My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was, because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists whose works are read more or less by “almost everybody.” It is hardly worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne, Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay—in fine, the leading English classics—were really well read by me, my ambition being not to be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know. Macaulay was then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him suggested. I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and injurious to making my way in life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions intended for me alone—as, for instance, to Kant’s “Æsthetik”—I was anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in Sartor Resartus, “If a man reads, shall he not be learned?” and I knew too well that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who feared wisely for my future.
I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life—’twas sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had bought me a nice English large type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character form—I forget now the name of the author—the following:—
“Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,
Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.
Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men
To treade aright the traces of thy penne,
And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!”
We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.
I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd’s class of mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously Cardanus de Subtilitate in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances. Reading of novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. George Boker remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.
I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read by repetition or reviewing and by collocation, which is a marvellous aid in retaining images. For, in the first place, I read entirely by groups; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair’s “Rhetoric,” Longinus and Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused “Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote,” I at once, on principle, followed it up with “Spain in 1830,” and a careful study of Ford’s Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me. And as I have found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read together, profit more than a hundred at intervals. And I may here add, that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in those days were the only events of my life.
Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish antiquities, which I relieved by reading O’Brien, Vallancey, the more sensible Petrie, and O’Somebody’s Irish grammar, aided by old Annie Mooney, who always remained by us. In after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the famed Ogham tongue, or Shelta, “the lost language of the bards,” according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson.
During my first half-year a college magazine was published, and I, a Freshman, was requested to contribute to the first number. I sent in an article on the history of English poetry. Before I wrote it, the great man among the senior students asked leave to be allowed to write it with me. I did not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid. So it appeared; but it was regarded as mine. Professor Dodd said something to me about the inexpediency of so young a person appearing in print. I could have told him that I had already published several poems, &c., in Philadelphian newspapers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the better of him, I said nothing. From that time I published something in every number. My second article was an essay on Spinoza, and I still think it was rather good for a boy of sixteen.
There was the College and also a Society library, out of which I picked a great deal of good reading. One day I asked Professor John MacLean, the college librarian, for the works of Condorcet. His reply was, “Vile book! vile book! can’t have it.” However, I found in the Society library Urquhart’s translation of “Rabelais,” which I read, I daresay, as often as any mortal ever did. And here I have a word to say to the wretched idiots who regard “the book called Rabelais” as “immoral” and unfit for youth. Many times did I try to induce my young friends to read “Rabelais,” and some actually mastered the story of the goose as a torche-cul, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading through or enjoying it, “that was not in their minds.” All complained, or at least showed, that they “did not understand it.” It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the “shocking,” really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moyen de Parvenir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, and Boccaccio (I owned these books), and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, with all such reading, I best loved such a book as Bromley’s “Sabbath of Rest,” or sweet, strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars or into Nature. Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped such influences easily enough.
A droll event took place