Saturday afternoons. Of Ben Jonson I could make nothing, but when
I turned to 'Hero and Leander', I was lifted to a heaven of
passion and music. It was a marvellous revelation of romantic
beauty to me, and as I paced along that lonely and exquisite
highway, with its immense command of the sea, and its peeps every
now and then, through slanting thickets, far down to the snow-
white shingle, I lifted up my voice, singing the verses, as I
strolled along:

Buskins of shells, all silver'd, used she,
And branch'd with blushing coral to the knee,
Where sparrows perched, of hollow pearl and gold,
Such as the world would wonder to behold,--

so it went on, and I thought I had never read anything so
lovely,--

Amorous Leander, beautiful and young,
Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung,--

it all seemed to my fancy intoxicating beyond anything I had ever
even dreamed of, since I had not yet become acquainted with any
of the modern romanticists.

When I reached home, tired out with enthusiasm and exercise, I
must needs, so soon as I had eaten, search out my stepmother that
she might be a partner in my joys. It is remarkable to me now,
and a disconcerting proof of my still almost infantile innocence,
that, having induced her to settle to her knitting, I began,
without hesitation, to read Marlowe's voluptuous poem aloud to
that blameless Christian gentlewoman. We got on very well in the
opening, but at the episode of Cupid's pining, my stepmother's
needles began nervously to clash, and when we launched on the
description of Leander's person, she interrupted me by saying,
rather sharply, 'Give me that book, please, I should like to read
the rest to myself.' I resigned the reading in amazement, and was
stupefied to see her take the volume, shut it with a snap and
hide it under her needlework. Nor could I extract from her
another word on the subject.

The matter passed from my mind, and I was therefore extremely
alarmed when, soon after my going to bed that night, my Father
came into my room with a pale face and burning eyes, the prey of
violent perturbation. He set down the candle and stood by the
bed, and it was some time before he could resolve on a form of
speech. Then he denounced me, in unmeasured terms, for bringing
into the house, for possessing at all or reading, so abominable a
book. He explained that my stepmother had shown it to him, and
that he had looked through it, and had burned it.

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