PERSONAL 125 



as that which he heard performed at the funeral 

 of the Duke of Wellington in 1851. 



Unless he found it necessary to do so for some 

 special purpose, he did not often read new books ; 

 his old favourites seemed to satisfy him. Of these, 

 like the old airs, he never grew weary. Sir Walter 

 Scott's writings he always enjoyed. These, together 

 with Miss Edgeworth's tales and the " Vicar of 

 Wakefield," were among his earliest mental com- 

 panions, and often quoted. Of poems, "Gray's 

 Elegy " was one which seemed specially to har- 

 monise with his tastes. For Charles Dickens' works 

 he had no great partiality. To him and his sup- 

 posed lack of appreciation for entomological studies 

 Mr. Morris playfully alluded in his " History of 

 British Butterflies," when he said : 



" The unfeeling and heartless manner in which Mr. 

 Charles Dickens relates the gratuitous destruction by 

 the robbers of poor Grimaldi's ' Dartford Blues,' in 

 revenge, as it would appear, for the rest of the intended 

 plunder having been timely removed, must for ever 

 lower him in the estimation of every high-souled 

 entomologist. True, indeed, it is that he uses lan- 

 guage not altogether inappropriate in treating of the 

 loss language which, did it express the feelings of his 

 heart, might be accepted as displaying some degree 

 of commiseration for so lamentable a calamity ; but 

 the acute perception of the entomologist will at once 

 tell him that the sympathy is but feigned, the pity 

 but a mockery, the pretended commiseration a mere 

 delusion, betokening an utter want of feeling on a 



