He goes on to describe, under the perfectly transparent mask of his hero,
the course of his studies. "To poetry, like most infants, I devoted most
of my time." From modern poetry he went back to the earlier sources,
first with the idea of systematic reading and at last through Chaucer and
Gower and early ballads, until he lost himself "in a dismal swamp of
barbarous romances and lying Latin chronicles. I got hold of the
Bibliotheca Monastica, containing a copious account of Anglo-Norman
authors, with notices of their works, and set seriously to reading every
one of them." One profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he says,
his attention to foreign languages,--French, Spanish, German, especially
in their earliest and rudest forms of literature. From these he ascended
to the ancient poets, and from Latin to Greek. He would have taken up the
study of the Oriental languages, but for the advice of a relative, who
begged him seriously to turn his attention to history. The paragraph
which follows must speak for itself as a true record under a feigned
heading.

"The groundwork of my early character was plasticity and fickleness.
I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with
my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the
study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous
habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as
gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches of
knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of strict and
impartial investigation of the sources of history. I was inspired
with the absurd ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of
knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it necessary for me,
stripling as I was, to study the authorities; and, imbued with the
strict necessity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid
pages of the modern historians to the notes and authorities at the