ent poets, you may be sure Pen read the English with
great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron and
Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire-worshipper and a Corsair; he had them by
heart, and used to take little Laura into the window and say, "Zuleika,
I am not thy brother," in tones so tragic that they caused the solemn
little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat, until the
proper hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis's knee, and
listening to Pen reading out to her of nights without comprehending one
word of what he read.

He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't),
and Byron, and Pope, and his favourite Lalla Rookh, which pleased her
indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, and Mrs. Hemans above all,
this lady used to melt right away, and be absorbed into her
pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read those authors to her in his kind
boyish voice. The 'Christian Year' was a book which appeared about that
time. The son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe--faint,
very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that solemn
church-music: but he always loved the remembrance of it, and of the
times when it struck on his heart, and he walked over the fields full of
hope and void of doubt, as the church-bells rang on Sunday morning.

It was at this period of his existence, that Pen broke out in the Poets'
Corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses with which he was
perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses signed 'NEP.,' addressed
'To a Tear;' 'On the Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo;' 'To Madame
Caradori singing at the Assize Meetings;' 'On Saint Bartholomew's Day'
(a tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn warning to the people
of England to rally against emancipating the Roman Catholics), etc.,
etc.--all which masterpieces, Mrs. Pendennis no doubt keeps to this day,
along with his first socks, the first cutting of his hair, his bottle,
and other interesting relics of his infancy. He used to gallop Rebecca
over the neighbouring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if
you please, we shall call Chatteris, spouting his own poems, and filled
with quite a Byronic afflatus as he thought.

His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He brought his
mother a tragedy, in which, though he killed sixteen people before the
second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust the masterpiece into
the fire in a pet. He