TASTES AND ACQUIREMENTS 29 



agreeable companion than Horace, Virgil or even Homer. 

 Do not think I underrate those attainments, which alone 

 make a man the perfect gentleman ; but I had no taste for 

 them, though ample time and opportunity for all. As it is, 

 I sometimes attempt to rub them up, but I enjoy nothing so 

 much as Hume and Smollett, 1 This mainly arises from the 

 writers' bringing associations, connected with different parts of 

 my native land, and of scenes, though perhaps only scampered 

 through in a Mail Coach, which my memory, very retentive 

 of localities, enables me to .revisit, along with the heroes of 

 my Author. A love of poetry is also a sad deficiency in me, 

 for you cannot suppose that I should learn to appreciate it by 

 being crammed with stanzas of Marmion, not amid Castles 

 and Groves, but in a school of 100 boys. Crabbe's Poems are 

 my favorites (laugh at me if you will), because I can go with 

 him everywhere. As for Thomson, ' void of rhyme as well 

 as reason,' he is quite too lackadaisical for me. To the 

 Southward, in bad weather, I used to spend a great deal of 

 time in reading, chiefly books on Scientific subjects, which 

 are of most importance to me now that I have to work for 

 my bread. 



Of French he early acquired a working knowledge, im- 

 proving it greatly in the winter of 1844-5, before his journey 

 to Paris, by dint of lessons and conversation with M. Planchon, 

 his father's assistant at Kew. With German, also, he was con- 

 versant enough to tackle German books on botany ; but it 

 was a labour to him. Hence the zest of his repartee to Darwin, 

 of whom it is told (' Life,' i. 126) : ' When he began German 

 long ago, he boasted of the fact (as he used to tell) to Sir 

 J. Hooker, who replied : " Ah, my dear fellow, that's nothing ; 

 I've begun it many times." 



Among his contemporaries he neither courted popularity 

 nor was constitutionally fitted to practise the arts of popu- 

 larity. Indeed, he suffered from a nervous irritability of the 

 heart which from his school- days brought on palpitation when 

 he stood up to construe in class. And although he tried to 

 overcome this by joining his college debating society and getting 

 up speeches carefully beforehand, success was denied him. 



1 The continuator of Hume's History of England. 



