"I began by a curious love for pastoral and descriptive poetry.

I read Thomson and Cowper, similes from 'Paradise Lost,' and other selections of my own; I read Tennyson, and revelled in the music of the lines and words.

I intended to be a poet.
"Then I became omnivorous, and read everything, whether I understood it or not, especially biographies.

I spent all my spare time in the school library; one only valuable thing have I derived from that--a capacity for taking in the sense of a page at a glance, and having a verbal memory of a skimmed book for an hour or two superior to any one that I ever met." Then there came an ebb, and he read nothing, but loafed all day, and tried to talk.

He had a notion he said, that he could argue Socratically; and he was always trying to introduce metaphors into his conversation.