better and more forcibly in verse than in prose: this, he said, was
a real advantage. The other was, that people in general attached more
value to verse than it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, on
this account, worth acquiring. He generally left me to choose my own
subjects, which, as far as I remember, were mostly addresses to some
mythological personage or allegorical abstraction; but he made me
translate into English verse many of Horace's shorter poems: I also
remember his giving me Thomson's _Winter_ to read, and afterwards
making me attempt (without book) to write something myself on the same
subject. The verses I wrote were, of course, the merest rubbish, nor
did I ever attain any facility of versification, but the practice may
have been useful in making it easier for me, at a later period, to
acquire readiness of expression.[1] I had read, up to this time, very
little English poetry. Shakspeare my father had put into my hands,
chiefly for the sake of the historical plays, from which, however,
I went on to the others. My father never was a great admirer of
Shakspeare, the English idolatry of whom he used to attack with some
severity. He cared little for any English poetry except Milton (for
whom he had the highest admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, and Gray's
_Bard_, which he preferred to his Elegy: perhaps I may add Cowper and
Beattie. He had some value for Spenser, and I remember his reading to
me (unlike his usual practice of making me read to him) the first book
of the _Fairie Queene_; but I took little pleasure in it. The poetry
of the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I hardly
became acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to manhood,
except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read at his
recommendation and was intensely delighted with; as I always was with
animated narrative. Dryden's Poems were among my father's books, and
many of these he made me read, but I never cared for any of them
except _Alexander's Feast_, which, as well as many of the songs