ction of the library several hundred volumes
of occult philosophy, a collection once formed by an artist named Cox,
and of these I really read nearly every one. Cornelius Agrippa and
Barret's "Magus," Paracelsus, the black-letter edition of Reginald Scot,
Glanville, and Gaffarel, Trithemius, Baptista Porta, and God knows how
many Rosicrucian writers became familiar to me. Once when I had only
twenty-five cents I gave it for a copy of "Waters of the East" by
Eugenius Philalethes, or Thomas Vaughan.

All of this led me to the Mystics and Quietists. I read Dr. Boardman's
"History of Quakerism," which taught me that Fox grew out of Behmen; and
I picked up one day Poiret's French work on the Mystics, which was quite
a handbook or guide to the whole literature. But these books were but a
small part of what I read; for at one time, taking another turn towards
old English, I went completely through Chaucer and Gower, both in black
letter, the collections of Ritson, Weber, Ellis, and I know not how many
more of mediaeval ballads and romances, and very thoroughly and earnestly
indeed Warton's "History of English Poetry." Then I read Sismondi's
"Literature of Southern Europe" and Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry of
Europe," which set me to work on Raynouard and other collections of
Provencal poetry, in the knowledge of which I made some progress, and
also St. Pelaye's, Le Grand's, Costello's, and other books on the
Trouveurs. I translated into rhyme and sent to a magazine, of which I in
after years became editor, one or two _lais_, which were rejected, I
think unwisely, for they were by no means bad. Then I had a fancy for
Miscellanea, and read the works of D'Israeli the elder and Burton's
"Anatomy."

One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a venture from the
library the black-letter first edition of the poems of Francois Villon. I
was then fifteen years old. Never shall I forget the feeling, which
Heine compares to the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy
mine, which shot through me as I read for the first time these
_ballades_. Now-a-days people are trained to them through second-hand
sentiment. Villon has become--Heaven bless the mark!--_fashionable_! and
aesthetic. I got at him "straight" out of black-letter reading in
boyhood as a find of my own, and it was many, many years ere I ever met
with a single soul who had heard of him. I at once translated the "Song
of the Ladies of the Olden Tim