76 PRÆTERITA-I

nervous feeling that the ladders would break, or the roof fall, before we got out again. They went with me, nevertheless, wherever I wanted to go,-my father even into the terrible Speedwell mine at Castleton, where, for once, I was a little frightened myself.

From Matlock we must have gone on to Cumberland, for I find in my father’s writing the legend, “Begun 28th November, 1830, finished 11th January, 1832,” on the fly-leaf of the “Iteriad,” a poem in four books, which I indited, between those dates, on the subject of our journey among the Lakes, and of which some little notice may be taken farther on.¹

84. It must have been in the spring of 1831² that the important step was taken of giving me a drawing master. Mary showed no gift of representing any of the scenes of our travels, and I began to express some wish that I could draw myself. Whereupon, Mary’s pleasant drawing master, to whom my father and mother were equitable enough not to impute Mary’s want of genius, was invited to give me also an hour in the week.

I suppose a drawing master’s business can only become established by his assertion of himself to the public as the possessor of a style; and teaching in that only. Nevertheless, Mr. Runciman’s memory sustains disgrace in my mind in that he gave no impulse nor even indulgence to the extraordinary gift I had for drawing delicately with the pen point. Any work of that kind was done thenceforward only to please myself. Mr. Runciman gave me nothing but his own mannered and inefficient drawings to copy, and greatly broke the force both of my mind and hand.

Yet he taught me much, and suggested more. He taught me perspective, at once accurately and simply-an

¹ [See below, § 91 (p. 81).]

² [Of the summer, the MS. says:-

“The summer of 1831, when I was twelve years old, might perhaps have been varied only by a visit to Tunbridge Wells, where I was content enough with the common and its sandstone rocks.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]