54 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [ch. ii. 



read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nau- 

 seated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or 

 music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically 

 on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleas- 

 ure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not 

 cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On 

 the other hand, novels, which are works of the imagination, 

 though not of a very high order, have been for years a won- 

 derful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novel- 

 ists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and 

 I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhap- 

 pily against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, 

 according to my taste, does not come into the first class 

 unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly 

 love, and if a pretty woman all the better. 



This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic 

 tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and 

 travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may 

 contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as 

 much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a 

 kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large 

 collections of facts, but why this should have caused the 

 atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher 

 tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind 

 more highly organised or better constituted than mine, 

 would not, I suppose, have thus suffered ; and if I had to 

 live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some 

 poetry and listen to some music at least once every week ; 

 for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would 

 thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these 

 tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious 

 to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, 

 by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. 



My books have sold largely in England, have been trans- 

 lated into many languages, and passed through several edi- 

 tions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the 

 success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring 

 value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy ; but 

 judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few 

 years. Therefore it may be worth while to try to analyse 

 the mental qualities and the conditions on which my suc- 

 cess has depended ; though I am aware that no man can do 

 this correctly. 



I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which 



