I COBBLE.
All this has led me, after a roundabout fashion, to what became for
some time the chief delight of my Winters--an employment, moreover,
which I have taken up afresh at odd times during my life. It came about
thus. My uncle had made me a present of an old book with pictures in
it. It was called _The Preceptor_--one of Dodsley’s publications. There
were wonderful folding plates of all sorts in it. Those which
represented animals were of course my favourites. But these especially
were in a very dilapidated condition, for there had been children
before me somewhere; and I proceeded, at my uncle’s suggestion, to try
to mend them by pasting them on another piece of paper. I made bad work
of it at first, and was so dissatisfied with the results, that I set
myself in earnest to find out by what laws of paste and paper success
might be secured. Before the Winter was over, my uncle found me grown
so skilful in this manipulation of broken leaves--for as yet I had not
ventured further in any of the branches of repair--that he gave me
plenty of little jobs of the sort, for amongst his books there were
many old ones. This was a source of great pleasure. Before the
following Winter was over, I came to try my hand at repairing bindings,
and my uncle was again so much pleased with my success that one day he
brought me from the county town some sheets of parchment with which to
attempt the fortification of certain vellum-bound volumes which were
considerably the worse for age and use. I well remember how troublesome
the parchment was for a long time; but at last I conquered it, and
succeeded very fairly in my endeavours to restore to tidiness the
garments of ancient thought.
But there was another consequence of this pursuit which may be
considered of weight in my history. This was the discovery of a copy of
the Countess of Pembroke’s _Arcadia_--much in want of skilful patching,
from the title-page, with its boar smelling at the rose-bush, to the
graduated lines and the _Finis_. This book I read through from boar to
finis--no small undertaking, and partly, no doubt, under its
influences, I became about this time conscious of a desire after
honour, as yet a notion of the vaguest. I hardly know how I escaped the
taking for granted that there were yet knights riding about on
war-horses, with couched lances and fierce spurs, everywhere as in days
of old. They might have been roaming the world in all directions,
without my seeing one of them. But somehow I did not fall into the
mistake. Only with the thought of my future career, when I should be a
man and go out into the world, came always the thought of the sword
which hung on the wall. A longing to handle it began to possess me, and
my old dream returned. I dared not, however, say a word to my uncle on
the subject. I felt certain that he would slight the desire, and
perhaps tell me I should hurt myself with the weapon; and one whose
heart glowed at the story of the battle between him on the white horse
with carnation mane and tail, in his armour of blue radiated with gold,
and him on the black-spotted brown, in his dusky armour of despair,
could not expose himself to such an indignity.