ear the society of my aunt, without much consciousness of her
impending fate. I feel a melancholy pleasure in repeating my obligations
to that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother of my
mind as well as of my health. Her natural good sense was improved by the
perusal of the best books in the English language; and if her reason was
sometimes clouded by prejudice, her sentiments were never disguised by
hypocrisy or affectation. Her indulgent tenderness, the frankness of
her temper, and my innate rising curiosity, soon removed all distance
between us: like friends of an equal age, we freely conversed on every
topic, familiar or abstruse; and it was her delight and reward to
observe the first shoots of my young ideas. Pain and languor were often
soothed by the voice of instruction and amusement; and to her kind
lessons I ascribe my early and invincible love of reading, which I would
not exchange for the treasures of India. I should perhaps be astonished,
were it possible to ascertain the date, at which a favourite tale was
engraved, by frequent repetition, in my memory: the Cavern of the Winds;
the Palace of Felicity; and the fatal moment, at the end of three months
or centuries, when Prince Adolphus is overtaken by Time, who had worn
out so many pair of wings in the pursuit. Before I left Kingston
school I was well acquainted with Pope's Homer and the Arabian Nights
Entertainments, two books which will always please by the moving picture
of human manners and specious miracles: nor was I then capable of
discerning that Pope's translation is a portrait endowed with every
merit, excepting that of likeness to the original. The verses of Pope
accustomed my ear to the sound of poetic harmony: in the death of
Hector, and the shipwreck of Ulysses, I tasted the new emotions of
terror and pity; and seriously disputed with my aunt on the vices and
virtues of the heroes of the Trojan war. From Pope's Homer to Dryden's
Virgil was an easy transition; but I know not how, from some fault in
the author, the translator, or the reader, the pious Aeneas did not
so forcibly seize on my imagination; and I derived more pleasure
from Ovid's Metamorphoses, especially in the fall of Phaeton, and the
speeches of Ajax and Ulysses. My grand-father's flight unlocked the door
of a tolerable library; and I turned over many English pages of poetry
and romance, of history and travels. Where a title attracted my eye,
without fear or awe I sn