Review of Reviews, 1/3/06. 



Character Sketches. 



149 



boyhood. I give the place of honour to Mr. Burt, the 

 first working man elected by working men to a seat 

 in the House of Commons. 



THOM.AS BURT (Morpeth). 



B. 1837, Northumberland. Ed., Pit Village 

 School. Oct., Coal-miner. 



I am greatly in arrears with my correspondence, 

 reports, etc., and, if the truth may be told, I am a 

 lazy, bad writer, but I do not like to say no to the 

 request of an old friend like your dear self. 



Few men owe more to books than I, but it is not 

 at all easy for me to specify the particular books 

 which were most helpful to me in my early studies. 

 I would be about sixteen when I first felt a strong 

 desire for mental improvement. At that time I was 

 working underground some twelve or thirteen hours 

 a dav — and had been doing so since I was ten vears 

 of age. Fortunately for me, both my father and 

 mother were fond of books, though they had but 

 little schooling, as, indeed, 1 had myself — mine 

 being about two vears in all. Books in our house 

 were few, consisting almost wholly of sermons, reli- 

 gious magazines, and other works on theology. His- 

 tory, poetry, fiction, there was none. 



In my father's little librarv there were two or 

 three odd volumes of Channing's works. One of 

 these contained essays on Napoleon, Fenelon and 

 Milton. These essays I devoured greedily ; that 

 on Milton I read over and over again. Todd's 

 ■' Student's Manual " was another of my father's 

 l.Mioks which stimulated my desire for reading and 

 study. .About this period, too, 1 laid ho'.d of two 

 small autobiographies, which I read with avidity 

 nd profit, those of Frederick Douglass and of Ben- 

 .luin Franklin — ^hoth of whom were self-taught 

 under very adverse conditions. Cassell's and Cham- 

 l>ers's educational books, "Cassell's Popular Educa- 

 tor," etc., helped me greatly. I studied carefulK 

 many of the le-ssons as they came out in the weekly 

 ' ^r montlily numliers of the "Popular Educator." 



I began, in spite of low wages and the scarcitv of 

 money, to collect a small libran- of my own. Among 

 i>ther books which I bought and read in these early 

 \ears — when from sixteen to twenty — w'ere Gibbon's 

 •' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " ; Milton's 

 Prose 'W'orks, the Imperial Dictionary (which I got 

 in 2s. 6d. numbers, monthly, and longed for). 

 Poetry I was then, and have always been, fond of. 

 My early favourites were Cowper, Longfellow, Mil- 

 ton, Pope, Kirke White. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, 

 ' Tennyson. Ruskin had not yet seized and possessed 

 me. Burke. .\(lam Smith, Stuart Mill, Grattan. 

 ■ Curran, etc.. the political economists, the orators and 

 statesmen did not c/inie till later, when, much to my 

 surprise, my fellow-workmen had called me into pub- 

 lic life. 



I will only add that, if I knnw myself, I was a 

 fairly good specimen of the pure student — seeking 

 knowledge for its own sake — with little or no ambi- 



Photooiuj}}! hn2 



Mr Thomas Bupt. M.P. 



[K. ff. Mills. 



tion. certainly with no desire to improve mv social 

 position, nor indeed, I fear I must confess, with any 

 conscious design, to equip myself foi the service of 

 my fellow-men. T.B. 



In the proof I had sent Mr. Burt, I stated that 

 in his youth he had been brought up among the 

 Primitive Methodists. In returning the proof, Mr. 

 Burt writes: — 



" I have struck out vour entry under ' Religion,' 

 as it might mislead. I am not a member — nor have 

 I ever been — of the Primitive MethodLst body. My 

 father and mother were Primitives. I went to the 

 P.M. Sunday school and chapel as a boy and 

 youth. From the travelling preachers — who often 

 came to our house — I derived intellectual stimulus, 

 and benefit in other wa\'s ; but as I have said, I 

 never was a member of the denomination." 



JOHN BURNS (Battersea). 



B. 1858, London Scot. Ed., Local School. Occ, 

 Engineer. 



Mr. Burns is the first Labour member to become a 

 Cabuiet Minister. His duties at the Local Govern- 

 ment Board are too absorbing for him to contribute 

 to this series, but the omission can easily be supplied 

 from information previously received. Mr. Burns is 

 one of the best re-ad, if not the best read, of all the 

 Labour members. His private library is probably 

 the largest possessed bv anv member of his partv. 

 He is a voracious reader. 



If John Burns ever wrote a companion volume to 

 Hugh Miller's " My Schools and Schoolmasters," he 

 would give the first place among the men who had 

 influenced him to Paine, Owen and Cobbett. The 

 first book that gave him a glimpse of the millennial 

 visions of what might be if co-operative brotherhood 



