More Pages from a Journal Part 7

At this moment the door opened and Larkins entered in haste. 'I say, Jackman--' then turning and seeing me,--'Hullo, Whittaker, what the devil are you doing here? Jackman, I've just heard--'

'Good-bye, Whittaker,' said Jackman, 'sorry can't help you.'

Neither of them offered to shake hands, and I pa.s.sed out into the street. The chop-houses were crammed; waiters were rus.h.i.+ng hither and thither; I looked up at the first floor of that very superior house, used solely by princ.i.p.als, where I often had my lunch, and again crossed London Bridge on my way back. London Bridge at half- past one! I do not suppose I had ever been there at half-past one in my life. I saw a crowd still pa.s.sing both southwards and northwards. At half-past nine it all went one way and at half-past six another. It was the morning and evening crowd which was the people to me. These half-past one o'clock creatures were strange to me, loafers, nondescripts. I was faint and sick when I reached home, for I walked all the way, and after vainly trying to eat something went straight to bed. But the next post brought me a note saying that Jackman and Larkins were willing to engage me at a salary of 100 pounds a year--much more, it was added, than they would have paid for more efficient service, but conceded as a recognition of the past. The truth was, as I afterwards found out, that Larkins persuaded Jackman that it would increase their reputation to take old Whittaker. Larkins too had become a little tired of soliciting orders, and I could act as his subst.i.tute. I was known to nearly all the houses with which they did business and very likely should gain admittance where a stranger would be denied.

My hours would be long, from nine till seven, and must be observed rigidly. Instead of my three-and-sixpenny lunch I should now have to take in my pocket whatever I wanted in the middle of the day.

For dinner I must subst.i.tute a supper--a meal which did not suit me.

I should have to a.s.sociate with clerks, to meet as a humble subordinate those with whom I was formerly intimate as an equal; but all this was overlooked, and I was happy, happy as I had not been for months.

It was on a Wednesday when I received my appointment, and on Monday I was to begin. I said my prayers more fervently that night than I had said them for years, and determined that, please G.o.d, I would always go to church every Sunday morning no matter how fine it might be. There were only three clear week-days, Thursday, Friday, and Sat.u.r.day, to be got through. I imagined them to be holidays, although I had never before taken three consecutive holidays, save in those wretched Augusts or Septembers, when pride annually forced me away to the seaside. At last Monday came: our breakfast hour was henceforth fixed at half-past seven, and at eight o'clock I started to walk to Kennington, and thence to ride by an omnibus to King William's statue. Oh! with what joy did I shut the little garden gate and march down the road, once more somebody! I looked round, saw other little front gates open, each by-street contributed, so that in the Kennington Road there was almost a procession moving steadily and uniformly City-wards, and _I_ was in it. I was still a part of the great world; something depended on me. Fifty-six? yes, but what was that? Many men are at their best at fifty-six. So exhilarated was I, that just before I mounted the omnibus--it was a cold morning, but I would not ride inside--I treated myself to a twopenny cigar. My excitement soon wore off. I could not so far forget myself as not to make suggestions now and then, and Jackman took a delight in snubbing me. It was a trial to me also to sit with the clerks. We had never set ourselves up as grand people at Stockwell, but I had all my life been accustomed to delicate food properly cooked, and now that my appet.i.te was declining with my years, I would almost at any time have gone without a meal rather than eat anything that was coa.r.s.e or dirtily served. My colleagues ridiculed my 'Stockwell manners,' as they called them, and were very witty, so they thought, in their inquiries when I produced my sandwich wrapped up in a clean napkin, how much it cost me for my was.h.i.+ng. They were a very cheap set, had black finger-nails, and stuck their pens behind their ears. One of them always brought a black-varnished canvas bag with him, not respectably stiff like leather--a puckered, dejected-looking bag.

It was deposited in the was.h.i.+ng place to be out of the way of the sun. At one o'clock it was brought out and emptied of its contents, which were usually a cold chop and a piece of bread. A plate, knife and fork, and some pepper and salt were produced from the desk, and after the meat, which could be cut off from the chop, was devoured, the bone was gnawed, wrapped up in paper, and put back in the bag.

The plate, knife, and fork were washed in the wash-hand basin and wiped with the office jack-towel. It was hard when old business friends called and I had to knock at the inner door and say, 'Mr. -- - wants to see you, sir,' the object of the visit not being entrusted to me. A few of them behaved politely to me, but to others it seemed to be a pleasure to humble me. On that very first Monday, Bullock, the junior in Wiggens, Moggs, and Bullock, burst into the room. He knew me very well, but took no notice of me, although I was alone, except to ask -

'Is Mr. Jackman in?'

'No, sir, can I do anything for you?'

He did not deign to say a word, but went out, slamming the door behind him.

Nevertheless I kept up my spirits, or rather they kept themselves up. At five o'clock, when the scramble to get the letters signed began, I thought of our street at home, so dull at that hour, of the milkman, and the m.u.f.fin-boy, of the curate, and of my niece's companions, and reflected, thank G.o.d, that I was in the City, a man amongst men. When seven o'clock came and the gas was put out, there was the antic.i.p.ation also of the fight for a place in the omnibus, especially if it was a wet night, and the certainty that I should meet with one or two neighbours who would recognise me. No more putting up window-blinds, pulling up weeds in the back garden, sticking in seeds which never grew, or errands to suburban shops at midday. How I used in my retirement to detest the sight of those little shopkeepers when the doors of Glyn's Bank were swinging to and fro! I came home dead-beaten now, it is true, but it was a luxury to be dead-beaten, and I slept more soundly than I had ever slept in my life. In about six months my position improved a little. Jackman's love for sherry grew upon him, and once or twice, to Larkins's disgust, his partner was not quite as fit to appear in public as he ought to have been. Very often he was absent, sick.

Two of the cheap clerks also left in order to better themselves. I never shall forget the afternoon--I felt as if I could have danced for joy--when Larkins said to me, 'Whittaker, Mr. Jackman hasn't very good health, and if he's not here when I am out, you must answer anybody who calls, but don't commit yourself--and--let me see--I was going to tell you you'll have ten pounds a year more, beginning next quarter--and there was something else--Oh! I recollect, if anybody should want to see Mr. Jackman when he happens to be unwell here, and I am not with him, send for me if you know where I am. If you don't know, you must do the best you can.' My office coat had hitherto been an old s.h.i.+ny, ragged thing, and I had always taken off my s.h.i.+rt-cuffs when I began work, because they so soon became dirty. I rammed the old coat that night into the fire; brought my second-best coat in a brown paper parcel the next morning, and wore my s.h.i.+rt-cuffs all day long. Continually I had to think--only fancy, to think--once more; in a very small way, it is true, but still to think and to act upon my thought, and when Larkins came in and inquired if anybody had called, he now and then said 'all right' when I told him what I had done. A clerk from my old office swaggered in and did not remove his hat. I descended from my stool and put on my own hat. The next time he came he was more polite. I have now had two years of it, and have not been absent for a day. I hope I may go on till I drop. My father died in a fit; his father died in a fit; and I myself often feel giddy, and things go round for a few seconds. I should not care to have a fit here, because there would be a fuss and a muddle, but I should like, just when everything was QUITE straight, to be able to get home safely and then go off. To lie in bed for weeks and worry about my work is what I could not endure.

CONFESSIONS OF A SELF-TORMENTOR

My father was a doctor in a country town. Strictly speaking it was not a town, and yet it was something more than a village. His practice extended over a district with a radius of five or six miles from his house; he drove a gig and dispensed his own medicines. My mother was the youngest daughter of a poor squire who owned two or three hundred acres and lived at what was called the Park, which was really nothing more than two or three fields generally laid for hay, a small enclosure being reserved for a garden. We were not admitted into county society, and my mother would not a.s.sociate with farmers and tradesfolk. She was a good woman, affectionate to her children and husband, but never forgot that--so she thought--she had married below her station. She had an uncle who had been in the Indian Army, and his portrait in full regimentals hung in the dining-room.

How her heart warmed to the person who inquired who that officer was! When she went home, it was never to her 'home,' but to the 'Park.'

My father's income was not more than eight or nine hundred a year, and his expenses were heavy, but nevertheless my mother determined that I should go to the university, and I was accordingly sent to a grammar school. I had not been there more than three years, and was barely fourteen years old, when my father was pitched out of his gig and killed. He had insured his life for two thousand pounds, which was as much as he could afford, and my mother had another two thousand pounds of her own. Her income therefore was less than two hundred a year. She could not teach, she would not let lodgings, nor was she wanted at the Park. She therefore took a cottage, small but genteel, at a rental of ten pounds a year, and managed as best she could. The furniture was partly sold, but the regimental portrait was saved. Unhappily, as the cottage ceilings were very low, it was not an easy task to hang it. The only place to be found for it, out of the way of the chairs, was opposite the window, in a parlour about twelve feet square, called the drawing-room; but it was too long even there, and my great-uncle's legs descended behind the sofa, and could not be seen unless it was moved. 'The cottage is a shocking come-down,' said my mother to the rector, 'but it is not vulgar; it is at least a place in which a lady can live.' Of course the university was now out of the question, and at fifteen I left school. I had read a little Virgil, a little Horace, and a book or two of Homer. I had also got through the first six books of Euclid after a fas.h.i.+on, and had advanced as far as quadratic equations in algebra, but had no mathematical talent whatever. My mother would not hear of trade as an occupation for me, and she could not afford to make me a soldier, sailor, doctor, lawyer, or parson. At last the county member, at the request of her father, obtained for me a clerks.h.i.+p in the Stamps and Taxes Department.

These were the days before compet.i.tive examinations. She was now able to say that her son was in H. M. Civil Service. I had eighty pounds a year, and lodged at Clapton with an aunt, my father's sister.

Although I had been only half-educated, I was fond of reading, and I had plenty of time for it. I read good books, and read them with enthusiasm. I was much taken with the Greek dramatists, especially with Euripides, but my only means of access to them was through translations. My aunt had another nephew who came to see her now and then. He had obtained an open exhibition at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a translation again for some time.

The men at my office were a curious set. The father of one was a leader of the lowest blackguards in a small borough, who had much to do with determining elections there; another bore the strongest resemblance to a well-known peer; and another was the legitimate and perfectly scoundrel offspring of a newspaper editor. I formed no friends.h.i.+ps with any of my colleagues, but one of them I greatly envied. He was deaf and dumb, the son of a poor clergyman, and had an extraordinary pa.s.sion for botany. Every holiday was devoted to rambling about the country near London. He cared little for anything but his favourite science, but that he understood, and he never grew tired of it. I took no account of his deafness and dumbness; the one thing I saw was his masters.h.i.+p over a single subject. Gradually my incompleteness came to weigh on me like a nightmare. I imagined that if I had learned any craft which required skill, I should have been content. I was depressed when I looked at the watchmaker examining my watch. I should have walked the streets erect if there had been one thing which I could do better than anybody I met. There was nothing: I stood for nothing: no purpose was intended by G.o.d through me. I was also const.i.tutionally inaccurate--this was another of my troubles--and nothing short of the daily use of a fact made me sure of it. No matter how zealously I went over and over again a particular historical period, I always broke down the moment my supposed acquisitions were tested by questions or conversation. I have read a book with the greatest attention I could muster, and have found, when I have seen a simple examination paper on it, that I could not have got a dozen marks. Of what value, then, were my notions on matters demanding far greater concentration of thought? Accuracy I fancied might be acquired, but I was mistaken. It is a gift as much as the art of writing sublime poetry. I struggled and struggled with pencil and precis, but I did not improve. My cousin's before- mentioned friend took delight in checking, like an accountant, what was said to him, especially by me, and although I saw that this for the most part was a mere trick, I could not deny that it proved continually that my so-called opinions were not worth a straw. The related virtues of accuracy, strength of memory, and clear definition, are of great importance, but I over-estimated them. I see now that human affairs are so complicated, that had I possessed the advantages bestowed on my cousin and his companion, they would not have prevented delusions, all the more perilous, perhaps, because I should have been more confident. However, at the time of which I am speaking, I was wretched, and believed that my wretchedness was entirely due to deficiencies and weaknesses, from which my friends were free. No sorrow of genius is greater than the daily misery of the man with no gifts, who is not properly equipped, and has desires out of all proportion to his capacity.

I had no real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts, but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that which was melodious. The long pa.s.sages with no striking theme in them conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The Ma.r.s.eillaise on a barrel-organ was intelligible, but gymnastics on strings--what did they represent?

With pictures the case was somewhat different. I often left Clapton early in order that I might have half an hour at Christie's in quiet, and I have spent many pleasant moments in those rooms on sunny mornings in May and June before De Wint's and Turner's landscapes. But I knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could not fix my attention on them long.

A water-colour by Turner, on which all his power had been expended, an abstract of years and years of toil and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really distinguis.h.i.+ng qualities. As to the early religious pictures of the Italian school, I cared nothing either for subject or treatment, and would have given a cartload of them for a drawing by Hunt of a bird's nest. Wanting an ear for music and an eye for pictorial merit, I believed, or affected to believe, that the raptures of people who possessed the ear and eye were a sham. It irritated me to hear my aunt play, although she had been well taught in her youth and was a skilful performer. I know she would have liked to feel that she gave me some pleasure, and that her playing was admired, but I was so openly indifferent to it that at last she always shut the piano if I happened to come into the room while she was practising. I remember saying to her when she was talking to me about one of Mozart's quartets she had just heard, that music was immoral, inasmuch as it provoked such enormous insincerity. It is strange that, although spite was painful to me, especially towards her, I could not help indulging in it.

My failings gradually wrought in me confirmed bitterness. I persuaded myself that the interest which people appeared to take in me was mere polite pretence. There may be enough selfishness in the world to explain misanthropy, but there is never enough to justify it, and what we imagine to be indifference to us is often merely the reserve caused by our own refusal to surrender ourselves to legitimate and generous emotions. Oddly enough, I frequently made hasty and spasmodic offers of intimate friends.h.i.+p to people who were not prepared for them, and the natural absence of immediate response was a further reason for scepticism. A man to whom I was suddenly impelled was in want of money, and I pressed ten pounds upon him.

He could not pay me at the appointed time, whereupon I set him down as an ungrateful brute, and moralised like Timon.

There was at that time living in London a lady whom I must call Mrs.

A. She was the widow of a professor at Cambridge who had died young, and she might have been about five-and-thirty or forty years old. My cousin, who had known her husband, introduced me to her.

She was not handsome; the cheek-bones were a little too prominent, and her face was weather-worn, but not by wind and sun.

Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face. Her ways were simple and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as Athens, and was complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice struck me--it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural modulation which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if it is so expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say, between the inspirations and expirations of a short pipe!

Mrs. A. took much notice of me, and her att.i.tude towards me was singular. She was not quite old enough to be motherly to me, but she was too old for restrictions on her intercourse with me, and her wide experience and wisdom well qualified her to be my directress.

Often when I went to her house n.o.body was there, and she would talk to me with freedom on all sorts of subjects. I did not fall in love with her, but she was still attractive as a woman, and difference of s.e.x, delightful manners, subtle intellect, expressive grey eyes, and lovely black hair streaked with white, might have taught me much which I could have learned from no ordinary friend. My cousin often went with me to Mrs. A.'s, but I was never at rest when he was there. I fancied then that if I could have rendered a dozen lines of Gray's Elegy into correct Greek, life would have nothing more to give me. Mrs. A. was too well-behaved to encourage conversation in my cousin's presence which disclosed my inferiority to him, but without premeditation it sometimes turned where I could not follow.

As I have said, she had travelled in Greece. She understood something of modern Greek, and she and my cousin one evening fell to comparing it with ancient Greek. I sat sulky and dumb. At last she turned to me, and asked me smilingly why I was so quiet. I replied that I did not understand a word of what they were saying (which was untrue), and that if they would talk about Stamps and Taxes I could join. She divined in an instant what was the matter with me, and diverted the discussion so that it might be within my reach. 'I must confess,' she said, 'that my knowledge of philology is no better than yours. Philology demands the labour of a life. I often wonder what the teacher, student, and school history of England will be at the end of another thousand years. Perhaps, however, in another thousand years books will no longer be written except on physics. Men will say, "What have we to do with the Wars of the Roses?" and as to general literature, they will become weary of tossing over and over again the same old ideas and endeavouring to imagine new variations of pa.s.sion. The literary man will cease from the land. Something of this sort must come to pa.s.s, unless the human race is to be smothered.' My cousin said he prayed that her prophecy might come true, but I remained hard and stockish. Her sweet temper, however, could not be disturbed, and she announced that she was going to see Rachel, the great actress, and invited us both to accompany her. I refused, on the ground that I knew nothing of French (also untrue). She a.s.sured me that if I would read the play beforehand I should be in no difficulty. I was really touched by her kindness, but the devil in me would not let me yield. I missed the opportunity of seeing Rachel, just as I missed many other opportunities of more importance. Oh! when I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break. The curse for me has not been plucking forbidden fruit, but the refusal of divine fruit offered me by heavenly angels.

Mrs. A.'s circle of acquaintances widened during the two or three years of my friends.h.i.+p with her. She often pressed me to meet them, but I nearly always held back. I told her that I did not care for mere acquaintances, and that certainly not more than one or two of her visitors would shed a tear if they heard she was dead. 'To possess one or two friends,' she said, 'who would weep at my departure would be quite enough. It is as much as anybody ought to demand, but you are mistaken in supposing that those who would not break their hearts for us may not be of value, and even precious.

We are so made that the attraction which unites us to our fellow- creatures is, and ought to be, of varying intensity, and there is something to be obtained from a weaker bond which is not to be had from a stronger. I like the society of Mrs. Arnold and Madame Sorel. I enjoy the courtesy which is not slipper-and-dressing-gown familiarity, and their way of looking at things, especially Madame Sorel's, is different from mine and instructs me. Forgive me for reminding you that in our Father's house are many mansions, and if we wish to be admitted to some of them we must wear our best clothes, and when we are inside we must put on our company manners.'

She was quite right; Mrs. Arnold and Madame Sorel could have given me just what I needed.

My visits to Mrs. A. became less and less frequent, and at last altogether ceased. It was actually painful to me to neglect her, but I forced myself to it, or to put it more correctly the Demon of pure Malignity, for there is such a demon in h.e.l.l, drove me to it.

Some years afterwards I wrote to her asking her if she could get work for a starving man whom she had known in other days, and she helped him to obtain it. Two years after she had done this kind office, and had shown she had not forgotten me, she died, and I went to her funeral in Brompton Cemetery. It was a cold day, and black fog hung over London. When the coffin was lowered into the grave I wept many tears. I had been guilty of a neglect which was wicked injustice, and I could never hear her say she had forgiven me. I understood the meaning of atonement, and why it has been felt in all ages that, by itself, reformation is insufficient. I attempted an expiation, which I need not describe. It is painful, but the sacrifice which I trust I shall offer to the end of my days brings me a measure of relief.

About a twelvemonth after Mrs. A.'s death I fell sick with inflammation of the lungs. Once before, when I was ill, I declined my aunt's attendance. I said that I did not believe it was possible for mere friends.h.i.+p or affection to hold out against long watching, and that there must come a time when the watcher would be relieved by the death of the patient. I declared that nothing was more intolerable to me than to know that anybody sacrificed the least trifle on my behalf, and that if my aunt really wished me to get better she would at once send for a paid nurse. I had a paid nurse, but Alice, our servant, told me afterwards that my poor aunt cried a good deal when she saw her place taken by a stranger. She was now nearly seventy, but she offered herself again, and I thankfully accepted her, stipulating of course that she should be helped. I wondered how she could retain her love for me, how she could kiss me so tenderly morning and night, and apparently not remember my unkindness to her. But therein lies the difference between a man and a woman. Woman is Christian. A woman's love will sweep like a river in flood over a wrong which has been done to it and bury it for ever.

I am not regenerate, but who is ever regenerate? My insignificance and defects do not worry me as they did: I do not kick at them, and I am no longer covetous of other people's talents and virtues. I am grateful for affection, for kindness, and even for politeness. What a tremendous price do we have to pay for what we so slowly learn, and learn so late!

A LETTER TO THE 'RAMBLER'

Sent to the Rambler March 1752, but, alas, in that month the Rambler came to an end. I am not sorry it was not printed. On re-reading it I find pa.s.sages here and there which are unconscious and unavoidable imitations of Dr. Johnson. No use in re-writing them now.

J. R.

June 1760.

Sir,--I venture to send you a part of the history of my life, trusting that my example may be a warning against confidence in our own strength to resist even the meanest temptation.

My father was a prosperous haberdasher in Cheapside, and I was his eldest son. My mother was the daughter of the clerk to the Fellmongers' Company. She had reached the mature age of nine-and- twenty when she received an offer of matrimony from my father, and after much anxious consideration and much consultation with her parents, prudently decided to accept it, although to the end of her days she did not scruple openly to declare that she had lowered herself by marrying a man who was compelled to bow behind a counter to the wife of a grocer, and stand bareheaded at the carriage door of an alderman's lady. My mother, I am sorry to say, abetted my natural aversion from trade and sent me to Saint Paul's School to learn Latin, Greek, and the mathematicks that I might be qualified to separate myself from the cla.s.s to which unhappily she was degraded and that she might recover in her child the pride she had lost in her husband. My abilities were not despicable, my ambition was restless, and my progress in my studies was therefore respectable. I conceived a genuine admiration for the cla.s.sick authors; I was genuinely moved by the majesty of Homer and the felicity of expression in Horace. In due time I went to Oxford, and after the usual course there, in which I was not unsuccessful, I took Holy Orders and became a curate. When I was about eight-and- twenty I was presented with a College living in the village of A.

about four miles from the county town of B. in the West of England.

My paris.h.i.+oners were the squire, a half-pay captain in the army, a retired custom-house surveyor who was supposed to be the illegitimate son of a member of parliament, and the surrounding farmers and labourers. All were grossly illiterate, but I soon observed that a common ignorance does not prevent, but rather tends to establish artificial distinctions. Inferiority by a single degree in the social scale becomes not only a barrier to intercourse, but a sufficient reason for contempt. The squire and his lady spent their days in vain attempts to secure invitations to my Lord's at the Abbey and revenged themselves by patronising the captain, who in his turn nodded to the surveyor but would on no account permit intimacy. The surveyor could not for his life have condescended to enter a farmhouse, and yet was never weary of denouncing as intolerably stuck-up the behaviour of those above him.

He consoled himself by the reflection that they were the losers, and that, poor creatures, their neglect of him was due to a lamentable misapprehension of the dignity of H. M. Custom-house Service. I can a.s.sure you I thought the comedy played at A. very ridiculous, and often laughed at it.

It was soon quite clear to me that if I was to live in peace I must take to myself a wife. The squire and the surveyor had daughters.

The squire's would each have a hundred a-year apiece, a welcome addition to my small income. They were good-looking, and by repute were virtuous and easy of temper, but when I became acquainted with them I found that I must not expect from them any entertainment save the description of visits to the milliner, or schemes for parties, or the gossip of the country-side. I did not demand, Mr. Rambler, the critical ac.u.men of Mrs. Montagu, or the erudition of Mrs.

Carter, but I believe you will agree with me that a wife, and especially the wife of a clergyman and a scholar, should be able to read a page of Dr. Barrow's sermons without yawning, and should not drop Mr. Pope's Iliad or Odyssey in five minutes unless she happened to light upon some particularly exciting adventure. I therefore dismissed the thought of these young ladies, and the daughters of the surveyor were for the same reasons ineligible, with the added objection that if I chose one of them the squire and his family would never enter the church again.

One day I went over to B. to leave my watch for repairs. I noticed a fis.h.i.+ng-rod in the shop, and as I was fond of the sport I asked the watchmaker if it was his. He said that he generally went fis.h.i.+ng when he could spare himself a holiday, and that he had just spent two days on the Avon. I was thinking of the Stratford river and foolishly inquired which Avon, forgetting the one near us.

'Our Avon,' he replied; 'our Avon, of course, sir; THE Avon.

'"Proud of his adamants with which he s.h.i.+nes And glisters wide, as als of wondrous Bath."'

I did not recollect the lines, but discovered on inquiry that they were Spenser's, an author, I regret to say, whom I had not read. I was astonished that a person with a mechanical occupation who sat in a window from morning to night dissecting time-pieces should be acquainted with poetry, and I begged him to tell me something of his life. He was the son of a bookseller in Bristol who had been apprenticed to the celebrated Mr. Bernard Lintot. The father failed in business, and soon afterwards died leaving a widow and six children. My friend was then about fourteen years old. He had been well educated, but his mother was compelled to accept the offer of a neighbour who took compa.s.sion on her, and he was brought up to the watchmaking trade in Bath. He had to work long hours and endure many hards.h.i.+ps which it might be supposed would tend to repress the sallies of the most lively imagination, but some men are so const.i.tuted that adverse circ.u.mstances do but stimulate a search for compensation. So it was with him. In his leisure hours he studied not only horological science but the works of our great English authors.