memories of success and good repute. He was, beside, well read
in French literature, and in English, a Queen Anne's man. He
hoped to make me the heir of all he knew, and of as much more
as the income of his profession enabled him to give me
means of acquiring. At the very beginning, he made one
great mistake, more common, it is to be hoped, in the last
generation, than the warnings of physiologists will permit
it to be with the next. He thought to gain time, by bringing
forward the intellect as early as possible. Thus I had tasks
given me, as many and various as the hours would allow, and
on subjects beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage
of reciting to him in the evening, after he returned from his
office. As he was subject to many interruptions, I was often
kept up till very late; and as he was a severe teacher, both
from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings
were kept on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus
frequently, I was sent to bed several hours too late, with
nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature
development of the brain, that made me a "youthful prodigy" by
day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare,
and somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious
development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while,
later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous
affections, of all kinds. As these again re-acted on the
brain, giving undue force to every thought and every feeling,
there was finally produced a state of being both too active
and too intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring
me,--even although I have learned to understand and regulate
my now morbid temperament,--to a premature grave.