have been reason enough for abandoning it even if I had not entered with more than usual ardour upon a new heroic subject, of which Cassibelan was the hero. I finished three books of this poem, and had advanced far in the fourth before I went to Westminster. All this was written fairly out in my own private characters, and in my best writing, if one may talk of calligraphy in an unknown hand which looked something like Greek, but more like conjuration, from the number of trines and squares which it contained. These characters, however, proved fatal to the poem, for it was not possible for me to continue it at school, for want of privacy; disuse made the cypher so difficult that I could not read it without almost spelling as I went on; and at last, in very vexation, I burnt the manuscript. I wonder whether Spurzheim could, at that time, have discovered an organ of constructiveness in my pericranium. The Elysian drama might seem to indicate that the faculty was there, but not a trace of it was to be found in any of the heroic poems which I attempted. They were all begun upon a mere general notion of the subject, without any pre-arrangement, and very little preconception of the incidents by which the catastrophe was to be brought about. When I sat down to write, I had to look as much for the incidents, as for the thoughts and words in which they were to be clothed. I expected them to occur just as readily; and so indeed, such as they were, they did. My reading in the old chivalrous romances has been sufficiently extensive to justify me in asserting that the greater number of those romances were written just in the same way, without the slightest plan or forethought; and I am much mistaken if many of the Italian romantic poems were not composed in the same inartificial manner. This I am sure,—that it is more difficult to plan than to execute well; and that abundance of true poetical power has been squandered for want of a constructive talent in the poet. I have felt this want in some of the Spanish and Portuguese writers, even more than their want of taste. The progress of my own mind towards attaining it (so far as I may be thought to have attained it) I am able to trace distinctly; not merely by the works themselves, and by my own recollections of the views with which they were undertaken and composed, but by the various sketches and memoranda for four long narrative poems, made during their progress from the first conception of each till its completion. At present, the facility and pleasure with which I can plan an heroic poem, a drama, and a biographical or historical work, however comprehensive, is even a temptation to me. It seems as if I caught the bearings of a subject at first sight; just as Telford sees from an eminence, with a glance, in what direction his road must be carried. But it was long before I acquired this power, - not fairly, indeed, till I was about five or six and thirty; and it was gained by practice, in the course of which I learnt to perceive wherein I was deficient. There was one point in which these premature attempts afforded a hopeful omen, and that was in the diligence and industry with which I endeavoured to acquire all the historical information within my reach, relating to the subject in hand. Forty years ago, I could have given a better account of the birth and parentage of Egbert, and the state of the Heptarchy during his youth, than I could do now without referring to books; and when Cassibelan was my hero, I was as well acquainted with the division of the island among the ancient tribes, as I am now with the relative situation of its counties. It was, perhaps, fortunate that these pursuits were unassisted and solitary. By thus working a way for myself, I acquired a habit and a love for investigation, and nothing appeared uninteresting which gave me any of the information I wanted. The pleasure which I took in such researches, and in composition, rendered me in a great degree independent of other amusements; and no systematic education could have fitted me for my present course of life so well as the circumstances which allowed me thus to feel and follow my own impulses. LETTER XV. CHARACTER OF MISS TYLER. - HIS MOTHER.- SHADRACH WEEKS. - HIS BROTHER HENRY PLACED WITH MISS TYLER. SISTER'S DEATH. July 17th, 1824. FEW boys were ever less qualified for the discipline of a public school than I was, when it was determined to place me at Westminster; for if my school education had been ill-conducted, the life which I led with Miss Tyler tended in every respect still more to un fit me for the new scenes, the new world almost it might be called, on which I was about to enter. When my aunt settled at Bristol, she brought with her a proud contempt for Bristol society. In fact, she had scarcely any acquaintance there, and seldom saw any company, except when some of her Bath friends came to Clifton for the summer; or when the players took up their abode in the city, for then Mr. Dimond used to visit her. He was a most gentlemanly and respectable man, as well as a good actor. Great is the delight which I have had in seeing him perform, and hardly less was that which I have felt in listening to his conversation. The days when he dined with us were almost our only gala days. At such times, and when she went out, Miss Tyler's appearance and manners were those of a woman who had been bred in the best society and was equal to it; but if any stranger or visitor had caught her in her ordinary apparel, she would have been as much confused as Diana when Acteon came upon her bathingplace, and almost with as much reason, for she was always in a bed-gown and in rags. Most people, I suspect, have a weakness for old shoes; ease and comfort and one's own fireside are connected with them; in fact, we never feel any regard for shoes till they attain to the privileges of age, and then they become almost as much a part of the wearer as his This sort of feeling my aunt extended to old clothes of every kind; the older and the raggeder they grew, the more unwilling she was to cast them off. But she was scrupulously clean in them; indeed, the principle upon which her whole household economy corns. was directed was that of keeping the house clean, and taking more precautions against dust than would have been needful against the plague in an infected city. She laboured under a perpetual dusto-phobia, and a comical disease it was; but whether I have been most amused or annoyed by it, it would be difficult to say. I had, however, in its consequences an early lesson how fearfully the mind may be enslaved by indulging its own peculiarities and whimsies, innocent as they may appear at first. The discomfort which Miss Tyler's passion for cleanliness produced to herself, as well as to her little household, was truly curious: to herself, indeed, it was a perpetual torment; to the two servants a perpetual vexation, and so it would have been to me if nature had not blest me with an innate hilarity of spirit which nothing but real affliction can overcome. That the better rooms might be kept clean, she took possession of the kitchen, sending the servants to one which was underground; and in this little, dark, confined place, with a rough stone floor, and a skylight (for it must not be supposed that it was a best kitchen, which was always, as it was intended to be, a comfortable sitting-room; this was more like a scullery), we always took our meals, and generally lived. The best room was never opened but company; except now and then on a fine day to be aired and dusted, if dust could be detected there. In the other parlour, I was allowed sometimes to read, and she wrote her letters, for she had many correspondents; and we sat there sometimes in summer, when a fire was not needed, for fire produced for |