’In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by.’
The remainder of my childish recollections are all
of the matter of what was read to me, and not of any
manner in the words. If these pleased me it
was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great
vacant world upon whose edge I stood; I listened for
delightful plots that I might re-enact in play, and
romantic scenes and circumstances that I might call
up before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of
Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of the sick-chamber
in which I lay so long in durance. Robinson
Crusoe; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious,
romantic soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome
and bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called
Paul Blake; these are the three strongest impressions
I remember: The Swiss Family Robinson came next,
longo intervallo. At these I played, conjured
up their scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed
unto seventy times seven. I am not sure but
what Paul Blake came after I could read. It seems
connected with a visit to the country, and an experience
unforgettable. The day had been warm; H—–
and I had played together charmingly all day in a
sandy wilderness across the road; then came the evening
with a great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness
in the air. Somehow my play-mate had vanished,
or is out of the story, as the sages say, but I was
sent into the village on an errand; and, taking a
book of fairy tales, went down alone through a fir-wood,
reading as I walked. How often since then has
it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was the
first time: the shock of that pleasure I have
never since forgot, and if my mind serves me to the
last, I never shall, for it was then that I knew I
loved reading.
II
To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to
take a great and dangerous step. With not a
few, I think a large proportion of their pleasure
then comes to an end; ‘the malady of not marking’
overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye
alone and hear never again the chime of fair words
or the march of the stately period. Non ragioniam
of these. But to all the step is dangerous;
it involves coming of age; it is even a kind of second
weaning. In the past all was at the choice of
others; they chose, they digested, they read aloud
for us and sang to their own tune the books of childhood.
In the future we are to approach the silent, inexpressive
type alone, like pioneers; and the choice of what we
are to read is in our own hands thenceforward.
For instance, in the passages already adduced, I
detect and applaud the ear of my old nurse; they were
of her choice, and she imposed them on my infancy,
reading the works of others as a poet would scarce
dare to read his own; gloating on the rhythm, dwelling
with delight on assonances and alliterations.
I know very well my mother must have been all the
while trying to educate my taste upon more secular
authors; but the vigour and the continual opportunities
of my nurse triumphed, and after a long search, I
can find in these earliest volumes of my autobiography
no mention of anything but nursery rhymes, the Bible,
and Mr. M’Cheyne.
