I besought my father to allow me to
have some lessons in Italian. These were given me by Professor Lorenzo
Da Ponte, son of the veteran of whom I have already spoken. With him I
read the dramas of Metastasio and of Alfieri.

Through all these years there went with me the vision of some great work
or works which I myself should give to the world. I should write the
novel or play of the age. This, I need not say, I never did. I made
indeed some progress in a drama founded upon Scott's novel of
"Kenilworth," but presently relinquished this to begin a play suggested
by Gibbon's account of the fall of Constantinople. Such successes as I
did manage to achieve were in quite a different line, that of lyric
poetry. A beloved music-master, Daniel Schlesinger, falling ill and
dying, I attended his funeral and wrote some stanzas descriptive of the
scene, which were printed in various papers, attracting some notice. I
set them to music of my own, and sang them often, to the accompaniment
of a guitar.

Although the reading of Byron was sparingly conceded to us, and that of
Shelley forbidden, the morbid discontent which characterized these poets
made itself felt in our community as well as in England. Here, as
elsewhere, it brought into fashion a certain romantic melancholy. It is
true that at school we read Cowper's "Task," and did our parsing on
Milton's "Paradise Lost," but what were these in comparison with:--

"The cold in clime are cold in blood,"

or:--

"I loved her, Father, nay, adored."

After my brother's return from Europe, I read such works of George Sand
and Balzac as he would allow me to choose from his library. Of the two
writers, George Sand appeared to me by far the superior, though I then
knew of her works only "Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre," "Spiridion,"
"Jacques," and "Andre." It was at least ten years after this time that
"Consuelo" revealed to the world the real George Sand, and thereby made
her peace with the society which she had defied and scandalized. Of my
German studies I have already made mention. I began them with a class of
ladies under the tuition of Dr. Nordheimer. But it was with the later
aid of Dr. Cogswell that I really mastered the difficulties of the
language. It was while I was thus engaged that my eldest brother
returned from Germany. In conversing with him, I acquired the use of
colloquial German. Having, as I have said, the command of his fine
library, I was soon deep in Goethe's "