12 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



thought and action of the greatest service to them after- 

 wards in their professional struggles. His maxim was, that 

 if a boy were not well thrashed when he was young, he 

 would most probably need it when he became a man ; and 

 he ridiculed the idea, that because a youth had brushed 

 clothes, or cooked a mutton-chop for his master at Eton or 

 Winchester, his feelings or demeanour as a gentleman would 

 be injuriously influenced when he grew up. It is notorious 

 that those who most cheerfully endured the hardships in 

 the Crimea, and roughed it best, were public schoolmen. 

 Even as regards scholarship, Mr. Smith could not have 

 quitted Eton without benefit. Where otherwise did he 

 acquire that taste for classical literature which characterized 

 him through life 1 Where did he get his love for Horace, 

 so as to be able to quote long passages with enthusiasm 1 

 Horace and Pope were his favourite authors, and he knew 

 the whole of the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard by heart. He 

 was also an enthusiastic admirer of Shakspeare, and fre- 

 quently cited parts of his plays with great emphasis and 

 feeling. The magnificent lines in Hamlet, where Polonius 

 gives his parting advice to Laertes, beginning, " These few 

 precepts in thy memory, look thou character," he often 

 repeated with much force and vehemence of delivery, "suiting 

 the action to the word," and said they were the finest that 

 ever were written. He laid particular stress on that passage : 



" This above all, to thine own self be true ; 

 And it must follow, as the night the day, 

 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 



In the sentiment here so nobly conveyed may be traced 

 the mainspring of his conduct in after-life. There was, 

 however, one part of Polonius' advice which the squire did 

 not strictly follow out in his own person, nor exactly put 

 faith in ; namely, on the subject of dress : 



** Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

 But not express'd in fancy ; rich, not gaudy. 

 For the apparel oft proclaims the niau.** 



