; but I was so inspired that my
poetical temperament for the first time broke out in verse; and I
fabricated some glowing lines, in which I be-rhymed the little
lady under the favorite name of Sacharissa. I slipped the verses,
trembling and blushing, into her hand the next Sunday as she came
out of church. The little prude handed them to her mamma; the
mamma handed them to the squire, the squire, who had no soul for
poetry, sent them in dudgeon to the school-master; and the
school-master, with a barbarity worthy of the dark ages, gave me
a sound and peculiarly humiliating flogging for thus trespassing
upon Parnassus.

This was a sad outset for a votary of the muse. It ought to have
cured me of my passion for poetry; but it only confirmed it, for
I felt the spirit of a martyr rising within me. What was as well,
perhaps, it cured me of my passion for the young lady; for I felt
so indignant at the ignominious horsing I had incurred in
celebrating her charms, that I could not hold up my head in
church.

Fortunately for my wounded sensibility, the midsummer holydays
came on, and I returned home. My mother, as usual, inquired into
all my school concerns, my little pleasures, and cares, and
sorrows; for boyhood has its share of the one as well as of the
others. I told her all, and she was indignant at the treatment I
had experienced. She fired up at the arrogance of the squire, and
the prudery of the daughter; and as to the school-master, she
wondered where was the use of having school-masters, and why boys
could not remain at home and be educated by tutors, under the eye
of their mothers. She asked to see the verses I had written, and
she was delighted with them; for to confess the truth, she had a
pretty taste in poetry. She even showed to them to the parson’s
wife, who protested they were charming, and the parson’s three
daughters insisted on each having a copy of them.

All this was exceedingly balsamic, and I was still more consoled
and encouraged, when the young ladies, who were the
blue-stockings of the neighborhood, and had read Dr. Johnson’s
lives quite through, assured my mother that great geniuses never
studied, but were always idle; upon which I began to surmise that
I was myself something out of the common run. My father, however,
was of a very different opinion, for when my mother, in the pride
of her heart, showed him my copy of verses, he threw them out of
the window, asking her “if she meant to make a ballad monger of
the boy.” But he was a careless, common-thinking man, and I
cannot say that I ever loved him much; my mother absorbed all my
filial affection.

I used occasionally, during holydays, to be sent on short visits
to the uncle, who was to make me his heir; they thought it would
keep me in his mind, and render him fond of me. He was a
withered, anxious-looking old fellow, and lived in a desolate old
country seat, which he suffered to go to ruin from absolute
niggardliness. He kept but one man-servant, who had lived, or
rather starved, with him for years. No woman was allowed to sleep
in the house. A daughter of the old servant lived by the gate, in
what had been a porter’s lodge, and was permitted to come into
the house about an hour each day, to make the beds, and cook a
morsel of provisions.

The park that surrounded the house was all run wild; the trees
grown out of shape; the fish-ponds stagnant; the urns and statues
fallen from their pedestals and buried among the rank grass. The
hares and pheasants were so little molested, except by poachers,
that they bred in great abundance, and sported about the rough
lawns and weedy avenues. To guard the premises and frighten off
robbers, of whom he was somewhat apprehensive, and visitors, whom
he held in almost equal awe, my uncle kept two or three
blood-hounds, who were always prowling round the house, and were
the dread of the neighboring peasantry. They were gaunt and
half-starved, seemed ready to devour one from mere hunger, and
were an effectual check on any stranger’s approach to this wizard
castle.

Such was my uncle’s house, which I used to visit now and then
during The holydays. I was, as I have before said, the old man’s
favorite; that is to say, he did not hate me so much as he did
the rest of the world. I had been apprised of his character, and
cautioned to cultivate his good-will; but I was too young and
careless to be a courtier; and indeed have never been
sufficiently studious of my interests to let them govern my
feelings. However, we seemed to jog on very well together; and as
my visits cost him almost nothing, they did not seem to be very
unwelcome. I brought with me my gun and fishing-rod, and half
supplied the table from the park and the fishponds.

Our meals were solitary and unsocial. My uncle rarely spoke; he
pointed for whatever he wanted, and the servant perfectly
understood him. Indeed, his man John, or Iron John, as he was
called in the neighborhood, was a counterpart of his master. He
was a tall, bony old fellow, with a dry wig that seemed made of
cow’s tail, and a face as tough as though it had been made of
bull’s hide. He was generally clad in a long, patched livery
coat, taken out of the wardrobe of the house; and which bagged
loosely about him, having evidently belonged to some corpulent
predecessor, in the more plenteous days of the mansion. From long
habits of taciturnity, the hinges of his jaws seemed to have
grown absolutely rusty, and it cost him as much effort to set
them ajar, and to let out a tolerable sentence, as it would have
done to set open the iron gates of a park, and let out the family
carriage that was dropping to pieces in the coach-house.

I cannot say, however, but that I was for some time amused with
my uncle’s peculiarities. Even the very desolateness of the
establishment had something in it that hit my fancy. When the
weather was fine I used to amuse myself, in a solitary way, by
rambling about the park, and coursing like a colt across its
lawns. The hares and pheasants seemed to stare with surprise, to
see a human being walking these forbidden grounds by day-light.
Sometimes I amused myself by jerking stones, or shooting at birds
with a bow and arrows; for to have used a gun would have been
treason. Now and then my path was crossed by a little red-headed,
ragged-tailed urchin, the son of the woman at the lodge, who ran
wild about the premises. I tried to draw him into familiarity,
and to make a companion of him; but he seemed to have imbibed the
strange, unsocial character of every thing around him; and always
kept aloof; so I considered him as another Orson, and amused
myself with shooting at him with my bow and arrows, and he would
hold up his breeches with one hand, and scamper away like a deer.

There was something in all this loneliness and wildness strangely
pleasing to me. The great stables, empty and weather-broken, with
the names of favorite horses over the vacant stalls; the windows
bricked and boarded up; the broken roofs, garrisoned by rooks and
jackdaws; all had a singularly forlorn appearance: one would have
concluded the house to be totally uninhabited, were it not for a
little thread of blue smoke, which now and then curled up like a
corkscrew, from the centre of one of the wide chimneys, when my
uncle’s starveling meal was cooking.

My uncle’s room was in a remote corner of the building, strongly
secured and generally locked. I was never admitted into this
strong-hold, where the old man would remain for the greater part
of the time, drawn up like a veteran spider in the citadel of his
web. The rest of the mansion, however, was open to me, and I
sauntered about it unconstrained. The damp and rain which beat in
through the broken windows, crumbled the paper from the walls;
mouldered the pictures, and gradually destroyed the furniture. I
loved to rove about the wide, waste chambers in bad weather, and
listen to the howling of the wind, and the banging about of the
doors and window-shutters. I pleased myself with the idea how
completely, when I came to the estate, I would renovate all
things, and make the old building ring with merriment, till it
was astonished at its own jocundity.

The chamber which I occupied on these visits was the same that
had been my mother’s, when a girl. There was still the
toilet-table of her own adorning; the landscapes of her own
drawing. She had never seen it since her marriage, but would
often ask me if every thing was still the same. All was just the
same; for I loved that chamber on her account, and had taken
pains to put every thing in order, and to mend all the flaws in
the windows with my own hands. I anticipated the time when I
should once more welcome her to the house of her fathers, and
restore her to this little nestling-place of her childhood.

At length my evil genius, or, what perhaps is the same thing, the
muse, inspired me with the notion of rhyming again. My uncle, who
never went to church, used on Sundays to read chapters out of the
Bible; and Iron John, the woman from the lodge, and myself, were
his congregation. It seemed to be all one to him what he read, so
long as it was something from the Bible: sometimes, therefore, it
would be the Song of Solomon; and this withered anatomy would
read about being “stayed with flagons and comforted with apples,
for he was sick of love.” Sometimes he would hobble, with
spectacle on nose, through whole chapters of hard Hebrew names in
Deuteronomy; at which the poor woman would sigh and groan as if
wonderfully moved. His favorite book, however, was “The Pilgrim’s
Progress;” and when he came to that part which treats of Doubting
Castle and Giant Despair, I thought invariably of him and his
desolate old country seat. So much did the idea amuse me, that I
took to scribbling about it under the trees in the park; and in a
few days had made some progress in a poem, in which I had given a
description of the place, under the name of Doubting Castle, and
personified my uncle as Giant Despair.

I lost my poem somewhere about the house, and I soon suspected
that my uncle had found it; as he harshly intimated to me that I
could return home, and that I need not come and see him again
until he should send for me.

Just about this time my mother died.—I cannot dwell upon this
circumstance; my heart, careless and wayworn as it is, gushes
with the recollection. Her death was an event that perhaps gave a
turn to all my after fortunes. With her died all that made home
attractive, for my father was harsh, as I have before said, and
had never treated me with kindness. Not that he exerted any
unusual severity towards me, but it was his way. I do not
complain of him. In fact, I have never been of a complaining
disposition. I seem born to be buffeted by friends and fortune,
and nature has made me a careless endurer of buffetings.

I now, however, began to grow very impatient of remaining at
school, to be flogged for things that I did not like. I longed
for variety, especially now that I had not my uncle’s to resort
to, by way of diversifying the dullness of school with the
dreariness of his country seat. I was now turned of sixteen; tall
for my age, and full of idle fancies. I had a roving,
inextinguishable desire to see different kinds of life, and
different orders of society; and this vagrant humor had been
fostered in me by Tom Dribble, the prime wag and great genius of
the school, who had all the rambling propensities of a poet.

I used to set at my desk in the school, on a fine summer’s day,
and instead of studying the book which lay open before me, my eye
was gazing through the window on the green fields and blue hills.
How I envied the happy groups seated on the tops of
stage-coaches, chatting, and joking, and laughing, as they were
whirled by the school-house, on their way to the metropolis. Even
the wagoners trudging along beside their ponderous teams, and
traversing the kingdom, from one end to the other, were objects
of envy to me. I fancied to myself what adventures they must
experience, and what odd scenes of life they must witness. All
this was doubtless the poetical temperament working within me,
and tempting me forth into a world of its own creation, which I
mistook for the world of real life.

While my mother lived, this strange propensity to roam was
counteracted by the stronger attractions of home, and by the
powerful ties of affection, which drew me to her side; but now
that she was gone, the attractions had ceased; the ties were
severed. I had no longer an anchorage ground for my heart; but
was at the mercy of every vagrant impulse. Nothing but the narrow
allowance on which my father kept me, and the consequent penury
of my purse, prevented me from mounting the top of a stage-coach
and launching myself adrift on the great ocean of life.

Just about this time the village was agitated for a day or two,
by the passing through of several caravans, containing wild
beasts, and other spectacles for a great fair annually held at a
neighboring town.

I had never seen a fair of any consequence, and my curiosity was
Powerfully awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with
respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied
these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with
curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the
showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to
witness this fair, which my fancy decked out as something
wonderfully fine.

A holyday afternoon presented, when I could be absent from the
school from noon until evening. A wagon was going from the
village to the fair. I could not resist the temptation, nor the
eloquence of Tom Dribble, who was a truant to the very heart’s
core. We hired seats, and set off full of boyish expectation. I
promised myself that I would but take a peep at the land of
promise, and hasten back again before my absence should be
noticed.

Heavens! how happy I was on arriving at the fair! How I was
enchanted with the world of fun and pageantry around me! The
humors of Punch; the feats of the equestrians; the magical tricks
of the conjurors! But what principally caught my attention was—an
itinerant theatre; where a tragedy, pantomime, and farce were all
acted in the course of half an hour, and more of the dramatis
personae murdered, than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden in
a whole evening. I have since seen many a play performed by the
best actors in the world, but never have I derived half the
delight from any that I did from this first representation.

There was a ferocious tyrant in a skull cap like an inverted
porringer, and a dress of red baize, magnificently embroidered
with gilt leather; with his face so be-whiskered and his eyebrows
so knit and expanded with burnt cork, that he made my heart quake
within me as he stamped about the little stage. I was enraptured
too with the surpassing beauty of a distressed damsel, in faded
pink silk, and dirty white muslin, whom he held in cruel
captivity by way of gaining her affections; and who wept and
wrung her hands and flourished a ragged pocket handkerchief from
the top of an impregnable tower, of the size of a band-box.

Even after I had come out from the play, I could not tear myself
from the vicinity of the theatre; but lingered, gazing, and
wondering, and laughing at the dramatis personae, as they
performed their antics, or danced upon a stage in front of the
booth, to decoy a new set of spectators.

I was so bewildered by the scene, and so lost in the crowd of
sensations that kept swarming upon me that I was like one
entranced. I lost my companion Tom Dribble, in a tumult and
scuffle that took place near one of the shows, but I was too much
occupied in mind to think long about him. I strolled about until
dark, when the fair was lighted up, and a new scene of magic
opened upon me. The illumination of the tents and booths; the
brilliant effect of the stages decorated with lamps, with
dramatic groups flaunting about them in gaudy dresses, contrasted
splendidly with the surrounding darkness; while the uproar of
drums, trumpets, fiddles, hautboys, and cymbals, mingled with the
harangues of the showmen, the squeaking of Punch, and the shouts
and laughter of the crowd, all united to complete my giddy
distraction.