Rummaging In The Dusty Pigeon-Holes
Of Memory, I Came Once Upon A Graphic Version Of The Famous Psalm,
'The Lord Is My Shepherd':
And from the places employed in its
illustration, which are all in the immediate neighbourhood of a
house then
Occupied by my father, I am able, to date it before the
seventh year of my age, although it was probably earlier in fact.
The 'pastures green' were represented by a certain suburban
stubble-field, where I had once walked with my nurse, under an
autumnal sunset, on the banks of the Water of Leith: the place is
long ago built up; no pastures now, no stubble-fields; only a maze
of little streets and smoking chimneys and shrill children. Here,
in the fleecy person of a sheep, I seemed to myself to follow
something unseen, unrealised, and yet benignant; and close by the
sheep in which I was incarnated - as if for greater security -
rustled the skirt, of my nurse. 'Death's dark vale' was a certain
archway in the Warriston Cemetery: a formidable yet beloved spot,
for children love to be afraid, - in measure as they love all
experience of vitality. Here I beheld myself some paces ahead
(seeing myself, I mean, from behind) utterly alone in that uncanny
passage; on the one side of me a rude, knobby, shepherd's staff,
such as cheers the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod
like a billiard cue, appeared to accompany my progress; the stiff
sturdily upright, the billiard cue inclined confidentially, like
one whispering, towards my ear. I was aware - I will never tell you
how - that the presence of these articles afforded me encouragement.
The third and last of my pictures illustrated words:-
'My table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes:
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows':
and this was perhaps the most interesting of the series. I saw
myself seated in a kind of open stone summer-house at table; over
my shoulder a hairy, bearded, and robed presence anointed me from
an authentic shoe-horn; the summer-house was part of the green
court of a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and white
imps discharged against me ineffectual arrows. The picture appears
arbitrary, but I can trace every detail to its source, as Mr. Brock
analysed the dream of Alan Armadale. The summer-house and court
were muddled together out of Billings' Antiquities of Scotland; the
imps conveyed from Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress; the bearded and
robed figure from any one of the thousand Bible pictures; and the
shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it
figured in the hand of Samuel anointing Saul, and had been pointed
out to me as a jest by my father. It was shown me for a jest,
remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted it in earnest.
Children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an
intermediary too trivial - that divine refreshment of whose meaning
I had no guess; and I seized on the idea of that mystic shoe-horn
with delight, even as, a little later, I should have written
flagon, chalice, hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have
appealed to me at the moment as least contaminate with mean
associations. In this string of pictures I believe the gist of the
psalm to have consisted; I believe it had no more to say to me; and
the result was consolatory. I would go to sleep dwelling with
restfulness upon these images; they passed before me, besides, to
an appropriate music; for I had already singled out from that rude
psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds of all, not
growing old, not disgraced by its association with long Sunday
tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:-
'In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by.'
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of
what was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these
pleased me it was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great
vacant world upon whose edge I stood; I listened for delightful
plots that I might re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and
circumstances that I might call up before me, with closed eyes,
when I was tired of Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of
the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in durance. Robinson
Crusoe; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious, romantic
soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome and bloody for a
child, but very picturesque, called Paul Blake; these are the three
strongest impressions I remember: The Swiss Family Robinson came
next, longo intervallo. At these I played, conjured up their
scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times
seven. I am not sure but what Paul Blake came after I could read.
It seems connected with a visit to the country, and an experience
unforgettable. The day had been warm; H - - and I had played
together charmingly all day in a sandy wilderness across the road;
then came the evening with a great flash of colour and a heavenly
sweetness in the air. Somehow my play-mate had vanished, or is out
of the story, as the sages say, but I was sent into the village on
an errand; and, taking a book of fairy tales, went down alone
through a fir-wood, reading as I walked. How often since then has
it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was the first time:
the shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot, and if my
mind serves me to the last, I never shall, for it was then that I
knew I loved reading.
II
To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great
and dangerous step. With not a few, I think a large proportion of
their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking'
overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear
never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately
period.
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