A BOY IN THE WOOD


I had many bad qualities as a child, of which I need mention only
three. I was moody, irresolute, and hatefully reserved. Fate had
already placed me the eldest by three years of a large family. Add to
the eminence thus attained intentions which varied from hour to hour,
a will so little in accordance with desire that I had rather give up a
cherished plan than fight for it, and a secretive faculty equalled
only by the magpie, and you will not wonder when I affirm that I lived
alone in a household of a dozen friendly persons. As a set-off and
consolation to myself I had very strongly the power of impersonation.
I could be within my own little entity a dozen different people in a
day, and live a life thronged with these companions or rivals; and yet
this set me more solitary than ever, for I could never appear in any
one of my characters to anybody else. But alone and apart, what worlds
I inhabited! Worlds of fact and worlds of fiction. At nine years old I
knew Nelson's ardour and Wellesley's phlegm; I had Napoleon's egotism,
Galahad's purity, Lancelot's passion, Tristram's melancholy. I
reasoned like Socrates and made Phædo weep; I persuaded like Saint
Paul and saw the throng on Mars' Hill sway to my words. I was by turns
Don Juan and Don Quixote, Tom Jones and Mr. Allworthy, Hamlet and his
uncle, young Shandy and his. You will gather that I was a reader. I
was, and the people of my books stepped out of their pages and
inhabited me. Or, to change the figure, I found in every book an open
door, and went in and dwelt in its world. Thus I lived a thronged and
busy life, a secret life, full of terror, triumph, wonder, frantic
enterprise, a noble and gallant figure among my peers, while to my
parents, brothers and sisters I was an incalculable, fitful creature,
often lethargic and often in the sulks. They saw me mooning in