TASTES AND ACQUIEEMENTS 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,^ 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 repHed : " 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. 
^ The continuator of Hume's History of England. 
