This seems a queer idea for a small boy, but it must be confessed.
"It takes all sorts to make a world," some are soldiers from the cradle,
some merchants, some orators; nothing but a love of books was the gift
given to me by the fairies. It was probably derived from forebears on
both sides of my family, one a great reader, the other a considerable
collector of books which remained with us and were all tried, persevered
with, or abandoned in turn, by a student who has not blanched before the
_Epigoniad_.
About the age of four I learned to read by a simple process. I had heard
the elegy of Cock Robin till I knew it by rote, and I picked out the
letters and words which compose that classic till I could read it for
myself. Earlier than that, "Robinson Crusoe" had been read aloud to me,
in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I remember the pictures of Robinson
finding the footstep in the sand, and a dance of cannibals, and the
parrot. But, somehow, I have never read "Robinson" since: it is a
pleasure to come.
The first books which vividly impressed me were, naturally, fairy tales,
and chap-books about Robert Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob Roy. At that
time these little tracts could be bought for a penny apiece. I can still
see Bruce in full armour, and Wallace in a kilt, discoursing across a
burn, and Rob Roy slipping from the soldier's horse into the stream. They
did not then awaken a precocious patriotism; a boy of five is more at
home in Fairyland than in his own country.
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