e"; and I knew what _bon bec_ meant, which
is more than one of Villon's great modern translators has done! Also
_heaulmiere_, which is _not_ helmet-maker, as another supposes.

I went further in this field than I have room to describe. I even read
the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay. In this year my father gave
me "The Doctor," by Robert Southey, a work which I read and re-read
assiduously for many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd
reading, Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny being one of the books.
This induced me to read all of Southey's poems, which I did, not from the
library, but from a bookstore, where I had free run and borrowing
privileges, as I well might, since my father lost 4,000 pounds by its
owner.

While at Mr. Greene's school I had given me Alsopp's "Life and Letters of
Coleridge," which I read through many times; then in my thirteenth year,
in Philadelphia, I read with great love Charles Lamb's works and most of
the works of Coleridge. Mr. Alcott had read Wordsworth into us in
illimitable quantities, so that I soon had a fair all-round knowledge of
the Lakers, whom I dearly loved. Now there was a certain _soupcon_ of
Mysticism or Transcendentalism and Pantheism in Coleridge, and even in
Wordsworth, which my love of rocks and rivers and fairy lore easily
enabled me to detect by sympathy.

But all of this was but a mere preparation for and foreshadowing of a
great mental development and very precocious culture which was rapidly
approaching. I now speak of what happened to me from 1838 to 1840,
principally in the latter year. If I use extravagant, vain words, I beg
the reader to pardon me. Perhaps this will never be published, therefore
_sit verbo venia_!

I had become deeply interested in the new and bold development which was
then manifesting itself in the Unitarian Church. Channing, whom I often
heard preach, had something in common with the Quietists; Mr. Furness was
really a thinker "out of bounds," while in reality as gentle and purely
Christian as could be. There was something new in the air, and this
Something I, in an antiquated form, had actually preceded. It was really
only a _rechauffe_ of the Neo-Platonism which lay at the bottom of
Porphyry, Proclus, Psellus, Jamblichus, with all of whom I was fairly
well acquainted. Should any one doubt this, I can assure him that I
still possess a full copy of the "Poemander" or "Pimander" of Hermes
Trismegistus