cate look--people still used to say in my presence, 'That
dear child is not long for this world!'--it was in consequence of
a sort of habit into which my body had grown; it was a
transparency which did not speak of what was in store for me, but
of what I had already passed through.

The increased activity of my intellectual system now showed
itself in what I behove to be a very healthy form, direct
imitation. The rage for what is called 'originality' is pushed to
such a length in these days that even children are not considered
promising, unless they attempt things preposterous and
unparalleled. From his earliest hour, the ambitious person is
told that to make a road where none has walked before, to do
easily what it is impossible for others to do at all, to create
new forms of thought and expression, are the only recipes for
genius; and in trying to escape on all sides from every
resemblance to his predecessors, he adopts at once an air of
eccentricity and pretentiousness. This continues to be the
accepted view of originality; but, in spite of this conventional
opinion, I hold that the healthy sign of an activity of mind in
early youth is not to be striving after unheard-of miracles, but
to imitate closely and carefully what is being said and done in
the vicinity. The child of a great sculptor will hang about the
studio, and will try to hammer a head out of a waste piece of
marble with a nail; it does not follow that he too will be a
sculptor. The child of a politician will sit in committee with a
row of empty chairs, and will harangue an imaginary senate from
behind the curtains. I, the son of a man who looked through a
microscope and painted what he saw there, would fair observe for
myself, and paint my observations. It did not follow, alas! that
I was built to be a miniature-painter or a savant, but the
activity of a childish intelligence was shown by my desire to
copy the results of such energy as I saw nearest at hand.

In the secular direction, this now took the form of my preparing
little monographs on seaside creatures, which were arranged,
tabulated and divided as exactly as possible on the pattern of
those which my Father was composing for his _Actinologia
Britannica_. I wrote these out upon sheets of paper of the same
size as his printed page, and I adorned them with water-colour
plates, meant to emulate his precise and exquisite illustrations.
One or two of these ludicrous pastiches are still preserved,