poorly written, in which every honest boy, at some
time in his life, finds what he wants. They are silent, too, about the
books which as a matter of fact had a tremendous influence on them--the
plain, dull school-books. For my part, if you asked me what books had
influenced me, I should not be telling the truth if my answer left out
Webster's Spelling-Book and Greenleaf's Arithmetic, though I did not
adore them extravagantly."

"That's just the point, Uncle Peter," said I, "these distinguished men
were really trying to tell you about the books that delighted and
inspired their youth, the books that they loved as boys."

"Well," said my Uncle Peter, "if it comes to love, and reminiscences of
loving, that is precisely the region in which the exact truth is least
frequently told. Maturity casts its prim and clear-cut shadow backwards
upon the vague and glittering landscape of youth. Whether he speaks of
books or of girls, the aged reminiscent attributes to himself a
delicacy of taste, a singleness and constancy of affection, and a
romantic fervour of devotion, which he might have had, but probably did
not. He is not in the least to blame for drawing his fancy-picture of a
young gentleman. He cannot help it. It is his involuntary tribute to
the ideal. Youth dreams in the future tense; age, in the past
participle.

"There is no kind of fiction more amiable and engaging than the droll
legends of infancy and pious recollections of boyhood. Do you suppose
that Wordsworth has given us a complete portrait of the boy that he
was, in 'The Prelude'? He says not a word about the picture of his
grandmother that he broke with his whip because the other children gave
him a 'dare,' nor about the day when he went up into the attic with an
old fencing-foil to commit suicide, nor about the girl with whom he
fell in love while he was in France. Do you suppose that Stevenson's
'Memories and Portraits' represent the youthful R. L. S. with
photographic accuracy and with all his frills? Not at all. Stevenson's
essays are charming; and Wordsworth's poem is beautiful,--in streaks it
is as fine as anything that he ever wrote: but both of these works
belong to literature because they are packed full of omissions,--which
Stevenson himself called 'a kind of negative exaggeration.' No, my dear
boy, old Goethe found the right title for a book of reminiscences when
he wrote _'Wahrheit und Dichtung_.' Truth and poetry,--that is what it
is bound to be.