ry my ability of original
production, I began to dole out to them by the hour and the diet, long
extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful.
My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like
Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and
they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles,
abounding in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And
finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful
encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded
in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying
open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious old age, like that of
Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of
confectionery and fruits. The master had a tolerably correct notion of
what was going on in the "heavy class;"--the stretched-out necks, and
the heads clustered together, always told their own special story when I
was engaged in telling mine; but, without hating the child, he spared
the rod, and simply did what he sometimes allowed himself to
do--bestowed a nickname upon me. I was the _Sennachie_, he said; and as
the Sennachie I might have been known so long as I remained under his
charge, had it not been that, priding himself upon his Gaelic, he used
to bestow upon the word the full Celtic pronunciation, which, agreeing
but ill with the Teutonic mouths of my school-fellows, militated against
its use; and so the name failed to take. With all my carelessness, I
continued to be a sort of favourite with the master; and, when at the
general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches,
vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground
common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, Sir," he has
said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection, a
_Tatler_ or _Spectator_,--"That, Sir, is a good paper;--it's an
_Addison_;" or, "That's one of Steele's, Sir;" and on finding in my
copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had
headed "Poem on Care," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it
carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served
as a pointer, in the one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the
level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar,
Sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's