morning, was amused to notice that
I always progressed by dancing along the curbstone sideways, my
face turned inwards and my arms beating against my legs,
conversing loudly all the time. This was a case of pure heredity,
for so he used to go to his school, forty years before, along the
streets of Poole.

One day when fortunately I was alone, I was accosted by an old
gentleman, dressed as a dissenting minister. He was pleased with
my replies, and he presently made it a habit to be taking his
constitutional when I was likely to be on the high road. We
became great friends, and he took me at last to his house, a very
modest place, where to my great amazement, there hung in the
dining-room, two large portraits, one of a man, the other of a
woman, in extravagant fancy-dress. My old friend told me that the
former was a picture of himself as he had appeared, 'long ago, in
my unconverted days, on the stage'.

I was so ignorant as not to have the slightest conception of what
was meant by the stage, and he explained to me that he had been
an actor and a poet, before the Lord had opened his eyes to
better things. I knew nothing about actors, but poets were
already the objects of my veneration. My friend was the first
poet I had ever seen. He was no less a person than James Sheridan
Knowles, the famous author of _Virginius_ and _The Hunchback_, who
had become a Baptist minister in his old age. When, at home, I
mentioned this acquaintance, it awakened no interest. I believe
that my Father had never heard, or never noticed, the name of one
who had been by far the most eminent English playwright of that
age.

It was from Sheridan Knowles' lips that I first heard fall the
name of Shakespeare. He was surprised, I fancy, to find me so
curiously advanced in some branches of knowledge, and so utterly
ignorant of others. He could hardly credit that the names of
Hamlet and Falstaff and Prospero meant nothing to a little boy
who knew so much theology and geography as I did. Mr. Knowles
suggested that I should ask my schoolmaster to read some of the
plays of Shakespeare with the boys, and he proposed _The Merchant
of Venice_ as particularly well-suited for this purpose. I
repeated what my aged friend (Mr. Sheridan Knowles must have been
nearly eighty at that time) had said, and Mr. M. accepted the
idea with promptitude. (All my memories of this my earliest
schoolmaster present him to me as intelligent, amiable and quick,
although I thi