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have clapped his hands with joyful approbation of my leap into them . He would have rejoiced to see me tear up every blade and root which grew there ; though he knew beggary , and scorn , and hate would inevitably be my lot through life , if I ventured to touch them in check of their growth ; for he believed they poisoned nature . And what
was this which I had learnt by stealth ? That it was prudent to say yea by implication , and do no directly—all in an honourable way , note ye . That one man ' s kick of another down stairs , should be accompanied by a drowsy voice , and a sleepy eye ; all in an honour * able way : —or , he might deliberately and gradually blight his soul arid burn his heart , while he looked at , and spoke to him as blandly as if he were fitting him with wings for a flight to Paradise ; still in an honourable way ! How did that book creep into the juvenile library of such a school as ours ? It was a volume of instructions for the attainment of the elegances and refinements * of common sense ; this of course was not its title . Surely it must have been placed there by one of the patrons of the school in sarcastic bitterness 1 I read it over and over , and through and through , and never
forgot its precepts . They were struck deep into the malleable iron of my memory . I scorned , loathed , and abhorred them ! Their design never succeeded with me , they could not touch me , they never could chill my affections . Hence , probably , I gradually imbibed an opposition to myself , my tongue of asperity and bitterness , while every untongued thought was so contrary in its tendency . By that book I was taught to avoid society , while I yearned to mingle in it every hour ; I feared myself . Hence , perhaps , my affection for young children , nay preference of a dog ' s congratulatory wag of his tail ,
to a man ' s ' how d ' ye do V Hence my love of every individual and my aversion of men in masses . I shrink from , because I am unfit for , the sympathies of society , its components cannot , or will not understand me , and they have driven me to the extremity of thinking , that , to become a sensible man in their opinion , I must be first a scoundrel
my own . Thus I have exhibited my sources of education up to my fifteenth year , and , except in the article to whicli my last paragraph alludes , they were poor indeed . That single article I did not believe , at the time , would be of import in my future destiny . it has swoln into a broad and deep stream since . But there was a warm fountain of inexhaustible knowledge within me , then—feelings—so please you , and whatever else I learnt afterwards , was drawn from that fountain . 1 est le chetnin des passions qui m ' a conduit a la philosophies if I may presume to think I have arrived at any philosophy . With such head , or rather heart , stores , did I go forth from school to earn salt to my porridge . I shall improve in my phraseology as I advance : when 1 arrive at the academy in which I made my acquisitions of elegant colloquy , viz ., the 'tween decks of a frigate , and the
cock-pit and gun-room of a seventy-four , my readers will be repaid fqr their present indulgence , by the ornaments of diction , flowers of rhetoric , and rounded periods , which will be scattered in every page , but that will be two years from this ' salt to my porridge * seeking : till then let it be salt to my porridge , or any thing else which my pen takes it into its nose to express my meaning by . This salt to my por-
Untitled Article
336 Autobiography of Pel Verjuice .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 336, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/48/
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