novels--ah! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day! O
Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't
I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said? Efforts,
feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. "I say,
old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, "Draw us Don
Quixote and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who
had a love of drawing. "Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers admiring
it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think
I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" was and remains
delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no
doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for
young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and
Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in
times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call
blushes on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions
to honest boys. Then, above all, we had WALTER SCOTT, the kindly, the
generous, the pure--the companion of what countless delightful hours;
the purveyor of how much happiness; the friend whom we recall as the
constant benefactor of our youth! How well I remember the type and the
brownish paper of the old duodecimo "Tales of my Landlord!" I have
never dared to read the "Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or
"Kenilworth," from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and
people die, and are murdered at the end. But "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin
Durward!" Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those
books again! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read
them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart
was good; but how fresh the appetite was! If the gods would give me the
desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys would
relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic loves the
story: grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the