ing nicknamed _the Prince of Wales_ by
the military mess to which he belonged. As for Whale, senior, the
least allusion to Jonah, or the terming him an odd fish, or any
similar quibble, was sure to put him beside himself. In point of
knowledge and taste he was far too good for the situation he held,
which only required that he should give his scholars a rough
foundation in the Latin language. My time with him, though short, was
spent greatly to my advantage and his gratification. He was glad to
escape to Persius and Tacitus from the eternal Rudiments and Cornelius
Nepos; and as perusing these authors with one who began to understand
them was to him a labor of love, I made considerable progress under
his instructions. I suspect, indeed, that some of the time dedicated
to me was withdrawn from the instruction of his more regular scholars;
but I was as grateful as I could be. I acted as usher, and heard the
inferior classes, and I spouted the speech of Galgacus at the public
examination, which did not make the less impression on the audience
that few of them probably understood one word of it.

In the mean while my acquaintance with English literature was
gradually extending itself. In the intervals of my school hours I had
always perused with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages
and travels as chance presented to me--not forgetting the usual, or
rather ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, Eastern stories,
romances, etc. These studies were totally unregulated and undirected.
My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a profane play or poem; and
my mother, besides that she might be in some degree trammelled by the
religious scruples which he suggested, had no longer the {p.030}
opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in
her dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of
Shakespeare, nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sat up
in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment,
until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it was
time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely
deposited since nine o'clock. Chance, however, threw in my way a
poetical preceptor. This was no other than the excellent and
benevolent Dr. Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary
character. I know not how I attracted his attention, and that of some
of the young men who boarded in his family; but so it was that I
becam