the dark ages, gave me a sound and peculiarly humiliating flogging for
thus trespassing upon Parnassus.

This was a sad outset for a votary of the muse. It ought to have cured
me of my passion for poetry; but it only confirmed it, for I felt the
spirit of a martyr rising within me. What was as well, perhaps, it
cured me of my passion for the young lady; for I felt so indignant at
the ignominious horsing I had incurred in celebrating her charms, that
I could not hold up my head in church.

Fortunately for my wounded sensibility, the midsummer holydays came on,
and I returned home. My mother, as usual, inquired into all my school
concerns, my little pleasures, and cares, and sorrows; for boyhood has
its share of the one as well as of the others. I told her all, and she
was indignant at the treatment I had experienced. She fired up at the
arrogance of the squire, and the prudery of the daughter; and as to the
school-master, she wondered where was the use of having school-masters,
and why boys could not remain at home and be educated by tutors, under
the eye of their mothers. She asked to see the verses I had written,
and she was delighted with them; for to confess the truth, she had a
pretty taste in poetry. She even showed to them to the parson's wife,
who protested they were charming, and the parson's three daughters
insisted on each having a copy of them.

All this was exceedingly balsamic, and I was still more consoled and
encouraged, when the young ladies, who were the blue-stockings of the
neighborhood, and had read Dr. Johnson's lives quite through, assured
my mother that great geniuses never studied, but were always idle; upon
which I began to surmise that I was myself something out of the common
run. My father, however, was of a very different opinion, for when my