14
special study. And in order to be able to recite
Shakespeare well, he studied elocution for a time.
" It is not easy after more than 50 years," he
says, " tojjixgL,a list of the books I read at Cam-
bridge, but I can mention some of them. Gray
and Shakespeare were my constant companions
and I knew nearly all the lyrical poems of Gray by
heart, and hundreds of lines of Shakespeare's plays
were recited by me in my leisure hours whether I
was in my room or out for a walk ; and other poets
like Burns^.Wordsvvorth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron,
ShejteyIl*aiu3U Keats --were- not forgotten. From
Shakespeare I found my way to the other drama-
tists of the Elizabethan Age and great was my pride
in possessing thick quarto volumes of Marlowe,
Massinger, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher. In
my reading I ran out of the beaten track
now and then and the Arcadia of Sir Philip
^Sidney and Richardson/s interminable novels,
such as Sir Charles Grandison and Clarissa
Harlowe did not appear so tedious to me as to most
people, and then I passed on to Fielding's and
Smollett's novels. Some of De Quincey's writings
and Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare and
Hazlitt's and Lamb's and Carlyle's essays came in
as interludes in my more serious reading ; for
occasionally I read translations of German plays —
Lessing's and others and the Theogony of Hesiod
and the great poems of Homer had a high place in
my admiration; One of my greatest delights was
to spend an early morning hour in summer in
the Botanical Gardens, Cambridge, with some