his family. The probability is that the Master never
read either the originals or my translation ; but
these letters were read by me with intense interest.
In them there was a mystery gradually unfolded, as
in some enchaining narrative of fiction. The real
name of the French teacher at Eton College the
author of many elementary books, and of a well-
known volume on Heraldry, that bear the name
of A. Porny was Antoine Pyron du Martre. Here
were depicted the undying memories of early wrongs ;
the strong "will which had scorned all fellowship
of his kinsmen when the solitary native of Nor
mandy was struggling for bread in a foreign land ;
the triumphs of his pride in rejecting the proffered
kindness which came too late ; the determination
that he would leave his hard-earned riches for the
benefit of the land in which he had gathered them.
From fourteen to seventeen I was learning the print
er s trade, more, as it were, for recreation than for use ;
set no task- work, but occasionally working with irre
gular industry at some self-appointed tasks. The
indulgence of my father was meant, I may believe,
to compensate me for his opposition to my desire for
a higher occupation than that which he pursued.
Thus I was often galloping my pony along the glades
of the forest ; or watching my float, hour after hour,
from the Thames bank at Datchet or at Clewer;
or wandering, book in hand, by the river-side in the
early morning ; or plunging into " the shade of
58 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
melancholy boughs" on some "sunshine holiday."
I read the old novels and the old poems again and
again. Miss Porter and Mrs. Opie gave me fresh
excitement when I was tired of Mrs. Radcliffe.
"The Pleasures of Hope" and Beattie s "Minstrel"
had long been my familiar favourites. At this time
there were published charming little volumes of
verse and prose, as " Walker s Classics," one of which
was generally in my pocket. But in 1805 a new
world of romance was opened to me by " The Lay of
the Last Minstrel." The old didactic form of poetry
now seemed tedious compared with the adventures
of William of Deloraine, and the tricks of the Goblin
Page. Meanwhile my small Latin and less Greek
were vanishing away. The newspaper, too, occupied
much of my reading time. It was a period of tre
mendous interest, even to the apprehension of a
boy. What an autumn and what a winter were
those of 1805, in which I was enabled, day by
day, to read the narratives of such deeds as stirred
the heart of England in the days of the great
Armada ! Napoleon had broken up the camp at
Boulogne, and was marching to the Ehine. Nelson
had gone on board the " Victory " at Portsmouth,
and had joined the fleet before Cadiz. On the 3rd
of November came the news of the surrender of the
Austrian army to the French Emperor at Ulm.
On the 7th we were huzzaing for the final naval
glory of Trafalgar, and weeping for the death of
Nelson. Pitt rejoiced and wept when he was
called up in the night to receive this news, as the
humblest in the land rejoiced and wept. Before I
saw the funeral of Nelson, on the 9th of January,
Pitt had received that fatal mail which told of the
A PRELUDE. 59
destruction at Austerlitz of all his hopes of a
triumphant coalition against France. It broke his
heart. He died on the 23rd of January. Tame, by
comparison, as were the great public events which
followed these mighty struggles, they were perhaps
more exciting in the conflicting opinions which they
provoked. England was still heart-whole. She was
not dismayed, even when Napoleon had the Prussian
monarchy at his feet, and Alexander of Russia had
exchanged vows of friendship with him on the raft
atJTilsit. Though she became isolated in her great
battle for existence, her resolution was not exhausted.
But she was humiliated by the events of the Dar
danelles and of Buenos Ayres. She blushed when
Copenhagen was bombarded, and she fancied that
the abstraction of the Danish fleet was a wanton
robbery. In this case, as in many others, journalism
was not history. The secret articles of the Treaty of
Tilsit had not then come to light for the vindication
of the Government.
The people at this time, even at Windsor, grew
gloomy and discontented. Public affairs were un-
prosperous ; parties ran high ; the taxes increased
with the expenses of the war and the yearly additions
to the interest of the debt. It was not only the
actual amount of taxation of which the middle classes
complained, but of the oppressive and insulting mode
of their assessment. The excisable trader had too long
been familiarised with the presence of the revenue
officer to complain. He walked into the tallow-
chandler s workshop without ceremony, put a seal
upon his copper and his dipping vat, and locked up his
moulds. He looked over the grocer s wares of tobacco,
pepper, and tea, at his good pleasure ; and this pro-
60 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
cess, which he called taking stock, was insulting and
troublesome to the honest, and no real check upon
the fraudulent. The liquor-merchant did not dare
to send out a dozen of wine or a gallon of spirits
without a permit. The Income-Tax was truly inqui
sitorial, for the local Commissioners had no hesitation
in ordering a tradesman to produce his ledger and
cash-book. If there was an error in the return of As
sessed Taxes the resident officer of revenue, called an
Inspector, immediately made a surcharge, which it was
extremely difficult to get off by appeal. I was once
horror-struck by witnessing a scene between an apo
plectic innkeeper and the tax-collector, who had no
alternative but to insist upon the payment of a con
firmed surcharge. The unhappy man, doubly red
with passion, slid out of his arm-chair in the bar,
and, falling upon his knees, exclaimed, "May the
curse of God light upon you all. Now I ll pay it."
And yet, amidst much grumbling and disaffection,
the majority of my townsmen went on in the light-
hearted course which was habitual to them. There
were few fluctuations of fortune amongst us, as in a
manufacturing district ; no sudden prostrations of
the capitalist ; no exceptional miseries of the labourer.
There was amusement and excitement for us in the
invariable round of the weeks and months. The
4th of June was a great day of bell-ringing, and
reviews, and the regatta of the Eton boys, which
closed with fireworks. There were Ascot Races, to
which the Royal Family came in state up the course,
their carriages preceded by the master of the buck-
hounds, with his huntsman and his yeomen prickers.
Ascot was too distant from London for a multi
farious assemblage from Tottenham Court Road
A. PRELUDE. 61
and St. Mary Axe to be there. The neighbouring
gentry came in their carriages, and the farmers
came in their taxed carts. A few Bow Street offi
cers stood around the royal booth, but they were
not installed in the preventive duties of sup
pressing E. O. tables, and of overturning the stools
of the numberless professors of " the thimble-rig "
and "prick in the garter." If a pickpocket were
detected, he had Lynch law. He was conducted
to a pond at the rear of the booths, and there, with
a long rope fastened round his waist, was dragged
through the water till he was half dead. There
was the weekly meet of the hounds, who duly
went forth to some neighbouring comnion from the
kennel at Swinley, with the deer in the cart. It
was not necessary to give the poor animal much
law, for the stag-hound of that day was slow, and
there were more hacks than hunters in the field.
The King walked as usual on the Terrace, but
loyalty was not so demonstrative as in the earlier
days. The Marquis of Thomond knocked off a
man s hat when it was not lifted as the King passed,
and the suspected democrat knocked down the Mar
quis of Thomond.
Left much to my own thoughts/ young as I was, I
gradually grew into a chronic state of suspicion as
to the general excellence of our political and social
system. I saw a vast deal of wretchedness around me,
and I saw no attempt to relieve it except by doles of
bread at the church door on Sundays, with an indis
criminate alms-giving to vagrants every night by the
overseer, and a driving of them out of the borough by
the beadle the next day. There was no education,
except at the Free School for some thirty boys and
62 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
twenty girls. The national school of Eton, which the
good old Frenchman founded, preceded our Windsor
national school by fifteen years. Out relief to the
poor was voted every week by a committee with a
lavish hand. The assistant overseer insulted the
weak, and was bullied by the strong. The parish
gravel-pit was the specific for want of employment,
continuous or temporary. The poor s rate was enor
mous, for there was destitution everywhere through
sickness and death, produced by the contempt of
sanitary laws. There was no dispensary, and the
parish doctor was hard worked and ill paid. It is
difficult, in these happier times of fiscal enlighten
ment, to estimate what the poor had to endure in the
incidence of taxation. The great burden which they
had to bear was in the dearness of food. Without
mentioning the effect upon their means of living by
the laws for the protection of agriculture which told
upon the market-price not only of bread, but of meat,
bacon, butter, cheese there was excessive direct
taxation for the purposes of revenue upon sugar,
upon tea, upon coffee, upon soap, upon candles, upon
salt. They lived in miserable hovels, for there were
duties of enormous pressure upon bricks, upon foreign
timber, upon glass. The cost of a cotton gown was
enhanced by the duties upon raw cotton and upon
printed calicos. Worst of all, the effect of this vast
mass of injudicious taxes was to arrest the profitable
employment of capital, and thus to reduce the labourer
to the lowest condition. The oppression and the
neglect which I witnessed all around me, evils
of which I did not see the causes or anticipate
the remedies, drove me into those socialistic beliefs
which it is a mistake to think did not exist in
A PRELUDE. 63
young and incautious minds long before the present
day. I was a sort of Communist in 1808. In a
satirical poem (whose MS. has turned up with other
rubbish of verse and prose stored in an old box) I
poured out my indignation against the indifference
and pride, lay and clerical, which I saw around me.
I find there these lines, which I give, believe me,
not as evidence of poetical talent but of a jaundiced
imagination. Many have written much of the same
stuff at a riper age than mine, who have in time
learnt the worth of more practical philanthropy.
But surely that youth is to be pitied who begins by
setting up for a political economist.
" Hail happy days, primeval ages hail,
Which deck the warm enthusiast s glowing tale,
When simple Nature, pure and unconfined,
With equal gifts ennobled all mankind ;
When hardy energy and rugged toil
Alone could snatch the blessings of the soil,
And wearied diligence return d to seize
The cup of pleasure in the lap of ease !
Now when the hand of unsubstantial worth
Grasps every treasure of the teeming earth,
And Nature vainly spreads her equal store
Whilst millions, heirs of plenty, still are poor,
Say, shall the glittering pomp of pride despise
The humble toil that taught the proud to rise ?
Say, shall the wretched, all-laborious hind
In vain demand the bread he gives mankind ?"
I fear that in this unwatched time of morbid
thoughts my religious principles were in as great
danger of running wild as my political. I had read
some of the old divines Hall, and Barrow, and
Jeremy Taylor with real benefit. I fear that I
acquired a sceptical humour from such defences of
the faith as Watson s " Apology for the Bible," and
- 01 TH* >
64 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
Lyttelton s "Conversion of St. Paul." They attempted
to prove too much to satisfy my reason, which they
addressed exclusively. They did not marshal their
proofs with the consummate skill displayed by Sher
lock in his " Trial of the Witnesses ; " nor did they
charm away the mists of doubt by the tolerant and
fearless candour of Berkeley in his " Alciphron."
Beattie s "Essay on Truth" did not sink deep into
my heart, although the King and Queen had lauded
it as the greatest of all theological triumphs, as if
there had been no such book as Butler s "Analogy."
The service at our church was too cold and formal
often too slovenly to satisfy me. There was no con
gregational singing. Chaunts and musical responses
were unknown. I got away from it, whenever I could,
to find a seat in St. George s Chapel, where the cathe
dral service was exquisitely performed. On Sunday
the choir was full ; but I could stand by the iron
gates of the south aisle, and hear every note of the
rich harmonies of Boyce and Handel breathed from
the lips of Sale or Vaughan. On a frosty winter
evening of the week-day it mattered little to me
that the choir was empty and cold. I yielded up
my whole heart to the soothing influences. I was
sometimes glad to be admitted into a stall by a good-
natured verger ; for at times my attention was sadly
distracted by the tricks and grimaces of the young
choristers, who, as they knelt in apparent prayer, _
were occupied in modelling hideous figures out of
the ends of their wax candles. Such were the secrets
disclosed to me as I commonly sat on the free bench
by the side of the sportive lads. These practices
were gradually extinguished by a better discipline ;
but there was one practice which no discipline could
A PRELUDE. 65
control, for it was an institution as old as the days
of James I. Decker, in his "Gull s Horn-book,"
thus ironically advises the lounger in Paul s : " Be
sure your silver spurs clog your heels, and then the
boys will swarm about you like so many white
butterflies ; when you, in the open quire, shall draw
forth a perfumed embroidered purse, and quoit silver
into the boys hands." Thus have I seen a stranger
civilian stalk into the choir of St. George s Chapel.
The spur was instantly detected ; and when the
bewildered man was surrounded by a bevy of white
surplices as he loitered in the nave, there was no
help for him but to pay the spur-money.
Such interruptions to the beauty and solemnity
of the service were not sufficient to prevent their
abiding impressions ; and thus the salt of devotion
was not wholly washed out of me. I was, how
ever, well nigh rushing into the desert, in going
through the ceremony which was to keep me in
the fold. I had diligently prepared myself for
Confirmation. Dr. Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, was
to perform the rite. There was an absence of all
solemnity, and even of decency, upon which I look
back with disgust. I still see the bishop s officers
driving the young people to the altar -rails as if
they were sheep going to the fair ; the monotonous
formality of the imposition of hands upon the
huddled batches who knelt for a few minutes, and
then were chased back to their seats by the impatient
ministers of the solemnity. Its failure altogether to
satisfy my excited feelings compelled me into a
passion of tears, and I went home and told my
father that I would be a Quaker or a Unitarian.
I think that Confirmation confirmed whatever was
G6 EAELY REMINISCENCES ;
sceptical in my composition ; and I had to escape
into the region of natural piety, and long dwell there,
before I could become reconciled to the establish
ment which could endure such profanations.
Up to my sixteenth or seventeenth year T had
found little in my professional pursuits to interest
me. But I then became what Mr. Hill Burton terms
a " Bookhunter." My father was always a great
buyer of second-hand books. He attended sales.
He purchased private libraries. He bought many
more books than he sold. Many of his rare volumes
had been heaped up in cupboards till I routed
them out, and made a complete catalogue of some
thousands. This occupation was of lasting advan
tage to me, in widening my horizon of knowledge.
I was led to study and abstract, not only Dibdin
and De Bure, but the catalogues of great London
booksellers, such as those of White and Egerton and
Cuthell (the predecessors of the later and greater
authorities). These enlightened my provincial esti
mate of value by " scarce," " rare," " very rare."
To hunt in brokers shops ; to attend sales, and
sometimes bid for volumes that I carried home in
triumph at a small price ; to talk with gusto to an
old apothecary at Slough about black-letter treasures ;
this was a pursuit that weaned me from many of my
idle reveries, and was not without its use in later
life. The remembrance of that worthy book-col
lector of the then small village of Slough fills me,
even now, with a sort of pride at the honour of
having been regarded by him with a feeling that we
were fellow-travellers upon the same road he with
his large experience and superb acquisitions, I with
my newly-developed bibliomania and small store of
A PRELUDE. 67
treasures. Often have I peeped into his little shop
on the high road, strong in many odours among
which rhubarb prevailed, to see if my master was
at liberty to discourse to a pupil on his favourite
theme. He would suspend his labours, if he were
not too busy, and hand over the pestle to his atten
dant boy. We then went up his narrow staircase
into .his sanctum. His first words invariably were,
"What have you got ?" I remember to have found
upon a stall in Windsor market two black-letter
pamphlets of the early English Reformers. They
were not much to his taste when I produced them ;
nor did he care for a rare Elzevir which I brought
out of my pocket. He would then unlock the cas
ket where he kept his jewels, and would delight my
eyes with something rich and rare that he had
recently obtained in a hasty visit to London, made
for the especial purpose of a book-hunt. How well
do I recollect the glow of his honest face as he
placed before me a Wynkyn de Worde, torn and
dirty, but nevertheless a fit companion for the im
perfect Caxton on his most sacred shelf. Missals he
had, and early English Bibles. They ranged har
moniously side by side. I soon grew to laugh at Dr.
Peckham s enthusiasm ; but better thoughts would
suggest to me how good it was that an old man who
had no cares of children to engross him, one who had
little aptitude for the acquirement of real knowledge,
scientific or literary should have a pursuit which was
intensely gratifying to him, and had a semblance of
learning to the world as well as to himself.
Even as Sir William Jones advised the young
Templar to read over law catalogues at his break
fast, that he might gain a general perception of
68 EARLY REMINISCENCES:
the learning of which he desired to become the
master, so I gained something like a broad view
)f the range of literature by my bibliographical
studies. In these dealings in second-hand books,
a circumstance occurred which I think had some
effect in leading me to one of the most pleasant
labours of my future life. I had been sent to a
house at Old Windsor to make a list of books belong
ing to a clergyman who had received an appointment
in "India. When the price to be given had been
settled at home, I again went to make the offer, with
the money in my hand. The generous man was
pleased with what he considered liberal terms, and
said to me, "Young gentleman, I give you that
imperfect copy of Shakspere for yourself." It was
the first folio. Sadly defective it was in many
places. I devised a plan for making the rare volume
perfect. The fac-simile edition, then recently pub
lished, was procured. Amongst the oldest founts of
type in our printing-office was one which exactly
resembled that of the folio of 1623. We had abun
dant fly-leaves of seventeenth-century books which
matched the paper on which this edition was printed.
I set myself the task of composing every page that
was wholly wanting, or was torn and sullied. When
the book was handsomely bound I was in raptures at
my handiwork. I was to have the copy for myself ;
but one of the Eton private-tutors, to whom my
father showed the volume, and explained how it had
been completed, offered a tempting price for it, and
my treasure passed from me. Some real value
remained. The process of setting up the types led
me to understand the essential differences of the
early text, as compared with modern editions with
A PRELUDE. 69
which I was familiar, especially those which had been
maimed and deformed for the purposes of the stage.
What would I riot now give, could I obtain this
testimonial that I had not been altogether uselessly
employed in this morning of my life, before a definite
purpose for the future had given energy and consis
tency to my pursuits !
My future walk in the world was gradually shaping
itself into a distant view of a practicable hill-side
road. It became clear to me that, as the professions
seemed to be shut out from my adoption by my
father s anxious desire that I should remain with him,
my only way of escape from the petty cares of the
trade of a country bookseller and small printer was to
make literature, in some way or other, my vocation.
It was not by writing commonplace essays and occa
sional odes and sonnets (which I had the sense to
burn as fast as they were composed) that I was to
carry out this purpose. If I were to accomplish any
thing, I must have a locus standi. There was my
father s prin ting-office ; he was not without capital.
Windsor, with its objects of interest, was without a
newspaper. Some day, not very far off, should my
ambition gain me the conduct of such a journal ? I
felt that the vocation of a journalist even of a pro
vincial journalist required thought, energy, various
knowledge. I applied myself to study the history of
my country and the nature of its institutions. I
had De Lolme and Blackstone often at my side.
Burke enchanted me. Yet I did not wholly sur
render my political faith to the eloquent philosophy
which had become Toryism, and which, in the dread
of the French Revolution, was opposed to every
change and every obvious remedy for the grossest
70 EARLY REMINISCENCES I
abuses. The Hunts John and Leigh began to
publish "The Examiner" in 1808. To my enthu
siastic views, the Hunts were the true men almost
the only ones who spoke the truth jas the younger
brother was the most winning of periodical writers.
Then there was the "Edinburgh Review." advo
cating Catholic Emancipation and many practical
reforms which were held as dangerous innovations,
and which, in their terror of the word " innovation,"
legislators were afraid to touch. But when the Re
viewers were indiscriminately denouncing the conduct
of the war and the imbecility of the Government
bitter in their sarcasms against administrative mis
takes, depressing in their belief of the hopelessness
of the contest, and ungenerous in their appreciation of
the only military leader who seemed likely to stand
between the living and the dead and stay the plague,
I could see, however imperfectly, the one-sidedness
of political partizanship which neutralized the best
efforts of the Whig Journal. Conflicting opinions
sometimes distracted me. There were the alterna
tions of joy and of gloom, of confidence and of despair,
as the events of 1808-9 presented themselves to
view. The insurrection of the Spanish Patriots was
a beacon-light amidst the darkness. The people
were shouting one day for Wellesley s triumph over
Junot, and the next day cursing the Convention of
Cintra. Moore had marched into Spain in No
vember ; on the 1st of January he had accomplished
his disastrous retreat to Corunna, there won a vic
tory and died a soldier s death. Never shall I forget
my feelings on the bitter cold day on which this
news arrived, nor the indignation with which, some
months after, his Journal was perused. There came
A PRELUDE. 71
to Windsor the son of a joiner, who had left his
father s house a stalwart dragoon, and returned
crippled and emaciated from the Spanish campaign.
He lent me his simple diary of his sufferings and
privations, which told of the horrors of war far
more forcibly than the newspaper reports of the
wounded and fever-stricken who filled the hospitals.
The public mind was inflamed by the mixed feelings
of disappointment and pity. Then came the wretched
inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York. The
hopes that had been revived of Germany being
roused to resistance were dissipated by the battle of
Wagra m. The expectation of a mighty blow to be