86 PRÆTERITA-I

dragged me through some conic sections, of which the facts representable by drawing became afterwards of extreme value to me; and taught me as much trigonometry as made my mountain work, in plan and elevation, unaccusable. In elementary geometry I was always happy, and, for a boy, strong; and my conceit, developing now every hour more venomously as I began to perceive the weaknesses of my masters, led me to spend nearly every moment I could command for study in my own way, through the year 1835, in trying to trisect an angle. For some time afterwards I had the sense to reproach myself for the waste of thoughtful hours in that year, little knowing or dreaming how many a year to come, from that time forth, was to be worse wasted.

While the course of my education was thus daily gathering the growth of me into a stubborn little standard bush, various frost-stroke was stripping away from me the poor little flowers-or herbs-of the forest,¹ that had once grown, happily for me, at my side.

¹ [The reference is to Mrs. Cockburn’s song, founded on an old ballad, “The Flowers of the Forest”:-

“I’ve seen the forest adorn’d of the foremost,

With flowers of the fairest, both pleasant and gay;

Full sweet was their blooming, their scent the air perfuming,

But now are they wither’d and a’ wede awae.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]