Longfellow and Mayne Reid, Dumas, and in brief, with every kind of light
literature that I could lay my hands upon. Carlyle did not escape me; I
vividly remember the helpless rage with which I read of the Flight to
Varennes. In his work on French novelists, Mr. Saintsbury speaks of a
disagreeable little boy, in a French romance, who found Scott
_assommant_, stunningly stupid. This was a very odious little boy, it
seems (I have not read his adventures), and he came, as he deserved, to a
bad end. Other and better boys, I learn, find Scott "slow."
Extraordinary boys! Perhaps "Ivanhoe" was first favourite of yore; you
cannot beat Front de Boeuf, the assault on his castle, the tournament. No
other tournament need apply. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, greatly daring, has
attempted to enter the lists, but he is a mere Ralph the Hospitaller.
Next, I think, in order of delight, came "Quentin Durward," especially
the hero of the scar, whose name Thackeray could not remember, Quentin's
uncle. Then "The Black Dwarf," and Dugald, our dear Rittmeister. I
could not read "Rob Roy" then, nor later; nay, not till I was forty. Now
Di Vernon is the lady for me; the queen of fiction, the peerless, the
brave, the tender, and true.

The wisdom of the authorities decided that I was to read no more novels,
but, as an observer remarked, "I don't see what is the use of preventing
the boy from reading novels, for he's just reading 'Don Juan' instead."
This was so manifestly no improvement, that the ban on novels was tacitly
withdrawn, or was permitted to become a dead letter. They were far more
enjoyable than Byron. The worst that came of this was the suggestion of
a young friend, whose life had been adventurous--indeed he had served in
the Crimea with the Bashi Bazouks--that I should master the writings of
Edgar Poe. I do not think that the "Black Cat," and the "Fall of the
House of Usher," and the "Murders in the Rue Morgue," are very good
reading for a boy who is not peculiarly intrepid. Many a bad hour they