III. THE BANKS OF TAY 59

to stop to contemplate in our walks; or, delight of delights, might be seen at ease from some fortunate window of inn or lodging on our journeys. In those cases the day was not long enough for my rapturous and riveted observation.

66. Constantly, as aforesaid, in the garden when the weather was fine, my time there was passed chiefly in the same kind of close watching of the ways of plants. I had not the smallest taste for growing them, or taking care of them, any more than for taking care of the birds, or the trees, or the sky, or the sea. My whole time passed in staring at them, or into them. In no morbid curiosity, but in admiring wonder, I pulled every flower to pieces till I knew all that could be seen of it with a child’s eyes; and used to lay up little treasures of seeds, by way of pearls and beads,-never with any thought of sowing them. The old gardener only came once a week, for what sweeping and weeding needed doing; I was fain to learn to sweep the walks with him, but was discouraged and shamed by his always doing the bits I had done over again. I was extremely fond of digging holes, but that form of gardening was not allowed.¹ Necessarily, I fell always back into my merely contemplative mind, and at nine years old began a poem, called Eudosia,-I forget wholly where I got hold of this name, or what I understood by it,- “On the Universe,”² though I could understand not a little by it, now. A couplet or two, as the real beginning at once of Deucalion and Proserpina, may be perhaps allowed, together with the preceding, a place in this grave memoir; the rather that I am again enabled to give accurate date-September 28th, 1828-for the beginning of its “First book,” as follows:-

“When first the wrath of heaven o’erwhelmed the world,

And o’er the rocks, and hills, and mountains, hurl’d

The waters’ gathering mass; and sea o’er shore,-

Then mountains fell, and vales, unknown before,

¹ [Compare below, ii. § 197 (p. 426).]

² [For “Eudosia, or A Poem on the Universe,” see Vol. II. pp. 269-271, where the meaning of the title is explained.]

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