drop Mr. Pope's Iliad or Odyssey in five minutes unless she happened
to light upon some particularly exciting adventure. I therefore
dismissed the thought of these young ladies, and the daughters of
the surveyor were for the same reasons ineligible, with the added
objection that if I chose one of them the squire and his family
would never enter the church again.

One day I went over to B. to leave my watch for repairs. I noticed
a fishing-rod in the shop, and as I was fond of the sport I asked
the watchmaker if it was his. He said that he generally went
fishing when he could spare himself a holiday, and that he had just
spent two days on the Avon. I was thinking of the Stratford river
and foolishly inquired which Avon, forgetting the one near us.

'Our Avon,' he replied; 'our Avon, of course, sir; THE Avon.


'"Proud of his adamants with which he shines
And glisters wide, as als of wondrous Bath."'


I did not recollect the lines, but discovered on inquiry that they
were Spenser's, an author, I regret to say, whom I had not read. I
was astonished that a person with a mechanical occupation who sat in
a window from morning to night dissecting time-pieces should be
acquainted with poetry, and I begged him to tell me something of his
life. He was the son of a bookseller in Bristol who had been
apprenticed to the celebrated Mr. Bernard Lintot. The father failed
in business, and soon afterwards died leaving a widow and six
children. My friend was then about fourteen years old. He had been