versal sea? And yet _that_ went perhaps to
fourscore parts. Not enduring the uncertainty that now besieged my
tranquillity, I resolved to know the worst; and on a day ever memorable to
me I went down to the bookseller's. He was a mild elderly man, and to
myself had always shown a kind indulgent manner. Partly perhaps he had
been struck by my extreme gravity; and partly, during the many
conversations I had with him, on occasion of my guardian's orders for
books, with my laughable simplicity. But there was another reason which
had early won for me his paternal regard. For the first three or four
months I had found Latin something of a drudgery; and the incident which
for ever knocked away the "shores," at that time preventing my launch upon
the general bosom of Latin literature, was this:--One day the bookseller
took down a Beza's _Latin Testament_; and, opening it, asked me to
translate for him the chapter which he pointed to. I was struck by
perceiving that it was the great chapter of St Paul on the grave and
resurrection. I had never seen a Latin version: yet from the simplicity of
the scriptural style in _any_ translation, (though Beza's is far from
good) I could not well have failed in construing. But as it happened to be
this particular chapter, which in English I had read again and again with
so passionate a sense of its grandeur, I read it off with a fluency and
effect like some great opera-singer uttering a rapturous _bravura_. My
kind old friend expressed himself gratified, making me a present of the
book as a mark of his approbation. And it is remarkable, that from this
moment, when the deep memory of the English words had forced me into
seeing the precise correspondence of the two concurrent streams--Latin and
English--never again did any difficulty arise to check the velocity of my
progress in this particular language. At less than eleven years of age,
when as yet I was a very indifferent Grecian, I had become a brilliant
master of Latinity, as my Alcaics and Choriambics remain to testify: and
the whole occasion of a change so memorable to a boy, was this casual
summons to translate a composition with which my heart was filled. Ever
after this he showed me a caressing kindness, and so condescendingly, that
generally he would leave any people for a moment with whom he was engaged,
to come and speak to me. On this fatal day, however, for such it proved to
me, he could not do this. He saw me, indeed, and nodded, bu