continued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all ancient
history. Mitford's Greece I read continually; my father had put me on
my guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his
perversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening
of popular institutions. These points he discoursed on, exemplifying
them from the Greek orators and historians, with such effect that in
reading Mitford my sympathies were always on the contrary side to
those of the author, and I could, to some extent, have argued the
point against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure
with which I read the book. Roman history, both in my old favourite,
Hooke, and in Ferguson, continued to delight me. A book which, in
spite of what is called the dryness of its style, I took great
pleasure in, was the _Ancient Universal History_, through the
incessant reading of which, I had my head full of historical details
concerning the obscurest ancient people, while about modern history,
except detached passages, such as the Dutch War of Independence, I
knew and cared comparatively little. A voluntary exercise, to which
throughout my boyhood I was much addicted, was what I called writing
histories. I successively composed a Roman History, picked out
of Hooke; and an Abridgment of the _Ancient Universal History_; a
History of Holland, from my favourite Watson and from an anonymous
compilation; and in my eleventh and twelfth year I occupied myself
with writing what I flattered myself was something serious. This was
no less than a History of the Roman Government, compiled (with the
assistance of Hooke) from Livy and Dionysius: of which I wrote as much
as would have made an octavo volume, extending to the epoch of the
Licinian Laws. It was, in fact, an account of the struggles between
the patricians and plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest in
my mind which I had previously felt in the mere wars and conquests of
the Romans. I discussed all the constitutional points as they arose: