My Life as an Author

, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occas

d voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speec

is it not

ting in ever

ankles in the

ll in each d

ting pett

never look

ulness of my bu

never with

ved and long-e

but cannot ven

I ought, but mu

rk his quick

kindness t

lcome strangle

rrow, while

onverse, to be

cle, from a n

poignant co

tand aloof, n

good in ratio

rilliant quick

ngenuous inter

open-hearted

self an iso

rness of wid

knew well at a time when I had overcome my calamity; whereas he carried his to the grave with him; though he had frequent gleams of a forced and courageous eloquence, preac

ve me a farce or a story instead), and one moreover in which any fool well up to crammed book games may crow over the wisest of men in an easy, because stereotyped, checkmate. However, in this connection, I recollect a small experience which proves that positive ignorance of famous openings may sometimes be an advantage; just as the skilled fencer will be baffled by a brave boor rushing in against rules, and by close encounter unconventionally pinning him straight off. When a youth, just before matriculation, I was a guest at Culham of the good rector there, a chess-player to his own thinking indomitable, for none of the neighbours could checkmate him: so he thought to make quick work of a silent but thoughtful boy-stammerer,-by tempting him at an early period of the game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat. However, I declined the generous offer, which began to

t M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,-and if ever

out the Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especia

he one who couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn came to read or to answer,-"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know it,-please to go on, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual c

page or two, and would have rejoiced my piscatorial friends Kingsley and Leech in old days, and will not be unacceptable to Attwood Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had vario

illage Queen of

st before the

musical laugh,

en sands, which

le-green kirtle

nd her tinkli

odies: quick,-y

efluence of t

rout, who shuns

rowler, loves

hold him bravel

own,-now madl

line among those

ds,-and hail, t

I

bbed the Nereids

fairy messen

very prankt wi

favourite page:

?a to her

ew-born founta

loving haste

cks, and through

me where coral

ea-nymph clasps

, terrible a

lissom rod, a

row the temptin

of trophies fr

I

Zephyr, waft m

ppling shall

l, whose calm

ambush, where

ping fly; there

ucus!-but he m

the monarch

ike a salmon's,

e, and waste hi

Damocles, a

ll to take this

ntly; quick, th

t the glitteri

dolphin, swe