free to enjoy life as I pleased; no further trammels, no further need of
being a soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and
France before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would
feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a
studio. A studio--tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it is
difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul in
these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my studio
was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of effectually throwing
over all restraint, I did not view it at all in this light. My love of Art
was very genuine and deep-rooted; the tobacconist's betting-book was now as
nothing, and a certain Botticelli in the National Gallery held me in
tether. And when I look back and consider the past, I am forced to admit
that I might have grown up in less fortunate circumstances, for even the
studio, with its dissipations--and they were many--was not unserviceable;
it developed the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to
grow and ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contra-distinction
to the University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a
formula which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average
human being.

Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from the
foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read pretty nearly
all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read Kant,
Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin and Mill; and these, again, in their turn,
introduced me to many writers and various literature. I do not think that
at this time I cared much for novel reading. Scott seemed to me on a par
with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too impersonal for my very personal
taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and "Bleak House" I thought his greatest
achievement. Thackeray left no deep impression on my mind; in no way did he
hold my thoughts. He was not picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that