careworn, unhappy, great, and yet weak as he was, he carried about
with him the mother's poison which he had sucked in his infancy.
Hence he exclaims, in his 'Childe Harold':-

"Yet must I think less wildly:- I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, UNTAUGHT IN YOUTH MY HEART TO TAME,
MY SPRINGS OF LIFE WERE POISONED."

In like manner, though in a different way, the character of Mrs.
Foote, the actor's mother, was curiously repeated in the life of
her joyous, jovial-hearted son. Though she had been heiress to a
large fortune, she soon spent it all, and was at length imprisoned
for debt. In this condition she wrote to Sam, who had been
allowing her a hundred a year out of the proceeds of his acting:-
"Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt; come and assist your loving
mother, E. Foote." To which her son characteristically replied--
"Dear mother, so am I; which prevents his duty being paid to his
loving mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote."

A foolish mother may also spoil a gifted son, by imbuing his mind
with unsound sentiments. Thus Lamartine's mother is said to have
trained him in altogether erroneous ideas of life, in the school
of Rousseau and Bernardin de St.-Pierre, by which his
sentimentalism, sufficiently strong by nature, was exaggerated
instead of repressed: (16) and he became the victim of tears,
affectation, and improvidence, all his life long. It almost
savours of the ridiculous to find Lamartine, in his 'Confidences,'