22 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



apt to recollect more clearly when the narcissus bloomed 

 in fields beside the Stour, and where yellow frogs of an 

 uncommon marking were to be found, than what boys more 

 usually remember. Yet he never failed highly to appreciate 

 the education which he received during these months, the 

 only classical training which he ever enjoyed. His favourite 

 walk was over the race-down to Tarrant Monkton, along 

 the course of that primitive telegraph, on the six-shutter 

 principle, which had been opened by Government to connect 

 London with Weymouth in the course of the Napoleonic 

 wars. Of the working of this line of telegraph, a picturesque 

 account is given in Mr. Hardy's admirable Dorset novel, 

 The Trumpet Major. In summer my father used to 

 wander off, across Lord Portman's park, to the bend in the 

 river just below Stourpaine, where the "clotes," the water- 

 lilies, grow thickest ; and in after years, looking back on 

 these childish excursions, he used to repeat with peculiar 

 gusto those exquisite lines of William Barnes' — 



" Wi' earms a-spreaden, an' cheaks a-blowen, 

 How proud wer I when I vu'st could zwim 

 Athirt the pleace where thou bist a-growen, 

 Wi' thy long more vrom the bottom dim ; 

 While cows, knee-high, O, 

 In brook, wer nigh, O, 

 Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote ! " 



The inseparable John Brown had accompanied his friend 

 to Blandford, and these two were sufficient unto themselves 

 throughout their school-days there. My father, at no time 

 of life much given to promiscuous cordiality, does not seem 

 to have formed lasting acquaintanceships with any of his 

 Blandford schoolfellows. John Brown and he continued 

 their zoological studies with unabated ardour, and at this 

 time began to make coloured drawings of animals with 

 great assiduity. In 1824 Womb well's travelling me- 



