III. THE BANKS OF TAY 61

beginning of sound botanical knowledge. But, while there were books on geology and mineralogy which I could understand, all on botany were then,-and they are little mended now,-harder than the Latin grammar. The mineralogy was enough for me seriously to work at, and I am inclined finally to aver that the garden-time could not have been more rightly passed, unless in weeding.

68. At six punctually I joined my father and mother at tea, being, in the drawing-room, restricted to the inhabitation of the sacred niche above referred to,¹ a recess beside the fireplace, well lighted from the lateral window in the summer evenings, and by the chimney-piece lamp in winter, and out of all inconvenient heat, or hurtful draught. A good writing-table before it shut me well in, and carried my plate and cup, or books in service. After tea, my father read to my mother what pleased themselves, I picking up what I could, or reading what I liked better instead. Thus I heard all the Shakespeare comedies and historical plays again and again,-all Scott, and all Don Quixote, a favourite book of my father’s, and at which I could then laugh to ecstasy; now, it is one of the saddest, and, in some things, the most offensive of books to me.²

My father was an absolutely beautiful reader of the best poetry and prose;-of Shakespeare, Pope, Spenser, Byron, and Scott; as of Goldsmith, Addison, and Johnson. Lighter ballad poetry he had not fineness of ear to do justice to: his sense of the strength and wisdom of true meaning, and of the force of rightly ordered syllables, made his delivery of Hamlet, Lear, Cæsar, or Marmion, melodiously grand and just; but he had no idea of modulating the refrain of a ballad, and had little patience with the tenor of its sentiment. He looked always, in the matter of what he read, for heroic will and consummate reason; never tolerated the morbid love of misery for its own sake, and never read, either for his own pleasure or my instruction, such ballads

¹ [See above, § 44 (p. 39).]

² [Compare Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 32 (Vol. XII. p. 56).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]