202 MEMOIR OP PLEEMING JENKIN 



and the rancid. The tale of David in the Bible, 

 the Odyssey, Sophocles, JEschylus, Shakespeare, 

 Scott ; old Dumas in his chivalrous note ; Dickens 

 rather than Thackeray, and the Tale of Two Cities 

 out of Dickens : such were some of his preferences. 

 To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was always faithful ; 

 Burnt Njal was a late favourite ; and he found 

 at least a passing entertainment in the Arcadia 

 and the Grand Cyrus. George Eliot he outgrew, 

 finding her latterly only sawdust in the mouth ; 

 but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and 

 must have gone some way to form his mind. He 

 was easily set on edge, however, by didactic writing ; 

 and held that books should teach no other lesson 

 but what ' real life would teach, were it as vividly 

 presented.' Again, it was the thing made that 

 took him, the drama in the book ; to the book 

 itself, to any merit of the making, he was long 

 strangely blind. He would prefer the Agamemnon 

 in the prose of Mr. Buckley, ay, to Keats. But 

 he was his mother's son, learning to the last. He 

 told me one day that literature was not a trade ; 

 that it was no craft ; that the professed author 

 was merely an amateur with a doorplate. ' Very 

 well,' said I, ' the first time you get a proof, I 

 will demonstrate that it is as much a trade as 

 bricklaying, and that you do not know it.' By 

 the very next post, a proof came. I opened it 

 with fear ; for he was indeed, as the reader will 



