his whole time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive
memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those
last months have exhausted the school library, which consisted
principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note;
Mavor's collection, also his _Universal History_; Robertson's
histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss
Edgeworth's productions, together with many other works equally well
calculated for youth. The books, however, that were his constantly
recurring sources of attraction were Tooke's _Pantheon_, Lempriere's
_Classical Dictionary_, which he appeared to _learn_, and Spence's
_Polymetis_. This was the store whence he acquired his intimacy with
the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled in that creed outworn;" for
his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the
_AEneid_, with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated that before
leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a
considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early
age--mayhap under fourteen--notwithstanding, and through all its
incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me (and the
expression riveted my surprise), that there was feebleness in the
structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better
publications in the school library, for he asked me to lend him some
of my books, and, in my "mind's eye" I now see him at supper (we had
our meals in the school-room), sitting back on the form, from the
table, holding the folio volume of Burnet's _History of His Own Time_
between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This
work, and Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_--which my father took in, and I used
to lend to Keats--no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil
and religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his
guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared
that if he had fifty children he would not send one of them to that
school. Bless his patriot head!

When he left Enfield at fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed to
Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street,
Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement
evidently gave him satisfaction, and I fear it was the most placid
period of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he
had to perform in the surgery--by no means an onerous one--his whole
leisure hours were employed i