fe, and which, as it was, was
a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who
feared wisely for my future.

I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life--'twas
sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had bought me a nice English large
type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character
form--I forget now the name of the author--the following:--

"Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,
Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.
Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men
To treade aright the traces of thy penne,
And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!"

We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw
grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when
looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.

I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd's class of
mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously
Cardanus _de Subtilitate_ in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid
it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed
at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances. Reading of
novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so
caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. George Boker
remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James
Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.

I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read
by repetition or reviewing and by _collocation_, which is a marvellous
aid in retaining images. For, in the first place, I read entirely by
GROUPS; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair's "Rhetoric," Longinus and
Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused "Rambles in the Footsteps of
Don Quixote," I at once, on principle, followed it up with "Spain in
1830," and a careful study of Ford's Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a
score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me. And as I have
found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on
Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read
together, profit more than a hundred at intervals. And I may here add,
that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real
youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in
those days were the only events of my life.