He had some value for Spenser, and I remember his reading to me (unlike his usual practice of making me read to him) the first book of the _Fairie Queene_; but I took little pleasure in it.

The poetry of the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I hardly became acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to manhood, except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read at his recommendation and was intensely delighted with; as I always was with animated narrative.

Dryden's Poems were among my father's books, and many of these he made me read, but I never cared for any of them except _Alexander's Feast_, which, as well as many of the songs in Walter Scott, I used to sing internally, to a music of my own: to some of the latter, indeed, I went so far as to compose airs, which I still remember.

Cowper's short poems I read with some pleasure, but never got far into the longer ones; and nothing in the two volumes interested me like the prose account of his three hares.

In my thirteenth year I met with Campbell's poems, among which _Lochiel_, _Hohenlinden_, _The Exile of Erin_, and some others, gave me sensations I had never before experienced from poetry.