In This String Of Pictures I Believe The Gist Of The
Psalm To Have Consisted; I Believe It Had No More To Say To Me; And
The Result Was Consolatory.
I would go to sleep dwelling with
restfulness upon these images; they passed before me, besides, to
an appropriate
Music; for I had already singled out from that rude
psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds of all, not
growing old, not disgraced by its association with long Sunday
tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:-
'In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by.'
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of
what was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these
pleased me it was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great
vacant world upon whose edge I stood; I listened for delightful
plots that I might re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and
circumstances that I might call up before me, with closed eyes,
when I was tired of Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of
the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in durance. Robinson
Crusoe; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious, romantic
soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome and bloody for a
child, but very picturesque, called Paul Blake; these are the three
strongest impressions I remember: The Swiss Family Robinson came
next, longo intervallo. At these I played, conjured up their
scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times
seven. I am not sure but what Paul Blake came after I could read.
It seems connected with a visit to the country, and an experience
unforgettable. The day had been warm; H - - and I had played
together charmingly all day in a sandy wilderness across the road;
then came the evening with a great flash of colour and a heavenly
sweetness in the air. Somehow my play-mate had vanished, or is out
of the story, as the sages say, but I was sent into the village on
an errand; and, taking a book of fairy tales, went down alone
through a fir-wood, reading as I walked. How often since then has
it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was the first time:
the shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot, and if my
mind serves me to the last, I never shall, for it was then that I
knew I loved reading.
II
To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great
and dangerous step. With not a few, I think a large proportion of
their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking'
overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear
never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately
period. Non ragioniam of these. But to all the step is dangerous;
it involves coming of age; it is even a kind of second weaning.
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